Mr Burton always maintained a
rigid professional detachment from the subjects upon which he was operating,
but there was something about Fiona that was different. The victim of a road accident, the thirty
year old had remained comatose for three days before finally succumbing to her
head injuries. The family were gathered
around her as the life support was turned off.
The sudden flat tone of the heart monitor piercing the soul of her
mother.
Fiona had signed the Organ Donors’
Register and the family, through their tears, gave consent for organs to be
removed from the young woman’s body. Mr
Burton scrubbing his hands in anticipation of the work found himself strangely
moved and as he proceeded to cut into the pallid skin he felt a tear trickling down behind his mask. He glanced at his assistant but she had
noticed nothing.
He opened the chest cavity and on revealing the heart was struck by the perfection of the organ – the
size, the shape, the colour. He held it
for several moments as if examining it, sensing the life it had
sustained. The nurse becoming concerned that delay would render the organ no
longer viable lightly touched his
arm.
The heart was placed into a canister
and sent along the corridor to Operating Theatre Three where a recipient was
being prepared. However a technical
issue with the monitoring equipment in that theatre resulted in the crucial window
of opportunity being missed.
Mr Burton became uncharacteristically angry at the waste.
He felt this heart should not be disposed of as just another piece of
detritus from the day’s surgical procedures.
So at an opportune moment he entered the chilled storage facility to
which the heart had been temporarily assigned, removed it from the shelf and placed it in the container in which he had brought his sandwiches that
morning.
At home later that evening he resolved that there was only one fitting course of
action. Drawing his Hiroshi Kato knife from its scabbard he set to work.
The fat spat a little as the
pieces were placed one by one into the pan where onions were already frying.
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