New Heart for Christmas

In a hallway of a well kept home, tastefully decorated with a few fairy lights and sprinkled with Christmas cheer, there is a telephone ringing. A woman in her late forties leaves the kitchen at the end of the hall and goes to answer it.

JUNE: On the telephone. Hello?…She’s not home…I don’t know…No, I won’t pass on a message! I’m not her secretary!…I’ve already said she’s not home!…She’ll be home when she’s home…ever thought she might not want to talk to you, and that’s why she’s not returning your calls!

June slams the telephone down, signs in frustration and goes back into the kitchen.

A nineteen-year-old boy is sitting alone in a bar, his fingers absent-mindly running over his mobile phone keypad. The jukebox is playing ‘All I Want For Christmas (Is You)’ and there are many tacky Christmas decorations all around.

SCOTT: Sitting down with two pints, putting one in front of his friend. Here you go mate.

MAX: Cheers.

SCOTT: Looking at the phone. Who was that?

MAX: Oh, I just tried calling to find out what’s going on.

SCOTT: Won’t talk to you?

MAX: It’s like I don’t even matter. I mean, it’s not as if we’ve not been together for five years.

SCOTT: Yeah, I know mate.

MAX: I just wanna see her. I went ‘round there and got the door slammed in my face. I’m suffering too here.

SCOTT: I don’t know what to say. You been getting sleep?

MAX: Not really. Every time I close my eyes, I see her.

SCOTT: I know this is gonna sound heartless-

MAX: Don’t-

SCOTT: It’ll get better.

Grace opens the front door to the house where the telephone conversation took place a few hours earlier. She comes in with her best friend, Ellie, both weighed down with Christmas shopping.

GRACE: Mum?!

JUNE: In the kitchen.

GRACE: Me and Ellie are going to my room! Don’t come up!

JUNE: Why?

GRACE: Lifting her bags up. I’ve got presents to wrap!

JUNE: Okay darling. You girls still going out tonight?

Grace and Ellie are heading up the steps.

GRACE & ELLIE: Yeah!

They giggle together.

JUNE: Do you want feeding first?

GRACE: We’re good thanks! Already eaten and gonna grab summert of Loui’s!

JUNE: Okay.

In the bedroom, Grace closes the door and pulls her desk in front of it.

ELLIE: What are you doing?!

GRACE: Mum hates me drinking in the house!

Ellie cracks up laughing while she goes into one of the bags and pulls out two small bottles of vodka.

ELLIE: Passing one to Grace, and taking the cap off her own. Here’s to a night of celebrations!

GRACE: Clinking bottles. Celebrations!

They both take a swig of the alcohol, making them shudder. Seeing the other shuddering they laugh at each other, and start picking through their new cloths for tonight’s outfit.

It’s three in the morning. The wind is blowing, the ice rain is falling hard and Max is sitting in his car, shivering, staring at the building where he knows his girlfriend is right now. He’s necking a bottle of cheap vodka, that’s no longer making him shudder. Tears are running down his face, getting himself more and more worked up.

He suddenly punches his stirring wheel, swearing loudly.

MAX: I should be with her! This is bullshit!

Visibly shaking, Max opens the car door and slams it shut, walking up to the building, his light blue shirt quickly soaked through, his jeans becoming swiftly becoming heavy with the rain, Max walks into the building.

MAX: I’m coming baby.

Max walks into the local hospital. A friend told him a few hours ago, that his girlfriend had been transferred, she was rapidly becoming critical, and Max was going to find out what was going on.

Max finds his way around the hospital to where his girlfriend is slowly dying.

STEPHEN: What the hell are you doing here?!

MAX: I’ve got every right to be here!

STEPHEN: You’re the reason why she got herself in this mess!

MAX: It was an accident!

STEPHEN: You’re lucky my wife is sleeping!

MAX: I want to see my girlfriend!

STEPHEN: You’re too late.

