His Heart
by  Alexa Smith

I held a human heart in my hands today. I pulled back the skin, using a scalpel to cut further where needed. I used the giant clippers to snap the ribs, hearing the crack of each as I went. Douglas tore back the thoracic wall and the thymus and, finally, we saw the lungs and the pericardial sac. Pretty soon, we were exposing the vessels to the heart and I cut through each of them, wondering if I was doing it wrong. But, it doesn’t really matter to him because he’s already gone. I stood there today, held this man’s heart in my hands and cut it in half. A heart that used to beat, that used to keep him alive. A heart that he knew was real and probably thought about, maybe in terms of anatomy, but probably also about love and thoughts and feelings. “I feel in my heart”, “I love you with all my heart.” Now, I stand here, with his heart that doesn’t beat anymore and doesn’t tell him things. I stand with it, broken in half in my hands. Because I need to learn about the inner workings of the heart, about the left ventricle and the papillary muscle and the interventricular septum.

It's weird when you think about it, the things we do here. I told a friend that I have this lab and she was grossed out. And it is a little gross. And a little morbid. But, I held a man’s heart in my hands today. I know that today, a friend is on a beach in Spain while she lives there for the year. Another skiing. Others working at jobs they may like, they may not. And it’s hard sometime, knowing I put in all this work and time to learn these things while others have time to gallivant around or free money to spend at ease. To know that while I sit at my apartment desk in Philly, others are out there seeing places I want to see, getting tan at beaches I want to be at, and living seemingly carefree lives. And it’s hard those days. It’s hard to remember my reasons for this. But today, I was reminded why. Why medicine is so cool and the body is amazing. All the parts that let us live our lives until they don’t work anymore. Today, I cut a man’s heart and held it in my hands.