The Heart of the Matter
I saw my heart on a monitor today. It was beating away, keeping me alive. I got to watch the red, blue, and yellow flashes of my blood flow while Emily, the technician, took still photos to show my cardiologist. Green doesn’t mean go here, and red doesn’t mean stop. Red and blue are indications of speed and tell Emily if the blood is flowing towards her or away. It’s mostly all red and blue, but the flashes of yellow are where the blood is flowing fastest, speeding through the valves of my heart. The grayish image on the screen doesn’t look like hearts on television or the movies. The more I watch the more clear it becomes, but it reminds me of the last time I had a sonogram. I was pregnant with my daughter, though in the first sonogram I didn’t know what sex she was, only that there was a baby growing inside me and there she was with her first cardiac movement fluttering on the screen. Her heart so fast it sounded like a hummingbird’s heart. The first rhythm we hear is our mother’s heart, you think you don’t remember it, right? The first time I laid my head over my first husband’s heart that thick, even beat panicked me. It sounded wrong to me, not soothing, not right. I would talk to my grandmother later and find out that my mother had a heart murmur, and when I laid across my then husband’s chest I’d been listen for that thump-whoosh, not thump-thump-thump of my ex-husband’s heart. I had no way to know about my mother’s heart murmur, no one had ever spoken it aloud to me, but I knew the sound of my mother’s heartbeat, because it had been the music that had soothed me to sleep for nine months.
My heart today sounds slow, thick, in some spots deep bass, then Emily moves the wand to another spot and suddenly my heart sounds like like a frog, with a two tone sound higher pitched, as if my heart still holds a piece of the marshes and swamps that our ancestors crawled out of to come onto land all those millions of years ago. I ask, why it sounds so different, and it’s different valves in my heart. Nothing sounds like my husband’s sure, thick heartbeat against the my ear when I lay my head on his chest as we’re falling asleep at a night. By the time we married a second time I’d grown accustomed to the sound of a healthy heart against my ear.
I listen to the push and pull and flow of my heart, sound to sound, spring frog croak, deep bass rhythm, water pushed through a rock crevice like a spring coming to the surface of the earth and spilling out into a trickle of water. My grandfather would walk down from his wooden cabin every day to get water from a spring on his land. It was this tiny pulse of water, clear and cold spilling into a small pool and then seeping away into the grass and down another crevice going back under ground. He made his coffee with that water every morning, even though he had a well for the house. That water tasted metallic heavy with minerals, the water from the spring tasted clean, no iron taste to it at all even though the spring and the well weren’t that far apart from each other. I always wondered if the spring flowed into the same aquifer as the well water was drawn from, did that clear, cold, bright taste go back under and mix with some larger underground reservoir and get lost in all the rocks and roots that flavored the well? Or did the spring flow into yet another body of water hidden beneath our feet and stay clean and sweet?
I stared at the screen today and wondered if my blood stayed clear and sweet and healthy, or if my doctor would find that somewhere in me was a root of something not so sweet. The thought scared me, so I forced myself to ask technician Emily more questions about hearts, blood flow, valves, sounds, and how all that thick muscled certainty kept beating. I asked academic questions like I was back in Human Anatomy in college, though I’d never asked many questions about the heart, except enough to help me memorize the parts of it. I’d never seen it as anything more wonderful than the bones, or any other part of the body. it was just something to memorize for the test to come. I hadn’t seen the body I was sitting in as anything that special. Watching my heart on the screen today it seemed special, not just because it was mine, in my living chest, but because it was fascinating watching it work, and thinking that’s inside me, that’s my heart. I realized that all hearts were this amazing. If I had ever had today’s epiphany back in college maybe I’d have stayed with premed classes for my biology degree, but it had been dry work back then, not as interesting as birds, mammals, reptiles, fish, or my own stories. I’d seen one film in school of an open heart surgery, and the moment they used the big shears to cut through the sternum it made a sound, wet and sharp as the bone was cut. I don’t know what it was about that particular sound, but my eyes rolled back in my head and I started to sink down to my desk with another girl beside me. Then the teacher was there screaming in our faces, “If you faint no one will give you their notes. No one!” We rallied and didn’t faint, but that took care of any thoughts I might have had about majoring in medicine as my undergrad degree. If I couldn’t make it through a film of an operation, well, the real thing would surely put me on the floor, but today for the first time I wasn’t sure of that. If I had known the heart was this … alive, vibrant, literally the heart of the matter. I might have tried my luck at hearing that wet, sharp, terrible sound in person just to see this living muscle in our chests that keeps us alive. It was an epiphany moment, like another dream come to knock on my door, but it’s not loud enough to derail my life. I make a living from writing. Okay, more than that. I am a best selling novelist. I’ve hit #1 more than once. I’ve succeeded beyond my wildest dreams when I was in college. Biology had always seemed the road less traveled for me, but today I listened to the inner workings of my own heart and realized that there were other possibilities had I been inspired at the right time. Now, instead of changing my major I sit down at my desk and I write. I share what happened today with you here. I’ll finish this then get back to working on my forty-fifth novel.
