I was two when Phoebe was born. I don’t remember it at all, but I do remember the doctor visits.
Phoebe was born with a hole in her heart. That sounds like a huge deal, but it wasn’t really. Turns out it’s pretty routine. But when Phoebe turned three, the doctors decided the hole wasn’t going to heal on its own, and she needed surgery. Before that, however, they did an EKG, and I got to watch.
Phoebe lay down on a hospital bed, and Mom clutched her hand like she was saying her last goodbyes even though everyone else, including Pheebs, was pretty chill about it all. Phoebe watched the cartoon the technician put on for her, but I watched the monitor. The technician rubbed a wand over Phoebe’s chest, and a black-and-white picture of her heart showed up on the screen, contracting and expanding with every beat.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing.
The technician showed me the arteries and the different chambers of Phoebe’s heart.
“And this is what’s causing all the trouble,” the technician said. “This is where the hole is.”
“It looks like a bird,” I said, and the technician laughed.
With every heartbeat, the wings of the bird flapped. This was blood flowing over the loose tissue, but to me it was like one of those drawings little kids make of birds in the sky, the ones that look like elongated letter m’s. I watched, mesmerized, as the bird’s wings moved up and down, up and down.
They got her into surgery, and she was only in the hospital for a day, and then she milked my parents for ice cream for dinner until she was sick of ice cream, and that was that.
But sometimes I look at Phoebe and I think about how she had a bird inside her heart. On the outside, she’s just like everyone else, but I like to think that maybe she carries within her something magical and free.