Hospital

August 24th, 2018 at 08:10 am (Motherwell, Scotland)

By Derek Clark

I take the afternoon and head out for a wander with my camera. I've no idea what I'm looking for other than escape. Then my phone pings. Incoming, in every sense of the word. Dad's had another heart attack and has been taken by ambulance to the hospital. I head over there and make my way to the medical receiving unit. My mum and my older brother are there. The absence of my sister is front and centre, a gap in the chainmail, surrounded twisted metal.

My dad's levels are fairly normal, so the doctor asks if there has been any sort of trauma in his life lately. They have adopted a Japanese theory, that a lot of heart conditions are less to do with medical conditions and more to do with stress or trauma. My dad tells them that my sister died just over a month ago. It turns out there is such a thing as broken heart syndrome.