After I got out the hospital, I felt strange…different. It was like returning to a life you realized didn’t belong to you anymore. I was forcing myself to be a person that I no longer was. I tried to feel things that weren’t there anymore.

I came home to an apartment I shared with a woman who I knew didn’t want me there. Because I wasn’t what she had signed up for. She was used to a Beckett Kingsley who ran with her after work, who planned backpacking trips, and who could stay up the entire night screwing her brains out in new and interesting ways.

The Beckett who came home after almost dying couldn’t do any of those things, and it quickly became obvious that Sierra didn’t necessarily want to be around this new guy I had become.

Sierra had never been the patient sort, and I knew that my heart attack had put a strain on how flexible and agreeable she could be. At first she tried. She really did. Those first couple weeks at the hospital, she’d visit me every day. She’d sit in the chair beside my bed and hold my hand. She brought me my favorite pajama bottoms and the book I had been reading.

That was all fine and dandy until I came home and she actually had to live with the invalid. Stuff changed really quickly after that.

I knew that I took a lot of my frustrations and anger out on her. She was easy to lash out at because she was simply there. But she didn’t help matters. She seemed to think that once I was out of the hospital, I should be able to jump back into our life together as though nothing had changed.

The first night I came home, she entered our bedroom wearing a silky piece of lingerie that, under normal circumstances, I would have ripped from her body. But I was tired and sore. I just wanted to sleep.

So when Sierra started kissing on my neck and touching me, sliding her hand underneath my pajamas and cupping my junk, I pulled away. She kept trying to get me in the mood, straddling me and pushing her tits in my face. She inadvertently pressed her hand into my healing incision and I had yelped in pain, pushing her off my lap.

“I can’t, Sierra!” I had yelled, frustrated and pissed that she was only thinking of herself. Pissed that I couldn’t be the man she wanted me to be…the man I was before.

I just remember lying there with my hot-assed girlfriend gyrating on top of me with my dick flaccid between us wondering what the hell was wrong with me. Why was I so angry? Why wasn’t I turned on? Why couldn’t I just be the man I was before my heart stopped working?

“Fine, be an asshole!” Sierra screamed, jumping off the bed and slamming out of the bedroom. She ended up sleeping in the spare room that night. And the night after that.

In the three months since I had been discharged from the hospital, Sierra and I had slept apart more times than we had slept together. Our sex life had dwindled to nonexistent and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to remedy it.

“All couples go through rough patches,” my mother had tried to assure me. She had been badgering me as to why Sierra, once again, hadn’t joined me for dinner with my parents. I knew that Sierra wasn’t their favorite person but they had always made an effort for me. I hadn’t wanted to admit that maybe they had been right about my girlfriend all along. That she was juvenile and self-centered. That she was incapable of thinking about someone besides herself.

But I had finally cracked and told Mom how bad things actually were. It was festering inside me. She surprised me by being completely nonjudgmental.

“Yeah, I don’t know, Mom,” I had said, unconvinced.

“If it’s meant to be, it’ll be. One thing I’ve learned in all these years being married to your father is that it’s not always passion and kisses that make your toes curl.” I cringed. The last thing I wanted to hear about was my parents’ toe-curling kissing. But when she was in her bestower-of-sage-wisdom mood, there was no interrupting her.

“There will be hard times. There will be moments when you ask yourself if this person is really worth it. But I can tell you that every time I have ever asked myself that question about your father, I could answer yes without hesitation. Because in my bones, I knew he was the only man I could ever spend my life with. If you look inside yourself and can say that about Sierra, then you’ll be able to get through this. I promise you.” She had poured me a glass of iced tea and left to go check on her pot roast.

In Mom’s mind, there was nothing in this world a good pot roast couldn’t fix. I wondered if her rose-colored glasses would fit my fat head.

Because, when I asked myself if Sierra was worth the trouble, all I could feel was frustration and anger at her selfishness. Maybe I needed to wait until I wasn’t pissed and irritated to ask myself such important questions. Or maybe that was the best time to ask them.

Perhaps I wasn’t being fair to Sierra. She’d been through a lot too, right? It couldn’t be easy seeing your boyfriend laid up in a hospital room, not sure if he’s going to make it. And I had been short tempered. And I had taken a lot of my shitty mood out on her.

But my mother’s words continued to echo in my ears for weeks afterward.

Was Sierra worth it?

I wasn’t so sure.

“All systems seem to be a go. You can put your shirt back on,” Dr. Callahan said a few minutes later, and I snapped out of my way-too-deep thoughts.

“So everything’s okay?” I asked, buttoning up my shirt.

Dr. Callahan nodded, looking at the computer screen. “Your numbers are exactly where they need to be. How have you been feeling? Any discomfort? Light-headedness? Dizziness? Nausea?” she asked, listing off symptoms the way you rattle off a fast-food order.

Would you like a side with that cheeseburger? Fries? Onion rings? Mozzarella sticks?

“Nope. I’ve been feeling pretty great. And I was sort of wondering when I could get back to some level of physical activity,” I asked hesitantly.

Everyone had a vice. Some people had drugs. Some people had booze.

I had sports.

I played forward on my high school’s soccer team. I went all state with the cross-country team. In college I took up jujitsu and skiing and since becoming a working stiff, I found a crazy love for the 5K.

And if I were feeling particularly wild, I’d go hang gliding.

My buddies Aaron and Bryan, whom I’d known since our freshman year of college, loved to give me shit about my running shorts and He-man calf muscles.

Dr. Callahan slipped her wire-frame glasses off her face and folded her hands in her lap. “I know you’ve always been active, Beckett, but part of the lifestyle change you have to adopt will involve a significant decrease in physical exertion. You’re an athlete but you simply can’t go back to how you were before. It won’t be possible.”

I deflated. I already knew what to expect but it still sucked to hear. “So no more 5Ks or park league soccer, huh?” I said with a halfhearted smile.

Dr. Callahan’s rigid expression softened and she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Beckett. You will be able to eventually resume some level of physical activity as it’s important for your health, but you are still recovering.” She looked at her computer screen again. “I’ll want to see you again in eight weeks to check your ICD. We’ll schedule an X-ray at that appointment and a stress test. If you continue to take it easy until then, getting plenty of rest, following your diet, then we can discuss increasing your activity levels then. Okay?”

I sighed, trying not to feel defeated.

You’re alive! That’s what matters! I repeated over and over again.

I plastered a smile on my face and pretended I wasn’t sick and tired of being sick and tired.

“Okay,” I agreed, hopping down from the table.

“In the meantime, if you feel any pain or chronic light-headedness and nausea, you need to call the implant center immediately. If the ICD activates, you’ll know it and it’s important that we be notified. We’d need to test your heart rhythms to see if there are any issues that have to be addressed,” Dr. Callahan informed me. I had already been told this stuff a million times. I could recite it in my sleep. It had become a daily checklist.