I remember you usually have terrible heartburn after eating poultry, and so for the first half of our dinner with Sarah and Marc I felt sorry for you. That is until you started having gas. You kept thumping your chest and saying “excuse me” after each burp while making a face like you were tasting vomit in the back of you throat. It was really distasteful and I could tell it was making Sarah uncomfortable. I promised myself to yell at you later. After our coffee they left in a hurry, I made sure they hadn’t forgotten anything before locking the door (stained oak, imported) behind me. Then I hunted you down. You were in the living room, thumping your chest again and making that awful face
       “Jesus. What did you put in that chicken?”
Totally uncalled for, especially after you were the one to embarrass us.
       “Oh, fuck you. The chicken was organic grain fed and cooked to perfection!”
You kept wincing while I was talking and now tiny geysers of sound were making their way past your lips. The burps grew in length and decibels until you could hardly get a word in edge wise. At that point I saw your eyes widen and your nostrils flare. You sucked in a lung-full of air and I sort of panicked. I mean, this was the expression of a man in a head on collision with something significantly heavier than himself.
Then it just happened, out came this shingle-shaking belch so loud it set off our car alarm. It was louder than all the other belches combined and in the corner of my eye I saw a few of the lights come on in the windows across the street. I just knew odd looks would be following us for a few days to come.
Now, I remember this part perfectly. You had your right hand over your mouth, covering it because you expected vomit. It had flown back after the burp, as if it too were shocked by the noise. It was now in perfect position to catch what tumbled out of your gaping maw after that trumpet blast of a belch. It hit the palm of your ready hand with a “spletch” kind of sound, like wet pulp. Strings of saliva and blood were still delicately sewn from your mouth to the object, swinging in the non-existent breeze of the room.  I had stepped back, lowering my hands from my ears. I noticed a poll of blood forming where I had stood not three seconds ago, just inches shy of my Channel pumps.
At this point you looked at me.
I looked at you, too.
Because we both had doctors for fathers and you were studying to be a neurosurgeon we both knew it couldn’t be what it appeared to be. But there it was, undeniable. The main chambers were in the right place, along with the ventricles that controlled the blood flow. It glowed an attractive red, and glistened with your bodily juices. Perhaps most peculiar of all was its beating, in perfect sync with the rest of you, as if it had never left your chest cavity.
Yes, I’ll say it now. You held your own heart in the palm of your hand.
At this point we had returned from looking at each other to the dislodged heart which you were holding. This immigrant organ, fresh from the safe keeping of your rib cage, sat now patiently in the waiting room of your hand, busying itself with its palpitations. Then you did something really unforgettable. You straightened up, cleaned your throat, and looked down, a touch ashamed. As you should be after a burp like that. Then, you held your heart out to me, as if offering a biscuit.
Guess you liked the chicken after all.