Love between two heartbeats

The human heart weighs approximately eleven ounces.

Heaven Wilson knew this fact the same way she knew that coffee had exactly 47 minutes to kick in before her hands would steady enough for sutures, that her father's temper peaked at 11:23 PM every night, and that silence was always safer than speaking.

She stood in Operating Theater 3, her spine rigid as a scalpel's edge, watching Dr. Martinez's hands move with the precision of a conductor leading a symphony. The patient—a forty-three-year-old male with a perforated bowel—lay splayed open beneath the harsh surgical lights, his life balanced on the knife's edge of expertise and circumstance.

"Wilson." Dr. Martinez's voice cut through the sterile air without looking up. "What's the next step?"

Heaven's response came without hesitation, her voice steady as a metronome. "Irrigation and debridement of the peritoneal cavity, followed by primary repair of the perforation using interrupted sutures with 3-0 silk."

"And if the tissue is too friable?"

"Resection and anastomosis. Remove the compromised section and reconnect healthy bowel."

Dr. Martinez finally glanced up, his eyes crinkling above his surgical mask in what might have been approval. Around the table, the other medical students shifted uncomfortably. Heaven Wilson had that effect—making everyone else feel slightly inadequate simply by existing.

She'd earned her reputation the hard way. While her classmates stumbled through differential diagnoses, Heaven dissected problems with surgical precision. While they fumbled with patient interactions, she delivered news—good or bad—with the kind of controlled compassion that came from years of practice hiding her own pain.

The surgery concluded without complications. As the team dispersed, Heaven remained behind, studying the suture lines with the intensity of someone reading sacred text. Each stitch was perfect, uniform, necessary. Control made manifest in silk and flesh.

Her phone buzzed against her hip. A text from her younger brother Marcus: Dad's asking about your grades again. Might want to call.

Heaven's jaw tightened imperceptibly. She deleted the message without responding, then methodically stripped off her gloves, gown, and mask. In the hallway mirror, her reflection stared back—angular cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, dark eyes that revealed nothing, black hair pulled into a bun so severe it could have been carved from marble.

She looked exactly like what she was: untouchable.

Heaven gathered her belongings with the same precision she applied to everything else. Her notebook lay open to pages of meticulous notes, each diagram labeled in handwriting so perfect it could have been printed. She closed it, secured it in her bag, and walked toward the hospital's main corridor with the measured pace of someone who had never been late, never been unprepared, never been anything less than exactly what was expected.

The heart weighs eleven ounces, she reminded herself. But some days, hers felt heavy enough to drag her straight through the floor.

Draven Callahan had always believed that life was too short for uncomfortable shoes, bitter coffee, or taking himself too seriously.

Which was why, at precisely 8:47 AM on a Tuesday that promised to be aggressively ordinary, he found himself balanced precariously on the back of a bench in the hospital's main lobby, trying to retrieve a paper airplane that had somehow lodged itself in the decorative ficus tree.

"You know," he called down to his audience—three first-year nursing students who had stopped to watch the spectacle—"in my defense, I was aiming for the trash can. The tree was completely innocent in all this."