Who Owns Your Heart?

by Quinten Dol

Part 1 appears in this issue

conclusion

Oda inserts an intubator and then they’re in the van on their way to the hospital, sons and daughter following in a car. And then the ER doctors ask them to remove the intubator, and they do so. But, as Raju pulls it out, it nicks the patient’s airway, which Oda says happens all the time but this patient is so old and fragile that he bleeds a lot, and his lungs fill with blood, which the doctors can fix, but it means a long and painful recovery for poor old Bakob Delamare.

Later, while Oda and Raju are filling out paperwork, a doctor enters the paramedics’ office. Her head’s down, and she’s rubbing her forehead with both palms.

“You’re gonna love this,” she says. She draws a theatrical breath. “Delamare did have a health directive, after all. DNR.”

Raju’s head sinks to the table, but Oda is cackling and the doctor is laughing and even Sahagur lets out a soft, rumbling chuckle.

“I knew it,” Oda says, wiping her eyes once the doctor has excused herself.

Raju still has his forehead on the plastic table. “It felt like everyone knew it.”

“Hard to miss all those images of Pilhoacatzintli,” Sahagur says. His bare blue feet are up on the desk by Raju’s head. Nobody has died, so he doesn’t have any paperwork.

“Is he your favorite?” Oda says, unwrapping a stick of chihuahua jerky.

Sahagur assumes a world-weary expression. “We priests follow Teotl, the sacred force that underlies it all. The lesser gods get the PR, but they’re all downstream from Teotl.”

Pilhoacatzintli. Raju recognizes the word from grade school. It is one of the many names of Tezcatlipoca, the jaguar god who sacrificed his leg. He tries to place this name’s meaning in the common tongue.

“Revered Father?” he tries.

Sahagur nods.

“Not revered enough, apparently,” Oda mumbles around a mouthful of jerky.

Raju is confused. In the accelerated intimacy of this job, he already knows Oda is an unbeliever. And in the mornings, after he’s shed his uniform, showered and become a civilian again, he can’t quite believe how cavalier she is about it, especially in front of a powerful priest like Sahagur. “I thought you’d be with the kids on this one,” he says.

Oda shrugs. “I’m with whoever needs saving, and that poor old man did not need saving. He was packed and ready, but his dumb kids wouldn’t let him go. Whatever superstition he carries around in his head is irrelevant to you and me. We leave that to the blue man.”

Raju winces. Sahagur has been lenient with her, but is he really going to let the S-word roll off for the second time in a night?

The priest takes his feet off the table and plants them on the linoleum floor. “You threatened to write me up on the Nezahual job,” he says, “but I could have filed multiple reports on you by now, what with all these errant comments.”

“But you won’t, because you loooove me,” Oda coos. She’s wearing an over-the-top smile that falters as she watches Sahagur. “Wait, you’re serious? You’d try to get me fired?”

“Forget fired. I know it’s a new day of tolerance and all, but I have plenty of older colleagues who would’ve sent you up the temple a long time ago for that sort of talk.”

“I guess I’m lucky to work in the one place where your colleagues don’t have ultimate authority,” Oda shoots back.

Sahagur maintains his glare for a second, and then his face cracks into a grin, his teeth glowing against his blue skin. “You’ve got a good heart, Oda,” he says.

The paramedic giggles. She leans back, puts her feet on the desk next to the paperwork Raju is finishing and pops a chunk of jerky in her mouth. As she munches, she appears to notice him again. “Oh cheer up, rookie,” she says. “Cases like this happen from time to time.”

And then she’s clapping him on the back, and the doctor returns to shake his hand, and Sahagur touches his shoulder, and the physical contact with healthy, upright humans feels good. Raju takes a deep breath.

“Poor Mr Delamare,” he says.

Oda takes another bite of jerky. “The ones you really want to make it, never do,” she says around a mouthful, “and the ones you don’t want to make it? Well they always come back. Come on, let’s hit the road.”

* * *

The house is putting on quite a show. It’s teetering and shuddering, and great booms and cracks are sounding from within. Nobody’s inside and there’s no saving the structure. The firefighters are suiting up only to keep the blaze from spreading to neighboring buildings.

“You stay right there,” a captain grunts, thrusting a meaty finger at the ambulance and its occupants. “This is our scene.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Oda says, throwing a salute as she stomps away. “All yours, cap’n.”

