Hearts

At the cardiologist’s office, I watch my ultrasound. On the screen my heart is a splash of black and white, with veins of purple, blue, and green streaking across like fish scales. I am told that this is normal. 

I lay on the hospital bed, enshrouded in white paper as a nurse takes pictures of my heart through layers of gel and skin and bone.

Why do we pretend to know so much about what we can’t know? The fist-sized organ pulsing inside me is so different from the black-and-white blur on the doctor’s computer, from the pink construction paper shapes the kids exchange on Valentine’s Day, from the part of you that hurts when someone leaves. 

When I was in preschool, we did a craft in which each of us brought in a photo of ourselves that we placed in a handmade heart-shaped picture frame to give our parents.

“You are in my heart,” it said, or something like that. “I have you in my heart.” The things we say can be baffling. When did “heart” become an equal to “love”? I think about all the contents of my heart, blood and muscle and tissue and all the other raw materials of a human being. Blood is pumped out by the aorta and once it has made its rounds, the vena cava brings it back in. The body is just a subway system for all the things that comprise it. And it seems grossly incongruous to compare being in love to the mechanical pulsing of blood through the Grand Central Station of my organs. 

In ninth grade, I stood behind a classmate, reluctantly participating in a mandatory dissection of a fetal pig. My classmate and I were wearing aprons, goggles, and gloves, but they looked better on her as she dug into the corpse with an enthusiasm that I found concerning. Organ by organ she removed its innards, and I became increasingly nauseous. She snipped sinew, cut cartilage, and broke bone. Formaldehyde and other unknown liquids seeped from the heart as she dislodged it from the pig’s now empty chest cavity. It was only the size of a human eyeball. To my surprise it was more gray than pink, and hard rather than soft. It was dense, and heavy, though it had been emptied of its lifeblood. 

I tried not to look down at the carcass, but I couldn’t help it, and I felt an indescribable disgust as I looked into the empty shell of a creature. 

The bell rang just as I had decided to step out into the hallway for some air. I left the room eagerly, but I couldn’t chase the formaldehyde from my nose or the image from my mind. 

I am not squeamish. The sight of blood does not disturb me beyond the appropriate level of disturbance at the sight of blood, but I often carried bugs outside in my bare hands to save them from being squashed. I am not squeamish, but I am sympathetic to the point of ridicule. I am sure this contributed to the reason I was so repulsed by the disembodied heart, but there was something else, I’m sure.

Biology students, willingly or otherwise, dissect pigs because they possess body systems remarkably similar to human body systems. Maybe my disgust came from the fact that I was looking into the cavernous emptiness of a creature that could have been me. Maybe it was because when I stared at the pig-heart in my classmate’s gloved hand, I could have just as easily seen my heart. It was a smaller and less developed version, but it had once pulsed just as insistently as mine continues to. 

And so I wonder- what do they all have in common? The image of the ultrasound, the pink-painted frame I made when I was four, the preserved organ dug out of a biology specimen? And then the real thing - the two-sided pulsing fruit inside me that controls my blood flow and - just possibly - my emotions? Oddly, it is only this heart - my own - that I will never really know.

We cannot live without our hearts - and maybe we can’t love without them either.  If a heart stops functioning, so does a person. But if a brain stops functioning, or a large intestine, or a lung, there’s no difference. So why is it the heart we place such responsibility in?

I think that perhaps each person has to answer this question for themselves. Maybe it has something to do with the DNA sequencing of humans and fetal pigs. Or maybe it has to do with a preschooler and a meticulously painted craft project. Maybe it has to do with a patient in white paper, or a bride in white linens. Or maybe with a black-and-white ultrasound shimmering in purple and green. Maybe it has to do with beginnings. Who can say?