Equivocality

Ka-thump.

Ka-thump.

Ka-thump-thump.

… !

Bang.

Ka-thump.

Ka-thump.

It’s an instant of, not fear exactly, but something that dissipates like a wave through your body. Your heart is still beating. It was just an ectopic beat, probably a PVC. Happens all the time, even in perfectly healthy hearts. Relax.

This is walking down the street, mind you, so you can’t be that ill. A sunny day in Europe, narrow stone houses, people out strolling, cafes. A half-second of dizziness that you knew wasn’t the sun in your eyes, and your hand went to your pulse without having to think about it. Left two fingers to right wrist. Just to see. Just to keep track. Just to keep your seventh sense attuned.

But you’re okay, you’re walking, you’re breathing. That’s the second irregular beat you’ve caught today. And three yesterday. A little too many more than usual. Sometimes months go by without one. Is it a trend or just noise? How much is enough to be worried? Nobody can answer that. Nobody knows. Perfectly healthy people have occasional misfires all the time.

Ka-thump.

Ka-thump.

Ka-thump.

ohshit

Then bang thud, and it falls back into the old rhythm with a contraction that shakes your tightened chest. You’re fine. It’s not today. It will never be that day. It’s a bright sunny day and the adrenaline fades.

Perhaps you’re low on magnesium. Or potassium. Or you’re just tired. In fact, you are tired. Long night last night! Jesus, that was some party, and Fabienne was all over you. Did you really need that last shot, you wonder? Wait, is alcohol bad for the heart? Does it have any documented connection to arrhythmia? Why today? Solve it. Solve it. Figure out some reason, some cause and effect, some explanation other than the grim possibility that this is the beginning of something that will land you in the hospital, that you’re just slowly dying.

We’re all dying. But not today. Let’s sit in that café for a moment.

The really great thing about Europe, you decide, is the cafés. In far too few American cities can you sit on the sidewalk and watch the world go by with a café-au-lait. Starbucks is a sham, a pale suburban imitation of genuine street-level culture. Your skin tingles in the sunlight, and where Fabienne touched it last night. You weren’t thinking about your heart last night, were you?

Most of the time, it just beats. This heart that was someone else’s. They ask you, is it weird having someone else’s heart? No, you bastards, you don’t understand: it’s my heart now. This is not a second chance at life. This is your life. And in your life, you’ve learned to feel your own heartbeat like an extra limb that you wake up and stretch in the morning. Every change in rate, every skipped beat, the small sensations of higher or lower blood pressure, you can feel it all. Your left hand takes your right pulse sometimes as you fall asleep. It’s a security blanket. It’s comfort. It’s home.

So that double-thump of a PVC—

Ka-thump.

Ka-thump.

You lift the wide cup towards your lips.

Ka-thump-thump.

ohshit.

ohshit it stopped that beat’s overdue it’s fractions of a second too late. an involuntary adrenaline pulse, a trained response, years of wondering, is this it, am i going to need surgery again, have i finally lost another heart, will my life once again narrow to hospitals, doctors, tubes and wires and pills and today’s ECG, the simple logistics of survival. oh shit, how many tenths of a second before that marvelous contractile tissue recycles, i know there are three different mechanisms for heartbeat, it’s right down to the cells, and it will go any second now, there’s no way this can be my last—

BANG shudder shudder and the engine fires up again.

Ka-thump.

Ka-thump.

Ka-thump.

Soft and steady like clockwork. A deep rhythm both sweet and threatening. The first time you tried to listen to Dark Side of The Moon you had to stop, you couldn’t take that spooky introductory heartbeat. It meant too much.

The cup reaches your lips and you sip the rich sweetness of sitting in a café in Europe and waiting for your lover, let the taste roll down your tongue. No one has noticed your split-second drama. Your head clears and you breathe deeply of your life this fine morning.

It will work out. It always has. There’s a necessary faith here.

Just after transplant, the ping of the cardiac monitor. Your heartbeat up on a screen, alarms ready for who nurses were standing by. You awoke three days after the surgery and realized you were still alive. Day four, sitting up in bed. Day five, standing. Day seven, a brief walk. At night, the ping ping ping of your continued life. Twelve days. At home now, taking your pulse, temperature, and blood pressure every day. Your hand on your wrist replacing the pings, the beginning of a habit. Twenty days. Fifty-three days. Losing interest in being a patient, not needing the constant reassurance of that ping and those doctors. Eighty days, and it’s easier to measure in weeks now. Then weeks become months become years. Before you know it you’re writing a thank-you note on the tenth anniversary of your transplant. Ten years. 3,652 days. You couldn’t attend the reunion, you were traveling around the world at the time, flying far above that long-forgotten worry. But your body is still the foundation of it all.

Ka-thump.

Ka-thump.

Ka-thump.

Ka-thump.

Ka-thump.

After half a minute, you take your hand off your wrist. Probably nothing. You’ll keep an eye on it. You bet your magnesium levels are low. Your diet keeps changing as you travel, so these things happen. It’s all worth it, this trade of life for life. You just don’t find plazas like this in the New World, and the buzz of text message tells you that Fabienne will be here soon.

Fourteen years, five months, twelve days. 5,185 days.

The breeze picks up the scarf of a woman walking down the street. She smiles as she sees you, her face breaking into fine lines of pleasure. She sits down and looks at you slightly sideways over the rims of her dark glasses. Her hair catches the light. Fabienne has arrived.

Some time after midnight, warm in the embrace of near-sleep, your hand goes back to your wrist. In your last waking thought you realize that you never had the chance to worry about whether day 5,186 would ever come.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2008 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.