The Heart-Shaped Bead

      

Rahm, Michelle. “4x4mm Heart Shaped Gem Quality Chatham Lab-Created Pink Sapphire Weighs .” 4x4mm Heart Shaped Gem Quality Chatham Lab-Created Pink Sapphire Weighs , OurCustomWeddingRings.com, www.ourcustomweddingrings.com/store/568029/product/CH-LGQ4x4HSPS_4x4mm-Heart-Shaped-Gem-Quality-Chatham-Created-Cultured-Pink-Sapphire-Weighs-.29-.35-Ct.

       “Thank you, dad,” I shouted from my room, trying to get my voice to reach all the way. I held the new pink, heart-shaped bead he bought me from Croatia with my thumb and index finger, fascinated by the small diamond pieces inside the heart. My collection started five years ago; my dad got into the habit of bringing me back heart-shaped beads from every country he visits, as he always leaves to work in other countries.

       I raised the bead up above my head as I was laying down in my bed, staring at my reflection from the pink plastic diamonds covering the bead. As I was twisting the bead to see the back, my index finger lost grip of the bead, and it fell straight into my mouth. I abruptly sat up, gasping for air; the bead was tumbling down my throat. I rushed to the bathroom and stood over the toilet trying to vomit, needing to get the bead out. My throat burned, my heart burned, and it was getting worse. Dad, where are you?

       The emergency room waiting room’s atmosphere of blood and death left no room for love. But I guess sitting in front of the doctor with a stethoscope against my chest, light shining into my eyes and a stick down my throat wasn’t any better. In an instant, the doctor removed the stick from my throat and I started panting for air. I heard the sound of the light switch pressed, and my pupils dilated back to its normal size; chaos surrounded me. 

       The doctor jumped up and ran to his phone on his desk, “Nurse, nurse! Come in here immediately; we need to prep her for surgery right now!”

       “Surgery! Wait, doctor what surgery?” my dad pleaded as a wave of nurses with a big white bed raced into the room.

       “Sir, move out-of-the-way!!” The doctor moved my dad aside and picked me up to place me right back down on the bed.

       “Doctor answer me right now!” my dad pressed, not giving up. The doctor grabbed my dad’s shoulders and put him to a stop.

       “While I was examining her, your daughter's heart was beating extremely irregularly. We need to explore this now because she may be at great risk of dying. So sir, if you don't sit down and let me do my job, in the next couple minutes she might not be able to breathe," he panted as he was pushing the bed down the corridor.

       “I am going to die?” I asked with tears coming to my eyes. My dad ran to me and placed his hand on mine as I was now being dragged down the hall.

       “Don’t worry sweetheart, the doctor knows what he is doing and will help you get better,” he claimed, trying to comfort not only me, however himself. “I love you, you know that right?” He asked me as the nurse told him he can’t go into the elevator with me. 

       And as the metal rusty elevator doors were coming to a close, I managed to reply, “yeah?”

       A few hours later.

       Where am I? I look below me. I was having a camera stuck down my throat, “excuse me, doctor, what are you doing to me?” I floated down and tried to touch the doctor, but my hand went right through him. Weird. Annoyed and frustrated, I walked out of the surgery room and out to the waiting area searching for my parents. 

       "She will be okay, don’t you worry,” I hear the voice of my father trying to calm my mother down, or maybe he's saying it for himself. I followed the voice and see my parents, sitting patiently, waiting. I walk up to them and reached over to hug my mom, but my body went right through her. I then went up to my dad, and just as I was walking in for a hug he got up, “I am so sorry, I have to go.” He gets up from the chair and starts heading towards the exit, he left; just like he always does. 

As if in an instant, I vanished into another room. A room surrounded by mirrors covering each inch of the wall. I look in the mirror and see a ten-year-old girl with a pink shaped heart patch sewed into her white gown at the exact location of her heart. Ripping my eyes from the mirror down at myself, and then back up, I realized that girl is me. Mesmerized by the path I started feeling the roughness of it. 

       Out of nowhere, I started feeling throbbing pain, like many tiny needles poking holes in my heart. The heart patch ripped open, and I began to bleed everywhere. Broken pieces of my heart were floating on top of the blood. My hands were trying to pick up the broken pieces and mend my heart them back together, but there was just too much damage. “Charge to 100!” I heard someone scream elsewhere. “Charge to 300!”

       “Sir, sir, stop!” I heard another man whisper, “she’s gone, there's nothing we could’ve done to repair the devastation.”

       I was now back in the operating table. The doctor puts his bloody hand on my hair and leans down to my ear, "I am truly sorry kid, maybe in another life, we would've fixed your broken heart." He abruptly stood up and stated, “time of death, 21:19” and I began to float up to the white light.

       As I looked down one last time, I saw the doctor walk up to my doleful mom informing her about me. All of a sudden I heard something shatter against the floor. My dad stood there with a loose hand, bent over and lifeless because on the floor below him was a bouquet of pink flowers and a new pink heart-shaped bead, broken into a million pieces, everywhere.