Wait! You forgot to close!

Imagine:

Your heart doesn't work quite like it should.

Perhaps it's stone cold and it takes a lot of muscular effort to get the blood pumping through it. Or maybe it's just too small, and has to work overtime to get the blood pumped to the tips of your toes and ends of your fingers.

Now, imagine that you are offered the chance to have a transplant. This would be great right? Keep in mind, however, you've had this bum heart for quite some time, it's not the ideal heart, but you're used to it. You know how to compensate for it's flaws. But it's flaws have the potential to end your existence early.

What do you do?

Do you keep the old classic, though not perfect/potentially lethal heart? Or do you shoot for the chance of getting a new, young, perfect heart...but a heart you don't know, one you're not familiar with?

Well, for the sake of arguing, let's say you opt in for the chance to have a new heart.

There you are, the day of surgery, so excited you can hardly keep from wetting yourself!

This is your chance, a new lease on life, a possible extension even. What a great day! How can you not be anything but elated?!

Hours later, you find yourself in recovery. You groggily open your eyes, stretching out your fingers and toes, already this new heart feels amazing!

You feel like a new person! No more compensating for that bum heart! Wow, this is just great!

You have to remain in the hospital for a few weeks, and you are told not to fiddle with your bandages. Both are simple requests you willingly oblige, you're so caught up in how good you feel, you could care less.

Well...time has passed, you've never felt so good, you're ready to take on the world, and you are free to go.

As you finish checking out, the nurses tell you it's time to remove your bandages.

Layer by layer, they remove the gauze. With the removal of each layer you feel more and more exposed.

Awkward.

Uncomfortable.

Raw.

You look down. Your chest is still cracked. No stitches in place. You can see your new, young heart, beating quickly, as if it were willing your chest to close in around it.

"Wait! You forgot to close!" You shout at the nurses.

They don't even acknowledge your presence anymore.

You are ushered from the building. There are many more people waiting for their new heart, and you're in the way now.

There you are. Once protected, now fully exposed. You try desperately to pull yourself together. You're frantic.

How did it come to this? It wasn't suppose to be this way.

Sure, you have a new heart, but what good does it do you, if you can't protect it?

Now you find yourself having to compensate again. At times you put up a shield, to cover your heart. And other times, it's just there, completely open.

Each morning and each night you try to stitch the gaping hole back together. It'll get there...but the progress is slow. The closing moves in such tiny increments, you hardly ever notice the change.

Until, one day. You wake up. And you're finally whole again, finally healed, after daily efforts to put yourself back together.

Was it worth it?

That is only for you to decide.

What is better? A bum heart or new heart, exposed?