For example, as I lay there, still uncertain as to where there was, a couple of the lessons of the orchid drifted through my mind, along with unclassified sounds and unsorted shapes and colors. I quickly achieved such conclusions as, Things are not always what they seem, and sometimes it doesn’t matter; and One can get screwed in the damnedest ways, often involving the spinal nerves.
I was testing my environment in a tentative fashion by then.
“Ooow! Ooww!” and “Owww!” I said-for how long I am uncertain-when the environment finally responded by sticking a thermometer in my mouth and taking my pulse.
“You awake. Mister Cassidy?” a feminine-to-neuter voice inquired.
“Glab,” I replied, bringing the nurse’s face into focus and letting it go back out of focus again after I had gotten a good look.
“You are a very lucky man. Mister Cassidy,” she said, withdrawing the thermometer. “I am going to get hold of the doctor now. He is quite anxious to talk with you. Lie still. Don’t exert yourself.”
In that I felt no particular urge to roll over and do pushups, it was not difficult to comply with this last. I did do the focus-trick again, though, and this time everything stayed put. Everything consisted of what appeared to be a private hospital room, with me on the bed by the wall by the window. I lay flat on my back and quickly discovered the extent to which my chest was swathed with gauze and tape. I winced at the thought of the dressings’ eventual removal. The unmaimed do not have a monopoly on anticipation.
Moments later, it seemed, a husky young man in the usual white, stethoscope spilling out of his pocket, pushed a smile into the room and brought it near. He transferred a clipboard from one hand to the other and reached toward my own. I thought he was going to take my pulse, but instead he clasped my hand and shook it.
“Mister Cassidy, I’m Doctor Drade,” he said. “We met earlier, but you don’t remember it. I operated on you. Glad to see that your handshake is that strong. You are a very lucky man.”
I coughed and it hurt.
“That’s good to know,” I said.
He raised the clipboard.
“Since your hand is in such good shape,” he said, “may I have your signature on some release forms I have here?”
“Just a minute,” I said. “I don’t even know what’s been done to me. I am not about to okay it at this point.”
“Oh, it is not that sort of release,” he said. “They’ll get that when you are checking out. This just gives me permission to use your medical record and some photos I was fortunate enough to obtain during surgery as part of an article I want to write.”
“What sort of article?” I asked.
“One involving the reason I said you are a very lucky man. You were shot in the chest, you know.”
“I had sort of figured that out myself.”
“Anyone else would probably be dead as a result. But not good old Fred Cassidy. Do you know why not?”
“Tell me.”
“Your heart is in the wrong place.”
“Oh.”
“Have you actually gotten this far along in life without becoming aware of the peculiar anatomy of your circulatory system?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “But then, I’ve never been shot m the chest before either.”
“Well, your heart is a mirror image of an average, garden-variety heart. The vena cavae feed from the left and the pulmonary artery receives the blood from your left ventricle. Your pulmonary veins take the fresh blood to the right auricle, and the right ventricle pumps it through an aortic arch that swings over to the right. The right chambers of your heart consequently have the thickwalled development other people have on the left side. Now, anyone else shot in the same place you were would probably have been hit in the left ventricle, or possibly the aorta. In your case, though, the bullet went harmlessly past the inferior vena cava.”
I coughed again.
“Well, relatively harmlessly,” he amended. “There is still a hole, of course. I’ve patched it neatly, though. You should be back on your feet in no time.”