Saturday's Storyteller: "My heart donor was a homeless guy who literally lived at the gym."

by Belinda Roddie

My heart donor was a homeless guy who literally lived at the gym. I never knew his name until afterward. No one did. He simply hovered around the treadmills by day, eating some sort of bagel that had probably been stale and free from the local café, before retiring to one of the locker room benches at night. Why none of the workers hadn't kicked him out was beyond me. And the one time he had stepped out of the gym, he had been bowled over by a motorcyclist who was still high from the adrenaline kick after thirty minutes on the elliptical. His heart seemed to be the only thing that had avoided skidmarks or road rash.

I had never been to Riley's gym. It wasn't your standard chain gym - it had endured the YMCA's and the 24 Hour Fitness's and the Equinox's. In fact, it had been going for over fifty years now. Riley Samson IV - spry and balding and barely thirty years old - had recently become the owner and was the one to break the news about the transplant. He said the guy's name was Jared Hoff Spiegelman, and he had always taken a liking to Riley III. Riley III, despite Riley II's complaints and allusions to the obvious disappointment that the deceased original Riley would've shown, had allowed Spiegelman to stay at the gym for as long as he liked. He was quiet and stoic, and he never bothered the patrons. He always stood by the treadmill that didn't work right, so it wasn't like he was invading the personal bubble of some pec-obsessed dude trying to run five miles in under ten minutes.

After the initial shock and, admittedly, the disgust, I knew that I couldn't complain much. I had always had a bad heart. Valves that wouldn't work right, arteries that easily clogged even though I hardly ate anything or had the appetite to eat, moments in which I'd merely be sitting on the couch and my heart rate would pick up like I was being chased by zombies. I needed a new heart, and this man was the reason why I jumped to the top of the list. I was seventeen, emaciated, and ready to die from an aneurysm at any moment. I still remember the cold touch of my mother's shaking fingers as the anesthesia kicked in.

I never knew Jared Hoff Spiegelman. He was sixty-two when he died. He had no children, no wife or husband, no living relatives as far as Riley IV was concerned. By the time I showed up at the gym for weight training, it had been two years since the operation. My girlfriend was spotting my bench pressing when the owner approached me, wiping his almost shining temples with a towel.

"Fancy seeing you here," he said. "I thought you'd want to stay away."

I grunted, straightened up, and shook my head. "Nah," I exhaled. "Got any bagels?"

This week's prompt was provided by Daniel Bulone.