Page 31 - WTP VOl. VIII #6

forceps, scalpel and scissors, to the right of the heart, brought home from the butcher on a styrofoam plate. The first time I sewed up a heart at the kitchen table, Dad pulled a chair next to mine and provided instruc- tions, the way an attending would teach a medical student in the O-R. He didn’t touch anything; I did all the work.
You have to wait to hear the clasp engage on the holder to know that the needle is in place. Otherwise, it can shift, and you don’t want sharp objects shifting inside someone’s body. I knew that I was suturing a dead heart that my mom put in the meat drawer of the refrigerator the previous day, but I sort of forgot that at the time, inserting the needle at a ninety de- gree angle, hooking the subcutaneous tissue on one
a quarter next to the directive.
The next evening, I removed my handiwork. Prema- ture, yes, as microscopic healing takes longer than
a day, clearly, and I’d be risking infection, but Mom didn’t want the dead cow heart in the refrigerator past the twenty-four hour mark. I put on my gloves and unwrapped the gauze. The sutures looked solid, the incision intact. I washed the area with an anti- septic cleanser and explained to my patient that he might feel a little pinch or tugging sensation. With forceps in my right hand, scissors in my left, I pulled up on the first stitch, found the space underneath, and snipped.
We sewed hearts at the round oak table every couple of months. In between, I practiced CPR on Ressusa Ann, the dummy who lived in our linen closet. I heard tales of perforated gallbladders, pulmonary thrombo- ses, obstructions, clots and stab wounds every which way. I saw intra-aortic balloon pumps and broncho- scopes the size of boa constrictors, stored in suitcases under the shelves of bath towels. I viewed color slides of heart bypass surgery as they were projected onto the zinc white living room wall, just over the back of the Louis XVI armchair. When I wasn’t stitching the hearts, the scalpels and needles and rolls of gauze were stowed in the cabinet under the TV in the den, where we kept the tourniquets. Every house should have tourniquets.
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Dad’s scar was shaped like a horseshoe, edges meet- ing gracefully and raised evenly throughout. The stitches were spaced about two millimeters apart, standard for scalp wounds, which are bloodier than most. Proper technique, and quite pretty, really.
“Did your surgeon close?” I asked when the bandage was removed, “because it’s stunning work, Dad.”
He hadn’t lost his hair from the chemotherapy, so the shaving of one side lent a rakish air. He used to wear a grey flannel hat, with a brim, when I was a young child. I borrowed it in the first grade for a school play. “The Sun, The Wind and The Man.” I was the man. The sun was warm, but it could burn. The wind was cooling, but it could devastate. The man had to sort it all out.
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I had to sort it all out. Dad never said that he was sick.
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"When you make an incision into a
calf’s heart, the trick is to point down with the tip of the scalpel so that you pierce the epicardium."
side, then the other, and flipping my wrist back up through the top. There is that signature twist of the hand, that rhythmic swivel to the outside. Nowhere else do you see it. Tying off the suture was easy, given my history with lanyards and pot-holder looming at age ten, not to mention a genetic map that included dressmaking on my maternal side. I was predisposed to sew cow organs.
I kept the heart in the fridge overnight, swaddled in gauze next to the Jarlsberg.
Dad could get dressed, brushed and out of the house within six minutes, even at four a.m. He wore a suit and tie, and dress shoes, no matter the time, or nature of the emergency. He kept clothes from the previous day on the bedroom chair, just in case. I rarely heard him leave, or return, and the next day, he didn’t sleep late or look tired. I knew that he went in only if he told me about the patient in the morning. He always told me about the ones who had mishaps. A fall from a ledge. A gunshot wound to the chest. The last sentence of every letter that he sent to me at summer camp was, simply, “No accidents.” He’d tape
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