Suffering reached out from the shadow of a dumpster and Sawyer
found himself unable to just walk on by. He felt the pain of
others like it was his own, fostering waves of compassion and a
desire to help. Empathy drew him closer to the bloodied
mass.
He watched as the pulsing and bruised heap shivered within the
confines of the shadows. It was afraid but still reached out
to him with a tendril of blood. At times like this when
Sawyer gazed upon hopelessness he sometimes wished his heart was
constructed of colder stuff.
But it wasn’t.
He knelt next to the skinless mass, its veins rising and
falling like lungs on the edge of futility. An empty Chinese
food container would make a decent carrying case so he gingerly
scooped it inside. Cradling the wounded mound to his chest
he took it home where he could better asses the damage.
Clearing off his kitchen table which only had a few mismatching
plates, he placed the food container reverently in the center.
He focused a lamp on it by tipping the shade, then leaned in for a
more forensic examination.
It looked as if it wanted to die. It made no effort to
save itself and Sawyer knew if he was going to bring it back from
death he would have to do all the work. The cracks along its
side made it seem like a lost cause, but he’d seen this before and
knew it was merely broken. The breaks were deep and there
would be much scaring, but it would live.
A week later, after much tender care, Sawyer was able to take
it out of the container; it no longer needed the food box to hold
itself together. And more importantly it seemed to want to
keep itself together. A good sign.
Sawyer was beginning to wonder what to do next, when his
doorbell rang. He stepped from his small apartment kitchen
and answered the door. A woman with mismatched clothes, as
if she had dressed in the dark, stood hunched and haggard, staring
up at him. She appeared a few years older than Sawyer, but
it was hard to tell. She seemed hollow inside.
Placing a hand on the doorframe, she steadying herself.
Her eyes were full of regret as her thin lips parted slowly.
"Do, you . . ." she paused to wet her lips. "Do you have
something of mine?"
Sawyer nodded sympathetically and motioned her inside. "I
wondered if you'd come. I wasn't sure if you wanted it
anymore."
They moved into the kitchen and when the frail woman saw her
discarded organ beating healthy and strong she collapsed into a
chair, her hands reaching for it. "My heart," she said
though labored breaths. "How . . . how did you do
this?"
Sawyer took a chair next to her. "With some attention and
a gentle touch."
"I thought it was damaged beyond repair." A tear welled in her
eye. "That’s why I . . . that’s why I threw it out."
Sawyer reached for her hand, caressing it tenderly. "Only
broken," he said.
"It's not used to gentle hands." Her tears began to fall.
"Just cruel ones."
"Why don't we talk about how we can change that?" Sawyer's
voice was soothing and sincere.
She nodded, wiping her cheeks dry. "I’m Beth."
Sawyer made coffee and they talked for hours all the while
Beth's heart got stronger. Over the next few weeks the two
never seemed to stray far from one another. Sawyer continued
to nurture Beth's heart, rubbing the scares that would fade but
never completely disappear. It seemed that all Sawyer's
compassion had finally come back to reward him. His lifelong
compulsion to bring home the strays and wounded had finally
developed into something besides the satisfaction that comes from
helping others.
Sawyer was falling in love.
He had already started to shop for the ring when he first
noticed something was wrong. They had had an argument, their
first, and as Sawyer went over the blowup in his mind he couldn't
get over the feeling that Beth had started the verbal assault on
purpose. More arguments followed and eventually it seemed as
if everyday he was struggling not to fight with her. Finally
during the loudest brawl yet, over what, he didn't even know, Beth
stuck out her chin and yelled, "You want to hit me? Go
ahead."
It was then that Sawyer realized that his gentle hands had
turned into fists, one on each side of him, like deadly medieval
weapons ready to do damage.
He peered down at them, mentally forcing his fingers to uncurl,
still not believing what he was so close to doing.
"You're a wimp," Beth said. "I don't know what I ever saw
in you." She threw the front door wide and turned to deliver
her parting shot. "You disgust me."
The door slammed shut, shaking the frame, sending shock waves
throughout the apartment and Sawyer.
For a month he wondered what he could have done differently,
what he might have said that would have changed things. His
heart was broken and he would never know the reason why.
Maybe there was something wrong with him?
Time passed and his wounds healed. Scare tissue seared
across his heart and he wore it with pride, not because he enjoyed
the pain but because he had survived it.
Beth's memory had just begun to fade when just by chance, he
came across her heart again. It had been beaten worse than
before. Blood ran free over massive bruises as it once again
tried to find shelter in the shade of a dumpster. Sensing
Sawyers gaze it seemed to reach out to him like a drowning soul to
a lifeboat. He could see that if he didn't help this time it
would die.
Sawyer looked away, felt his heart frost a bit, and kept on
walking.