I'm Only Human

Imagining salvation.

It's what she's been attempting for the last two months. And yet it is just that: imagining. For no matter how many times the pen belonging to the man sat opposite her strokes paper, forms her name, scribbles down the words that spill over her lips with practiced fluidity, they can not grant her the one thing everyone desperately wants.

A heart.

She stares blankly out of the window, eyes tracing the faint reflected outline of the man's face, his hair that turns silver at the temples, the gold wires of his glasses. He is more than aware of what her name is by now, but for some reason, he will not continue until she demonstrates knowledge of it herself.

“Can you tell me your name?”

No. No she cannot. It doesn't matter what her name is. It doesn't matter what her age is – that she's too young to be here, balancing on a tightrope that promises her nothing she desires. Still, she pulls her gaze away from the window just long enough to throw him a pointed glance. “If you won't tell me yours, I don't see why I should tell you mine.”

The doctor isn't phased by the comment, and with a disappointed sigh jots something down in his spidery, hap-hazard scrawl. “Why are you here?”

Her hands clench involuntarily. There is no point in prolonging the inevitable. “To prove the existence of my heart, I suspect.”

“And if you fail to do so?”

“I will be deemed inhuman, my organs will be made available for transplant and the remains of my body will be disposed of in the most sanitary way possible.” The parroted statement rolls off her tongue with rehearsed ease, and it startles the doctor for a moment – hearing the words come directly from her mouth.

But then he's off again, running the same course they have been for the last god-knows-how-long.

“Do you have any idea why your heart is missing?”

“None whatsoever.” It's a lie. Somewhere in the back of her brain, locked away in a safe, tangled with cobwebs and smothered by dust, there is a faint memory of someone holding it in their hands. A tear stained face. The sound of a door closing.

“How do you feel today?” He talks to her like she's a child, or hard of hearing, or just downright crazy.

“Fine.”

“If you could be a little more specific.”

A flashing glare across the table. “I feel fed up. Fed up of this room and fed up of you and your stupid questions and your stupid glasses which are so outdated I want to rip them off your face and throw them out of that godforsaken window. I'm fed up of needles and scans and blood tests and that look on all of their faces when they look at the results and have to admit: oh dear, this one's a lost cause.”

The doctor abandons his pen and clipboard during her outburst. Intertwining his long fingers, he leans forward and studies her with his bespectacled eyes.

“If I'm a lost cause, finish it. I don't care.” She says, half expecting her eyes to bubble up with tears. However, she's not surprised when none surface.

The doctor's mouth twitches. “Sorry, are you asking for it to be over?”

She doesn't speak. She can't. The words she wants to say are like a car pile up in her throat, so she keeps her mouth closed. Because speaking will make her fate concrete.

The session finishes for the day. Tomorrow, the doctor promises, they will start on something different.

She is fully aware of what the “something different” entails.