while the cherry blossom falls
1st place CREATIVE NON-FICTION COMPETITION £200
ByJeanette Everson
Jeanette Everson was first published in Horse and Pony magazine at the age of ten. She’s striving to achieve equal accolade now she’s (allegedly) a grown up, and has recently completed the Open University Advanced Writing course and had a few flash fiction contest wins and publications. She runs her own ceramics business and teaches English as a foreign language to people all over the world.
Jeanette was pleased that publication of this story would raise awareness of the importance of organ donation, which is still taboo in Japan. ‘I talk to this Japanese heart surgeon who is the subject of my entry, the more I realise just how hard doctors work and how under-appreciated they are. He is without doubt one of the people I am most inspired by and in awe of and I am thrilled that his story is being told.’
If you held my heart in your hands you would be able to tell me where it was broken. You would tell me how it happened, and whether you could fix it. I know that you would try, and that if you couldn’t fix it for me, you would tell me gently, calmly, but that I would see sadness in your eyes and new lines on your face.
I can you tell you that you can hold a six-year-old child’s heart in your hands and pump it back to life in another child’s body. I can tell you that if that were not enough, you can perform this magic while news announcers pump updates to your assistants about the earthquake rumbling across the nearby towns. I can tell you that while the buildings around you begin to quiver, and the blossom is shaken from the trees outside your windows, you will remain steady until your work is done.