I lifted out the cold solid mass and examined our work from the last 30 minutes. We had just played surgeon on a dead guy and performed the first half of a heart transplant. It began with the whirring sound of the electric bone-saw as we pushed through the medial ends of the clavicles. Next came the stainless steal clippers. They looked like the hand-held shears my mom uses to trim her roses. Instead of flower stems, we clipped along the side of the man's thorax, crunching through his ribs like they were crab legs at a buffet dinner. Stopping at the bottom of the rib cage, we left the diaphragm muscle intact to act as a hinge for this doorway into the man's chest. As two of us strained to break open the chest cavity, a third assisted the ripping connective tissue with a scalpel. Inside, revealed the pinkish/gray spongy lungs... but no heart. Where was that red, fist-sized muscle that we value so much? Apparently, it doesn't sit openly on the left side of the chest like I was led to believe. Carefully nested between the lungs in a sac of greasy fluid was the treasure we were searching for. With nimble fingers we reached around the heart and sliced through the small and large vessels that were tethering it to the rest of the body. Then...for the first time in this man's existence his heart was literally pulled out of his chest. I took it over to the sink and began washing out the dried blood. It felt like a rubber pliable toy as I stuck my fingers into the hollow atriums and felt around for left over chunks. Little fountains were created as water poured into one tube and shot out of another. My lab partners sat behind me discussing the latest "Bachelor" episode and the 3 women that were left, all striving for the man's heart. Too bad they weren't in lab with us today. It wasn't that difficult.
