Syncopation
Lori Barrett
The headache started quietly but was persistent. Tapping behind my eyes, until I bent over. Then it knocked. By morning it banged, angry and demanding, making me want to hit my head against a window to feel it shatter. My head and the window. At the Minute Clinic, a bewildered nurse said my heartbeat was irregular; maybe the pain was due to circulation or rhythm. A bigger problem than I’d imagined. I thought stress. Emotion unexpressed. My heart was tender and lonely that winter, in a city, in a state, in a world without my Dad, without his singing, his jokes. The nurse suggested the E.R., where a glowing plastic clip hugged my finger the way a child grips a parent’s finger. Stay. Please. It monitored my rhythm and beats. Medication induced sleep, and they wheeled me to the cardiac unit just for one night, just to be sure. The lullaby of hums and beeps was familiar from the oncology unit where my Dad sang barbershop in a hallway, his IV pole turning his quartet into a quintet. I dozed in the glow of illuminated numbers and lines until faint music from behind a curtain next to my bed woke me. Someone was replaying old videos and messages on a phone. A deep voice said, hello beautiful, this is Dad. The woman listening on the other side of the curtain sighed and sniffled. Isolated in our beds, connected to machines, we weren’t alone. She played the message over and over, and our two tender hearts beat together.
Lori Barrett is a writer and teacher in Chicago. Her work has appeared in Citron Review, The Pinch, Maudlin House, New World Writing and Little Engines. She’s an assistant fiction editor at Pithead Chapel. Find more of her work at LoriBarrettwrites.com
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