Be still, my bleeding heart

My father used to tell me that I had a bleeding heart. As it turns out, he was right.

My doctor calls it mitral valve prolapse with slight mitral regurgitation.

I'm fascinated with this disease of mine. Basically, the mitral valve leaflet that keeps blood from flowing back into the heart is misshapen, which sometimes allows blood to spill. The more my heart bleeds, the bigger it gets. Sounds terrible, right? Well, it's really not that bad.

Even though the odds are it won't kill me, it still hurts whenever it leaks. For instance, I'm prone to taking pity on strange people, picking them up, and driving them places, which isn't the smartest thing to do late at night.

I first picked up someone in need when I was 16. A scruffy-looking man came up to me while I was sitting on my 19-year-old brother John's front stoop down on Highland Avenue in Knoxville. I had fond memories of that street, it being the first place John had to himself and the first place I could go with my friends to party, so I went there a lot. But John wasn't there that day, so I was just wasting time waiting for him. This man asked me if I wouldn't mind giving him a lift, and I said sure. He motioned at a tree, and from behind it came his wife and two children. We went back to my truck, and he and I climbed into the cab, while my 11-year-old sister Maggie, who was sitting in the passenger seat, looked at me with narrowed eyes and a furrowed brow and silently demanded, 'What are you doing, crazy brother?' His wife and two kids climbed into the bed.

I drove this family around until the father in the back of the cab reached his arms around my seat and said they'd go ahead and get out right here, on a Cumberland street corner. They hurried out of my truck and ran off, not looking back. I've continued to do this (though never again for that family) since then, and I have never been robbed, per se. So it's not a fatal condition that I have, just a borderline dangerous one.

Ah, my bleeding heart, my wonderful mitral valve prolapse with slight mitral regurgitation. What trouble will you get me into next? I would be bled dry in a big city such as San Diego or New York, I just know it. About this time last year, for instance, when I visited San Diego for Thanksgiving, a guy sitting on a street corner held out his palm and said, "You got any change?" To this, I said no, and as I walked away without missing a beat, he said, "Yeah, well, happy Thanksgiving to you." I lost another half a pint right then and there. I could feel it.

Usually it's not so bad when I refuse to do people favors. Usually they understand. One time last fall semester, when I was living out of my car for a couple of weeks, I refused to pick anybody up, no matter how needy they seemed. Never invite a stranger into your home, that's what I say. That's about the time that I found out about my condition.

I've looked my bleeding heart up on the internet, and there's always the chance that this mitral valve prolapse could be fatal, but the odds are in my favor; I have little to worry about from phrases such as "could be fatal." My life is pretty good. I'm not poor to the point that I have to be hungry when my stomach gets close to empty, not addicted to the point that I drink up the money I should spend on better clothes, not inept or disabled to the point I can't hold a job. Far from it, in fact. That's a good feeling, whenever I think about it. Happiness can be knowing that it can always be worse. Unless you're dead. There's probably no happiness in being dead; that's probably about as low as you can go.

Still, I meet some people and wonder if they wouldn't drag me down with them, if they could.

A couple of weekends ago, I tried to go to a show in Nashville at the Exit/In, a venue I've never been to before. They Might Be Giants were playing, and going to that show were Cara and two of her best friends. Cara is a short 23-year-old woman with ever-color-changing hair and a body increasingly covered in tattoos. We get along well because we have nice conversations, but we can also be at odds because when we were together, we had awful fights. I still enjoy spending time with her, but she's a full-time waitress and a part-time student, and we don't get to hang out very much anymore, so I felt I had to make this show.

When I got there on Saturday night, the line was, as I expected, around the building. Cara and I had had lunch earlier that same day at the Clay Pit, and she had told me that tickets were far from being sold out. She called me when I was still very close to the back of the line and told me that she had been wrong. Tickets had sold out earlier that day; she had had to pay a scalper $40 for a ticket that had originally cost $19.

I had to make this show. I had to see her, hang out with her. She was, and I consider her still to be, one of my best friends. I was willing to do pay a scalper $40 if I needed to. When I had arrived, I had noticed a man standing five feet away from the end of the line, just standing there, looking for someone to sell tickets to. He was offering four tickets for $40. After talking to Cara, I decided to leave, thinking that someone else had snatched up this scalper. But no, as I passed, there he was, still only five feet from the end of the line. He latched onto me and asked if I needed some tickets. He was a slightly hunched over, skinny man with a pockmarked face and a light brown moustache. He wore a red shirt and blue jeans, and he seemed completely normal: a man who had extra tickets to sell and just needed a ride to go and pick them up.

"Yeah," I told him: I was definitely looking for tickets. My immediate question was: "Do you have them on you?"

"No, my sister has them. She's at her boyfriend's house just up the road."

I should have said no thanks at that point, but I couldn't resist. Just up the road meant 10 minutes, 20 at the most. More than 20 minutes later, however, after we found my car, we got in and were off. Steven the scalper navigated me to his friend Mark's place, a dingy two-story apartment in the middle of a ghetto near the railroad tracks off of Charlotte Avenue. It wasn't a well-lit area, and when I pulled up to the curb about a block from the apartment complex, I ran my right front wheel up on the sharp, cold concrete. We discovered later that I'd actually ripped a small hole in the tire, and it was deflating slowly, just another piece of bad news to add to an entirely bad night.

I had told Steven before he got in my car that I only wanted one ticket and I would pay $20 or $30 for it. He was really nice in saying that his sister would only want $20 for one ticket, so when the time came, I was at first glad to give him the $20 bill. But before I let him round the corner and possibly disappear forever with my money, I told him I wasn't comfortable. I followed him, despite his protests.

