Arun smiled and nodded, but his hand was already reaching for the ECG machine. Standard protocol for anyone over fifty with epigastric discomfort. He pressed the cold electrodes to her skin, her chest rising and falling in a rhythm that seemed too easy, too unremarkable for what he was about to see.

“You couldn’t have known,” he said gently. “But we know now.”

Mrs. Gable shrugged from the bed. “I’ve had worse back pain. You think I should have known?”

Anterior infarct, age undetermined. Not a mystery anymore. Just a woman who had survived Tuesday night, and who would now be given the chance to understand what her body had already endured.

“Well, I had to stop folding laundry to lean against the dryer. But that happens sometimes.”

He started her on a beta-blocker, an ACE inhibitor, a statin, and aspirin. He scheduled an angiogram for the morning. And before he left the bay, he looked again at that ECG—the ghost Q waves, the absent R waves, the silent testimony of a heart that had fought alone in the dark and somehow won.