Her Mechanical Heart

It had been an experiment.
Not an experiment gone wrong, or even mildly awry.
In fact, it was very nearly a miracle of science

Gasping for breath, she picked up the phone. 911. An operator said, Hello.

Please send an ambulance.
What seems to be the problem?
Im dying.

Click, disconnect, beep beep beep.

By the time the ambulance got there, it was nearly too late. They had not understood the urgency of her heartbreak, or the reality of it. There had been no blood, no collapsing dramatically, no moaning or screaming. The girl was sitting on the love seat in her living room, elbows propped up on her knees, her face in her hands. Her heart had collapsed, broken one too many times by bent promises, the worst intentions, and too many years of breathing in other peoples smoke. She had given it away to the wrong people, and it had been thoroughly abused, mistreated, disregarded. In fact, it was amazing that it had held up as long as it did.

They drove her to the hospital.

The rain poured down on the ambulance as they weaved through traffic, through quickly changing lights and ridiculously large puddles. Driving at eighty miles per hour, the ambulance, light flashing and siren blaring, hit a particularly great puddle and hydroplaned, flipping over and skidding across three lanes of traffic.

An ambulance was called, and arrived at the scene of the other ambulance within a minute of receiving the call. The first ambulance had only been thirty seconds away from the hospital when it had flipped.

The driver, two EMTs, and the three young passengers of a car the ambulance had crashed into had died before the second ambulance arrived.

The girl, still strapped to the grey stretcher, however, was not yet dead. Her heart beat was so faint that it almost didnt register, and they rushed her into the emergency room.

When she arrived, five doctors inspected her. It was an anomaly. They had never seen anything quite like it. Her heart had simply ceased to function. It had given up on her. It was tired of mistreatment and the brutality inflicted upon it, and had made the executive decision to stop.

There was no real reason to keep her alive she had no family, no friends, no one at all. But there certainly was no reason for her to die, and that was when it was suggested that they carry out that which they had been discussing for years.


After several minutes of talking, the five doctors decided upon her fate. Seeing as how she had no relatives, no loved ones, not a single person in the world, no one would know if they tried something which they had been theorizing about for years. It was to be an experiment; she was to be an experiment for those five doctors. Regardless of the results, failure or success, there would be no publication of them, no articles in any medical journals, no acknowledgement of it outside of their group. It was just for them; she was just for them. They loved her, all five of those middle-aged doctors.

For all of their selfishness, they were the only ones who ever truly had.

The theory.

It had been one the men had been discussing for what seemed like their entire lives. Did one really need a heart? Certainly there needed to be something to pump the blood through ones system, but really, did it need to be a heart? Or would something as simple a metal box suffice? As long as it carried out the same function, there seemed to be no reason it would not work. They had even gone so far as to build a steel box that would work to pump blood and aerate it in the same fashion as the muscle it was meant to replace. They had done several tests on unsuspecting animals- the family rabbit, a starling that had crashed into the sliding glass door, a raccoon whose intestines lay spilled on the road after being run over by a speeding semi-truck.

Naturally, they had never tested it on a human, but there was always a first time for everything. If it were to fail, no one would be any the wiser. If it worked, well, then, they received validation, and that was all that they needed from the experiment.

It had almost always worked on the animals. What did they have to worry about?

Three of the doctors wheeled the girl into the brilliant white surgery room and began to prepare while the other two retrieved the mechanical heart from the back of a grey-green station wagon. The steel was cold from sitting out in the winter air; the doctor wrapped it in the corner of his stark white lab coat so that his fingers wouldnt have to be in direct contact with the icy, silver surface. A few flecks of blood still lay, matte rouge against the shining steel, from their last trial with the heart. The yellowish plastic tubes still hung from the box where it had connected to the small arteries and veins of the pig that it had been pumping for only two nights previous.

The plastic tubes would be disconnected.

The blood specks would be wiped off.

This was going to be a permanent solution, for the first time in all of their years of conjecturing. The two doctors quickened their pace. They didnt have forever, after all. They slunk quietly in through a back door and proceeded to the operating room. The other three doctors were already scrubbed and gloved and ready to see all of their work come to fruition.

Forceps, gauze, scissors, scalpels all lay sterilized and shining under the glare of harsh florescent lights. Facemask firmly placed, the strapped a respirator to the girl and snapped their gloves once more, for effect, before beginning the operation.

Cut snip break cut snip tear cut snip.

Beep beep beep and then flat line.

As they cut the last artery from the mass of muscle that pumped her blood, one of the doctors took the pulsing heart in his hand. Beating, beating, and then still. He placed the heart on a stainless steel tray, which filled with the dark crimson that seeped from the immobile muscle. Then the mechanical heart.

They placed it carefully in her open chest, plugging in the veins and arteries in the same fashion that they plugged their VCRs into their television sets. Red to red. Blue to blue. Big to big. Small to small.

Flat line flat line beep beep beep.

It was working. The blood was flowing in, working systematically through as series of pumps, flowing out, and into the rest of her frail body. Lubb dupp, lubb dupp, as the doctors had learned in medical school. Lubb dupp, the official sound of a beating heart. But there was no sound coming from this heart, there never would be. Just the quiet rush of blood in and out. The sound of aortic and pulmonary valves opening, of bi and tricuspid valves closing, would never again be heard by a doctor listening voyeuristically through a stethoscope, by the boy she brought home who pressed his ear to her sternum and cried when they kissed, by the cat that curled up on her lap and took comfort in the constant, unchanging sound.

Needle, thread, stitch stitch stich.

Everything back in its place, chest cavity closed and sewn together with a white thread stained dark red with blood; the doctors removed their masks, cleaned themselves up, and stood in a circle around the dead heart. Beep beep beep beep beep beep.

She was alive.

The air felt heavy to the doctors. They had succeeded, but felt no elation, no joy in their discovery. They felt nothing as they stared at the lump of muscle that had, only moment before, been the life source of a young woman. They felt nothing but despair as they realized that the clichs about following ones heart, about the heart being a guide, about picking up the pieces of it and moving on, now meant nothing. By succeeding, they had negated the need of a heart for survival, physically, mentally, spiritually.

Nothing was sacred anymore, and as each returned to their separate houses, they all wept with the disparaging knowledge that they had made a mistake.

The girl was returned to her the home in which they had found her, propped up with her elbows on her knees, her face in her hands, alone on a seat made for two. When she woke up, she took a deep breath and lifted her head, looking around. The phone was off of the receiver, beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. She took a deep breath. In, out, in, out, in out in out inoutinoutinoutin. Something was different.

Her small tabby cat jumped into her lap, but immediately jumped back down, shooting across the room and curling around the corner. The girl couldnt tell what had changed, but the cat could. The thump thump thump in her chest was gone, the tick-tocking of her internal clock was replaced with the dull hum of a generator; the cat was no longer interested.

The girl slid down to the floor, bringing her knees up to her stitched chest. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she could not understand why, she could not feel anything associated with them. Happiness, sadness, anger, frustration, love. Nothing. And as the tears continued to stream down her face, she laughed aloud, but there was no feeling as her mechanical heart continued to pump.