MAX: What?

STEPHEN: She’s gone-

MAX: His heart breaking. No…you’re lying.

STEPHEN: I’ve lost my daughter.

MAX: I…please…let me see her…please? I won’t even come-

STEPHEN: Where? To the funeral?! When I burry my own child?

MAX: Please? I promise. Let me say goodbye?

Seeing how hurt Max is, Stephen stands aside from the door, allowing Max to enter.

He goes to her bedside. Besides a few cuts, she just looks like she’s sleeping.

MAX: Taking her hand, the tears flowing hard. Baby. You can’t leave me.

Stephen is standing by the door.

MAX: Maybe going to the fair ground drunk wasn’t a clever idea, huh?…I was gonna ask you a question…but you already knew that…you always knew what I was up to. I know we’re young, but don’t tell me you’d not already started planning. September forth, first day of year seven, first day we met.

He reaches into his jean pocket. Stephen jumps away from the door.

MAX: It’s not a ring. It’s her bracelet I bought her last Christmas, the latch kept breaking, she asked me to look after it-

STEPHEN: Keep it-

MAX: No. It’s hers.

STEPHEN: It’s the only thing you’ll get of hers…keep it.

The is a doctor who gently knocks on the door and comes in.

DOCTOR: I’m sorry to disturb, but I just need to talk with you-

STEPHEN: Can’t it wait?

Max is kissing his departed girl friends forehead.

MAX: Whispering. You’re still warm.

His tears are falling onto her pale cheeks while the doctor and her father continue to talk in hushed voices.

DOCTOR: It’ll only take a moment. The thing is, your daughters’ heart, lungs, liver and kidn-

STEPHEN: Don’t even ask.

DOCTOR: I don’t think you understand. Your daughter could save a lot of people, if we act fast.

STEPHEN: You’re not butchering my little girl.

MAX: Leaning over the body of his beloved. You don’t have a choice, Stephen.

STEPHEN: As her father-

MAX: She’s on the donor register.

STEPHEN: She is not-

Max goes into his back pocket, removes his wallet and pulls out two organ donor cards. One in each of their names.

MAX: We did it together when we gave blood. She made me keep hers, she knew you’d hit the roof if you found out.

STEPHEN: You need my say-so.

DOCTOR: I’m afraid we don’t. She was over eighteen; she was an adult.

MAX: She said you could have anything but her eyes.

Max kisses her lips for the final time.

MAX: Our hearts will always be connected.

Max starts to walk out of the room.

MAX: We weren’t planning to get married by the way. We were planning to go travelling, I wanted to ask her to move abroad and never come back. Look in her room, you’ll find all her plans to come with me. To the doctor. Please don’t hack her up?

DOCTOR: We don’t, and a lot of people will be forever in hers and your debt.

MAX: Yeah.

And with that, Max leaves the hospital room.

On the other side of the building there is a children’s ward. It’s decorated to the heavens with all sorts of coloured fairy lights and Christmas decorations, ones that have been donated and ones that the children have made themselves.

Two parents are talking quietly to their daughter’s doctor, while the five year old ‘sleeps’, listening to every word being said.

DOCTOR: The valve replacement will be ready within the next few hours. This is the best possible outcome; your daughter is a very strong little girl. I’m actually very positive about the operation.

Tears run down the faces of both parents, unable to speak they mouth ‘thank you’ and hold each other for support.

Grace, Ellie and their friend Loui are sitting in McDonald’s before heading home at four in the morning. It’s been a hard-core night of ‘celebrations’ and there is nothing like an Egg McMuffin to sort out the hangover.

LOUI: So, wait. You were five?

GRACE: Yeah. My right valve needed replacing since I was born. It was okay, but it wasn’t as strong as it should have been. It pretty much conked out by the time I got to five.

LOUI: Can’t you just have the left valve?

ELLIE: Laughing. You can’t live with half a heart!

