Hearts - Darcy Vebber

Initially, a pig valve was alarming to the Orthodox. The issue generated much discussion and quickly, because it was a matter of life and death, a rabbinic response. To save a life, the rabbis determined, is always the most important thing and besides, the patient was not eating the thing. Still, a faint unease remained. When Terry explained to her friends the operation her son was going to have, she could see it in their expressions. Maybe it wasn’t the pig, maybe it was the surgery itself but she insisted that it was common. The doctor who is doing it does nothing else, all day long.

She met him, in his office at Phoenix Children's. A surgeon, like all surgeons, she had been told. Don't expect him to be nice the pediatric cardiologist warned them. The pediatric cardiologist was a sweetheart, a tiny Asian lady Terry trusted right away.

Bobby was fourteen but the surgeon talked to him as if he was a man, as if a man were sitting in the chair opposite him, next to his mother instead of this small, frail boy.

And Bobby listened intently, like a man who would be making his own decisions.

The surgeon drew a diagram on a prescription pad and handed it to the boy.

Terry could see that it was a crude pencil drawing of the heart, the real four chambered muscle she had had explained to her so many times. He included arrows, the way people always did. In, out.

Bobby studied the paper for a moment then left it, in his lap. He brushed his hair out of his face -- he was wearing it long that year, like all the boys, long and wild. It was curly and if he wasn't careful, it would fall in ringlets. "I have one question."

His mother held her breath, sucked it in without being exactly aware that she was doing it. There were some questions he had asked once, as a very little boy the first time he was in the hospital, that he never asked again.

"What would happen if I didn't do this?"

Terry waited for the impatient surgeon to bark back an answer but the man took some time and considered, as if the idea interested him. "Specifically?"

"Specifically."

Terry watched while the man drew another diagram with more arrows. Bobby stood, so he could look at it as it was being finished. They talked about electrolytes and oxygen receptors and muscle death while Terry reminded herself to take deep, even breaths. Somehow, no matter how often it was explained to her she couldn't grasp it, the in and out, the transitions, the way air turned to fire in a human body.