The Cardiac Museum

On January 31st Cliff had quadruple heart bypass surgery.

Five times since May he’d experienced flash pulmonary edema, meaning his lungs filled with fluid, and he was drowning.

Each time the ambulance raced him to the hospital without a minute to spare.

Cardiologists added stents, changed medicine, and then installed a pacemaker, but it kept happening. So that’s how we ended up at the Cleveland Clinic for the ultimate fix.

Their Miller Pavilion houses the cardiac unit, along with an extensive art display. Throughout our eight-day stay, I studied each art plaque’s vocabulary:

gestural,

allegorical,

chimerical,

representational,

elemental,

liminal,

universal.

Out-of-place words, given every conference’s medical language, but I thought about them.

Just like I thought about BlueBerg, a 30-foot sculpture of aluminum tubing by Inigo Manglano-Ovalle. I puzzled over his posted statement about “the unknown below the surface.” Given the location, anyone would see it as a symbolic heart, so my wheels whirled over his added explanation of it as an iceberg floating in the Labrador Sea.

Why hang it here?

Then Cliff’s bedside monitor buzzed and flashed post surgery. The pacemaker team arrived more than once to flip switches. A nurse explained his repaired heart was at odds with the electronic device.

Who’s in charge? the two parts argued “below the surface.”

In 2010 Cliff had a heart attack, and over time I realized a significant part of his heart had gotten informal about its work, wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

Casual Friday every day.

This new surgery had outfitted it in a suit and tie.

At least return the jeans, it begged, causing the screaming monitor because that repaired heart wasn’t about to remove its formal attire.

Finally, peace prevailed. The old clothes were stuffed into the closet or donated elsewhere, but don’t ask me how that worked.

Cliff recovered and returned home better than ever. His thrilled cardiologist scheduled regular cardio-rehab exercise.

Before Cliff began the program, he suffered a stroke.

Another recovery began.

Suddenly I understood the entirety of BlueBerg.

For Cliff, more than BlueBerg resembled a heart, it resembled a classic iceberg with certain danger hidden below. He’d been sailing on the Titanic all along.

But he climbed onto a lifeboat.

Those art descriptors mounted in a hospital?

They belong.

And a suspended iceberg?

Definitely.