The hummingbird hadn’t been there when Lily was born, of that everyone was fairly certain, but no one, including Lily herself, was exactly sure of when the little bird took up residence in her chest. (Lily laughed at that because she didn’t know how else to react, because isn’t that the sort of thing one should remember?)

            The hummingbird, for her own part, was never born (never hatched, really; never laid). One day she just was. Which, she supposed, is how all things come to be, but usually there is some sort of lead-up.

            All anyone knew, including both the hummingbird and Lily, was when Lily first became aware of the bird’s presence. It was a bright and cold morning in late fall, and Lily was on her way to work, walking down a street in midtown Manhattan. One moment she was fine and then, suddenly, the sidewalk no longer felt trustworthy. The feeling reminded Lily of a trick that she had once seen in which a tablecloth was pulled out from underneath an elaborately set table: the china and glassware wobbled, yet they remained in place. Lily felt like the wine-filled crystal glass set on that table, she sloshed but somehow managed to remain upright. She proceeded to the E.R. where they did triage and told her it was “probably nothing.” Lily got stuck on the word “probably” and made herself a pain-in-the-ass until they agreed to do a full work-up.

            The CT scan baffled the doctors so they called in other doctors who called in other doctors until every doctor in the world had seen Lily’s CT scan and, with unprecedented medical consensus, agreed that, yes, it did appear that Lily had a hummingbird living in her chest, and, no, they did not know where her heart had gone to.

            She was kept under observation for weeks and weeks to see if they could prove that Lily’s heart was simply damaged and not a bird. They ran more tests and, when those proved inconclusive, they devised new tests, and, when those too proved inconclusive, they found modern augers and oracles and had them read hawk entrails and scry into mirrors.

            It was all inconclusive.

            They knew they were testing for the wrong things, but they were afraid to open up her chest to confirm what they had seen in the scan. They told themselves that they wouldn’t open Lily up because if there was a bird living in there it might flee, thereby killing Lily – first do no harm and all of that – but they were lying to themselves. The truth was that the very existence of the bird frightened them, and they could deny the bird only as long as it remained unseen. 

            And so, the world was at a precipice: they could declare the hummingbird and Lily goddesses and worship them or they could push the whole thing out of their minds and act as though it had never happened. Those were, after all, the only two ways to handle something that defied all laws of medicine and nature and science as fundamentally as Lily and the hummingbird did. They flipped a coin; it came up tails and so they decided to forget. It was a conscious forgetting, a forgetting that was hard won by everyone who truly forgot and feigned by anyone who couldn’t help but remember.

***

            Lily was given a discharge form when they released her. On the form were the words: “Arrhythmia of Unknown Origin” (which sounded better than the alternative suggested by the very frustrated Head of Hematology, which was: “Probably magic or something – fuck if I know”). One of the leading experts on heart disease in the world sat Lily down before she was discharged and told her that she should not exist. It wasn’t supposed to be comforting, but Lily found it comforting nonetheless. She had beaten the odds.

            If the heart disease expert had spoken to the hummingbird, he probably would have said that she too should not exist. The hummingbird would have agreed and added that she wasn’t actually sure that she did exist. What if she was just a fault in the CT scan? What if she had made herself up?

***

            On her way home from the hospital, Lily stopped in at a medical supply store and asked them for the best stethoscope they had. It was somehow both more and less expensive than she expected it to be, but she paid the money because it seemed a fair price for the ability to speak directly to her heart.

            She didn’t wait until she got home. She opened the stethoscope on the subway, placed the eartips under her shirt and around her left breast, pressed the chestpiece to her lips, and whispered, oh so softly, “Hello, friend. My name is Lily.”

            Upon hearing this, the little hummingbird was elated. She must exist if Lily was speaking to her. It was proof. The hummingbird was so pleased by the fact of her existence that she began to shake, her wings shivering with unimaginable speed. Lily felt the now familiar feeling of being utterly unbalanced, and she took a few deep breaths like they had taught her to do in the hospital: in for four, hold for seven, out for six. She was surprised when it seemed to help.

            The hummingbird was surprised when Lily’s lungs enveloped her like a weighted blanket. It calmed her down immediately.

***

            A ruby-throated hummingbird beats its wings at an average of 50-60 beats per second. The human heart, for comparison, beats at an average 60-100 beats per minute. The hummingbird was sending Lily’s brain all of the wrong signals.

            Lily had always been a nervous person. As a child she went through what her mother called “phases.” She went through these phases with alarming regularity. There was the phase when she was afraid to ride elevators and so would walk up and down the ten flights of stairs to their apartment multiple times a day and her calves became as sturdy as oak trees in the prime of youth. There was the phase when she became convinced that she would die in an earthquake so she shuddered at every truck that rumbled by as she walked down the street. There was the phase when she was afraid her own mouth would betray her and let loose all of the secrets and fears she stored deep down inside, so she barely spoke for months. She never grew out of her phases, just replaced one for the next until they bled together like a watercolor painting.

