She’s scared all the time. But is her fear the reason why her heart suddenly speeds up a dozen times a day, shifting in a second from the dull ticking of dread into the accelerating staccato of runaway panic? The diagnostics in her peacemaker’s app say that everything is normal, but perhaps they can be faked by somebody with maintenance access to the device. She doesn’t have it, she’s only the patient.
Maybe her ex-husband, a medical tech sales rep, does. Too many things have default passwords companies never bother to change. But there’d be no point in talking with him, even if she hadn’t moved across the country to avoid ever having to. In an emergency room they’d just look at the same app she has, and she can’t get an appointment with an specialist before next month.
Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the day she told her husband she was leaving.
She’s scared. Maybe that’s what makes her chest feel like it’s going to break.
.finis.