10 thoughts on “The Heart of the Matter”
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Wow. I’m mean just wow. Thank you. You are so descriptive and it helps to make me less afraid of dealing with my diagnosis of Parkinson’s. So much involved in brain and our amazing bodies
Your words are magical. They let me see what you’re feeling. I hope your blood stays clear, sweet, and healthy and that the living muscle in your chest keeps you writing for many years to come.
You absolutely picked the right road. the way you write has always allowed me to see and feel your world. Thank you
All I can say is thank you for being so raw and real and wonderful you inspire me in so many different ways… The love you found in your life makes me hopeful that I will find it in mine in some conceivable way form shape or manner… and your novels open hope in my heart that I to might find success as an author as I slowly put mine together and work toward my goals
❤️
I had the dubious fortune to discover what you mean about “that’s me, that’s inside me” pretty recently. I have fairly serious Complex PTSD (among other diagnoses, most of which want me dead, but I’m almost 40 and I’m still here). Since I’ve had social ideation since I was 3&1/2, I consider this a serious accomplishment.
Anyway, with serious CPTSD, you can suffer from seizures out of nowhere. It’s not epilepsy. No meds work to control it. And I had a rare seizure in the parking lot of my building, feel like a puppet with my strings cut, and landed directly on the back of my skull. Stubborn is like, my basic rock of personality. That and rage but I can’t let that out because I fully have the potential to red out, go super-strong, and kill someone with my bare hands if I don’t come back in time. I learned a lot about self-control from finding out that a potential serial killer lives in my head.
Anyway, they shoved me in a CAT scan at the hospital to be sure I didn’t have skull splinters or brain bleeds. I caught a glimpse of the screen and it was “oh my god, that’s my brain right there. I can see my brain but I can’t see the things in it that have fucked up the last 36 years of my life.” (I’m 39.) I told them the truth about my drug use because I was temporarily incapable of lying for about ten days after the seizure/concussion, so they turned new loose ASAP before I went into withdrawal in their hospital. Don’t get judgy on me. I’ve tried meds – they make my symptoms worse and add horrible side effects on their own. I’ve done a lot of therapy but haven’t found a therapist yet willing to admit that opiates saved my life by keeping me from losing my shit so badly someone would have been forced to shoot me years ago.
But that look at my blurry brain and skull – that’s IN me and I never saw it before. I keep wondering if the dent in my skull will heal, if the scar will stop being a big swelling my hair barely hides (they had to shave some stuff), how long the rest of the brain fog will last, how long until I heal.
And in the meantime I read and re-read your Anita Blake novels like a million-word talisman. My first physical addiction was the printed word (my parents took the books out of my room once and I went into physical withdrawal, thus proving that an addictive personality doesn’t need drugs to get wired).
But… That was my brain on that screen. That was my skull. That’s where the shrinks say all the fucked-up parts live. I don’t think I agree, but then I believe in souls.
I just wanted to say I’d had a similar experience recently – holy shit that’s ME on that screen! – and thank you for your books, because reading and re-reading them obsessively the last little while (bad breakup, new strain of COVID, head injury, etc) has helped me hang on to myself when I was terrified I was going to die without my own permission. Somehow Anita Blake helped keep me alive through the worst of it, so I really hope your heart is okay and I’m undyingly grateful for the words you’ve put out into the world where they could reach my busted ass.
Thank you for sharing! Plz be healthy with out you idk what to do
I hope your heart is ok, & that you are healthy & in a great condition. *Hugs*
I for one am grateful you took the path you did in your life. The talent you have is too much to have been lost to this world, had you not. I read other book series, but YOUR series is the ONLY one that I buy in hard back, & place on my shelf after I’m done reading. All other books I usually just read through my tablet online.
I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve read your whole series, from the first book up to the current (for that time). Thank you for being you. Thank you for your awesome books. Thank you for mostly for giving me something to put my attention in, & focus on when I need the distraction from my pain.
You see your books mean more than just something to read to me… I have several health issues, & I’m in pain 24/7. I’m 49 now, & started feeling pain in my mid 20s. I live with it, & deal with it the best I can. I don’t take any actual pain meds, or narcotics mainly for fear of the long term effects. So I try to just find things to help distract me from the pain. T. V., movies, my laptop are all good … But reading is best when my headaches aren’t too bad. YOUR BOOKS though, even though I’ve read them already several times, & know what is going to happen in them … YOUR BOOKS are still the BEST distraction from my pain. I get so into them when I’m reading, that some of the pain floats away. Well not really LOL, but more like I float away from the pain, into the book
So again, THANK YOU for helping me make it through my hardest days of pain.
We go through our days just expecting one of our most important organs to function, never thinking about its own work. This has made me stop and think. Not only of my own heartbeat, but those of the ones I love and wondering about the Rythm of it all.
Thank you for sharing and inadvertently helping me see something I have disregarded.
Always a pleasure getting a peak into your world and precious insights!