by Elliott Fielding
Dispatch wakes me for a courier job. It’s a donor heart, which means a four hour countdown. I’m up and out the door, instant coffee in hand, in under seven minutes.
Ground transportation is the backup plan or I would’ve had more warning. Mountain weather is wild and high winds grounded the air-medical helicopter. The wind is gusting still, pushing my car around as I drive to the hospital.
Once I have the heart in hand, safe in its special transport cooler and documented with pages of paperwork, only three hours remain on the cold ischemia countdown. Snow is falling now, sweeping sideways across the road. I don’t need my coffee: the adrenaline keeps my eyes wide.
When there’s two hours to go, my hands are cramping, clenched tight on the steering wheel. Dispatch lets me know that I-70 has closed behind me. Traffic, already thin, gets lighter as people exit the interstate, pull over to the shoulder, or slide off the ice and into drifted snow.
One hour left. It’s a race: miles versus minutes—scalpels prepped and poised in Denver. I think about the heart next to me. I call it “the heart” but it’s a life I’m transporting. It’s the donor’s past and, if I can get there in time, the recipient’s future. I lean forward, take the middle of the empty highway, and accelerate, snowflakes flashing white in the beams of my headlights.
It happens on a curve. I don’t brake hard, I know better, but I’m crossing lanes, sliding sideways toward the drop-off and there’s no traction. At the last moment my wheels cut through softer snow to grip pavement inches from the guardrail and I’m swerving back to center. My heart is beating hard. I think of the donor, name unknown, who died in a heartbeat at age 30, maybe on this very road. I make a choice. I slow down. I pull over. The only life I’m carrying now is my own.
Elliott Fielding is a Colorado scientist and emerging author who weighs phrases and measures words. Xyr short narratives have appeared or are forthcoming in ScribesMICRO, MoonPark Review, The Examined Life, Five Minutes and elsewhere. https://elliottfielding.carrd.co/
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