LOUI: So you got a new one?

GRACE: Yes Lou.

LOUI: Where from?

GRACE: What?

ELLIE: Where do you think?

LOUI: Like, was it a cow’s heart or something?

Grace and Ellie look at each other and burst out in hysterics of giggles.

LOUI: What? What’s funny?

ELLIE: You!

GRACE: Calming down. No, it wasn’t a cow’s heart. All I know is, she was nineteen and she died at a fair ground.

LOUI: Wait…it was a persons heart?!

GRACE: Yeah.

LOUI: Who died?

ELLIE: You know when someone uses the term, ‘you’re heartless’? You’ve still got a heart Lou!

LOUI: Yeah I know-

ELLIE: You can’t live without one.

LOUI: I know. Wait…she died when she was nineteen?

GRACE: Yeah…sad really.

LOUI: Oh my God. She was our age!

GRACE: Yeah.

LOUI: So wait…you were five and she was nineteen, and you have her heart?

GRACE: Well, a valve.

LOUI: Yeah, but you’re nineteen now. So your heart is, wait, she counts on her fingers. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four…twenty-four years old!

ELLIE: What?!

GRACE: I like that age.

LOUI: It’s not?

ELLIE: Do the math Lou.

LOUI: Wait…what? You’re confusing me.

GRACE: My heart was already nineteen when I got it.

LOUI: So it’s nineteen plus nineteen? So it’s…

She gets her mobile phone out.

ELLIE: Oh my-

GRACE: Thirty-eight Lou, my heart is thirty-eight years old!

LOUI: Oh my God! Do you think that’s why you like older guys?

GRACE: I don’t like older guys!

ELLIE: Do you think the hash browns are cooked yet?

LOUI: Hope so! I’m starving.

GRACE: I’ll go check.

Grace heads to the service counter.

GRACE: Hey, we’re still waiting on three hash browns.

SERVER: Just a few more minutes.

GRACE: More to herself. That’s what you said a few minutes ago.

A man, aged 38 laughs next to her.

MAN: They’re always slow here on a morning.

GRACE: I’d be slow if I had to work this early in a morning too.

They laugh lightly together.

GRACE: Uhm…I don’t always dress like this.

MAN: Been clubbing?

GRACE: Yeah.

MAN: Birthday?

GRACE: Uh, yeah. I guess you could say that. It’s my celebration night.

MAN: So not your birthday?

GRACE: Laughing. No. It was the time when I got my life back-

MAN: Finished with an ex?

GRACE: Na way…life’s too short for ex’s.

MAN: Refreshing to hear. Oh and…I don’t always look like this-

GRACE: It’s a very nice suit.

MAN: Well when you’ve got directors meetings all day-

GRACE: And you’re up this early?

MAN: It’s what you do when it’s your business.

GRACE: Nice.

SERVER: Three hash browns.

MAN: Oh, I ordered one with mine.

SERVER: Oh…yeah…few more minutes.

The man looks at his watch.

GRACE: Here. You can have one of ours.

MAN: It’s okay; I can wait.

GRACE: No honestly. It’s fine. We’re gonna wait ‘til the coffee and juice start to work anyway.

MAN: Thank you, uhm…?

GRACE: Grace.

MAN: Max.

GRACE: Nice to meet you Max.

MAX: And you too Grace.

Max leaves while Grace goes back to the table.

Ellie and Loui have been watching her the whole time, with big, soppy smiles on their faces.

GRACE: What?

ELLIE: ‘I don’t like older men’ she says.

GRACE: I don’t.

LOUI: What kinda flirting what was then?!

GRACE: I was just being nice.

ELLIE: ‘You can have my hash brown’.

LOUI: Laughing. What a chat up line!

Ellie and Loui take their hash brown, leaving Grace with hers.

GRACE: Looking at hers.Oh shit.

Grace quickly jumps up and runs after him, calling Max’s name.