The first blow hit me out of nowhere. That was at table tennis, it was a friend’s birthday. Summer evening, beer, run around, the usual. Ka-Boum! it made out of my chest. My head was still buzzing the next day, like someone hit me with a baseball bat. Really, I’ve tried harder in my life. Had run three or four times a week, danced all night and lugged washing machines up stairwells… But I hadn’t had a defibrillator implanted back then either, a palm-sized device that delivers a shock when the heart beats life-threateningly fast. How many times has it done that before implantation without my knowing about it?
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