Ciaran Cardiorotic

You don’t remember hitting the floor.

You remember the sensation. It had been happening for a few years. This strange, quivering, fluttering sensation in your chest. It made you cough. Sometimes you felt faint, and dizzy, and on several of these occasions after an “incident”, you had gone to the doctor or the ER. On each occasion they listened to your heart and monitored you for a time, and each time your heart had behaved on the EKG and otherwise. As far as the doctors knew, you were fine. At one point a physician prescribed you some medication and you took it diligently. Still, it didn’t seem to help. You suffered through four more incidents before you ran out of pills and didn’t bother to ask for more.

This time, when the feeling began in your chest, you started to ignore it as usual. And then you leaned against a wall. Sweat slicked your body as if you had just run a marathon. There was this feeling… indescribable. It made your chest burn and a lump ball up in your throat and everything felt heavy and far away.

When you opened your eyes again, your chest was screaming in pain as it was crushed down by a weight in the center of it. You couldn’t see more than streaks and blurs and when you tried to grab at the source of the pain, you heard a startled yelp and it lifted.

Your chest still hurt.

You blacked out.

This time when you opened your eyes, the pain was still there, only this time you were screaming. You tried to grab at the pain again but your arms wouldn’t obey when you told them to. You gasped, and wheezed, and your vision cleared enough so that when you looked up you saw furrowed brows and red lipstick pulled taught in a determined line. Eyes, hazel so dark you could barely see the color, met yours, and the corner of that mouth twitched as she tried to smile at you. You stopped screaming but you couldn’t help but to gasp and moan in pain. It felt like someone had smashed you in the chest with a claw hammer repeatedly. To be fair...There was probably enough adrenaline and dopamine flooding your body to make it not feel like you were being crushed under a steam roller.

She kept doing this strange jerking motion. Your eyes tracked from her gaze to her cheek, to the dark curls spilling over her tanned shoulder, all the way down her sleeve to her elbow and wrist. Then, you were staring at your chest. Her hands were placed in the center, one over the other, and they were hammering into it rhythmically.

“I stopped when you woke up,” she said, answering a question you hadn’t asked. “You passed out again, so…” The sentence trailed off, but you understood. You could distantly see a misshapen lump along the left side of your torso. Somehow it registered that probably, a rib had cracked. Each compression was a truck tire bouncing over your prone body. In theory you shouldn’t be awake right now. Maybe you weren’t. Maybe you were dead, imagining an angel bludgeoning your chest and making your heart pump blood through your oxygen-starved body as it slowly expired. When you looked to your left and right, you could see concerned people all around, a few pinning down your limbs. Maybe so you couldn’t make her stop like you had the first time.

“I can see the ambulance!” someone called from further.

The restaurant. You were still in the restaurant. You coughed and your rib cage screamed, and she still kept pumping away. A drop of sweat slid down her forehead and landed on your clean blue shirt. The EMTs pushed through the crowd and she finally let up, slipping away to let them in as you fell back into unconsciousness. You could hear things underwater for a moment and then they too went into the dark.

There was a distant whine. Someone punched you in the chest, you think, and your whole body jerked without your intervention.

Your chest crushed down like it had before when she was compressing it.

Another whine. Another punch and jerk, and there was nothing.

Your heart thudded in your chest, twice, and it felt like something rippled through your sternum lightly. There was pain, so much pain.

The noise came again and you gasped and again all was black. But the good sort of black. Not like everything was missing, but like dreamless sleep.

Somewhere in the distance you heard a beep. And another. It kept going, coming closer, and you moaned as you opened your eyes to a bright light high overhead and you were blinded for a time, blinking until it all became clear. You tried to roll over but a pressure on your shoulder stopped you and you realized that your chest hurt and you asked the pressure - the hand - why it felt like someone was sitting on the handles of the knives in your chest.

“I broke a rib during CPR,” a familiar voice abashedly said. You turn your head and see her, those dark eyes and dark curls, then look down at your torso as her hand moves to gently squeeze yours. A tube streams from your arm over the side of the bed and up to an IV drip. Your ribs, wrapped in bandages, ache with every breath. You imagine it would be worse if you weren’t drugged. A large pad is taped near your collarbone, and you reach up to touch it when she stops you again, laughing.

“I hope the doctor gets here soon, you really need to stop poking at everything!”

Everything? Doctor?

