Jacob Aiello

They say your heart is beating too slow. They have you connected to a heart monitor and every time it drops below forty beats per minute it starts beeping and someone has to hit a button on the screen to silence the machine until it drops below forty again, but your heart rate never goes higher than forty-five and most of the time lingers just above thirty. You ask me to ask the nurse if there’s any way to turn off the beeping. He’s standing right there, writing numbers on the whiteboard above your head, but I ask him anyway. “Is there any way we can turn off this beeping?”

Originally published June 30, 2014 in Storychord, Issue 85.

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