* * *
Marianne stands on the balcony, the cold sealing her fingers to the metal guardrail. From here, she can see the city, the estuary, the sea. The main roads, the port, and the coastline are illuminated by the orange glow of streetlamps, cold flames creating powdery Payne’s gray haloes in the sky, the lights signaling the entrance of the port at the end of the main pier, while beyond the waterfront it is black tonight — not a single boat left stranded, not a single flashing light, only a slowly pulsing mass, only darkness. What will become of Juliette’s love when Simon’s heart starts to beat inside a stranger’s body? What will become of everything that filled that heart, its emotions slowly deposited in strata since the first day, inoculated here and there in a rush of enthusiasm or a fit of rage, its friendships and enmities, its grudges, its vehemence, its serious and tender inclinations? What will become of the bursts of electricity that rushed through his heart when a wave approached? What will become of this full, this too-full, this overflowing heart? Marianne looks out at the courtyard: the pines still, the copses retracted, the cars parked under streetlights, the windows of the apartments opposite spilling warm light into the darkness, the reddish glows of living rooms and the yellows of kitchens — topaz, saffron, mimosa, and that even brighter Naples yellow behind the misted windows — and the neon-green rectangle of a sports field. It’s almost time for Sunday supper — that reduced meal, that TV dinner of self-service snacks, leftovers, pancakes, boiled eggs, a ritual that meant: this evening, she didn’t have to cook anything, and they would all sprawl in front of the TV to watch a soccer game or a movie, and Simon’s outline appears clearly in the lamp. She turns around: Sean is there, looking at her, forehead pressed to the window, while behind him, on the couch, Lou has fallen asleep.
22
Another call. Another telephone trembling on a table and another hand picking it up — this one has a large, dark gold ring on one of its fingers, ribbed with spirals. Another voice succeeding the electronic growl — this one sounds nervous, and we understand why when we see the name on the cell phone’s screen: “Harfang surg.” Hello? And then another announcement — we can read the contents of this one on the face of the woman who is listening to it, emotion rushing beneath her skin, and then her features contracting again in furls.
“We have a heart. A compatible heart. A team is on its way to remove it. Come now — we’ll do the transplant tonight. You’ll go into the OR around midnight.”
* * *
She hangs up, breathing heavily. Turns toward the room’s only window and gets up to open it, both hands leaning on the desk as she struggles to her feet, walking the three steps with difficulty, and then grunting as she forces the latch. Behind the window, winter is massing: a hardened landscape, glacial and translucent. The cold turns the sounds of the street to glass, each one isolated like the murmur of evening in a provincial town; it neutralizes the screech of the elevated railroad car as it comes to a halt at the Chevaleret station; it muzzles the air’s odors and presses an icy film over her face. Shivering, she looks slowly over toward the other side of Boulevard Vincent-Auriol, to the windows of the building, directly across from where she stands, that hosts the Cardiology Department of the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital. She had been there, three days earlier, for exams that showed her heart to be in a state of severe deterioration, enabling the cardiologist to request she be put on the priority list of recipients at the Biomedical Agency. She thinks about what she is living through, now, at this second. I’m saved, she thinks: I’m going to live. Someone, somewhere, has died suddenly, she thinks. Now, this evening, she thinks. She experiences the full force of the announcement, thinking that she doesn’t ever want the spark of this present moment to fade into the past, into the realm of memory: she wants it to endure, sharp and new. I am mortal, she thinks.
She takes a deep breath of winter, eyes closed: the bluish planet is drifting through a fold in the cosmos, suspended in silence amid gaseous matter; the forest is starred with straight-lined gaps; red ants are writhing under trees in a sticky frost; the garden expands: mold and stones, grass after rain, heavy branches, palm tree claws; the lidded city incubates the masses; children in bunk beds open their eyes in total darkness; she imagines her heart — a chunk of dark-red flesh, oozing and fibrous, pipes running in all directions — this organ riddled with necrosis, this organ that is failing. She closes the window. She has to get ready.
* * *
It is nearly a year since Claire Méjan rented this one-bedroom apartment without having even seen it — the mentions in the ad of the Pitié-Salpêtrière and its second-floor location being enough to make her sign a check, then and there, for the exorbitant sum demanded by the guy at the real estate agency. It’s a small, dirty, dark place, the balcony on the third floor obscuring the view from her window like a helmet visor. But she has no choice. This is what it means to be sick, she thinks — not having a choice. Her heart has left her no choice.
It’s myocarditis. She found out about it three years ago, during a cardiology consultation at Pitié-Salpêtrière. Eight days before that, she’d stayed at home with flu, poking the crackling fire in the hearth, a blanket over her shoulders, while outside in the garden, snapdragons and foxgloves cowered in the wind. She had gone to see a doctor in Fontainebleau and told him about the fever, the aches, and the tiredness, but she had neglected to mention the short-lived palpitations, the pain in her chest, and the breathlessness she experienced during exercise, ascribing these symptoms to weariness, winter, the lack of light, a sort of general exhaustion. She left the doctor’s office with a prescription for flu medicine, and decided to stay home and work from bed. A few days later, dragging herself through the streets of Paris to see her mother, she collapsed in shock: her blood flow decreased dramatically, her skin became pale, cold and clammy. She was taken to the ER in an ambulance, sirens screaming — like she’d found herself in an American soap opera — and they resuscitated her, then began the first tests. Blood analysis confirmed the existence of an inflammation, so they examined her heart. After that, she underwent a series of exams: the electrocardiogram detected an electrical anomaly; the X-ray showed her heart to be slightly enlarged; then, finally, the ultrasound established heart failure. Claire stayed in the hospital. She was transferred to the coronary care unit, where more specific exams took place. The coronary catheterization was normal, reducing the likelihood of it being cardiac arrest, so they decided to carry out a heart biopsy: Claire received an injection in the cardiac muscle via the jugular. A few hours later, the results concluded with a hostile-sounding nine-syllable diagnosis: myocardial inflammation.
The treatment was two-pronged: the first dealt with the heart failure (the organ no longer pumping efficiently), and the second the rhythm disorder. Claire was ordered to rest — no physical strain whatsoever — and to take antiarrhythmic drugs and beta-blockers, while she was implanted with a defibrillator in order to prevent sudden death. At the same time, the viral infection was treated with powerful immunosuppressants and anti-inflammatories. But the disease persisted in its severest form: it spread into the muscle tissue, the heart grew even more distended, and every second the risk of death hung over her. The organ’s destruction was now considered irreversible: she needed a transplant. A new heart. The heart of another human implanted in the place of her own — the doctor’s gestures seemed to mime the surgical act. In the long term, this was, for her, the only solution.