Your Heart Belongs to Me

was no longer quite enough.
    Their lovemaking was different from any Ryan had known, rich with desire for a perfect union, yet without lust, giving without taking, receiving without wanting. Tender, selfless, almost innocent, this was a sweet celebration of life, but more than a celebration, it was a commemoration of all they had been to each other to this point in time, to this fulcrum of their lives, and it was a solemnization of a commitment to be two in one henceforth, to be as one, always one, one forever.
    Even after Ryan had received a virtual death sentence from his cardiologist, such a moment of beauty and joy was possible, which not only gave him hope but also stropped a sharper edge on his determination to live.
    This consummation at dawn was his high tide, his lifetime-best surf, a perfect set of double overhead swells, and it was not in his nature to imagine that what came thereafter would be not more of the same and soon a new life with a new healthy heart, but instead error, disorder, terror, anguish, and loss.
    The storm.
     

 
    TWENTY-SEVEN

    R yan sailed through the psychological testing and was added to the heart-recipient list of the United Network for Organ Sharing.
    Following the diagnosis of cardiomyopathy and his revelation of his condition to Samantha, he was spared the dreams that had plagued him for a week. The city in the sea, the lake of black water, and the haunted palace had been deleted from his nightly itinerary.
    No other dreams arose to trouble him. He slept well each night and woke rested or at least rested enough.
    In lonely moments, he no longer heard the curious rapping that—at windows, at doors, in bathroom plumbing, and from a plasma TV—had insisted upon his attention.
    His sense of being watched, of being the object of a sinister conspiracy, blew away with the dreams and with the phantom knocker. A fresh air came into his life, and cleared from his head the stale miasma of unreason as if he had merely been suffering from a pollen allergy.
    He experienced no further episodes of deja vu. Indeed, he suspected that if he returned to Denver and located the small park with the aspens, that place—and the church adjacent to it—would not affect him as it had before.
    As for knowing, before he saw it, what the crucifix would look like above the altar at St. Gemma’s…
    Over the years, he had been inside a few Catholic churches, attending weddings and funerals. He didn’t remember any of those altars, but he assumed that perhaps a crucifix in one Roman church was much like that in another. Uniformity might even be required. He must have known what he would find in St. Gemma’s only because he had seen the identical crucifix—or one nearly like it—at one of those weddings or funerals.
    He attributed the calm and clarity that purged his paranoia to the medications that Dr. Gupta prescribed, including a diuretic to control heart failure and an antiarrhythmic drug to correct abnormal heart rhythms. His blood was better oxygenated now than it had been, and toxins once dangerously retained were being flushed from his system more efficiently.
    Irrationally, he had feared that a scheming poisoner, a modern-day Medici, might be among his household employees. Ironically, the only poisoner had been the very heart within his breast, which by its diminished function had clouded his mind and fostered his delusions, or so he concluded.
    Through October and November, Ryan’s greatest problem proved to be impatience. As others awaiting transplants received their hearts or perished, he moved up the list, but not fast enough.
    He remained acutely aware that Samar Gupta had given him at most one year to live. A sixth of that year had passed.
    When he saw TV news stories about traffic accidents involving fatalities, he wondered if the deceased had signed organ-donor cards when getting their driver’s licenses. Sometimes the knowledge that most people did not donate would inspire an angry rant. This was not fair to those against whom he railed, because during all the years that he’d been in good health, he never signed such a card, either.
    Now enlightened, through his attorney he arranged to donate what organs, if any, might be of use to others after his body succumbed to the ravages of cardiomyopathy or, alternately, if he received a transplant but died anyway.
     

     
    By December, Dr. Gupta had to adjust Ryan’s drugs and add two more medications to his regimen in order to prevent