The Literature Network - Nightingales with a heart // After heart surgery, it's the nurses who make it all work

Nightingales with a heart // After heart surgery, it's the nurses who make it all work

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From: Chicago Sun-Times
Date: 19870421
Author:Dick Roraback

In each human heart are a tiger, a pig, an ass and a nightingale. Ambrose Bierce

LOS ANGELES The mechanics have been and gone.

They had rumbled through the ribs, the mechanics had, with one of those neat little mini-power saws. Then they'd got right into the sanctum sanctorum of the whole shmeer, and replaced a faulty heart valve.

Not the same make and model, they'd said earlier with simulated rue. The line was discontinued in the '30s. What they were going to do was bung in a pig's valve. ("Most appropriate," the valvee's wife had said.) Warranty: 10 years or 100,000 miles. Better ...

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