The Heart is a Machine

She was a machine. Her heart fired blood from its pistons and pumped it through hollow tubes; her lungs expanded and contracted, sending metal bellows up and down like elevators; her brain sent shots of electricity to every working part of her body, to everywhere beneath her skin.

Her skin felt like plastic against my fingers.

My eyes skipped over the powder blue gown and the steel bed frame, and I looked over her face. I could have once said it was beautiful, described the colour of her lips with poems and songs, the way her eyes glittered as she smiled with made up words of beauty, but all I saw as I looked down from my plastic throne was the face of someone dead.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

The beeps and buzzes told me she was working, but her straight face and closed eyes were enough for me to know that she was gone.

Unaware of my thumb stroking the back of her hand, I raised my head to look at all the robots standing around her - the heart monitor, the breathing apparatus, her crimson drip. Were they keeping her alive, or was she their livelihood? Without them, she would be buried, but without her, these metal cases and blinking lights would have no purpose. They co-exist perfectly.

I continued to rub invisible circles into her hand, elsewhere in my absent mind. Somewhere behind me, though it could have been anywhere, a clock tick-tocked to itself. To me, it sounded more like a click-clack. A part of me itched to know what time it was, but most of me was apathetic. After all, I had been sitting beside her deathbed for years - the exact hour would never matter.

Clickbeep. Clackbeep. Clickbeep. Clackbeep.

The world went on timelessly, and as her heart beat its beat and my heart skittered in my throat, I began to realise that I didn't know what I was waiting for. I had been told that she didn't have much time left, but for me, her time had run out the moment I caught sight of her here, suspended in her web of wires and pipes.

She may not have died yet, but she wasn't living. How could it be different when the machines finally stopped?

I watched her blood being squeezed into her veins by a plastic bag, listened to her feeble breaths, aided by dusty pipes, and studied the mountains and valleys speeding along the red line of the heart monitor for a long time. It was like some sick parody of Frankenstein’s monster, with the only difference being that the machines were trapping life inside of her, as opposed to reawakening it.

Clickbeepflash. Clackbeepflash. Clickbeepflash. Clackbeepflash.

Several memories danced through my mind, though they didn’t quite scatter the heavy clouds which also seemed to lie there. Her face, with eyes wide open and skin shining with sweat, was pressed against my chest, our racing heartbeats practically inches apart. She was smiling, and she was radiant with life.

The only thing she was shining with now was the reflection of the yellow hospital bulbs.

I longed to make myself believe that she was gripping my fingers back, but there was just no way. Her insides were still going through their motions with clockwork precision, oblivious to the fact that her brilliant, beautiful mind was gone. Whatever spark had been lit inside her head had flickered out, and all that was left was smoke and embers to power the body.

So they sent in the machines.

Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

Even machines have to die, don’t they?

“I’m sorry, your wife is dead.”

I couldn’t be sure where the voice came from. It took me a few moments to blink away the stupor surrounding my head and dissect the words.

But I had already known it for so long.

My wife died a machine, as only half a person. The moment her heart and lungs and brain stopped working, the metal contraptions and the red liquid in the plastic tubes ground to a halt, no longer needed.

And even though I felt as though I had died with her that day, my heart still beat on.

Machines don’t care about that sort of thing.