The Week Before
13. What the Heart Records When No One's Watching
The clinic was in Orchard. Eighth floor of a medical building, the kind that housed twelve different specialists behind frosted glass doors, each with their own receptionist and their own particular version of the same waiting room chairs. He’d gotten the name from Marcus, who’d gotten it from someone at his gym, the referral travelling the way referrals travelled in Singapore — through networks, through trust, through the particular confidence of someone saying just go to him, he’s good.
Dr Lim was mid-fifties. Unhurried in the way of someone who had stopped needing to perform competence decades ago. He listened to David describe the squeezing without writing anything down, just listened, his hands folded on the desk, his eyes on David’s face rather than a screen.
“How long,” he said.
“A few months,” David said. “On and off.”
“Stress levels.”
David looked at him.
“Yes,” he said.
Dr Lim nodded once. Stood. “Let’s have a look.”
The ECG took twelve minutes. David lay on the table with the leads attached to his chest and looked at the ceiling and felt his heart doing what it did — steady, faithful, the valve opening and closing, the blood going where blood went — while the machine recorded it in lines on a strip of paper that Dr Lim read afterward with the same unhurried attention he brought to everything.
“Structurally normal,” Dr Lim said. “I want blood work and a monitor. Wear it tomorrow. Full day. Return it Thursday morning.”
He handed David a device the size of a small radio. Two leads. A strap to hold it against his chest under his shirt.
“It records continuously,” Dr Lim said. “Go about your day normally. Don’t think about it.”
David looked at the device.
“Come back Friday,” Dr Lim said. “We’ll have everything by then.”
He texted Kenny from the carpark.
Not planned. Just — sitting in the car with the device in a paper bag on the passenger seat and his hands on the wheel and the particular quality of a Tuesday afternoon in Orchard, the traffic already thickening, the city going about its business entirely indifferent to the paper bag and what it represented.
He typed more than he usually did.
Going through some tests. Heart stuff. Nothing confirmed. Been having these chest squeezes for months, doc wants to rule things out. Honestly a bit scared. Don’t really know what’s going on with me. Maybe payback for the years of not sleeping and the rest of it. You know.
He looked at it for a moment.
Sent it.
Put the phone face down on the passenger seat.
Drove back to the studio.
Kenny’s reply came four hours later. David was at his desk, the device under his shirt, his heart being recorded without ceremony, the team moving around him the way they always did.
Just go get it done. Find out. Whatever it is you can face it then. I’m here.
David read it twice.
Put the phone on the table.
Went back to the proposal on his screen.
His chest did the squeezing thing.
He put his hand flat against his sternum briefly, over his shirt, over the monitor, over the leads recording everything his heart was doing.
Still there.
Still his.
He took his hand away and kept working.
Wednesday he wore the monitor through a full day.
Nobody knew. That was the strange thing about it — the team arriving, the coffee being made, Priya and James doing what they did, the phones ringing, the work continuing — and underneath all of it his heart being recorded continuously, every squeeze documented, every unremarkable beat added to a strip of data that would tell Dr Lim what David’s heart was actually doing when nobody was watching.
He had a client call at eleven. His voice easy and warm and professional. The monitor under his shirt.
He had lunch at his desk. The monitor under his shirt.
He approved two sets of revisions, delegated a brief, answered fourteen emails. The monitor under his shirt.
At five-thirty he was the last one there. He sat in the quiet of the studio and felt his heart doing the squeezing thing and thought about the fact that it was being recorded right now, that the machine was catching it, that Dr Lim would see this exact moment on Friday in lines on a strip of paper.
He wondered what it would look like.
He wondered if it would look like anything at all.
Thursday he returned the monitor.
The receptionist took it with the practiced ease of someone who handled devices that had spent 24 hours against strangers’ chests without thinking much about what they’d been recording. She smiled and said Dr Lim would see him Friday at ten.
He went back to the studio.
Friday morning. Dr Lim’s office. The same unhurried attention. The blood work results on the desk, the monitor data on the screen, the ECG strip from Tuesday laid out alongside them.
Dr Lim went through each one.
Cholesterol within range. Blood pressure normal. Blood work unremarkable. The monitor data — he turned the screen so David could see it — showing 24 hours of cardiac activity that was, in every measurable way, the activity of a healthy heart.
“The squeezing you’re describing,” Dr Lim said. “Your heart is not the source.”
David looked at the screen.
“Structurally and functionally normal,” Dr Lim said. “What you’re experiencing is real. But it isn’t cardiac.”
“Then what is it,” David said.
Dr Lim looked at him with the same steady attention he’d been giving him since Tuesday.
“What’s been happening in your life,” he said. “In the last year.”
David sat with that for a moment.
“A lot,” he said.
Dr Lim nodded. Smiled, gently.
He gave David a name. A GP who worked with stress-related presentations.
David took the card.
Thanked him.
Walked out into the Orchard morning with a folder of normal test results and a chest that was already doing the squeezing thing again.
He stood outside the building for a moment.
He stretched — arms back, shoulders opening. Took a breath. A full one.
The city moved around him. Traffic. People. The particular quality of Friday morning light in Singapore, already warm, already carrying the weight it would have all day.
He took out his phone.
Texted Kenny.
Clean. Nothing wrong with the heart.
Kenny replied in two minutes.
Good. Now you know.
He texted Lina from the car.
Different words than he’d sent Kenny. The week more fully laid out — the monitor, the data, Dr Lim’s question about what had been happening in the last year, the referral card still in his jacket pocket.
He put the phone face down on the seat and drove.
That Friday, Karen’s best friend was turning forty. She’d asked him weeks ago. He’d said yes without thinking much about it.
The party was at a house in the afternoon — a garden out the back, music from inside, women in clusters doing the work of celebrating. Karen was near the far end with a group he half-recognised. She saw him come through and something in her face settled.
He got a drink. Stood near the table. Ate something.
The afternoon circulated around him. He asked questions and listened to the answers and laughed at the right moments. He had always known how to be in a room like this.
His phone buzzed.
He stepped to the edge of the garden.
Lina.
Medicine came late to a conversation the body started years ago. What you have now is a receipt. Not a beginning.
He read it twice.
Behind him someone laughed. The music shifted slightly. A glass set down on the table.
He stood at the edge of the garden for a moment. The garden doing what it did — the late afternoon light on the leaves, the particular stillness of a space that wasn’t waiting for anything from him.
He put his phone in his pocket and went back in.
At some point later he found his hand flat against his chest.
Not pressing. Just resting there. Over his shirt. The organ underneath doing what it did — steady, unrecorded now, its data already back in Dr Lim’s files.
He took his hand away.
Across the garden Karen was laughing at something. Her head tilted back slightly. The sound reached him at the small delay of distance.
The light changed. Afternoon into evening, the particular thinning of it before dark.
On the way home she was quiet for the first part of the drive.
“You seem better,” she said.
“Better than what?” he said.
She looked at him. “I don’t know,” she said. “Just better.”
He drove.
He didn’t tell her about the monitor.