‘I’ve been reading about the heart,’ he said. ‘It starts beating long before we’re born. I think a lot of people believe that doesn’t happen until the umbilical cord is cut.’ ‘It happens on the twenty-eighth day,’ I said. ‘That amazing muscle starts working on the twenty-eighth day, and after that it usually stops only once. Death is the end of a race, after all, but we don’t charge through and break a tape. If the heart were a bird with wings, you could well have flown to the moon and back several times before it decides that it’s time for those wings to rest.’
