Rabbit Heart
My heart is the small brown rabbit. We can recognize it from the other rabbits by the way it shivers, which I imagine is an indication of my anxiety. The hutch is large and made entirely of glass. The rabbits hop back and forth. They stare, unblinking.
The heart rabbits are the results of a voluntary clinical trial on replacing hearts with robotic hearts. I was in between jobs and saw an ad online asking for donors aged 18 to 35. The hospital promised $30,000 for every successful heart transplant. The robotic hearts were engineered to eliminate stress, to maintain a healthy fight or flight response, and to expire at your chosen date. We no longer had to live in mystery of our death, the hospital explained, and we no longer had to worry about heart disease or attacks. We could eat whatever we wanted and become as worried or as frightened as we wanted without risk.
The week before surgery, I gorged myself on junk food. I went to every drive-thru in our town and came home with warm, brown bags filled with burgers, biscuits, fries, mozzarella sticks, and large, pale coffee drinks that were mostly ice and sugar. I felt my heart twist as I swallowed and swallowed. My heart would never have to feel pain again.
The operation was simple enough. My husband drove me to the hospital in the early morning. In the examination room, I filled out more paperwork.
Excuse me, I said to the nurse. Can you do this part for me?
She looked at where I was pointing to the entry “Artificial heart expiration date.”
You don’t want to provide a day? she asked. She was probably my mother’s age. Her eyes were very blue.
I’d rather not know, I said.
She hesitated and said she’d have to ask the doctor. You can leave that part blank for now, she said, and patted my bare knee.
I was prepped for surgery while my husband waited in the hospital cafeteria.
If this goes well, maybe I’ll opt for a terminator ticker, he said.
Stop calling it that, I’d replied. You make me feel like I’m going to wake up metal. Or evil.
Better than not waking up at all, he said.
A week after I was discharged and sent home, the hospital called to tell me there had been some updates to my test. It turned out my heart was not the only heart that, once removed from my chest cavity, became a rabbit. Every patient who’d participated in the trial had a rabbit heart.
Your heart is this one, a nurse said. He pointed to the smallest rabbit in a hutch that swam with rabbits, like a waterless aquarium. It had a tag around its leg with my name and birth date.
Do you want to hold it? the nurse asked.
Why is it shivering? I asked. Is it scared?
According to your chart, you suffered from acute anxiety, said the nurse. We’re discovering the rabbits show symptoms of what the hearts were affected by. He pointed to a large rabbit with thinning fur, patchy in places revealing lavender skin. This patient had heart disease.
What did this person suffer from? asked my husband, pointing to a blind rabbit with eyes like pearls.
Grief, the nurse replied.
I was given gloves and sat in a chair. The nurse lowered my heart rabbit into my cupped hands. It kicked a little against the nurse’s fingers. How do I hold it? I asked.
Close to your chest, he said. We’ve found they like to be near where they came from.
I held my heart rabbit up to my ear.
I don’t hear anything, I said.
My husband stroked its tiny face, and the rabbit flattened its ears.
Can I take it home with me? I asked.
As part of the clinical trial, all participating organs are property of the hospital, said the nurse as if he were reading the fine print from my paperwork.
What will happen to it? Will it be taken care of?
We always do our best, said the nurse.
We left my heart rabbit in its glass hutch with the rest of the heart rabbits. It was nice in a way, to see them all together, thumping rhythmically beside each other. I whispered to mine before I let it be taken away, told it to be brave. To get along with the others as best it could. And to always remember that just because it was small it wasn’t weak.
It was a heart after all and knew best, more than any other animal, how to live.
Aimée Keeble (@AimeeKeeble) has her Master of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of Glasgow and is the great-niece of Alexander Trocchi. She lives in North Carolina and is working on her second novel.