The Unremarkable Heart

The Unremarkable Heart
by Karin Slaughter
    June Connor knew that she was going to die today.
    The thought seemed like the sort of pathetic declaration that a ninth grader would use to begin a short story assignment – one that would immediately elicit a groan and failing grade from June – but it was true. Today was the day that she was going to die.
    The doctors, who had been so wrong about so many things, were at least right about this: she would know when it was time. This morning when June woke, she was conscious not just of the pain, the smell of her spent body, the odor of sweat and various fluids that had saturated the bed during the night, but of the fact that it was time to go. The knowledge came to her as an accepted truth. The sun would rise. The earth would turn. She would die today.
    June had at first been startled by the revelation, then lain in bed considering the implications. No more pain. No more sickness. No more headaches, seizures, fatigue, confusion, anger.
    No more Richard.
    No more guilt .
    Until now, the notion of her death had been abstract, an impending doom. Each day brought it closer, but closer was never too close. Always around the corner. Always the next week. Always some time in the future. And now it was here; a taxi at the foot of the driveway. Meter ticking. Waiting to whisk her away.
    Her legs twitched as if she could walk again. She became antsy, keenly aware of her pending departure. Now, she was a businesswoman standing at an airport gate, ticket in hand, waiting to board the plane. Baggage packed. Luggage checked. Not a trip she wanted to make, but let’s just get it over with. Call my row. Let me onto the plane. Let me put back my seat, rest my eyes and wait for the captain to take over, the plane to lift, the trail of condensation against the blue sky the only clue that I have departed.
    How long had it been since the first doctor, the first test, had predicted this day? Five and a half months, she calculated. Not so much time, but in the end, perhaps too much to bear. She was an educator, a high school principal with almost a thousand kids in her charge. She had work, responsibilities. She hadn’t the time or inclination for a drawn-out death.
    June could still remember going back to work that day, flipping through her calendar – standardized testing the following month, then the master schedule, which no one understood but June. Then the winding down of the school year. Grades due. Contracts signed. Rooms cleaned. The school was to be painted this year. Tiles replaced in the cafeteria. New chairs for the band room. Lockers needed to be re-keyed.
    ‘All right,’ she had said, alone in her office, staring at the full days marked in the calendar. ‘All right.’
    Maybe she could fit it in. Maybe if she could last four months, she could get it all done.
    So June had not taken her dream vacation to Europe. She had not gone skydiving or climbed a mountain. She had continued to work at a job she had grown to despise, as if what she did made a difference. Suspending students. Lecturing teachers. Firing a slovenly gym coach she’d been collecting a file on for the last three years.
    Clumps of hair fell onto her desk. Her teeth loosened. Her nose bled. One day, for no obvious reason, her arm broke. She was holding a cup of coffee and the heat from the liquid pooling on the carpet in front of her open-toed sandal was the first indication that something was wrong.
    ‘I’ve burned my foot,’ she had said, wondering at the dropped jaws of the secretaries in the front office.
    What had forced her on? What had made her capable of putting on pantyhose and pantsuits every morning, driving to school, parking in her spot, doing that hated job, for four more months when no one on earth would have questioned her early retirement?
    Willpower, she supposed. Sheer determination to finish her final year and collect her full pension, her benefits, after giving thirty years of her life to a system that barely tolerated her presence.
    And pride. After all this time, she embraced the opportunity to show her suffering on the outside. She wanted them to see her face every day, to watch the slow decline, to note the subtle changes that marked her impending death. Her last pound of flesh. Her last attempt to show them that they were not the only ones who sustained damage. Jesus on the cross had made a less determined departure.
    There was no best friend to tell. No family members left to whom