OPen Heart surgery
Three to six hours.
Three to six hours is the average time open heart surgery takes.
Yet my chest has been open for days.
I lay on the operating table unable to help myself as I feel the cold air touch my beating heart.
My blood seeps out of me and runs along my chest,
I look at what they’re doing to me, I feel sick.
It's as if they don’t realize-
I know.
My chest feels empty.
I feel like I’ve forgotten how to breathe and when I think about it too much I’m sure I’ll puke.
There’s too much space between my heart and the world now.
All open and exposed.
I reach to try and cover myself, but I can’t.
Deep down inside I know if I move to cover myself I could develop an infection.
Each time I flinch the skin on my chest tears stretching the hole wider.
I don’t think I can stay here much longer.
I am cold and afraid.
It hurts.
But not in a way that feels like I have just been cut open.
In fact that was my favorite part.
Now it is an ache.
A pain that eats away at me from my throat to my stomach.
It consumes me so much that it becomes all I know,
all I feel.
I wish I could go back to when I didn’t notice.
Back to when I didn’t know you were slowly cutting me open.
Preparing to expose me to the outside world.
For so long it felt like I had an extra layer of protection.
Your body settled between my heart and the world.
But what I didn’t realize then
is that you slowly tore me open.