‘Doesn’t it drive you mad?’ My brother asked, gesturing at the ticking clock on the mantle, the baroque beast that had been our father’s.
‘I find it quite soothing,’ I replied.
It was the first time he’d come to visit me in almost a year. Good to see him again, though it felt a little odd, me now living in the house we’d grown up in while he had built a new home elsewhere. In hindsight, my hosting was not up to snuff that night. Perhaps I’d have been more attentive if I’d known what was to follow.
Less than a month later, it was my turn to visit him, though the venue was not his house. He found himself in the hospital, in dire circumstances. Congenital heart disease leading to total heart failure. Due to his generally poor health, brought on by a mix of genetic faults and hard living, he was not a good candidate for a transplant.
‘That doesn’t mean we’re entirely out of options.’ The doctor handed leaflets to my brother and I. ‘We’re doing a trial in conjunction with the Ferenbrooke University physics department. They think they have a power source that can run safely inside a person for a decade or more. That, in conjunction with a few advancements in material science, mean we’re able to make artificial hearts that won’t reject, don’t require an external power source. It’s a huge leap forward. Or it will be, if it pans out. I can get you onto the trial. It is not without risk, but I do believe it’s your best bet.’
My brother was apprehensive, but at my urging he signed up for it.
Two weeks later, he was in my house, the dining room table having been replaced with a hospital bed. The surgery went well and he was calm and mobile, though not unchanged. His scar was long and ragged. And the noise. A whoosh and a tick, the mechanical answer to a more conventional, meaty heart beat. That noise was ever-present.
I had to ferry him to the hospital weekly, for a blood test and some other checks. The main risk was that the power source, some chemical device conceptually like a battery but in composition entirely unlike one, might leak. The doctors had assured us that this would not be lethal but would need to be attended to with haste. It was a novel material and its effects were not entirely predictable.
The initial appointments were fine. By the end of the third month, I found myself worried by my brother’s continued stillness. He’d stand and walk without issue, take his meals, all that. But he was possessed of a preternatural calm that was quite unlike him. I blamed the medication, at first. But he’d forgone any painkillers or sedatives after the first four weeks. The trauma of the ordeal could, of course, contribute to his change of personality, his dulling. If that were the case, it would need addressing.
The fourteenth appointment came by, my brother shuffled to the passenger door of my car, and we set off. The whoosh-tick of his mechanical heart filled the air. I put on the radio to cover it, found a classic rock station. My brother’s favourite genre. I spotted no reaction in him.
At the hospital, first a blood sample was taken. My brother then followed a nurse through to a consultation room, where the doctor leading the study on the new artificial hearts would be waiting for him. I waited with the phlebotomist, watching as he worked in a side room with the door open. He deposited a drop of blood into a vial of yellowish liquid, shook it, and then squirted a few drops onto something like a COVID test. I was used to this procedure. The test was a basic screening measure, it would show positive if there was more than a trace of the battery compound in my brother’s blood.
That day, it was indeed positive. ‘I’ll have to let the doctor know right away.’ The phlebotomist said.
My heart a-quiver, I followed him to the back hallway, through to the consultation room. He flung open the door. ‘He’s positive,’ the phlebotomist said.
‘Right, okay. Let’s not lose our heads,’ replied the doctor. He retrieved a stethoscope from the trolley by the examination bed upon which my brother sat. The ear pieces went in his ears, the chest piece on my brother’s chest. ‘Have you noticed anything troubling?’ Asked the doctor.
‘That ticking,’ replied my brother. He grabbed the doctor’s head, one large hand over either ear, and pushed the stethoscope in towards the middle.
The doctor screamed. The phlebotomist did likewise, moving to my brother and trying to pull his arms off the doctor.
I stood, transfixed by panic, unable to process the scene.
My brother pulled the doctor’s head to his own chest, muffled the man’s screams with his own flesh. He pulled and pulled, exerting more force than I’d ever known he could. The phlebotomist’s efforts meant nothing. Three long seconds until the screaming stopped, until a sickening crack heralded the doctor’s body going limp.
whoosh-tick, whoosh-tick, whoosh-tick
My brother whispered, ‘Doesn’t it drive you mad?’