"We've found you a heart." The kindly expression on Dr. Manzaneres' face seemed ludicrous, in light of the fact that his visage was melting away, exposing the white bone beneath. He boomed on authoritatively, oblivious to this decomposition. "It's a perfect twelve of twelve for HLA-matching, Sue. There's just one thing."

The physician paused, and the motion made his molars clatter together like castanets. In the silence she struggled to tell him that she hated being called 'Sue'. But every breath was an effort and she could hear the bubbling in her chest and she wanted to live she was too young to die...

"The family wants this to be a brisobarbital match." Manzaneres fixed empty eye sockets on her face. "They won't consent to donation, otherwise. Would you be willing to consider it?"

Say no, she willed herself silently. Say no, say no sayno sayNO SAYNO! But her lips parted and she heard her voice, a wheezy wet whisper. "Yesssssss..."

"NonononoNO!" Susan woke up screaming, sitting upright in bed. The Other gibbered in the back of her mind, almost as agitated as she was. Her fingernails dug painfully into the scar that transected her breastbone.

The sheets tangled around her legs as she struggled to get off of the mattress. They were soaked with sweat. Standing, swaying slightly, she glanced at the clock. 5:00. A good night; she'd managed to get four hours of sleep before the nightmares had started.

She pulled the last entangling fold of sheet away from her ankle. The Other's presence gradually subsided into a whining mumble just behind her left ear as she staggered toward the computer and collapsed in her desk chair

Susan kicked the power button with a careless toe and sat staring blankly at the screen as it lit up in fractal patterns and then settled into her usual desktop arrangement. In the top right corner of the screen, a flowerpot labeled 'Mail' sprouted a flower that grew, withered, and sprouted anew every two seconds. Her stomach clenched, and the Other whined fretfully.

"It's probably just spam," she said aloud. The Other wasn't convinced; his whining grew louder. "Stop being such a crybaby," she snarled at the ghost as she tapped the enter key. "We've got the best e-locks that money can buy."

The synthesized voice of the computer was tinny, but the words were clear enough. "Message One: Sender Unknown. You ghostridden bitch, excommunication isn't good enough for the likes of you. I hope that you die slow and painful before you go roast in the flames of Hell. I saw you on the news and if it weren't a sin to -"

The Other's frantic screaming filled her head. She had to kick the power button with her toe to silence the stream of vituperation that was pouring dispassionately from her computer. Her hands were clamped over her ears in a futile effort to block the world out.

"...on Oprah," she heard someone whisper. "Unmistakable. See the scar?"

....round and round, round and round... all the livelong day... Childlike, the Other sang lyric-fragments tonelessly as two middle-aged ladies stared at her chest and then tut-tutted. Their voices dropped lower, plunged into the ocean of bus-sounds and then drowned. The occasional disapproving glances spoke volumes; Susan didn't need to hear what they were saying to know what they were thinking.

Susan grimly resisted the urge to button up her jacket; she'd deliberately worn the low-plunging shirt as a gesture of defiance. Instead, she looked at the other passengers. Her gaze stopped on a generously endowed brunette in a Delta Zeta sweatshirt, and despite her best efforts, fixed there as the Other picked up interest.

Fortunately, the chesty co-ed was gossiping and laughing with a knot of other girls in similar pink and green gear by the rear door. The group of them missed the Other's leer, wink, lick of the lips and nod.

It was only two blocks to the next stop. Susan's stop. She folded her hands tightly in her lap, gripping the fingers of one hand with those of the other. Biting her tongue sharply enough to make her eyes water, she wrested control of her face away from the ghost. "It's my body," she muttered, the mantra's consonants worn thin by endless repetition. "My body, not yours."

As she got off the bus, the Other used her fingers to smack the girl sharply on the ass. Susan could barely hear the outraged shrieks over the laughter in her head. Whose body now?

"Steve! Thank goodness you're here. Where's Alix? She should be here by now." Susan tried to keep the worried edge out of her voice. "She said she'd meet me by the doors, but I waited until I was late and she never showed."

Bald and paunchy, his face made round by steroids and psychotropic drugs, Steve stared at her sightlessly for a moment. A muscle in his cheek jumped in a rhythmic pattern; a side effect of the Zyprexa. How much was he taking now, to keep his ghost at bay? "You didn't hear."

Susan's breath caught in her throat. She looked around the room: empty, except for herself and Steve. The Other whispered in fearful realization. Oh no, no no no no. Not another one, not again. Not her too. "She left town for a vacation?" But she said she'd meet me here, she said so last week...

"She's dead, Sue, dammit!" Steve yelled at her. His fists, chubby as an infant's, clenched and unclenched in strangling motions. His voice was higher-pitched now, nasal, with a nearly Southern accent. He'd told her his transplant story once. His donor heart came from a Florida woman who'd been prone to rage episodes. "She couldn't take it any more."

Over the ringing in her ears and the snickering, I-told-you-so mumbles from the Other, Susan thought she heard him whisper, "Neither can I."

She grabbed at his arm in a sudden panic. "Don't you leave me too. Promise, Steve! Promise!"