            But the beating wings of her hummingbird heart turned her innate nervousness into an overwhelming and inescapable terror. She felt on constant alert, every rustle of wind making her want to whip her head around 260 degrees, like an owl might. The noises and crowds of the city made her want to jump out of her skin, but the quiet and solitude of the country were no better. The suburbs filled her with a lurking sense of unease, as though the whole world was wrong but she did not know why. She felt as trapped as her bird-heart no matter where she was. 

            Lily spent her nights scouring the internet for tricks: breathing techniques and visualizations and diets and exercises. She asked the hummingbird, “What do you want?” The frustration in her voice was obvious to the hummingbird, even muffled through stethoscope and skin.

            What the hummingbird wanted was out. She felt the damp darkness on her feathers. She wanted to tell Lily, I, too, am afraid. I, too, am trapped, but she had neither a stethoscope nor the words to speak into it.

            The hummingbird was aware that when she beat her wings as fast as they could go it disturbed Lily. She cared for Lily and didn’t want to disturb her, but it was the only form of freedom she had, so she did it anyway.

***

            Through trial and error, Lily learned that the best way to calm the hummingbird was to tell her stories. Through the stethoscope she would whisper fields full of flowers, and friendly bees, and secret gardens to which the key had been lost long ago. In these moments the hummingbird closed her eyes and rested, lulled by the calm voice and the bright words. In these moments, in these stories, Lily and the hummingbird were both able to find peace.

            Neither blamed the other for their predicament. They were linked, miserably and inexorably, in a tangle of valves and veins.

***

            And so they went on until one crisp October day while Lily was taking a walk through the park. As she walked, she narrated the surroundings to the hummingbird. She told her of the earthy wet smell of the ground and the sound of leaves crunching; she described the way the trees seemed to be trying on fall sweaters in rusty shades of red and orange and yellow; she narrated the birds singing and the squirrels gathering food for winter.

            The hummingbird wouldn’t have been able to explain what was special about that day, about that description. She didn’t know why she hadn’t been overwhelmed by Lily’s descriptions of freshly fallen snow or spring crocuses or the fireflies of early July. Maybe it was because almost a full year had passed since she became aware of herself and nothing had changed, or maybe it was because the autumn reminded her of her own eventual death, or maybe it was simply because there is a kind of magic to be found in New York in the fall. Whatever the reason, it was all suddenly too much for the hummingbird.

            And so she began to peck and tear.

            At first the feeling was like heartburn, but quickly Lily realized there was something wrong. She raced to the hospital and arrived just as she began to bleed.

***

            The hummingbird never meant to hurt Lily. Truly she didn’t. She just wanted a peephole. It’s really not so much to ask. She didn’t understand how much pain her little beak could cause.

            Although, she had to admit to herself, she would have done it anyway even if she knew the pain it would cause Lily; her own pain felt more pressing.

***

            The doctor stitched up the wound, not understanding that the wound could not be stitched. Lily knew that her nervous fluttering heart wasn’t a problem that could be solved by drawing up skin around it and hiding it away. The hummingbird would only tear the stitches out to get free again. So she researched.

            She found a possible solution on a forum about body modification: a clear polymer that could mimic the look and feel of skin. Lily made an appointment with a surgeon to discuss this possible solution. He understood immediately what she had in mind and refused to look into it. He said that, while it was theoretically possible to use the polymer in the way that Lily was suggesting, it was both impossible in practice (it wasn’t) and grotesque (Lily neither agreed nor cared).

            So she went from doctor to doctor until she found one who thought inside-out the way that she did. The doctor understood what Lily was going through – she didn’t have a hummingbird for a heart, but sometimes the panic would rise in her so swiftly that she could barely stand. The doctor was able to keep the panic at bay with medications and therapy, but if she had needed to cut her chest open and put her insides on display to fight back against the misfired signals in her brain, she would have.

            The doctor told Lily that the surgery would be complicated. No one was sure if it would work or if Lily and the hummingbird could survive it. On the operating table, as the anesthesia dragged them down into an unnaturally deep slumber, Lily hugged the hummingbird with her lungs. The hummingbird fluttered gently in response before she tumbled into sleep.

***

            Lily woke up from the surgery to find her heartbeat steady and the hummingbird still sleeping peacefully. Lily’s chest reminded her of the “visible man” – that toy that was once frequently available in gift shops of natural history museums, the doll with the clear plastic skin. She felt educational. Here is my esophagus, and here are my ribs, and those are my lungs, and that right there, slightly left of center is my bird-heart. Say “hi” to her – she loves meeting new people.

            Slowly, the hummingbird woke up. She looked around. Light streamed in through Lily’s chest. When the hummingbird and Lily looked at each other for the first time, Lily smiled, and if the hummingbird could smile she would have too.

            The world was cracked wide open.