I dreamed I was drawing a heart with no blood in it

It was a perfect, intricate thing—veins like circuit boards, chambers like miniature cathedrals. But when I pressed the pen to the paper, the ink stayed black. No red. No pulse. Just a map of what should’ve been alive. I woke up wondering if that’s what medical illustration feels like sometimes: not truth, but the shape of truth. And then I remembered I had a deadline at 2 PM. The hour before thunderstorms always feels like this—like something’s about to crack open.