“Yes. They’ve had a nurse here but she’s just gone for a moment. They told me to buzz if you wake up, and you did, so I did!”

What are you not supposed to be poking at?

“I… er. I expect they’ll want to inform you of everything themselves. It’s a pacemaker though. Or… a defibrillator? I don’t really know the difference.They had to put one in. They said you collapsed because your heart was beating too fast until it stopped. Ventricular fibrillation, they said.”

Hopefully the insurance would cover it. Your hand drops obediently to the bed and she squeezes it again, making your heart skip a beat with the warmth of someone caring for you. The device sorts it out though, with a swift kick in your shoulder that you expect was it firing to restore your heart. You try not to think about the fact that you can feel the cables leading down to your pump under the skin. When your other hand comes up, she doesn’t stop you, only watches as you place your hand gently over your heart. It beat just fine now, steady, if fast. A knock came gently at the door and you looked up to see a doctor there, smiling as he greeted you and flipped through paperwork.

He told you essentially the same thing she had said; the fluttering in your chest, the way you breathed as if through a straw, it was your heart skipping beats and pumping too fast. It misfired and everything went out of order, and your ventricles just quivered instead of squeezing blood through your body. She saved your life, he said, making sure your brain got enough blood until the paramedics could get there. You remembered seeing her face, and speaking, and you asked about it. Her brows furrowed and she shot you a glance, while the doctor laughed it off. Generally people aren’t conscious during CPR, he said. Your brain may have registered the external stimuli while she kept your blood flowing, getting oxygen through your body with each compression of your chest. That didn’t feel right though. It was certainly distant, but the way she looked at you as he spoke…

Perhaps it was real.

You mentioned the kick in your chest, the faraway whine, and he said they kept up CPR at the scene in between shocks. It took four to get a rhythm enough to get on the ambulance, and you crashed once on the way to the hospital but they brought you back around. It kept going, though. Your heart wasn’t responding how they’d hoped, and so they were forced to perform an emergency implantation of an ICD. That is, an implantable cardioverter defibrillator. A pacemaker wouldn’t be enough to help your heart if it stopped beating again, and medication alone wouldn’t be enough to keep your heart pumping at an acceptable rate. You’d need some time to recover, but you’d be up and about like normal once your ribs healed.

There was more to it, the doctor said, but for now you needed rest. You wouldn’t be moving for a while anyway. Your rib needed time to heal.

At least you weren’t dead, though.

Say you meet a cardiophile girl online. Maybe she’s in a mood to share, and offers it. You join a skype call, or chat on HBP. What do you say?

[A] Thank you for sharing!

[B] Wow, your heart is so fast!

[C] Eh. I prefer doppler. Do you have one? You should get one.

[D] I’d love to listen with my ear to your chest.

[E] Oh man, it’d be awesome to put my hand on your chest, I bet it’s beating super hard.

[F] Wow, it’s so fast! I’d love to hear your heartbeat during orgasm. Could you do that?

Okay, now let’s see the scale for that.

[A] Not creepy. You’re welcome!

[B] Fine. Thanks, I guess? Generally innocent.

[C] Annoying. They’re sharing. You don’t like it, leave. Do NOT ask them to spend their money to buy more shit to please YOU.

[D] If they don’t know you? Creepy. Please don’t.

[E] SUPER creepy if they don’t know you. Like for real. No.

[F] Wow. What? NO. Oh my god no. If you do not have a pre-existing relationship with a person, do NOT ask weird, incredibly personal shit like this. If they want to do this, they’ll offer. Or post it.

Okay so you did A or B or apologized for doing C-F if they said they felt uncomfortable. You have them on social media. Sometimes when they’re online you chat them up! But... wait. They’re.... they’re only giving one word responses. Like they don’t really want to talk to you? What happened?

What I commonly see that personally weirds me out, but not enough to say anything along the lines of “Fuck Off”....

“How’s your heart?”

Uh. Fine. I guess. Listen... Some people just never ever log out of anything. Like me. Just because they’re online does not mean they want to talk about hearts. Or cardiophilia. This phrase in particular is super weird and creepy. You are completely ignoring that they’re a real person, in a real world, in a real life, possibly waiting tables or hanging out watching videos on YouTube. They’re not thinking about their heart. They’re giggling at cats. It’d be like asking “how’re your tits?”. I dunno dude. There. They’re there. Doing their thing.

“Can you share?”

