The surgeon outlines the road map to recovery. ‘Three days in ITU, a week at most, then paediatrics. There’ll be drips, wires, in case we have to…’ he stops, looks at me and smiles, ‘but of course, you know this already…’
X-rays, scans, cardiographs, bloods, heart tracings, everything explained in minute detail. The eccentricities of the human heart unfolding before my eyes explained yet inexplicable. A map of any human heart could look the same to uncharted eyes yet you have your unique way of startling me, of throwing me off course.
I imagine the map inside you: the artery having taken a wrong turn lost in a tangled web. You are playing with your own road map now, the toy track spread out on the playroom floor, the fabric faded. So many hands. I wonder about those children, those mothers who prayed for a miracle. This is a place of miracles. I understand that now. And yet there is science too in the machinery of life. I watch as you play, unaware of your weakening heart; a fluke of nature, a fault line between two intersections, both distinct in their own way but together unmatched.
So much is eradicated from my brain, superseded by other thoughts–your little hands manoeuvring the toy car along the high street past the baker, the butcher, the candlestick maker… For no reason other than my unreasoned mind I find myself thinking of the absurdity of it all. How we laugh at funerals, how, when faced with the worst our brain tricks us with silly thoughts, how they say laughter is the best medicine.
My mind is unravelling.
Thinking back to those early years I see myself as I was then, a first-time mum looking forward with hope. A routine check-up. Six weeks old. Oscillating your chest with her hands, the paediatrician was kind yet indifferent. I try to imagine what she hears: heart sounds bouncing back from an echo chamber full of secrets.
‘He is easily tired,’ I say, trying not to sound too concerned.
She smiles. A smile that says: first-time mum…over-anxious.
‘And his chest…’ I hesitate.
‘Oh, I shouldn’t worry about that…’
‘Don’t you think it’s odd though?’
I search through my lexicon of words trying to find the correct one, eventually pouncing on the only one that seems to make sense: ‘Uneven.’
‘Vroom! Vroom!’
My boy has found his way out of the city, his little car zooming across the playroom floor.
‘Children are resilient,’ the surgeon says, ‘but his reserves are running low.’ He looks at me gravely. Then, taking a pen from his breast pocket he draws me a picture. The only paper available: a children’s colouring book from the bundle of toys.
His knuckles are brilliant white against the sickly hospital lights, as he outlines the contours of your broken heart. The pen moves swiftly, finally tracking the fault to its source. There’s magic in those hands, I realise. These are the hands that will enter my son’s chest, crack him open like a nut. They will touch his heart in a way I never could. These are the hands that will give him the life I never imagined possible till now. This man, this stranger, will do the impossible.