Huffington Magazine Issue 15 | Page 65

Fiction

Granta 108: Chicago
Artwork by Chris Ware

Granta 110: Sex
Photograph © Billie Segal
Design by Michael Salu

HUFFINGTON
09.23.12

case for cardiology.
“And ortho isn’t taking him because?” I said wearily.
“Because he’s got internal organs, dude.”
I sighed. “So why me?”
“Because they got an EKG.”
The MAO was clearly enjoying
himself. I remembered he had recently been accepted to a cardiology fellowship. I braced myself for
the punchline.
“And?”
“And there’s ectopy on it. Ectopy.” He then made a noise intended to suggest a ghost haunting something.
Ectopy, meaning literally “out
of place,” refers to a heartbeat
generated anywhere in the heart
but the little knob in the upper
right-hand corner where heartbeats are supposed to start. Such
beats appear with an unusual
shape and timing on the EKG.
They can be caused by any number of things, from too much caffeine to fatigue to an impending
heart attack, but in the absence of
other warning signs, ectopy is not
something we generally get excited about. And it sounded to me as
though a man with a broken neck
had enough reasons for ectopy
without sending him to the Cardi-