Raju, Oda and Sahagur are there as a matter of protocol, in case a firefighter inhales too much smoke or makes the kind of silly mistake that will turn their heart over to Sahagur and buy a few more weeks for the Fifth Sun.

The crew sits side-by-side in the back of the van with the doors open, their legs dangling. Raju’s phone vibrates and he sees that the little car icon has stopped just up the road from his blue dot. “Tacos are here, be right back.”

He shoulders through a crowd of gawking neighbors, retrieves the food from the driver and hustles back, brown bag cradled in his arms. He hands Oda and Sahagur their dinner.

“What do we owe you, rookie?” Oda says, drizzling chipotle sauce and lime on her meal.

“Nothing.” Raju grins. “Last day of my first rotation. I want to thank you both for showing me the ropes.”

As he sinks his teeth into his first taco — it’s iguana spiced with cacao, and he’s had it on the brain since Shenelope Xochitl — the fire detonates a gas tank under the backyard barbecue, sending a jet of flame plunging into the night sky and consuming an entire family’s treasured heirlooms: omen feathers, ceramic flying bird trophies and the timber clubs of favorite macuahuitls, leaving nothing but little obsidian blades for the family to sift from the ashes.

Raju whoops, feeling the heat on his face. Oda cheers. Sahagur chuckles. Later, the paramedics and the priest boo the firefighters moving in to douse the flames.

* * *

They’ve been rolling around their quadrant for about half an hour, in the dead hours just before dawn, when Dispatch lights up the radio: a young woman named Markia Postecoglou is very sick.

“Number four,” Oda sighs as she guides the van in. The driveway is flanked by a pair of cheap plaster jaguar statues and packed with cars.

The Postecoglous’ many relatives are crammed into the bedroom around Markia’s bed, and they silently make way for the paramedics. She’s a frail little thing, sweating into a cotton sheet that seems to weigh her down into the mattress.

As Raju checks her vitals and listens for a heartbeat — it’s faint and too slow, but it’s still there — he can hear family members greeting Sahagur, who is hanging back in the far corner of the room, eyes lit up against his body paint, hair crusty and matted.

“She’s stable.”

“I’ll get the gurney,” Oda concurs and disappears to fetch it.

Markia turns her pale face to Raju and smiles with the kind of serenity he usually associates with the oldest patients: the ones with DNRs, supportive families and no regrets. Easy jobs for him, because really they’re Sahagur’s jobs. But Markia is 16, not 86. And while something is making her sick, she’ll make it to the hospital.

Raju stands and addresses the room. “Folks, please make way for my colleague. Mr. and Mrs. Postecoglou, you can ride along with us or follow in your own vehicle.”

The father steps forward. He’s got the same pronounced brow line as the patient and a kindly, bespectacled face. “That won’t be necessary,” he says gently.

“Excuse me?”

“She’s... she’s ready,” he whispers. He leans into a short, plump woman with the same narrow nose as the patient.

Raju can see Oda’s increasingly frantic face behind them, at the back of the crowd. “Please,” she’s saying, trying to guide the gurney through. “Please, make way.”

Raju feels Markia’s clammy hand take his. Her peaceful smile is starting to unnerve him.

“Wait, Markia, with all due respect, you’ve got a fever and you’re dehydrated but I’m sure you’ll feel a lot better once we get some fluids in you. The doctors at the hospital, they’re very good.” He turns to the parents. “She’s sick, but—” he glances over their heads and receives Oda’s nod of affirmation— “we don’t think she’s in real trouble, so long as we get to the hospital soon.”

A frown is scrunching Mr Postecoglou’s brow. “I said she’s ready. She’d tell you herself, if she could.”

On cue, Markia squeezes Raju’s hand again.

Mr Postecoglou turns and cranes his neck. “Your holiness,” he says. “Please.”

“No!” Oda yells from the back of the room. “Mr Postecoglou, it is our medical opinion that your daughter is not dying. She can recover with proper medical treatment.”

Meanwhile, Sahagur strides through the parting crowd. “Are you sure?” The priest almost sounds giddy, but it’s only because Raju knows him well. To a stranger, his affect is somber.

The parents smile and say they are. Family members are yelping in the background as Oda rams the gurney into the backs of their legs, but nobody’s moving, they’re craning their necks to see.

