I.
You hear the tinkle of the shop door as it is pushed open, but you do not look up. What you are doing is too delicate an operation to be interrupted. A broken heart is a serious thing, after all, and you continue to fiddle with nerves and fuse tissue in a desperate attempt to appear dismissive.
But the customer does not depart. You hear the soft, light tread – like that of a cat – coming nearer and nearer. At last you know that the customer – whoever it is – is standing right in front of you. Not speaking, not interrupting. But waiting. Waiting and watching your hands with quiet curiosity.
It is this silent patience that at last forces you to stop what you are doing and look up. You restrain the urge to curse just barely in time. Because the customer is not another middle-aged woman, bringing in a heart battered and beaten by poor nerves, nor an elderly man, who has come to you because his heart no longer works the way it should. It is a little girl – not more than ten or eleven years old.
You have never seen anyone so young come into your shop. You are curious to know the reason why. This is, perhaps, why you put away the heart you were working on, and ask the girl what you can do for her. You force yourself to speak gently, to hide your surprise. Something in the way she looks at you invokes your pity.
She doesn’t answer you though. Only lays her heart on the counter between you. You see right away that it is covered with bruises, and that there is a large crack running down one side. It beats weakly and uncertainly – quivering on the table like a lump of blue jello.
You try to maintain a neutral expression as you pull on a new pair of gloves and begin your assessment. You have seen many hearts over the course of your career – several even in worse conditions than this one. But there is something about this heart that sickens you. Perhaps because it is so small. Too small, surely, to keep anyone alive. You ask the girl, as you pinch and prod, how long it has been this way. She doesn’t answer you. Just watches your hands without saying a word. Sometimes, when you touch a particularly large bruise, she winces.
At last you finish your examination. You tell the girl that you can fix it – but you need some cooperation. Without the necessary background information, any repairs will quickly disappear. She doesn’t look at you while you’re saying this. She has dropped her head to look at the counter in front of her, and traces an invisible pattern with the tip of her finger. Around and around. Around and around…
You sigh, then, and say: Never mind, I’ll try anyway. Come back in a few days.
You pick up the heart, and turn around to put it in a large jar of fluid. When you turn around again, the girl is gone.
II.
When she comes back, you are working on another heart in the back of the shop. You nod to indicate she should come to you, and then turn back to your work. She doesn’t come right away though. And as you twine fibers and glue veins, you watch her as she wanders around the shop.
You got into the habit of keeping the lights off years ago. There are only two in the shop – one by the front desk, and one over your workbench, where you are sitting right now. Because of this, you cannot see the girl very well. You are like an actor on a stage – looking out into the darkened audience, watching as a few pale faces flash into being, and then just as quickly slip away again. This is how you see the girl, watching the deep sheen of her hair as it bobs behind shelves and between countertops – melding with the darkness. You see too the rims of hundreds of glass jars, rippling with the line of her shadow. She pauses by one of these, looking into it intently. Then she looks away again. The heart inside is black and withered.
You speak to her then, telling her to come to you. She can hear the excitement in your voice and hurries over. You hold out a heart to her – deep red, and pulsing deep and hard. This is what a proper heart should look like! you tell her. Look at that – isn’t it beautiful?
She looks from the heart in your hand to your face and smiles a little. And you begin to laugh, because you see the irony of your statement. But also because you are glad. You have made her smile. You have never seen her smile before.
You put the heart away, and tell her that you’ll look at her heart now. You made some notes after your preliminary examination. But you are still rather baffled. You pull it out now, and feel that familiar sick turning of your stomach. You don’t want to look at it. It’s wrong, somehow. You have seen worse. But this is wrong.
You take a deep breath, and force yourself to focus. You ask the girl the same questions you asked her before: How long has it been like this? Where did this bruise come from? What hurts? When she doesn’t answer, you look up at her. And you see that the smile has faded from her face. You want to ask: How can I help you? But the words are thick and heavy on your tongue, and you cannot get them out.
You try another tactic. You turn back to the heart, pretending not to look at her. While you measure air and write nonsense, you ask her about her family. Do you have siblings? Do your parents work? Where do you go to school?
You are watching her out of the corner of her eye while you speak. And you see how she folds inside herself, shoulders hunching forward to protect the fragile chest and abdomen, head dropping lower and lower. You trail off mid-sentence, unsure of how to go on. Suddenly a tear splashes down on the workbench, and you reach out to touch her without thinking.
She recoils sharply, instantly. As if your hand had been a snake. For a moment, she stands there, trembling. Then she turns, and runs out of the shop.
III.
It is winter now. The streets are muffled with snow, and the light outside is sharp, pale, and brilliant. You have almost forgotten about the girl. That is why you are so surprised when she suddenly appears in your shop one day, bent almost double under a large backpack. You ask her how she is, although you can see for yourself that she is still small and thin, and that her eyes are restless and sad. She doesn’t answer you, but you were expecting that. You ask if she has come for her heart, and she nods. You pull it out of the jar, and see that it looks exactly as it did when she first brought it to you. You are vaguely disappointed. Although you know it’s ridiculous to feel this way – hoping beyond hope that the heart would have somehow repaired itself.
She looks at it a moment, then shrugs the heavy backpack to the floor, and pulls out a small purse. You wave it away, telling her that you don’t charge for what you can’t fix.
She nods and puts away the purse. You hand her the heart, wrapped in tissue paper, and she puts that inside her backpack too. She is having trouble getting the backpack on again, so you step around the counter to give her a hand. You are surprised at how heavy it is, and say so. You make some stupid joke about how much homework the teachers must be assigning. But she doesn’t laugh.
You watch as she walks to the door, hear the soft tinkle of the bell as she pushes her way outside. She pauses for a moment in the empty street, shifting the heavy backpack on her shoulders to move it into a more comfortable position. Then, she begins to walk away.
Your legs are moving before you are aware of it, carrying you to the door, and forcing you to open it and step outside. There she is – almost at the end of the street. She hesitates a moment at the intersection, then turns left, and walks out of sight. And you do not know where she is going, or why she is going, or why it even matters to you. But your throat is so tight that it is hard to breathe, and your heart is beating in sharp and painful motion.
Grace Larson is a junior studying Business at the University of Cologne, Germany, but she originally hails from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her work has previously appeared in ‘Every Day Fiction’ and ‘Variety Pack’.