Free Heart Stopper by R J Samuel

I’ll catch her tomorrow.”
    Aidan walked over with just the hint of a swagger. He perched on the corner of her desk. She could smell his aftershave, a vaguely musky odor. He worked in the sales and marketing side of the clinic, a job he had gotten through his brother, Gerry. She looked up at him with a questioning look.
    “So, did you enjoy Friday night?” His tone was neutral, but his eyes and lips held a little smirk.
    “Friday night?” She was blank for a moment. “Oh yes, Tara’s do. I’d forgotten, what with everything that’s happened since. I guess it was okay.”
    “And your ‘friend’...? Did she enjoy the night?”
    “My friend…?” She felt like a parrot. “Do you mean Tara?”
    “No, Tara’s my friend too.” He was looking at her as if she was being as dim as she felt. “I mean the other one, you know, the one you spent half the night with,” the smirk was now obvious, “the very attractive one.”
    So he had seen her with Reyna.
    “Oh her...” Priya tried to be nonchalant. “She was a tourist. I was just being friendly; telling her what there was to do in Galway and stuff. Civic duty and all that.”
    “Did you show her the city on your ride home in her cool Merc?” He was trying not to laugh.
    Damn, damn, damn . “I don’t remember. I guess she was kind enough to get me to Michael’s place.”
    Aidan looked like he was going to keep tormenting her so she looked at her screen and said, “I really have to get this stuff done, trying to catch up.”
    He got up, still grinning, and brushed down his suit trousers. “Well, have a good evening then.”
    He left her staring at the screen. Her mind was working feverishly. Had he recognized Reyna? He hadn’t been at the funeral; she’d never visited the clinic . There was a good chance he had no idea who the woman was and had just been teasing her. For her own peace of mind, Priya decided it had just been his usual banter.
    She forced her mind back to the readings in front of her.
    So what was she seeing that was setting off her teeth ? Priya looked again at the notes she had scribbled down. Parts of the Controller II code looked familiar. She did not have access to the Controller I code so she did not know what had been changed in the upgrade. But something that seemed out of place and she just couldn’t put her finger on it. A section of the figures showed the readings from routine checks done in clinics around the world. The numbers showed the electrical activity recorded by the leads in the heart from the area around the SA Node. Priya wished she had a graphical representation of the figures. There were thousands of readings dating from 2007 when the Controller II had replaced the Controller I. She did not have the readings for the Controller I. Her initial mental translation of the numbers showed a peculiarity. There were dips in the voltages. She needed to figure out whether there was a pattern.
    She looked at her watch. It was 8.15 p.m. She had been staring at these figures for almost eleven hours transcribing them, translating them, playing with them, and reverse engineering the code. She realized with a sense of loss that a few years ago the patterns of numbers would have danced to her command. Funny what stress and the willful destruction of a mind could do. She needed a break and the time to let her mind relax and absorb.
    The clinic was quiet. She normally enjoyed this time when the rest of the staff had left and she could think better. Tonight, though, the silence felt heavy. It was still bright outside her window, the grey brightness of a summer that wasn’t feeling sure of itself. She started to gather her hand-written notes into a pile to take home. Priya put the papers into her bag and tidied up her desk, feeling a strange reluctance to leave her office. She would not be taking home copies of the research figures this time, but she had the important details in her notes. Maybe a look through them while she lay out on