Pegasus Heart

 

I saw my heart on a screen today. A tiny fluttering bird, I must be a sparrow. Or a robin, I thought.

I couldn't keep my eyes off it, as the nurse kept saying, 'Turn to the side please'. It opened and closed like a tiny door, in and out, in and out. It had the feeling of another, like watching the beginnings of your first born, the magical sound of a horse galloping in a field. It was the same sound. A horse bird. Looks like a bird, as fast as a horse. A Pegasus! I was a Pegasus!

Just when my pride was swelling up in my beautiful heart, ready to burst out of the machine and fly around this cold, sterile room, she muttered to herself.

'Are you bicuspid?'

'Bi what?'

The only Bi I know is something I could have been or probably will be, if given the chance. 

'Someone who has only two aortic valves instead of three.'

'If I were, I would have known, right? What causes it?'

'It's a rare congenital condition.'

'I don't have any such thing. How can three valves become two?'

'It fuses. Two close to become one. There's lesser blood flow then.'

I started panicking now. How could I suddenly have developed this strange condition?

She called her senior who after some prodding seemed confused. 'See this part. There's only two where there were three. It's closed up.'

I asked the senior doctor if there was a problem. She snapped at me rudely. 

'If there's anything to tell, I will tell the doctor.'

After the report came, it was normal. Where did my rare discovery go?

I have three valves, I sighed. I'm just like everyone else.

The doctor saw the report and said, 'You have a healthy heart. There's nothing to worry.'

Thank God. And here I had been crippled with anxiety lately, thinking there was something wrong with me 

I looked at the image of my heart and held it to my heart. Two or three, whatever you choose to be, you are special.  My very own bird, with its very own song.

The root of the root and the bud of the bud,

And the sky of a sky of a tree called Life.

- e e cummings