Seven People Who Borrowed the Same Heart

How it begins

Ada found the heart in her lunch tin, beside the cheese sandwich.

It was no larger than a plum. Glass, she thought, until it moved.

The note beneath it said RETURN WHEN FINISHED.

There was no address.

She had fourteen minutes before the afternoon bus route. Enough time to eat, not enough to decide what counted as finished with a heart.

She wrapped it in a napkin.

At the first stop, a man complained about the fare. Ada knew him. He complained every Tuesday, always after visiting the hospital. Usually she explained the price once and closed the discussion.

Today she felt a sharp ache beneath her breastbone.

It was not the man's grief. She could not know his grief. It was the sudden, unwelcome certainty that his complaint had somewhere else to go.

“Sit down,” she said. “Pay me on the way back.”

He looked offended, then relieved, then offended by the relief.

At the next stop, a woman argued that Ada had driven past her yesterday. Ada had not been working yesterday. She began to say so.

The heart warmed in its napkin.

She stopped.

By the terminus, she had accepted three incomplete fares, missed her break, and acquired a headache. The passengers had not become kinder. One had left a drink under the seat.

Ada took the heart out of the tin.

“This seems badly designed.”

It beat once against her palm.

She thought of her daughter, whose calls she had been putting off because every conversation ended in an argument about help.

Ada dialed.

When her daughter answered, she nearly began with advice. Instead, she asked what time would be good to talk.

“Now,” her daughter said, surprised.

The heart cooled.

That evening, Ada placed it back in the tin with a new note.

Useful. Not comfortable. Do not confuse the two.

She still had no idea where to return it.