"Her landlord is real weird, man," he told me before going inside the chain link fence surrounding the apartment complex. I watched a stray dog on the inside furiously dig a hole and slide out from under the fence, as if all it wanted in the world was to escape this place. "He won't want you coming inside."

Again, I should have taken my money back and run, but I didn't want to give up. A part of me still felt like I had to make that show.

"Look," I said, "I'm just not comfortable."

"I understand," he said, digging into his back pocket. "Here. Take my wallet. It's got my driver's license and debit cards in it."

That made me feel better, but still I followed him through the chain link fence's gate and tried to mount the stairs with him to the second floor. He held out his hand and told me, no, I needed to wait downstairs. So I did, leafing through his wallet to make sure he had given me his own. He looked back as he climbed the stairs and laughed.

"It's all there," he said.

"Sorry," I said, regretting it as soon as I said it. After all, what's wrong with wanting a little insurance?

He came back out a few minutes later and told me his sister wasn't there. She was over at another house not far away. We needed to go there. I shook my head and kept his wallet in my pocket.

We got back in my car, and we noticed the passenger side seemed to be lower than it should have been. I pulled over to the nearest gas station, a Shell on Charlotte, and sure enough, my right front tire was almost flat. I filled it up with air, but even then I could hear the air hissing out.

I dropped Steven back off at Mark's apartment and barely made it to the Shell station before my tire was completely flat again.

While waiting for Steven to return with Mark's car jack, I spent the next hour and a half asking every customer at the gas station for a lug wrench and a jack. Most people looked at me and laughed, or ignored me altogether. "I have a flat tire. That's all. I just need a jack and wrench."

"No, man, I want nothing to do with it," one guy said.

"You stay away, now," one woman said from the passenger seat as I approached her minivan. "I'm freaking out. I am freaking out!" she said as a violent shudder shook her body.

"All I want is a car jack."

"Can't help you. Just stay away."

Finally, a taxi driver filling up his cab said he would help if I hurried. He had a call, and he needed to pick somebody up as soon as possible. He was a tall Middle Eastern man wearing a gold cross and chain around his neck, and as slow as I was to put my spare on, he was all the more patient.

Together, we got the spare on in a few minutes, and I thanked him. He was gone, and I filled my spare up with air and headed back to Mark's to return Steven's wallet and get that ticket or get my money back. I still had time. It was only 10pm, and the show had started at 8. If I was fast, I could make it.

I crossed the railroad tracks and managed not to hit the curb this time as I parked. I went up the stairs to Mark's apartment and knocked lightly on the door. A skinny woman shivering and smoking a cigarette in the cold a few doors down mumbled something incomprehensible, and I smiled, and I knocked louder. I saw the curtains flutter on the inside and heard a voice say, "Okay, okay, yeah, I'm coming. Hold on!"

Then the door was open and a man in a long, white beard and wife beater undershirt ushered me inside. His eyes were crossed. The living room, furnished with only a beige couch, small lamp, and wooden table, smelled of urine. "Hey," he said, turning on the lamp by the door.

"Hi, I'm Jacob." I shook his hand.

"I'm Mark."

Steven came from the back. "Hey, Jacob. Did you make it here okay? Did you get your spare on?"

He hadn't been able to find the jack, he said, and hadn't wanted to walk the two or three miles back to the Shell in the freezing cold. He said his sister was on her way there, and we just needed to go and get another $10 for the tickets. Now that he had his wallet back, he could take out the money from his ATM.

"I really don't want to drive too much on my tire," I told him.

"We'll just go up to the Shell and come back. She'll be here by then."

So we were off again. Unfortunately, the Shell had closed its doors and was only offering window service, which meant no ATM. "I really need to get to that show, man. I really need to get to that show," he told me. And so, I drove him down Charlotte, looking for another gas station. We found one, but his check card, which was cracked, wouldn't work. Eventually, we found a SunTrust, and it was the same story: his check card wasn't being accepted. From my driver's seat, I watched him at the ATM with growing contempt, thinking, 'Maybe I should just drive off. Let him have the $20 and just leave. Make him walk back.' I'm far too nice, and way too trusting. When my father told me, a long, long time ago, that I had a bleeding heart, he was obviously right.

Steven motioned me out of the car, and I came to him. I read the screen: exactly what it had said at the last ATM, that the card could not be read. "I swiped it three times," he said, playing dumb. "I don't know what's going on."

"All right," I said. "It's okay." I withdrew another $20 from my own account.

And that was that. When we got back to Mark's, there was a new car sitting in the parking lot, and Steven told me it was his sister's: as promised. We got out of the car, and I was again to wait outside. He coaxed another $10 out of me and went upstairs. I waited 10 minutes, and then I let myself inside the chain link fence, watching dogs trying to get back in. Before I made it to the stairs, Mark came outside.

"Where's Steven," I asked.

"Where's who?"

"Steven. Where is Steven?"

"Oh, he left. 10 minutes ago."

"Screw it then," I said, spinning around, getting in my car, and leaving.

When I rolled back into Murfreesboro riding on a spare that was practically flat, my mind was raging. I had cursed Steven and his apparent friendliness. That was $30 that I'd just let go.

Cara called me later that night on her way back to Murfreesboro. She had woken me up, but I told her the short version of what had happened, and she was sorry. "I'll call you tomorrow," she said.

"Talk to you then," I said.

And as I sunk swiftly back to sleep, I cursed my ever-loving benevolence.

Yeah, sometimes I curse my bleeding heart. Though it probably won't be the death of me, it'll be a source of great annoyance until the day I die.