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Four years...
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“Everything looks perfectly normal, Ms. Avci.” The cardiologist looked up from studying my ECG and echocardiogram.
I still flinched when addressed with Aslan’s last name. I couldn’t take it through marriage, so I’d changed it the only other way I could.
By choice.
“I can’t see why you would be suffering intermittent palpitations. Your bloods are fine. You’re fit, healthy, and young.” His bushy white eyebrows knitted together. His tanned skin at odds with the health warnings to ‘slip, slop, slap’. “You say you have no idea what triggers them? No particular foods or stresses?”
I folded my hands in my lap, fighting off impatience, all while burning up inside for answers.
I’d hoped.
I’d truly hoped that there’d be some magical diagnosis that my strangely skipping heart at three in the morning wasn’t because of biology but spirituality.
Because of him.
I had no history of heart issues.
My lineage of family were all healthy and still mostly alive—minus my dad’s parents who died in a car accident. My mum’s parents lived in Bali after retiring there twenty years ago, and my mother’s brother regularly ran in charity marathons down in Brisbane.
Yet me?
I’d somehow been afflicted by a condition no one could label or cure.
“I’ve been keeping a heart diary, like you told me last time we met. I can’t pinpoint anything that has a theme. Some months I get them often and some none at all.”
“How about lately?”
“They’re not as frequent, I will admit.”
And how could I say that that scared me? If I did feel them from Aslan, what did it mean that they were few and far between these days?
Was he better?
Was he dead?
It means you’ve lost your bloody mind, Nerida, that’s what!
When are you going to stop doing this?
When are you going to finally accept that he’s gone?
He’s dead.
He’s been dead for four fucking years!
You’re deluding yourself.
You’re looking for truths when the only one is...you’re delusional!
Anger blazed through me. Self-hatred. Frustration.
I was so sick of feeling like this.
