The Watch Said

The watch said: high heart rate detected while inactive. 128 bpm. I was sitting on the sofa watching the hurling. Cork were losing. I said to Siobhan, is 128 a lot, and she said depends what you're doing, and I said sitting, and she put down her tea. Monday I rang the GP. The receptionist asked was it an emergency and I said no, and then I thought about it and said probably not, and she gave me Thursday. Thursday the doctor was a young lad who looked about fourteen. He listened. He did an ECG in the room, the sticky pads on my chest and ankles, the paper spooling out with the little mountains on it. "Bit of an arrhythmia," he said. "Nothing scary. But I'd like the cardiology crowd to look at it." I said I'd never felt anything. "Most people don't. The watch caught it before you did, which is annoying for me professionally but good for you." He asked what I did for exercise. I told him about the odd walk with the dog, and then I told him the truth, which was that the dog was fitter than me and knew it. "How old are you, Declan?" "Fifty-one." "Grand. Then we've plenty of time." Cardiology was six weeks. A monitor for a week, a thing the size of a matchbox stuck to my chest that I had to take off to shower. Siobhan said I looked like I'd been bugged. Then a follow-up where a woman with kind eyes and a very direct manner said the word medication and the word lifestyle in the same sentence, and asked me how much I drank, and waited while I told her the real number instead of the first one. I'm on a tablet now. Small, white, morning. Two pints on a Friday and that's it, which is grand, mostly. And I walk. Properly. The dog and I do the loop out past the GAA pitch and along the river, forty minutes, and the watch tells me my heart is doing 105 and steady, and some days I don't look at it at all, and those are the good days. Cork still lose. That part hasn't changed.