Anatomical heart with banner scroll on a leg

The boat came in on Tuesday with Callum Reid stretched across the thwart like a sack of meal, and I have not slept properly since. The doctor who sent you that letter about the ferry timetable would have called it a murmur, but out here we have one stethoscope and one bed, and when I put my ear to his chest I heard a river running the wrong way. He laughed when I said so. Then he tapped his ribs with two fingers and told me there's a traitor here, beneath my breast, and asked whether I could cut it out before the spring tides.

I told him the heart is no spy. It only does what it was built for, which is to keep pumping until it can't. He didn't believe me. He wanted it to be a person, somebody he could hold to account, and I suppose I understand that. On an island everybody is somebody. The man who sold his boat in March to clear the mainland debts still buys his bread at Morag's every Saturday, and he still nods at Callum across the harbour wall as if nothing has passed between them.

I've put him on the Thursday ferry to the hospital in Oban with a sealed envelope and a list of what to ask for. I wrote everything plainly so no one could mistake it. Before he went down the gangway he asked me to draw the thing for him on the back of his ticket, the way the old textbook did, with the vessels going off like roots. I did it in red biro, badly, and he folded it into his coat as if it were a map.

You always said I was soft. Maybe so. The gulls were lifting off the pier when the boat pulled away, and I stood there until I couldn't tell his hat from the other passengers'. Write when you can.

Morven