Checkered Hearts
5 G lateral at the top, the blood pooling in the wrong chambers, the arrhythmia that could be triggered by exactly this stress, in exactly this body, his body, Arthie's damaged heart.
He had watched Eau Rouge on screens for years, the analysis that was professional interest in extreme physiology, the fascination that was abstract because the drivers were abstract, statistics, probabilities. Now he watched it through the window, the track visible below, the cars that were specks becoming violence becoming beauty, and the speck that was Arthie was specific, particular, the damage that was his to know intimately, to monitor continuously, to fear particularly.