On the late afternoon of Beverly High School’s senior prom that I didn’t attend (did I tell you that already, that I didn’t go to the prom? So many years later it seems ridiculous to bring up, but also, what about prom, Art?), I donated a pint of blood, my sixth pint in twelve weeks. Well, I wasn’t really donating. More like I put my blood in storage because I was going to reuse it later. Dr. Seward wanted me to have my own blood for transfusion instead of someone else’s.

Will anyone get a Pretty in Pink reference?

The final bit of pre-surgery preparation was the echocardiogram Dr. Seward ordered because of the possible Marfan syndrome diagnosis. That procedure wasn’t as needly as the blood donation. I lay on an exam table membraned with crinkly white paper. The tech slathered a cold, clear gel on the sonic wand, the knobbed head of which she firmly pressed against my bare chest, paying no mind to avoid my galaxy of acne, and I swear at times she jammed the wand underneath my sternum. A small black-and-white screen broadcasted Doppler ultrasound images of my beating heart. The tech pointed out ventricles, arteries, and the aorta. Then, as instructed, I rolled onto my left side, facing away from the screen, my face inches from a wall. What would show on the monitor now that I couldn’t see it? Maybe there was a face hidden within the digital swirls that only I might recognize. The tech said we were going to listen to my heart and turned the volume to eleven. The sound wasn’t a thump-thump of a stethoscope or an ear to someone’s chest. It was organic, wet, and grainy, undulous. More like a glup-glup. My heart was a flopping fish, which seemed kind of appropriate. We kept listening as the tech stabbed the wand around, back-alleying it between my ribs, until she said, “Huh.” My swimmy heart glup-gluped along and I asked if there was something wrong. She said, “No?” with a requisite and confidence-draining pause, and then, “But I did find a little something.” With the caveat that she was not a cardiologist and could not officially offer diagnosis, she said it appeared I had a slight heart murmur caused by mitral valve prolapse. The aforenamed valves weren’t closing properly, so when the heart pumped, the valves, or flaps, collapsed into the left atrium, then a small amount of blood that was supposed to be pumped away, leaked back into the ventricle. It was a common condition, and for most sufferers their health wasn’t appreciably affected, but the heart would need to be monitored over time for other complications. She said, “I’ll slow down the audio and you can hear a little swish of regurgitated blood.” I didn’t want to hear the regurgitated swish.