Zhu Jiechen, 14

School: Yuying School (Secondary)

Topic: Journey of a transplanted organ

Before I was yours

I have always known my purpose.

From the very first moment I existed, a tiny cluster of cells no bigger than a grain of rice, I understood what I was made to do. Beat. Push. Sustain. I was the engine at the centre of everything, the faithful engine that never missed a beat in thirty-two years. I felt every laugh, every quiet night when my keeper lay still, and I slowed to a gentle, steady murmur. I knew him completely.

His name was Wei Liang, though I only knew him by the rhythm of his days. Alas, peaceful days do not last forever. I felt the tightening in his chest the morning the accident happened. The sudden lurch, the sudden wrongness. Then the frantic hands of strangers pressing down on me, trying to put me back into my familiar song. I fought to beat him to life, I truly did. But silence is louder than any heartbeat, and eventually, I understood that Wei Liang was gone.

And yet I was still whole and waiting.

The doctors moved quickly after that. I remember cold hands and bright lights, the strange sensation of being lifted free from the only home I had. I wanted to cry out. This is my shell! But I was already sealed inside a bacteria-free container, submerged in a solution that felt like ice, and the world went very quiet.

That darkness was the loneliest I have ever felt. There was no rhythm, no warmth, only the terrible stillness in between.

I did not know where I was going. I did not know if anyone would want me, or would I simply cease to exist, a naked engine that would be discarded and thrown away like a piece of fatty meat in the wet market. My greatest fear in those silent hours was not death. It was irrelevant, what if I had forgotten how to beat like an engine like before?

Then came movement and voices. The container was opened, and the cold air rushed in. The sharp, antiseptic chill of an operating theatre. I could sense the urgency in the air, gloved hands and masked faces bent over their work with quiet precision. Somewhere beyond the surgical drapes, a machine was doing my job, keeping someone alive in the shell where I was about to go.

Her name, I would later come to learn, was Serene.

The moment I was placed inside her chest, something extraordinary happened. It was not immediate; there was a pause, a held breath, a moment of uncertainty as the surgeons reconnected me, vein by vein, artery by artery. I was a stranger in an unfamiliar land, and I could feel her body hesitating, wary of me, the foreign and uninvited guest.

Please, let me try.

And then I felt warmth.

Her blood — her living, rushing blood — flooded into me for the first time, and I felt something awaken that I had not felt since the moment I went still. Without thinking, without deciding, I did the only thing I had ever known how to do.

I started to beat.

Once, then again. A little uncertain at first, like a musician picking up an instrument after a long silence. Then stronger, steadier. When the surgical team heard me, they exhaled and cheered as the monitor traced that first arc across the screen.

That sound, the shuddering relief of human beings who had spent hours holding their breath, is the most beautiful thing I have ever felt.

Learning Serene was different from knowing Wei Liang. She moved differently and laughed at different things, her pulse quickening at different moments. At first, I mourned the familiar rhythms I had lost. But slowly, I began to discover new ones. The way her heart rate lifted when she walked into a ward to comfort a frightened patient, the fierce drumming when she held someone's hand and told them that they would be alright.

I did not replace Wei Liang. I was carrying his memory forward, beating in honour of both.

I am a heart. I do not think in words or dream in images. But if I could say one thing to the world beyond these walls of flesh and bone, it would be this.

An echo fades from human sight,

Yet burns against the coming night.

The chest is still, the breath is gone,

But in your chest, it marches on.

It did not die; it only moved.

To live inside the ones it loved.

Disclaimer: Please note that the views and opinions expressed in the essays for the Live On Festival 2026 are those of the participants and are not endorsed by the National Organ Transplant Unit (Ministry of Health).

To learn more about organ donation and organ transplantation in Singapore, please visit www.liveon.gov.sg ↗ (opens in new tab)