As soon as the plane landed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and I collected my suitcase, I raced out of the airport. I gasped when the bitter December wind hit my face, a sharp contrast to the 85-degree temps I’d left in Mexico where my husband and I were wintering. The cold jarred me to attention after traveling for twenty-six hours. It was Friday, December 22, 2016.

A friend had parked my vehicle in the lot a few hours earlier. Lot D, row 5. Shivering in my flimsy sweatshirt, I slid my suitcase on the back seat.

I paid seven dollars for parking instead of a forty-dollar cab and sped downtown. The steering wheel almost froze to my gloveless hands, but I barely felt it.

I needed to see my son.

Matthew had been admitted to the hospital the previous week after a routine X-ray revealed a mass on his heart. Nothing serious, apparently. Most likely fluid, the doctor had said.

But, as his mother—even though he was thirty-six—I needed to be near him.

I entered Matthew’s room. He was fully dressed, ball cap on his head, reclining in bed. His girlfriend stood beside him, and my daughter sat in a chair.

After hugging, we discussed what had happened. He’d had a lingering cough, and his doctor thought he might have pneumonia. Thus the X-ray.

“I’m fine, Mom. I just want to get out of here.” He was as antsy to get home as I had been to leave Mexico.

He didn’t look sick, and his cough was gone. He’d actually not been feeling well when we left two weeks ago. I’d talked to him several times while away, but he’d never been a phone person, and it was almost impossible to get anything out of him over the telephone.

“What’s this,” I said, picking up a two-foot-tall obviously homemade heart stand. The pinkish wooden heart was affixed to a dowel that had been inserted into a sturdy base.

“Jake made it,” he replied.

“How nice.” I fingered the carved heart. My oldest son, Jake, had scrawled “My heart is broken” on one side and “It needs fixing” on the reverse. He’d even cut a jagged strip out of the heart. “He did a great job.” I set it back on the counter.

It had been over thirty hours since I’d left the warmth of Mexico, and I didn’t relish going home to an empty house, but Matthew and Jessica convinced me to go and get some rest. I reluctantly agreed, realizing the doctor wouldn’t show up until the next day.

“Okay, then. I’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

I barely slept. The electric blanket took forever to heat up. I had never felt so alone.

I was back at the hospital by 8 a.m., hoping to catch the doctor. Matthew was alone, still wearing his ball cap. I’d been irked so many times over that hat. He was such a handsome guy, but that dratted cap never left his head.

“Aw, what happened?” I asked. The wooden heart lay on the counter.

“It broke off,” Matt said. “Not sure how it happened. A nurse, maybe. Or the cleaning people.”

“Crazy glue will fix it,” I said. “Just like Humpty Dumpty.”

“No, Mom. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again, remember? You used to read all those nursery rhymes to Jess and me.” His crooked, impish grin spread across his face.

“I remember,” I said.

The doctor discharged Matthew the next day, December 23, with a promised phone call for follow-up tests. “Enjoy Christmas with your kids” were ominous words from the doctor. Matthew’s words to me, “Sorry you came all this way for nothing,” were optimistic.

After Christmas, we had a meeting with the surgeon to discuss surgery to remove the mass. On New Year’s Day, Matthew was admitted to the hospital, with surgery scheduled for the following day. The unspoken word “cancer” lingered in the air.

But, no, cancer would be an impossibility. No one in my ex-husband’s family or mine had ever had cancer. I was reminded of the saying “Why me? But why not me?”

After surgery, we were devastated when the doctor said the mass had invaded too much of his heart and he was unable to remove it all. He had removed what he could, however, and sent a small section for biopsy. We were even more devastated when he said he was pretty sure it was cancerous.

Matthew remained in the hospital until the results came in. I arrived at the hospital by 9 a.m. every day and didn’t leave for home until close to ten hours later. I took small breaks. Nibbled at unhealthy snacks. Trudged in the snow to my car every couple of hours to put more money in the meter or to move the car to another two-hour parking spot. I’m not sure Matthew appreciated me hovering over him, but he never complained.

When I returned home from the hospital, I’d cry. I’d cry on the phone to Gary, my husband, who called every night. I cried on the phone to friends. I cried to relatives too far away to visit.

On January 9, 2017: the diagnosis. Cancer. A rare heart cancer. Nine months to live—if he was lucky. If he didn’t suffer a massive heart attack in the meantime.

I was numb. In denial? In disbelief? I didn’t know what I felt. My family had never experienced a tragedy. Nothing like this. Then again, why not us?

