The discharge was procedural. Paperwork signed. A wheelchair brought to the room. William J. Schroeder, a 52-year-old retired government employee, stood with assistance. He wore street clothes. He had been in the hospital for 38 days since the implant of the Jarvik-7. The device was not hidden. A console the size of a washing machine, on wheels, accompanied him. It was his external power source. From it, two lines of flexible drive lines exited, passing through his abdomen to connect to the heart. The apparatus whirred and clicked with a steady, mechanical rhythm.
He walked out. Past the nurses' station. Into the elevator. The doors opened to the lobby. Reporters and cameras were present, but the moment was defined by its mundane logistics. How to navigate the threshold. The adjustment of the console's cables. The transfer from hospital wheelchair to a waiting vehicle. There was no grand pronouncement. The fact of his exit was the statement.
He moved into a nearby apartment, not his home in Jasper, Indiana. The machine required constant monitoring. Its sound filled the rooms. For 620 days, the device sustained him. It was a temporary bridge, not a permanent solution. The significance of that February exit was its demonstration of a threshold crossed. A human body could be powered, for a time, by a machine of plastic and metal. Life continued outside the clinical environment. The ordinary act of leaving a building became an extraordinary redefinition of what a heart is, and what it means to be alive.