Things were different after he had been shot. The bullet had pierced his heart, an injury he would have believed, if he ever had reason to think about it, that a person could not survive, and yet here he was today living proof thanks to the emergency operation that took the five hours following his shooting to crack open his ribcage, extract his perforated cardiac muscle and replace it with that of a recently deceased 76-year-old woman who’d possessed such altruism and generosity of spirit that she’d chosen to donate her earthly remains to strangers. He didn’t know her name, and yet he knew her age, cause of death (although he felt opposed to revealing this) and he knew the thing he had since considered to be the most intimate of human attributes — the rhythm of her heartbeat.
In the days following regaining consciousness, he received bedside visits from his doctor, but in such a groggy state of recovery he was never able to pin down any more characteristics of his surgical saviour than a trimmed greying beard and a voice that reminded him of Santa Claus (which could have also been due to the beard) nor could he recall the doctor’s name despite that the doctor like all medical professionals wore a name tag. “You suffered a rather severe gunshot wound,” the doctor had said. “The bullet entered in a gap between two of your ribs and struck your heart. Luckily we were able to replace it.”
“Can a persons survive that?”
“Well here you are.”
“Was it a matter of… something like half an inch over and I wouldn’t be?”
“Oh no. Nothing like that. You were legally dead for a while, but once we got the new heart in you it was just a matter of a fresh reboot. But you should understand the irony of saying you have a new heart, because of course the donor was several decades your senior — your new heart is very much an old heart. And because of this, you may need to readjust your lifestyle some.”
“I’m just happy to be alive.”
“Aren’t we all lad.” The doctor patted him on the knee and later, after an explanation of the lifestyle changes a new old heart may require and after a reassuring Christmassy smile that marked the doctor’s continuation of his other doctorly duties, his patient again realised that he had forgotten the doctor’s name.
It had been an accident, the shooting, something both he and the legal institutions had accepted without argument, although he no longer kept in touch with his shooter. Things just seemed to drift apart. And not just between him and his would-be killer (or manslaughterer?) but it also seemed the same between him and many things, but he couldn’t be sure just how many things, whether just a small subset of things which were magnified by his worry, or if he was without proper and full comprehension drifting each day further away from all things.