One of the nurses watched the surgeon playing with the patient's heart. His fingers stroked and pressed as if it were a woman's breast. The nurse wondered if the heart would respond to his touch, or for that matter, if a woman's breast did. She closed her eyes and imagined his fingers.

The surgeon was thinking of his girlfriend. He wondered if her heart was strong and if he touched it with his tongue. He wondered if she'd yet noticed the balding patch on the top of his head that he kept covered with a yamulka even though he wasn't Jewish. He wondered if the other doctors had girlfriends too. He wondered if one of them was screwing his wife.

The he felt a sharp stab of pain in the heart. His heart.