All the Horrible Girliness

Heart

Did I mention the heart? I didn't. It was there. I didn't hear it, but man could you see it. 180 beats per minute, like a bird.

When I worked in the cardiovascular research laboratory, I touched a real living heart. It belonged to a white, male bunny. He'd already been opened up once and given a heart attack, then given the medication they hoped would help. When I saw him, asleep on the operating table, he was being examined for the last time, and he was about to die.

I put on a glove and pressed my index finger to his heart. It was going wild, there inside him, though nothing else moved. I have been trying to write about this experience for years, ever since it happened, and I still cannot find the words to describe what it is to feel a beating heart under your finger. I can still feel it now. It was tough and hard, so strong, part of me and yet distinctively owned by this life. It was just like life. It was like feeling life.

That said, having something inside me with a heartbeat is so strange, and a little icky.

posted by Samus @ 11:50 AM