“Markia,” Raju says, “if you just let us give you some electrolytes, I think you’ll see things a bit differently...” But the patient is gently shaking her head and now the commotion in the room — Oda yelling, the family members gawking, the parents weeping and holding one another, the dim yellow lights catching Sahagur’s obsidian blade as he mutters prayers in the ancient tongue, even the diagnoses and dosages chattering away in Raju’s own brain — it all falls away.

He stands in a new silence between the two of them. Markia has not let go of his hand. Her fingers squeeze a third time, and now her grip is warm and strong. Something old and elemental moves in Raju’s chest, flows out through his arms, overwhelms the distant, sputtering synapses trying to remind him of his oath.

“It would be my honor,” she whispers. Her face is calm. Conviction gives strength to her words. In his mind’s eye, Raju sees a river of energy flowing through the room, collecting within and then swirling out of the packed bodies and the icons on the walls and, as he watches, it seems to open around her. The parting waters of the sacred power, Teotl, prepare to accept Markia back into the whole. A new feeling washes over Raju, all beauty and connectedness and love. He smiles.

“Mine too,” he replies.

“Raju! Raju, stop him!” Oda is shouting with a tone that strikes Raju as unprofessional. “Get out of my way, you fanatics. Markia! You own your heart, nobody...” The crowd jostles and her voice fades, as if she’s been carried to another room.

Meanwhile, the priest is gently unbuttoning Markia Postecoglou’s nightshirt. Then, as he whispers his prayers, and as the family prostrates around the bed, and as Oda yells from the other room, Sahagur makes one, then two large incisions with his blade. Blood is suddenly everywhere, all through the bed and all over Sahagur, who thrusts his blue arm into the wound, and then he is holding Markia Postecoglou’s heart aloft, soft and dripping, pulsing through the priest’s triumphant fingers, beating weakly, but still beating.

“There will be no Sixth Sun,” Sahagur chants in the modern tongue. “We nourish the gods with our sacrifice and, in doing so, we stave off the great earthquake that will shatter the sun and the earth. Markia Postecoglou, daughter of Tezcatlipoca, now embarks on her journey through the moving mountains, the winds of knives, the rivers of blood. She was brave and honorable to give herself. Her descendants will thank her for the time her heart has bought, just as we luxuriate today in the time our ancestors bought with theirs.”

The father pipes up. “Priest, how much time does her heart give to the gods?”

“My colleagues at the temple will make the necessary measurements and determine an exact figure,” Sahagur says, placing Markia’s now-still heart in a brass bowl engraved with the many visages of Tezcatlipoca, the jaguar god of night. “I can say, however, that young hearts are especially valuable. Her next of kin will receive the official results of the examination in writing within ten business days. For now, though, rest easy knowing she has begun the next phase of her journey, having bought us all more time.”

And with that, he lights a stick of incense and waves it over the bloody bowl. He lifts it with one hand, waves the incense with the other and, chanting, leads the family outside towards the ambulance.

Left alone, Raju’s gaze drifts back to Markia. The mien of serene conviction is gone. At the last second, her facial muscles have twisted into an ugly expression that Raju recognizes as fear and pain. He hears the rattle of the gurney in the hallway and quickly passes his hand over her face, closing Markia’s staring eyes and relaxing her muscles before Oda enters the room.

Oda rolls the gurney in and looks down at the patient with a look of disgust. “Like a cored apple,” she spits. There are tears on her cheeks. They load the body onto the gurney and follow the family out into the driveway.

“I thought it was quite beautiful,” Raju says.

Oda gives him a stone-hard look, as if the last two weeks have evaporated. “Feel like you’ve learned something, huh?”

Dawn has lit the eastern sky as they wheel Markia out into the driveway. The unseen sun is lifting towards the horizon. Shades of purple and orange are chasing the morning star across the heavens. In the trees, birds are stirring and singing. The city moves with waking life. Deep in his chest, Raju can feel it all pulsing around him.

“Oda,” he says, “we serve at the pleasure of the priests. If you don’t agree, why are you here?”

“Because I want to save lives,” she says. Her voice is cold. She’s not looking at him.

“Even those who don’t want to be saved? Or shouldn’t be saved? We have an obligation to society too, Oda. Death is also a gift.”

Oda shakes her head and spits into the street. At that moment, the Fifth Sun dawns again. As the leading edge of the celestial orb peeks over the horizon and beams light over his body, Raju thinks of Shenelope Xochitl and Markia Postecoglou, and he feels sure that it shines a little brighter than yesterday.