Gary returned home from Mexico. I continued to spend the days and early evenings in the hospital.

The next couple of weeks were roller coasters of living and dying. Too many tests. Biopsies galore. Numerous CT and PET scans. One day there was hope; the next day that hope was dashed. On the heart transplant list one day; off the next. The cancer had spread; it hadn’t spread.

His doctors had never seen this type of heart cancer and shrugged him off to oncology. The only option? Chemo.

When the oncologist told Matthew that chemo might prolong his life by only two months, Matt made up his mind fairly quickly. Why spend his last nine months ill from the effects of chemo for a slim chance at an extra couple of months?

His two children, the youngest nine at the time, were inconsolable. We all were.

I dubbed myself Mrs. Humpty. I needed to find a miracle.

Late into the nights after returning home from the hospital, I researched in earnest. I emailed doctors all over the world, looking for a magic pill. Surprisingly, I received answers from all of them, but not one had a magical cure.

Finally, I discovered a doctor in Montreal, the only one authorized in Canada to implant the SynCardia total artificial heart. He agreed to talk to Matthew’s doctor in Halifax.

Wheels moved fast. Within a week, the doctors had spoken, the out-of-province surgery was approved, and Gary and I were driving Matthew to Montreal, a twelve-hour trip. The doctors ordered us to stop overnight so Matt could rest.

I would have paid any amount of money to save my son. I would have depleted my savings. I would have begged. I would have borrowed. I would have robbed a bank had that been necessary. But none of that was needed. While on the road, we received approval from our provincial health care for the cost of the operation, which would be a staggering sum. A prohibitive amount.

We arrived at the Montreal Heart Institute on January 31 for the first of two days of tests. A barrage of tests—psychological and physical. Even a meeting with palliative care.

Matt was in excellent spirits, though frightened. But this was his only chance for life. He’d remain with the mechanical heart for at least a year, perhaps as long as two, at which time he’d be placed on the donor heart list. This would give time to ensure the cancer hadn’t spread and time for him to build up strength. He’d have to remain in Montreal the entire time, live in an apartment near the hospital, and stay hooked up to the monster machine keeping him alive.

The surgery on February 6 was successful, but my heart was as broken as that wooden heart when I saw him a few hours after he’d awoken. He was groggy, and his robotic motions brought me to tears. Two large plastic tubes entered and exited his stomach, and I was reminded of Frankenstein when I saw the clump of tubes and needles going into the right side of his neck.

The thumping of the monstrous machine that kept the implanted plastic heart beating was deafening. An identical massive machine stood in the corner in case the first broke down. A battery backup unit sat in a cabinet in case of a power outage.

How could I have allowed such an atrocity to happen to him? Removal of his heart? I was sickened. What had I done? No one else had brought up an artificial heart but me. Did he want this, or had I influenced him?

Thump, thump, thump. One hundred twenty beats a minute. Thump, thump, thump…

We stayed for another few days. I dreaded leaving, but he was in good hands with the doctors, nurses, and his girlfriend.

Matthew lived thirty-three days with the mechanical heart. After developing numerous infections, one of the two side effects the doctors had warned us of, a stroke being the other. He was immediately added to the national heart donor list.

A week later, Matt called me, ecstatic. “I have a heart, Mom. I have a heart.” Despite his happiness, I heard the weariness in his voice. I felt the doctors were moving too fast. I wanted to tell him to wait. I wanted to say, “There’ll be more hearts.” But his famous words, “I gotta go,” ended the call. Thankfully, we did exchange “I love you” before he hung up.

The donor heart transplant early the next morning was labelled a success.

But he developed complications and lasted three days. He never woke up.

Two months from diagnosis to death.

Minutes before we removed him from life support on March 11, 2017, one lone tear from his right eye traveled down his cheek. Did he know he was about to take his last breath?

Jake didn’t want the heart stand he’d made his brother. I didn’t want to see it trashed. I now have it in my home office, sitting on the windowsill.

I tried so hard to repair it, to glue the heart back to the dowel, but no matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t fix it.

Catherine MacKenzie’s writings can be found in numerous print and online publications. She has also published several short story collections, books of poetry, and children’s picture books. She writes all genres but invariably veers toward the dark—so much so that her late mother once asked her, “Can’t you write anything happy?” She published her first novel, Wolves Don’t Knock, in 2018, and Mister Wolfe (the darkly dark second in the series) in 2020. My Brother, the Wolf, the final volume, will be available in 2023. Cathy divides her time between West Porters Lake and Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.