The Shape of Takotsubo

One afternoon she watched as the terrible storms descended. Unable to climb to the sky with her ladder and pull the clouds back together or seal the leaking shut, after several days her heart answered by opening until it was too feeble to carry her body and she fell to the ground. And now, after being rescued, after entering the hospital for the second time in less than a week, after being carried and swaddled tight in white sheets soaked heavy in the torrential rain, machines bleeped and dripped, chanted their anonymous steady promises throughout the room, and the doctor waded through rancid water to listen once again to the body nestled in her own.

What creature had taken hold to ensnare her heart in what seemed like an instant, inflating her left ventricle with its unexpected breath into the softness of a u instead of the efficient angles of a v, she asked him after he showed her the image.

Takotsubo's Syndrome he told her, his mouth stretching the word like an extended tentacle. Meaning the shape of an octopus trap.

A visitor then—for how long?

It happens sometimes; but don't worry; in most cases it goes away.

She watched them inside her: a billion worms twisting thick from a conical, glowing body, the suction-cupped arms of a violet octopus thrashing, swimming, drumming in wild, terrified protest—to to the rain, the thunder, the interrogation of the clouds mocking her with their windy chorus of whys, whys, whys—as thump, swoooosh, thump, swoooosh, thump, swoooosh slapped the tentacles and she saw the fallen ladder.

In the field under the grass the creatures slunk and hid from the storm. There they remained, nestled together until it was safe.

And lying in her drenched bed she remembered and began scouring for remnants, for a needle, a thread, a stapler, a roll of tape—something, anything—to patch up the sky. She turned from the octopus, because maybe there was a way to do it, pushed the sheets from her body, and began digging into the mattress, ripping it open with her bare hands, clawing the white stuffing away from the coils bit by bit, plundering past the bleeps and drips for the day before the rain. But she found nothing, dug until she made a hole straight through to the floor, was laughed at by the sanitized tiles, and returned bloody-armed and empty-handed as the storms continued, the water levels rose, and she began to float. Eye to eye with the octopus in its unexpected chamber.


--- Published in Tabula Rasa, Vanderbilt University Medical Center's medical humanities journal, 2012