Fifth floor, the Cardiac Centre. The floor I've lived on for a whole month.

Doctor Fadel's office isn't far from where I get off at the elevators, and I don't waste a second looking around like I'm lost, and march down the corridor, arms crossed again and hands tucked in my sleeves beneath my pits.

I am lost though; what happened with Nurse Jarvis just before, what happened at home earlier, what happened yesterday at that damn gym. Ever since the surgery, my life's been on a constant here and there path of weird shit. These days I don't have that new 'up-to-date' feeling, just a 'what the hell is wrong with me' feeling. This isn't normal. A lot of things aren't these days.

The door to Fadel's office is half open, and I poke my head in a bit to see if he's alone or with company. White-speckled souffle hair is the first thing I notice, bobbing and hovering from behind a wide desk. I can really only see the top curly parts of it.

I glance around the room, no one else in here but the floating strip of white fluff. One of my hands frees itself from a sleeve to reach up and knock the door, maybe a little too hard.

"Huh? ...Oh! Who goes there?"

The strip of hair seems to quiver, and then the rolling slam of a drawer. Fadel finally stands upright, maybe a bit too fast as he wobbles for a second on his feet.

"Suzie!" he says, his voice suddenly so chipper. His face immediately twists, confused. "It's not Friday already, is it?"

I don't reply, just sidestep into the room and conceal my exposed hand in my sleeve again.

"Something the matter? What's brought you here this fine morning? Is your father out there?" he asks and asks and asks, then comes around the desk to stand before it.

My lips stay zipped. I just stare at him, waiting for him to show me who he really is; his glowing eyes, his treacherous nature. Who is Doctor Altair Fadel?

"Suzie?" He's stepping closer, concern oozing out of every fraction of him. What. An. Act. "Are you feeling alright?"

His voice is so tender, like Nurse Jarvis'. Fuck, here it comes. The stinging in my eyes as tears break through. The full, throbbing sensation at the back of my throat as I try to hold back the urge to cry. My palms are too sweaty; they can't hide anymore. They free themselves from the sleeves but keep their guard as clenched fists.

"Suzie-"

"What did you..." My own voice comes out in a strained squeak, but a few quick coughs get it right again. "What did you do to me?"

His concerned face — his facade — shifts, realization dawning. He steps closer again, but not towards me, to one of two black chairs stationed on front of his desk. He lowers himself down to it, sighing as he folds at the waist. "I wanted to tell you as soon as possible after the surgery."

"W-what?" What?! The inside of my mouth is drying out.

Fadel goes on, too calm for comfort. "I was going to tell you everything, but then you said you felt 'heavy'." One of my hands unconsciously reaches up to rest over the left side of my chest, where my-that heart's being uncharacteristically 'light'. Fadel shakes his head, a side-to-side unrushed movement. "I couldn't tell you then. It would only serve to do you more harm than good."

"What?" I repeat, a new dryness to my mouth, one that's being dried up by rage. "Excuse me? In what world does not telling me the truth do me any good? And you admit it — you did do something to me? To my hear-no...it's not...who's heart is this? Where did you get it from? Tell me the name of the donor!"

In an instant, Fadel was up from the chair, unfolded and his index finger pressed against his lips, shushing me. I stumble backwards against the wall, down the wall, into a corner, away from him as he stalks over to where I formerly stood and soundlessly shuts the door.

"...please, we must try to keep our voices manageable," he instructs me, and what makes him think I'm going to do what he says?

"Don't want anyone to find out what you did?" I counter.

"Suzie..." Fadel strays away from the door, but maintains his distance from me too. He better keep it that way. "That heart, the one inside you, it's no ordinary organ. It's made almost entirely of steel."

I haven't realized I've been holding in my breath, and cough out my next words as my voice revives. "What?" I say for the third time, or maybe the millionth. I'm not keeping track. "What kind of bullshit are you talking about?"

"Someone else owned that heart before you did, Suzie. He too had a congenital heart disease, needed a transplant, and I performed it."

My eyebrows crinkle, frustrated, confused. "What are you even saying? He had the same heart, but what? He died because you put...a literal chunk of metal inside him instead of actual heart? Is that what you did to me?"

Fadel shook his head, still so calm about it. "No no, you're misunderstanding. Firstly, that boy I speak of lived long and well after his transplant, but that's a tale for a better time. Secondly, it was the very heart inside of you and him that was made of steel; an actual 'steel' heart. But the point I'm making, is that he and you had different symptoms afterwards. He'd never felt this 'heaviness' that you've reported experiencing when he awoke from the procedure. The heart was a perfect match. But you..."

The sweat's building under my arms, in my palms. "Me what?"

"....when you first told me that you felt heavy, I thought it might be a sign that the heart might be rejected, that you might not survive."

