Lomita’s heart literally skipped a beat but did not go back to its sinus rhythm, it was constantly skipping, a supraventricular tachycardia kind of attack; her atrial fibrillation had kicked in. And with this misbehaving heart she scrambled for the door, reached the handle and cracked the door open. Ever rushed round to her side of the car, completed the opening of the door and helped her out, carrying her, off the ground, to his waiting Honda. A woman speed-walked past with a sun visor, headphones, track suit and trainers, apparently oblivious to what was going on. Without a second to calculate the situation he turned the car around and went east on Carmelita; without thought but instinctive panic got the hell out of town as fast as grabbing no attention would take him. Up Oakhurst Drive, with the briefest of a split second that registered the possibility of going to her home for tablets: ignoring her plea, he went south on Doheny, all the way down to Olympic, travelling east towards Koreatown.

Lomita was in a state of hysterics, sobbing, shouting and screaming: it was all incoherent and his ears weren’t tuned to hear. Or tuned to her.

*

Lomita had been a long-term sufferer of atrial fibrillation.

Controlling the condition with f lecainide tablets on a daily basis to regulate the rhythm, keep it in sinus rhythm: but this trauma had overridden the control that the tablets gave , resulting in a non-sinus rhythm phase. Lomita was panicked and breathless. The blood was not being pumped out of the atria and c ould pool there, just sit there, given up, relieved of responsibility, making its statement that it s job was done . The downside of this non-emptying atria, at least its irregularity, was the potential for clotting and therefore a stroke. Thus things were not at this moment going well for Lomita . S he hadn ’ t had an AF attack for a number of years and its return produced its own shock . She needed some tablets. Beta b lockers or more f lecainide.

*

‘Why did you do that?’

‘You made me. I did it for you. You don’t, you understand, kill me now, kill me please. I can’t live with it. I don’t want to anymore. Ever please.’

What she wanted him to do with her cries, he had no idea; he was too isolated in his own emotion to take time to wonder.

This continued all the way through the Mid-City and started to die, the noise, from pure exhaustion, as they were crossing Western; he took a left up on to 8th Street in an attempt to find his patch of anonymous land.

Had he made Lomita do this?

Ever the bringer of all that is bad and negative into people’s lives. The soulless one. Ever. Forever doing the same thing: consistent in the wrong.