Page 26 of Broken Secrets
The waiting room is exactly what you’d expect from a cardiology office—beige walls, motivational posters about heart health, and patients who look like they’d rather be anywhere else. A woman about my mom’s age flips through a magazine without reading it, her leg bouncing with nervous energy. An elderly man stares at the fish tank in the corner, where three goldfish swim lazy circles around a plastic treasure chest.
I check in with the receptionist, a woman with kind eyes and scrubs covered in tiny hearts. She hands me a clipboard thick with forms, and I settle into a chair that’s probably supposed to be calming but instead makes me feel small.
The forms are the usual nightmare of family medical history, but now I actually have answers for the paternal side. I pull out the sticky note and carefully transcribe my mom’s cramped handwriting into the appropriate boxes. Heart failure. Multiplebypasses. Triple bypass at forty-five. Each entry feels like I’m signing my own cardiac death warrant.
“Olivia Kline?”
A nurse in navy scrubs appears beside me, clipboard in hand. She’s probably in her forties, with graying hair pulled back in a practical ponytail and the kind of efficiency that comes from seeing dozens of patients every day.
“That’s me.”
“Follow me.” She says.
I stand and do so. Past the door that separates the lobby and the back, there’s a small narrow hallway with a bunch of pretty watercolor floral paintings across the wall.
“We will be going into room twelve.”
I nod and walk straight into that room.
“First time seeing Dr. Kasey?” she asks, glancing at my chart.
“Yeah. My regular doctor referred me because of some symptoms I’ve been having.”
“What kind of symptoms?”
“Racing heart, getting dizzy when I stand up too fast, shortness of breath,” The list sounds scarier when I say it out loud, especially with Jeremy’s family history fresh in my mind.
She nods, making notes. “Any family history of heart problems?”
“Yeah.” I touch my pocket where the sticky note sits. “Just found out about my dad’s side. It’s… extensive.”
“We’ll make sure Dr. Kasey has all that information.” She opens the door to exam room three, a small space with the usual examination table, blood pressure cuff, and motivational posters about the importance of exercise. “Go ahead and have a seat on the table. I need to get your vitals first.”
The paper crinkles under me as I sit down, the same sound that’s been following me through medical appointments my whole life. But this time feels different. This time, I’m not justgoing through the motions. I’m actually scared of what they might find.
The blood pressure cuff squeezes my arm, tighter and tighter until I think it might cut off circulation entirely. The numbers that appear on the screen make the nurse frown slightly.
“One forty over ninety,” she murmurs, making a note. “That’s elevated for someone your age.”
“Is that bad?”
“Dr. Kasey will discuss it with you. Let’s check your heart rate.” She clips the pulse oximeter to my finger, and I watch the numbers jump around on the small screen. “Ninety-eight beats per minute. A bit high for resting.”
Everything’s high. Everything’s wrong. I think about Jeremy’s uncle, who needed a triple bypass at forty-five, and wonder if this is how it started for him with elevated blood pressure at eighteen, racing heart, the slow march toward surgery.
“Any medications you’re currently taking?” the nurse asks.
“No. That’s it.”
“Caffeine intake?”
“Maybe one coffee a day? Sometimes none.” I’m grasping for explanations that don’t involve genetic cardiac time bombs. “I’ve been stressed lately. Family stuff.”
She nods sympathetically. “Stress can definitely affect your heart rate and blood pressure. Dr. Kasey will want to rule out any underlying conditions, though, especially with your family history.”
After she leaves, I sit alone in the exam room, studying the poster on the wall that shows a cross-section of a human heart. It’s surprisingly complex—four chambers, multiple valves, arteries branching off like the roots of a tree. All those moving parts that have to work perfectly for years and years, never taking a break, never getting to rest.
A knock on the door interrupts my cardiac anatomy lesson.