"...w-what?" My hand shoots in the air, hovering by the left side of my chest, clenching and unclenching nothing. The to-good-to-be-true lightness has vanished. Everything's heavy again — the world, my mind, my fucking heart. Death had been just around the corner. "I was...going to die? Because of what you did..."

More head shakes from Fadel. That calmness starting to break. Or maybe the heaviness is clouding my vision somehow. "No Suzie," Fadel says, "I knew the steel heart would be a match for you, I knew it could save you. The immediate heaviness you started feeling was unprecedented, but I soon thought it'd just needed some time to pass with the heart being inside a new body. So I decided to delay revealing the truth to you in case it caused you more stress during your recovery time. Lo and behold, the 'heaviness' stopped, didn't it? Albeit, that was a week ago. No reason to have kept any of this from you for so long. I was a coward, afraid of your reception to such an outlandish truth. But it is the truth."

The inside of my hoodie must be flooded by now; my underarms and palms are so damp. One question bubbles in my mind. "How...how did you know?"

Fadel blinks, just once. "Hm?"

"...how did you know that it could 'save me'? That the heart was a match?"

"It's...an ability of mine." Fadel starts back to his desk , one slow, calm step after the other.

I stare at him as he does, unable to process. "H-huh?"

"That might be another story for a better time, but for now, to be short..." He halts in front of the desk, his back to me but not for long when he begins to turn around and-

"Oh my god...it-you-"

His eyes, mystical and grey, previously dull and normal, now suddenly aglow, somehow brighter than the light in this room. He holds up both his hands, his palms facing him, the fingertips aglow too, fainter though and the same shade of grey barely there. When he speaks again, his voice isn't so benign anymore:

"Sometimes, I can see the potential of objects or organisms or even organs, whenever I touch them. Potential meaning possibilities, capabilities, capacities — one touch and I can assess it completely, instantly. My eyes, well, they don't hold as much power but they do help to assess the condition of what I touch....Suzie?"

My eyes must be stuttering again, but who cares about that when he just told me-

"So you have superpowers, is what you're saying?"

"Oh, no, nothing super about it," Fadel chuckles, like something about this weird-as-shit situation is amusing. "Just...something natural that I've always possessed."

"Right, okay, sure —just 'powers' then. Makes sense." Maybe I'm laying it on too thick with sarcasm, because Fadel's expression's shifts, looking...hopeless. His eyes have dimmed down, fingertips along with them. Such a bizarre yet 'natural' effect, and that's all it is — an effect. Has to be.

And hopeless about what, though? That I've busted him and he knows that he's looking at a dozen charges and a lawsuit for purposely screwing with his patient's operation? Speaking of which, I need to escape this place, this room, unscathed asap. No clue if Fadel is willing to get violent to protect himself, but he literally admitted to putting metal inside my body. I think anything's possible with this guy.

I glance as subtly as I can at the still shut door, pondering how to get there without setting off any alarms-

"Do you want to see it?"

Fadel's hopeless voice spooks me, mildly, and my eyes jump back to look across at him. "W-what?"

"The heart — your heart. Do you want to see what it looks like?"

My hear-that lump of metal inside me thumps forcefully against my chest. No. I don't want to see you. You're just a horrible science experiment that should've never happened.

"H-how can I see it?" I ask him, betraying my own self.

Fadel retreats to behind the desk, reaches to pull open one of its drawers. "I have your recent chest x-rays here, if you'd like to take a look." He extracts a grey folder, sets in atop the desk.

I remember now. The x-rays were taken a week after the transplant, and even though things seemed like they were going well then — when I didn't know what was really put inside me — I'd still refused to see the images. Too disturbing to see that part of myself after a transplant of all things, even without holes in it.

If only I just looked at them then instead of being so squeamish, maybe I wouldn't be here now, maybe I wouldn't have gotten here by thinking I was going crazy when really my doctor was the cuckoo one.

I make my way over as Fadel flips the folder open, but then station myself across from him on the other side. Distance isn't going out the window all of sudden.

I lean forward a little, peer at the images; they're foggy in the grey scale, as per usual with x-rays, but there is something I clearly notice that's different from my pre-transplant x-rays: there among my ribcage, in between the reduced image of my lungs — the hea-metallic clump looks bigger. Much bigger than the usual size of a normal heart. How're my lungs managing with that pushing against them?

A punch right to my chest suddenly, hard enough to make me recoil back a few steps. It wasn't Fadel though. It was that metal Freakshow living inside me, thumping again, this time making it seem like it's actually trying to hurt me.

"Suzie?" Fadel abandons the folder in favour of me, fleeing from behind the desk and coming towards me. "Are you alright? It's your heart isn't it? You need to-"

"Stop it, stop! Don't touch me, don't come here — just leave me alone." With a hand clasped over the left of my chest, I continue backtracking to the door. "Don't follow me."

I came here looking for answers, but now I'm leaving with even more questions — and the hostage of freak heart.