Who Is The Protagonist In How To Repair A Mechanical Heart?

I was laid off. Having reached middle age and lacking any special skills, I could only work as a warehouse manager in a private company. On the first day of work, I saw a large, dusty object in the corner. An imported precision instrument worth four million dollars sat there as scrap metal. My new colleague scoffed. "Stop looking. The boss spent a fortune on it. Even ten experts couldn't handle it. It's just a decoration." I walked up and touched the familiar body of the machine. "I can fix this." The entire workshop fell silent. My boss came upon hearing the news. He looked at me with contempt. "If you can fix it, I'll give you half of my shares. If not, you'll pay with your life."

My heartbeat is so steady that sometimes, I don't resemble a human being at all. The fluctuations in my heart rate are very small even though I might be sleeping, suffering from a fever, or losing too much blood. When I'm 18 years old, the Ziegler family admits me into a rehabilitation center. My new home is now a temperature-controlled intensive unit located on the top floor. Oh, Aiden Ziegler doesn't love me at all. It's merely because the one and only artificial heart present in this world—and also in his chest—needs to be fine-tuned with my own heartbeat as its primary frequency. If my heartbeat is steady, he gets to live. If not, he dies. Three months ago, a nurse accidentally took off one of the monitoring pads on my chest. Five minutes later, Aiden, who was ten thousand miles away, went through a temporary crash where his heart stopped. The next day, the third-party medical company filed for bankruptcy. Everyone who was involved in this incident got banned by the medical world. Because of that incident, all of the sounds get eradicated from the top floor. Even the elevator's chimes get muted when it reaches the top floor of the rehab center. Everything changes when Aiden flies to Iropa. That's when his fiancee, Mandy Sutherland, takes over the rehab center. As she flips through my medical bill of nine figures, she sneers at me. "So, the Zieglers are basically sustaining a loser who does nothing but gasps for breath while lying in bed, huh?" After that, Mandy tears off the monitoring pads and unplugs the sync line. Then, she forces me to get on a treadmill. "That'll be a six-mile run for you. You can forget about returning to the top floor if you can't finish the run." As I grip the handrails tightly, I can feel my heart rate turning erratic for the first time ever. It feels as though my heart is about to burst out of my chest. As soon as the alarm goes off, Mandy turns it off immediately. What she doesn't know is that Aiden's artificial heart has already gone crazy, just like mine, while he's stuck in a place that's 12 time zones away.

In the third year after my death, the one who remained faithfully by my wife's side was still the bionic robot I had painstakingly designed. It looked exactly like me and carried within it every detail of my mannerisms, speech, and habits. The only difference was that it never lost its temper with her. Because of that, my wife never sensed anything amiss. Yet each night, she brought home a different man, deliberately testing "me," desperate to see the wild jealousy and rage I once wore so vividly. Then, one day, her childhood sweetheart and first love, shoved "me" off the balcony. It was only then, in her horror, that my wife realized… "I" didn't bleed.

Seven years ago, I swap my heart with Orion Gifford, the cyborg replica of me that my sister, Mildred Gifford, creates. However, my heart frequently gives him chest pains because of organ rejection. Mildred blames everything on me. She believes I have hidden a preexisting heart condition and have given away a defective human heart in exchange for a mechanical heart worth millions. So, she sues me for fraud and sends me a court summons. But on the day of the hearing, I don't show up. To force me out of hiding, she publicly announces to the media that she is officially taking Orion as her younger brother and leaving all her assets to him. When I still fail to appear, Mildred loses her patience and goes to the workplace address I leave behind. She steps into a sketchy factory and grabs a random worker to ask, "Do you know Zachary Gifford?" My factory supervisor, Greg Mathews, stares at her in shock and says, "Zachary? He died three years ago from sudden cardiac arrest. It was awful! His body got pulled into one of the machines. There was basically nothing left of him."

When the nurse pulled the IV needle out of the back of my hand, her gaze was filled with pity. “Mr. Young, the heart meant for your transplant was transferred at the last minute. It was sent to the VIP ward on the seventh floor. It’s a shame, but all your pre-operation prep has gone to waste.” Marcus Stewart was warded on the seventh floor. He was the frail young man my sister brought home. Ten minutes ago, Marcus suddenly had terrible chest pain. My usually strong mother burst into tears. My stoic father slammed the table in front of every expert in the hospital, then decided to give Marcus the heart I had been waiting three years for. It was supposed to save my life. I hurried to the end of the corridor, but the green operating light had already come on. Clutching the twisting pain in my chest, I leaned against the ice-cold wall and slid to the floor. There was no need to wait anymore. My heart failure was terminal. The doctor said I would not last the next few days. The mechanical voice sounded in my head. [Master, your vital signs are rapidly deteriorating. If you terminate this body and leave this world now, you still have a chance at a new life. Would you like to proceed?] I looked at the faint grey hue of death tinging my fingertips. “...Yes.”

The day I was finally welcomed back into the Salazar family, Nathaniel Salazar—the frail adopted son they'd raised in my place—died from heart failure. My sister, Alyssa, shaved her head and withdrew from the world, claiming she wanted to soothe Nathaniel's restless soul. My parents had lost two children in a single night, and they blamed me for both. To make amends, they decided my heart would one day be donated to a distant young relative suffering from the same condition. After all, that little boy had been Nathaniel's favorite person in the world. From that day on, I was forbidden from drinking, smoking, staying up late, or doing anything that might damage my health. They called it redemption for my brother. For ten years, I lived like a spare part, a replacement waiting for the day I would finally be needed. Then, three days before the transplant surgery, I saw Nathaniel in the hospital. He was alive. He was curled up against Alyssa's shoulder, acting spoiled while our parents watched with indulgent smiles. Alyssa gently stroked his hair. "Don't be scared, Nathaniel. Jordan's healthy heart will be yours soon. After this, you'll never be sick again." I lowered my eyes to the results of my pre-surgery examination: stage IV stomach cancer with multiple organ failure. Not a single organ was suitable for transplantation.