Excision

By now, the parasites had become legion. He could see them squirming around his chest cavity on the ultrasound and he would swear he felt them too, as if that were possible. Infection had become a common phenomenon since the water supply had become tainted all those years ago. But, people smartened up quickly and infection could easily be avoided if one simply took the time to boil one's water and cook fully one's food.

But he had become sloppy, haphazard in his day-to-day dealings with what he consumed. He found himself retracing his steps and regretting his inattention, his lack of insight previously. But now it was too late, the parasites had seeded themselves into his viscera, with particular liking to his cardiac muscle. Slowly eating away at him.

The only thing the doctors could do now was to excise his unsalvageable tissue and replace his heart with a mechanical prosthesis, a contraption that experienced quite a boom in the past decade.

And now, as he lay there on the operating table, he waited with bated breath. The doctor was clearly in no rush as she nonchalantly joked around with the assistants and nurses. He just lay there, eyeing the surgical chainsaw that the doctor would need to gain proper access into his chest. He wished he could just reach for those serrated blades, push them straight into his own sternum, and tear it open with his own bare hands so that he could rip out his diseased heart, with parasites and regrets in tow, by himself. He wanted to be rid of all those evils he had accumulated over the years. He couldn't wait for the day that he could start anew, with a clean slate, never to make those obvious mistakes ever again.

But, alas, this was all but fancy. The local left his whole body paralyzed and all he could do was lie there ...like the poor sap he was.