She Has Your Wife’s Heart

When your wife died her heart went to another. Now it beats for someone else. Can it still beat for you?

It was a Monday. Just a normal Monday. Some throwaway day in April. The day Your world fell apart. Your wife Amanda started it as always. She read some of her book before work. Kissed You goodbye, said she loved You like she always did.

She worked downtown in the high rises, she went to lunch with some coworkers at some trendy bistro near their office. On the walk back she was struck in the crosswalk. Distracted driver. Someone texting something that didn’t matter. It wasn’t a hard hit, didn’t break many bones, but she hit her head hard on the pavement. Her brain bled. It swelled. And before it could be relieved the pressure was too great. Brain death.

The machines kept her body alive. She was still warm when you arrived. You felt her skin, it felt alive even if she wasn’t. Even if she couldn’t feel your touch in return.

Years ago she had checked the box when renewing her drivers license. Organ and tissue donor. She explained it to you at the time: if she was going to leave this world she wanted to leave ‘one last gift’ so that others had another chance.

The doctors let you say goodbye, then began the process of transplanting her into others.

Her corneas went to a five year old boy, granting the gift of clear sight.

Her kidneys saved two lives, one went to a housewife with two kids who were able to continue loving their mother, the other to a high school student who was on their way to valedictorian.

Her liver went to a kind 60 year old man, a new grandfather, now he can hold his first grandchild, and live to see many more.

But her heart? That went to Sabrina.

Sabrina Higgins, 22, college student, the woman who carries Amanda’s heart.

Sabrina lived a comfortable suburban life. She grew up watching her parents' love fade into comfortable distance. Decided early that love should be a story worth telling. She left for college at eighteen, studied literature, worked at a campus coffee shop, dated casually, boys and girls, but found no one who made her want to stay. No one that had that story worth telling.

Until she met Chi.

Xochitl ("Chi") Ramirez, 23, College Student, Sabri