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The Beating Heart: A tragic crime. A medical breakthrough. A last chance at life.
I'm not usually a big fan of Gene Weingarten. Every now and then he comes through. This might be one of those times.
The Beating Heart
A tragic crime. A medical breakthrough. A last chance at life.
Story by Gene Weingarten Photos by Katherine Frey Illustrated by Patrik Svensson
SEPTEMBER 30, 2019
Alan Speir hadn’t had a drop to drink. The reason for this was on the phone.
The call came at 12:01 a.m. He’d just fallen asleep in the guest bedroom of his sister’s home in Charlottesville, Va. Speir and his family were visiting for the Christmas holidays, and now his brother-in-law was waking him, phone in hand.
Speir didn’t have to be told who the midnight caller was or why he was calling, or that the next few hours would be eventful. Okay, thrilling.
Speir wasn’t famous in his field yet. A quarter-century later, he’d be the man who would sew a new heart into Dick Cheney’s chest. But in 1986 he was a reasonably obscure cardiovascular surgeon in a busy hospital in suburban Washington. His name had not been in the newspapers. That was about to change, for better or worse.
The midnight caller, as he’d assumed, was his surgical colleague, Edward Lefrak. The terse message, as he expected, was that there was a donor. Speir was now fully awake. Within three-quarters of an hour he was dressed and in his car, beginning the two-hour drive north to Fairfax, Va., going through a heart surgeon’s mental checklist, which included, somewhere around step five, keeping your own heart steady.
Lefrak had made a few more calls himself; others, he delegated. By 3 a.m., the whole team had assembled. There were four doctors, 11 nurses, a physician assistant and two medical-instrument operators, gathered in two rooms.
....
Gene Weingarten is a columnist for the magazine. This article is adapted from his new book, “One Day,” to be published Oct. 22 by Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group.
Credits: Story by Gene Weingarten. Photos by Katherine Frey. Designed by Christian Font. Illustrated by Patrik Svensson. Photo Editing by Dudley M. Brooks and Daniele Seiss.
A tragic crime. A medical breakthrough. A last chance at life.
Story by Gene Weingarten Photos by Katherine Frey Illustrated by Patrik Svensson
SEPTEMBER 30, 2019
Alan Speir hadn’t had a drop to drink. The reason for this was on the phone.
The call came at 12:01 a.m. He’d just fallen asleep in the guest bedroom of his sister’s home in Charlottesville, Va. Speir and his family were visiting for the Christmas holidays, and now his brother-in-law was waking him, phone in hand.
Speir didn’t have to be told who the midnight caller was or why he was calling, or that the next few hours would be eventful. Okay, thrilling.
Speir wasn’t famous in his field yet. A quarter-century later, he’d be the man who would sew a new heart into Dick Cheney’s chest. But in 1986 he was a reasonably obscure cardiovascular surgeon in a busy hospital in suburban Washington. His name had not been in the newspapers. That was about to change, for better or worse.
The midnight caller, as he’d assumed, was his surgical colleague, Edward Lefrak. The terse message, as he expected, was that there was a donor. Speir was now fully awake. Within three-quarters of an hour he was dressed and in his car, beginning the two-hour drive north to Fairfax, Va., going through a heart surgeon’s mental checklist, which included, somewhere around step five, keeping your own heart steady.
Lefrak had made a few more calls himself; others, he delegated. By 3 a.m., the whole team had assembled. There were four doctors, 11 nurses, a physician assistant and two medical-instrument operators, gathered in two rooms.
....
Gene Weingarten is a columnist for the magazine. This article is adapted from his new book, “One Day,” to be published Oct. 22 by Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group.
Credits: Story by Gene Weingarten. Photos by Katherine Frey. Designed by Christian Font. Illustrated by Patrik Svensson. Photo Editing by Dudley M. Brooks and Daniele Seiss.
