ONE LAST REQUEST [Tom Hiddleston Fanfiction]

Chapter 2 : Start the clock

Seven hours I had been out cold, barely living on the uncomfortable bed inside the operating area. The doctors and nurses had worked around the clock, making sure that my vitals were still functioning as they began the operation. I did not envy them in any way; I couldn't never imagine a harder job in the world as a matter of fact. I hadn't even decided what I wanted to do for a career, but I guess now I wouldn't have to ever worry about that. I could keep dreaming that I could be a princess anyway. 

As far as my mother were concerned, my operation had been a success. She now sat beside me in the hospital, waiting for me to come around, whilst a doctor waiting by the door anxiously. They didn't tell her what had happened, for fear it would destroy her. The operation had worked and I was alive, my secondary heart now beeping away inside me, but it hadn't always been like that. At one point during the operation, my heart stopped altogether, and I died.

They had only been operating on my for about 30 minutes when it happened, causing them all to panic, trying to quickly revive me. They had just cut open my chest, and were removing some of the body tissue surrounding my heart when it stopped. I went into cardiac arrest. The nurse at my head placed a mask over my mouth and nose which already had a tube coming out of it into a ventilator. She began pumping in oxygen manually, making sure my body was still receiving air even though my lungs had stopped. Another nurse filled a needle nearby with adrenaline and pushed it into my arm, injecting the dose immediately. The doctors around my heart couldn't perform normal CPR, when they manually pump the chest to get the heart beating again, so had to place their hand around my frail, small heart and manually squeeze it, contracting each muscle inside it. 

For several minutes they worked endlessly, shouting orders at each other, demanding more air, more drugs, sweat pouring off them. They didn't dare give up, even when they made the risky decision to bring out the defibrillators. Having my heart out, already exposed to the elements was dangerous enough, but now sending a giant bolt of electricity through it was just suicidal. But I was already dead, so there was not much else more they could do, apart from try, and hope. They charged them up, before slamming them down onto my chest, my body jolting as the electrical charge coursed through it. My heart rate peaked with the blast, then flat lined again. No response. Again they pushed more adrenaline into my blood stream, forcing more oxygen into my lungs, every single one of them praying. Strike two, they tried again. A peak, then the flat line. No response. It was coming up to the ten minute mark. Only a miracle could save me, and save me it did. 

As the count ticked over 10, the bolt of electrical energy hit my heart with a jolt, my whole body managing to lift off the bed before crashing back down. A beat. A pulse. A breath. A miracle. My heart rate began to pick up again, stabilizing, the doctors not dropping their guard. They all stood around, the various apparatus held in their hands, primed, ready, just in case. Finally, my body and heart rate became stable and constant again. They all breathed a huge sigh of relief, patting each other on the back, before quickly getting back to work. They weren't out of the danger zone yet, as they still had another 6 hours of the operation to go to install my second heart. 

A small black box, no bigger than a small iPod Shuffle was placed carefully on top of my heart, before carefully being stitched in place. This was my second heart. A faint blue light began beeping steadily as the doctors carefully wound the thin, almost invisible wires around my heart, creating a small, electromagnetic coil. This was to make sure the electrical signal being given off by the box would react with my normal heart, and let my body continue to function and pump blood around should mine fail. Old people get given pacemakers when they have weak hearts, and this was a similar thing. It would help keep me alive, but it would not prolong my life for very long, if not at all. The doctors checked that it was all working, before beginning the long process of pulling the muscles back around my heart, and stitching my chest closed.