Twenty-Four Hours: A Heart's Call

“Ugh!’ I groaned in frustration at the negligible amount of work I had done despite trying for the past hour. The pull had gotten worse lately and it was getting impossible to ignore it. I glared resentfully at the foreign heart beating chest. The heart transplant two years ago should have been a new lease on life but I was once again at the whims of an organ.

Sighing in exasperation, I decided to indulge it once and for all. For the next twenty-four hours, I would do whatever this heart wanted me to do.

As someone who would have been unable to survive past the age of thirty without a heart transplant, I was intimately familiar with the sequelae of such a surgery. But just because I knew of heart memory did not mean I was willing to go along with it. My weak heart had shackled me to a hospital bed more times than I cared to count so after receiving a new one, I was even more reluctant to let it direct my lifestyle.

But now I just wanted to be free from its pull. After sending a message to my assistant, I shoved three sets of clothes, basic toiletries, a water bottle, and a packet of biscuits into a rucksack.

After a moment’s hesitation, I strode back to my study and headed towards a trunk. With trembling hands, I opened it and extracted its sole occupant - a diary - from the layers of fabric I had wrapped it in. During the first week after the transplant, I had been plagued with dreams of memories that were not my own. Confused, I had noted them down in the diary, though the dreams ceased, I would wake up sometimes to the sound of heartbeats emanating from the book. After I had locked it in the trunk out of desperation, the pull began. An uncontrollable urge to head south, to a city called Clonsford whose name had unknowingly been branded onto my soul. When resistance proved futile, I had moved to Medding, a small town about an hour away from Clonsford.

I had managed to hold on for two years but could no longer do so. Comforting myself that it would be over only twenty-four hours later, I started the car.

The journey to Clonsford was uneventful, though the urge had abated somewhat. The first thing I was supposed to do was to go fishing. Clonsford boasted of a large lake and fishing was a popular attraction, making it easy to find a shop to rent the necessary equipment from.

After rolling up my trousers, I sat on the pier and let my feet dangle into the water. The action was strangely calming. As I stared at the surface of the lake, I wondered why the one change I had made was moving to Medding. Given my life expectancy, I had let my parents chart my future, obediently completing a two-year course to become a work-from-home consultant. We had all given up on hope as I could only be put on the transplant waiting list at twenty-nine. I could have gone back to college after the transplant but I had continued on the same track.

My grumbling stomach startled me. The sun had climbed to its zenith while I ruminated. As I walked to my car after returning the equipment, a snack cart caught my eye. It was stop number two. Its signature chili cheese corndog burger probably had more calories than I had ever consumed in a meal but the heart’s first owner used to like it.

Then I drove to a church on the otherwise of the town to listen to Redwood Children’s Choir practice for two hours. The teenage pianist had average skill, but I still found myself drawn to him. I left before the practice ended and asked for directions to a park with red oaks.

As I strolled through the park, I wondered what my heart’s original owner was like. Only stopping after sunset, I consulted the diary for my next stop - an inn called The Ivy Homestead. Just as well, it saved me the trouble of searching for accommodation.

Fifteen minutes later, I was taking my room key from the enthusiastic owner when a photo behind her caught my eye. The young man in it was sitting on the pier, with a fishing rod in one hand and a chili cheese corndog burger in the other, smiling widely at the camera. It was probably her son, for they shared the same eyes and mouth. It made me shiver and I instinctively realized that I was looking at my heart’s previous owner, whose shaggy blond hair was oddly familiar.

Just then, the door opened, and in walked the blonde pianist from the choir. He greeted the owner with a soft call of “Mother” before disappearing through another door. This was his home, I realized. My heart wanted to return home one last time.

That night, I had my dinner in my room, savoring the oh-so-familiar taste of dishes I had never heard of before as tears streamed down my face. I also had an unusually deep and dreamless sleep.

I checked out at eight in the morning, speeding back home. The heart’s twenty-four hours were over, but my life would now begin anew.