There's a heart lying on the kitchen table.
It's different from the usual, though. (God, he thinks it's usual to have body parts lying around the flat.) For one thing, it's beating. For another, it looks a little bit familiar.
John isn't really personally acquainted with any hearts that he knows of. He did his stint in the cardiothoracic rotation, but always enjoyed the straight-up trauma surgeries more. Leave the specialists to their work. So why he feels like he knows this heart isn't clear.
He moves closer, gazing down at it. The beating is very rapid; out of habit, he takes the rate. Most accurate apical pulse he'll ever measure.
Oddest of all (and this is the oddest part, there's a bloody heart on the table and this is the oddest part?), the heart feels lonely to him. Like it wants something. He thinks he's going crazy. Well, crazier. Craziest. He snorts.
He's a doctor, he knows hearts don't belong laying around on tables like Thursday's rubbish waiting to be carted away. He reaches down and gently pokes it with his index finger. It wants picking up, holding. He knows the best place to keep a heart, and it's not a tea tray.
He lifts it with one hand, cradling gently, and opens his chest with the other. There's a nice, fist-sized, heart-shaped hole on the left side, just waiting for something warm and pulsing to fit in there like it was tailor-made. He places the heart inside the (gaping, vast, cavernous) opening and holds it there for a second, hand placed on his open chest like he's about to make the most important declaration of his life. Then he pats once, twice, decisively. Closes his chest. Sighs.
He feels so much better. He'd no idea how much he'd been wanting one of his own. He doesn't take the time to wonder where his old one went (hadn't been missing it at all, really. How long had it been gone? He thinks since the man at the door returned his cane, but that's not who took it), just revels in the steady beat under his ribs. He wants to think something silly, like it feels like a caged bird fluttering inside his chest, but it's much too strong for that. More like a caged elephant, caged cheetah, caged velociraptor, something that wants to run, run, run forever down London streets, chasing happiness and a dark coat.
He spent far too long without a heart, but less than 48 hours after he got it back he gave it away again, without question. It's nice to know he has one in return now. He was getting a bit cold without one. He likes this new one better than his, anyway. It has a feeling of potentiality about it, a feeling of intent. He thinks OhGodYes is branded on this heart in the same way it was on his old one, but it comes with a hard diamond shine to the words that his own couldn't mimic. There's no substitute for the real thing.