Steve pulled his elbow out of her grip and stalked away, leaning beside the sign that said "Brisobarb Support Group Tuesdays 10 AM". He was muttering to himself, muscle twitch more pronounced as he argued with his ghost. She knew the panicked undertone to his voice too well.

Alix gone. Catie, Jim and Nate gone too. That left... just her and Steve. It was a horrifying realization; even the Other left off his monotonous mumbling long enough to take note. And she was the ghost-ridden with the longest survival post-transplant, now that Alix had committed suicide.

"Just the two of us," she whispered, staring at Steve from across the hallway as they waited for the therapist to arrive and unlock the conference room door. He was still muttering to himself. "No. Just the four of us."

"Well, you check out A-OK and top of the line. And you're down two kilos from last visit," Dr. Manzaneres said, as Susan sat on the edge of the examining table. "Weaning off the cyclosporine did the trick, eh?"

"Mmm," Susan said noncomittally. The Other was stirring up fragments of ghost-memory again: the cardiologist always reminded him of his father, apparently. The cardiologist nodded with satisfaction. She wasn't about to tell him that she'd started skipping meals, since the brisobarbital made everything taste like cardboard.

The physician patted her on the back, and she tried not to shudder, remembering her dream. Her paper gown rustled with the contact, the sound like static in her ears. "And otherwise, how are you doing?"

"Fine, fine." She managed a smile, amazed at how easily he accepted the deception. How easily everyone, even her own parents, accepted her veneer of equanmity at face value. We walk among you, outwardly normal and inwardly dissolving. One day, the erosion will go so far that there will only be tatters of us left. Two ghosts in a single body.

He was saying something now, looking at her with greying eyebrows raised. Inquiry. She dragged her attention back to the present. "I'm sorry. What did you say?"

"I said, we can count on you again this year? The lecture is tomorrow." Dr. Manzaneres looked annoyed, ascetic features drawn into a frown. He glanced at his watch as she mouthed hollow reassurances, and then bustled out of the room.

Susan's fingers trembled as she picked up the receiver. The metal was blood-warm against her touch, from the sun streaming in through Plexiglass windows. The Other was silent for once, anticipatory. He hardly needed to guide her fingers. She knew the number better than her own.

The phone rang, and rang. Susan sat patiently, woodenly, listening to the silence in her head and counting rings.

"Hello?" The voice was male, harried and abrupt. The Other lunged forward with a snarl, and Susan's fingers tightened on the receiver. She didn't say anything. She didn't have to.

"I know it's you, you psycho obsessive bitch. What part of 'restraining order' don't you understand?" The voice at the other end of the line was hostile, snarling threats into the silence. Lawyers. Police. The Other gibbered, raging against this enforced paralysis.

"And one more thing. Janie doesn't want to talk to you or any of your multiple personality psycho fantasy fake memories, either, bitch. You get me? Call here again, and I'll have you locked up in the loony bin permanently."

Susan found her voice, found words for the Other, howling in anger/sorrow/outrage. "If I could just talk to her..."

Before she'd reached the second word, she was speaking to a dial tone. Gently, she replaced the phone on the toggle. It took two tries to get out of the payphone booth. The Other wanted her to dial the number again.

The microphone squealed, cutting into the formless babble of multiple conversations. "I think we're ready to start, people. Can I have your attention, please? Thank you."

Susan watched the disinterested gazes of over a hundred twenty-somethings swivel toward the speaker. They slouched forward as if melted onto their desks, reading their newspapers, or simply gazing blankly at the front of the auditorium. Their collective attitude stated clearly: we're only here because attendance is required. An unpleasant thought occurred to her: in another five years, the majority of these apathetic young adults would be primary care physicians. The Other started up an uneasy murmur; he didn't like that idea any more than she did.

Seated in the corner behind the lecturer's podium, she had a beautiful view of the back of Dr. Manzaneres' long white coat. It fluttered about his trouser legs as he shifted his weight from foot to foot. Concentrating on the undulations of that pristine hem helped her keep the Other contained. The movement was hypnotic; she watched, and tried not to think about her handbag, heavy with promise in her lap.

Gradually her attention slipped back to the medical students, the opening comments providing a numbing background rumble. A girl in the back was already sleeping, forearms crossed to serve as a pillow for her forehead. As the lights dimmed, the audience's faces became a sea of indistinct ovals, and Susan focused on the words. The Other's whisperings were quiet enough to be ignorable, for the moment.

"....even as late as 2010, transplant stories were just that: stories. Urban legends, with varying basis in fact. Many stories were variations on the vegetarian transplant recipient who suddenly developed a craving for the donor's favorite sort of meat product, or the tone-deaf transplant recipient who began expressing an interest in the donor's favorite band." This part of the talk was nearly as familiar to her as the amused condescension in her cardiologist's voice. The screen behind him flickered covering his lab coat with dull blue tints as it displayed a rotating ball-and-stick chemical structure.

