The Heart Chronicle (Part 3)

[This is the third installment of a multiple-chapter essay on my recent heart surgery. Scroll down to read Parts 1 and 2.] In the early morning of Feb. 13, about nine hours before my release from Vanderbilt Medical Center, I became increasingly emotional. Sitting there in the dark, my roommate asleep but snoring on the other side of the partition—my short-term ordeal coming near to its end—I