Did they post about it? Did they comment somewhere? Did they offer or otherwise indicate they were in a position to share? If they didn’t, the answer is probably no. For a lot of people this is a very private or secret thing. They wait until they have time alone to do anything related with it because they’re embarrassed or “in the closet”, as it were. If you ask this repeatedly, especially if you were told “I’ll let you know when I can share”, you’re being a smidge annoying but generally harmless.

But let’s go deeper, to people who have no tact at all.

“Is this a fascination or a fetish?”

You can probably discern that from their page. But when you ask this question, one of two things happen. It’s either a fascination for them, and this creeps them out because they now know you fetishize their contributions and it’ll make them feel weird. If it’s a fetish, they still don’t want to answer a ton of probing questions like...

- Do you have a visible heartbeat?

- Can you feel your heartbeat?

-  Do you want to see it on an ultrasound?

- Does it excite you? Sexually?

Because all of these things, if I don’t know you, feel weird. Because I know you are sitting there, building a picture of me in your head that you can jerk off to. Also please for the love of god, even if they’re a fetish blog, don’t privately message them to ask if they jack off to ultrasounds.

It’s really simple you guys. If they’re not talking about sex or fetishes, don’t ask them sex or fetish shit. If they’re not offering to share, don’t ask. If you’re messaging them privately, have a fucking conversation and don’t just obsess over their internal organs.

He was awoken by the rustle of sheets and a warm body wriggling up under the duvet. It might have been disturbing if he had not been expecting it, or it hadn’t happened a hundred times before.

“For fuck’s sake Quinn.”

It was hard to see an eyeroll in the dark, but it was easily heard in his voice as his eyes rolled sleepily under their lids. The little moving lump paused and then squirmed higher, a warm hand pressing to his belly and sliding up his torso to rest in the middle of his chest. A tangle of hair appears first, and then a pair of eyes peep up from under the covers, and he slits one of his own to meet the stare in the mostly dark. Wan moonlight slips in thin bands through the blinds and casts over Quinn’s features and the wrinkles of his shirt where the cover slipped down.

“It’s…” he looked over at his clock, even as his hand slides up to ruffle through Quinn’s hair. “...three thirty. What the hell are you doing here?”

“I can’t sleep.”

“Can’t you not sleep in your own bed?” “I’m just trying to hang out with my favorite twin!”

“Literally your only twin.”

“Exactly!”

Heaving a sigh, the hand on his chest lifting with the motion, he finally looked down.

“Sometimes I feel like the only reason you came to this school is so you could harass me.”

“I’m not harassing you, Liam.”

Liam only grunted in return and slid his other arm around his brother’s trim waist, head flopping back on the pillow. They settled there for a long while, Quinn with his hand on his brother’s chest and the other arm tucked under his head, Liam with one hand in his brother’s hair and the other holding to him close. In fact he was quite nearly back asleep again when Quinn shifted, his other hand moving to help push up so he leaned over his brother, slinging one leg over him to settle on Liam’s hips. The response is immediate as he lurches up in the dark, hands planted behind himself.

“What the fu-”

Long finger splay wide and press in the middle of his chest, the pair of them falling flat on the bed with a thud. The beginnings of scruff scratch lightly against his sternum, and Quinn presses his ear firmly over the space between his ribs where his heart can be seen to thump against the skin, as if begging to break free. A slow shuddering breath drags into his lungs, and a warmth spreads in his cheeks and through his chest like fire. Unconsciously he lifts a bit from the bed to press into the weight above him and then forces it down, forces himself to lie still and flat. His knee twitches upward in response to the discomfort.

“It’s so loud,” Quinn murmurs, and Liam doesn’t have to ask what. Large, rough hands rub up and down his brother’s back. He can feel for himself how his heart shakes his chest and begins to pump even faster. He can nearly hear it himself. His twin makes a small noise that makes him twitch.

“So fast too… do you… like this?”

“I’m trying to sleep.”

It’s hard though, his heart thrashing anxiously against his ribs, Quinn’s hands feeling over them even as the muscle pumps from the inside.

thumpthumpthUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP

His breath is shallower, quicker, uneven and shaky. Liam wraps his muscular arms firmly around his brother, squeezing tightly. They lay here long in the dark, until Quinn began to breathe slow, and he looked down to see that his brother’s eyes had closed, mouth half-open in slightly drooling sleep. The beat that shook his chest began to relax, slowing but still strong.

THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP. TH-THUmp. Th-Thump. Th-THump.