"In 2006, the drug brisobarbital was developed for use in continuous seizures, or status epilepticus. It was meant to replace its close cousin, pentobarbital...." The screen flickered again, showing a smiling face in a fuzzy photo; an older man, giving the camera two thumbs' up from a hospital bed. Susan stared at the screen, wondering to herself if the man in the picture would still be wearing the same smile now if he were still alive. I don't think so...

"But it was not until John Marsden, a liver-lung transplant recipient, developed an intractable seizure disorder, that the most infamous effect of brisobarbital were discovered. Given brisobarbital during an acute episode of status epilepticus in the year 2015, his EEG patterns changed... as did his personality." Her attention wandered. This was the fourth year in a row she'd heard this talk, word for word. Then again, she hadn't varied her own speech in the last three years, keeping it cheerful, positive. Inspirational. Just like the doctor ordered.

Her lips stretched in a smile at her own joke. Even the Other snickered his appreciation. Something moved over to the side, and she glanced over to see Dr. Manzaneres taking a seat. He was looking at her expectantly. This was her cue; she'd missed her introduction, his recap of her 'interesting case'. She'd brooded right through his superficial presentation of the 'ethical issues' surrounding brisobarbital in the early 2020's, and the Supreme Court decision in 2028.

Now, it was her turn to provide a 'little bit of her success story', and 'a few anecdotes about her experience'. She had fifteen minutes to 'assist in educating tomorrow's physicians'. The unspoken expectation- an expectation that she had fulfilled satisfactorily in the past- was that she would provide no information that might shake their world view.

As she stood, a smattering of polite applause greeted her. She moved to the podium, fixing a smile on her face. "Hello. It's so good to be here." This statement was met with silence and more blank staring. Taking a deep breath, she placed her handbag on the podium in front of her. The Other whispered in the back of her head... or was that her conscience?

Carefully prepared words died on her lips. She had fifteen minutes to convince these children of the truth, if she was brave enough.

"My name is Susan, and I live with a ghost," she began again, trying to start simply. "Five years ago, I was dying from a rare disease called IHSS. My only hope for life was a heart transplant.

"At the time, it was no choice at all; I could join the transplant list and live, or I could die. I wasn't ready to die. I lived in the hospital for six months before a match was found. I don't suppose I'd have been invited to talk to you if the donor's family hadn't specified that this would be a brisobarbital match, with an annual visit."

Dr. Manzaneres was leaning forward, expression uncertain, as she continued to speak. "My donor was a thirty-three year old investment banker who suffered a drowning injury that left only his brainstem intact. He left a wife and a set of two-year-old twins behind." A fragment of memory slipped in between her and her audience as she paused. Two little red squalling things with old-man faces. Pressing close to the nursery window, trying to get the best view. Not her memory, but she'd seen it before.

"He didn't desert them completely. He lives in me; the ghost in my head. The remnants of a personality and a lifetime of experiences." How much had science not yet discovered about cellular memory, and genetic components of personality? Certainly, the memory fragments associated with being ghostridden were stored in cells outside of the brain.

"As you know, the Supreme Court decision of Baker vs. Vitellas provided the donor's family an opportunity to make brisobarbital use mandatory. They reasoned that the donor individual should also have the same second chance at life that their organs provided those on the transplant list." Again she paused, this time wishing for a glass of water. Her mouth was dry.

"That ruling allowed donor's families to require a recipient to agree to visits with the donor's family, once the patient was stable, post-transplant. The first year... was difficult. The donor's wife watched me constantly for his mannerisms, tried to draw him out with memories and photos. It wasn't very .. successful. They were disappointed. I think that they might have felt betrayed." Her memory, now. Janie staring at her hungrily, looking for something that she just couldn't find. Watching the disappointment seep into Janie's eyes, as page after page of photo album pictures caused no more than the faintest recognition in the back of her skull.

"By the second year post-transplant, my donor family no longer wanted to see me, or what was left of their loved one. They had done their grieving and moved on." She had to stop, her voice rough. "Needless to say, this left me with an unwanted ghost." A mutter of denial, fierce and angry, from the Other. He still loved the family that had given him up for dead, locked in a live woman's skull.

"He's getting stronger, day by day. I'm told this is only my imagination, a way for my subconscious to provide release for impulses I'd rather deny. I don't know how much truth is in that; that's for science and my psychiatrist to judge." She paused again, rubbing at her forehead. She had had a headache for the last five years.

"I'm supposed to tell you that if I had this choice to make over again, I wouldn't do anything differently. That would be a lie." Another ripple of consternation ran through her audience. "I am not an organ donor. My tissues are potentiated by the chronic low-dose brisobarbital that I am legally required to take, even now. And I would not want to saddle someone as ill informed as I was with my ghost, or worse... with two ghosts." Now she looked up, the Other quieting as his demand to see was met. The audience was a blur of faces, swimming in front of her eyes. "The American Medical Association would like me to encourage you to donate your organs. I can't do that in good conscience. If you choose to do so, I would beg you to tell your friends and family not to create more unwanted ghosts. Thank you for your time and attention."

The End

Bio

Stella Evans is a pediatric resident at the University of Minnesota. She is certain that the sludge at the bottom of her coffee cup is well on the way to achieving sentience.