Page 58 of Hearts to Mend

I’d told my editor I would be awake for the procedure. He insisted that was absurd, but here I am, awake and watching it all on that big monitor. It’s weirdly fascinating to see this sterile, black-and-white view of my heart, my circulatory system; all that blood is invisible from this perspective.

The catheter my doctor inserted into my right femoral vein moves on the monitor, wiggling like a worm up toward the right atrium of my heart, and I can’t feel it. It’s like I’m observing someone else’s ASD closure on the screen. There on the massive monitor, in bloodless black and white, the catheter reaches the hole inside my heart, and the doctor works to plug it.

At my side, the doctor and his assistant calculate the size of my heart hole, deciding on an eleven-millimeter plug, which someone retrieves from a cabinet in the corner of the room. Then they fish that up into my heart too.

I can’t tear my gaze away as things start to happen on the screen. I hardly blink and definitely don’t move a muscle as one end of the device expands in my heart. It looks like an umbrella, opening up to cover one side of my heart hole. A few moments later, a second part of the device expands within the second chamber of my heart, holding the plug in place between these two caps.

There it is—my shiny new ASD closure device. It looks like a flying saucer hovering in the cosmos of my chest, space alien technology right inside my body. It’s so…

“Cool,” I say as I stare, mesmerized.

The doctor replies, “It is pretty cool, isn’t it?”

“Can I get a copy of that image?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says as he instructs one of his aides to grab a few still images for me.

Once that’s done, focus turns away from the device in my chest to the incision in my femoral vein. Because, despite my bloodless view of the procedure, there is quite a lot of blood coursing through my veins. The doctors move quickly to remove the catheter and seal the delicate incision in the vein. I remain silent and still, not wanting to distract the doctors as they ensure I don’t bleed to death.

When my incision is stitched closed, the room fills with people and activity. The X-ray machine is shut off and moved, the monitor slid back into its resting place. The doctors shuck their X-ray protection and leave with friendly farewells.

Someone hands me a couple of pills to take, explaining they will prevent blood clots from attaching to the device. But I’m not allowed to sit up or move in any way. I can’t swallow pills lying down, so I chew them and take a few sips of water through a straw to wash the chalky taste away.

Then, it’s time to put me back on my waiting hospital bed. For that task, two big, burly nurses come in and instruct me not to move a muscle as they shift me from table to bed. Someone pulls the paper sheet off me and replaces it with warm blankets that feel so freaking amazing.

I revel in that warmth as I’m moved out of the fancy operating room and back to my waiting family. The moment mamá and Dee see me—still alive—their pensive expressions turn soft with relief, and their reactions fill me with more warmth than the cozy blankets.

It feels good, to be loved, to be on the other side of the procedure, to be healed—

“Okay, now, you cannot move at all for the next four hours,” my primary care nurse instructs me. “We want to make sure you don’t pull your suture open at the incision site. So stay horizontal, don’t bend your legs, don’t move. If you need anything, use this call button. Do you need anything right now? A sip of water?”

“Uh.” I blink at her. “Yeah. Water.”

And thus begins the worst part of the entire procedure. I don’t think the procedure itself took more than an hour, and now they want me to lie here, completely still for four times that long? Jesus, when did I get so restless? I’m like Matty when I tell him there’s something he can’t do, and suddenly, he’s singularly focused on doing that precise thing.

Groundhog Day plays on television, which seems weirdly appropriate. The story of a man, stuck, with nothing but time and boredom. I can relate.

“What are you doing?” Dee asks, her voice shockingly loud after so much quiet. “Why are you moving?”

I glance down at myself and realize I’ve shifted my legs a little, like I’m going to bend my knees. “Oops. I…forgot.”

“Oops. You forgot?” She looks angry at me. “You forgot that if you pull the suture in your femoral vein open you could bleed to death in under five minutes?”

“Uh…yeah?”

She smirks and raises a brow. “Don’t forget again. You have two more hours to follow one simple rule, Stroke Boy. Now lie still.”

Damn, she’s sexy when she’s bossy. I glance over at mamá, who silently watched this exchange with an ear-to-ear smile and wedding bells in her eyes. With a huff, I turn my attention back to the movie and remain very, very still.

Eventually, finally, I’m allowed to move, but not much. I’m granted permission to waddle to the bathroom in my hospital socks and a gown sporting a few blood stains, a reminder that I had a doctor poking around in my heart this morning. The nurse gives me a clean gown to change into before I take my first post-surgery piss. In my room, she changes out the blood-stained sheets on my bed.

Now, when I return to lie down for the second four hours of observation, I’m allowed to adjust the bed so I can sit up a bit. And, finally, I’m fed. Salisbury steak and canned peaches—it’s a feast. They bring meals for mamá and Dee, too, and it’s nice eating together. It’s relaxing to have them both here.

Once I’ve eaten and am feeling friendlier, mamá calls Javi to check in, and I’m handed the phone so I can talk to Matty. “Hey, big guy, did you have fun with your tios today?”

“I did!” Matty’s excitement bursts through the phone line. “I got to swim all day and ride on the waterslides four times, and I had ice cream for lunch, and there was a pirate ship with a rope bridge and…” I close my eyes and listen to my son beam about his wonderful day. All my irritation and exhaustion melt away.

“That’s awesome, Matty.”

---