Mark Mondalek
THE STRAIGHT WARP OF NECESSITY

Seated on the examiners table, I hold a mouse pad-sized monitor in place over my left breast with assorted electrodes leeched upon my arms and chest and my pacemaker’s memory bank is successfully tapped dry. All my secrets electronically spill onto a sleek computer screen for only my cardiologist to read and the zigzagged data codes become lost in translation to me. I’m soon told of what my nurse described as a tiny short circuit in my electrical system; an intermittent junctional rhythm, to be exact.

“Something new,” my doctor keeps repeating rather intriguingly as he continues tapping away at the results. It seems my heart has never done this sort of thing before.

He deliberates with his two assistants and begins to adjust my settings with a series of quick taps on the screen. “You might feel a little light-headed for a second or two. Do you feel anything?” he asks, but no, no I never do, and then another––tap-tap-tap, and he says I should feel my heart speeding up a little and I feel it a little I do.

Mark Mondalek  is a Detroit-area writer and editor. He previously worked as an assistant editor for South Loop Review: Creative Nonfiction + Art, a national literary magazine published annually by the Nonfiction Program within Columbia College Chicago’s English Department, interviewing authors for publication and approving final manuscript submissions. He graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fiction Writing.

Read more from Cleaver Magazine’s Issue #2.