You wonder to yourself, lying in the hospital bed: when will you hit the point of no return? your flesh is reddened near the wound, it still stings from the incision point... but the cool metal beyond it feels perfect, like it was just assembled (and it probably was). You know you won’t be able to stop. You already have an appointment scheduled for a new heart. Your body is slowly becoming yours. You don’t- can’t- regret it.
Your wonder lies elsewhere.
Each time you wake up, they look at you a little differently. Humans tend to put a lot of stock into small signals- the way a body moves when happy, or surprised. But your new parts don’t do that. You express those emotions in other means, ones most humans can’t read at all.
So with each trip under the knife, they start treating you a little less like a person.
It started small. Occasionally getting talked about like you weren’t there. But the nurse that just ran over your body with a wet sponge said absolutely nothing to you. It was as routine as any sort of maintenance work.
You don’t mind it. Its fun, really. But you do wonder: at what point will they stop treating you like a human at all?
You probably wont miss it.
