I 'Heart' You

“The cardiac muscle in the heart is myogenic.” A perky voice blasted from the biology laboratory’s weird black cuboid hanging by the blackboard, accompanied by the soft struggled whisper of the speaker threatening to tear.

I leaned on my hand as I tried to concentrate on today’s lesson. Well, at least today’s voice was slightly better than the usual. “She sounds younger,” I commented out loud to Shawn who was sitting next to me, referring to the voice of the interactive teaching aid.

He nodded, his eyes fixated on a heart projected on the screen in front of us. I shrugged and turned my attention back to the screen just as a tiny yellow dot on the right atrium started to blink.

“The SA node located on the right side of the right atrium generates electric impulses which spread rapidly…” And then I lost my attention again. Instead, I watched our ever sweet Biolody teacher, Pn. Noraini walked away from her desk into the back door. Agitated that I was so easily distracted in my weakest subject –excluding Additional Mathematics-, I quickly glanced back at the purple heart on the white screen. Oh now, there are FOUR yellow dots! What the hell?!

“The electrical impulses will spread to AVN. Then, electrical impulses from AVN are conducted to the bundle of His, onwards to Purkinje…” Eekk! AVN? HIS? PURKINJE? Maybe it was just me but the voice from the speaker seemed to conjure a sentence more like this…”the electrical impulses triggered (obviously by a hot opposite sex) were spread throughout AVN aka Alvin into His hand which held another girl. Holding puke in, she quickly jerked her hand away.” Aww, poor Alvin.

Abruptly, I snapped back to reality. Even more agitated that I have once again lost my attention, I held my head up with both hands, directing my eyes to focus only on the animations. But did I succeed? Sadly, no because just then, dear Pn. Noraini reentered the laboratory and handed out small boxes. “Stethoscope!” Shawn yelled in excitement.

“Shh! Focus on the board!” Pn. Noraini instructed. Yes, Samantha, focus! Nevertheless, I grabbed one of the boxes along with Shawn as she passed those boxes down the lab. Quickly, I poured all the materials out from the box. Out came two plastic bags; one filled with a long black tube and a binaural (the metal thingy that looked like an earphone) and another one stuffed with a diaphragm and a small black rubber band. I fiddled the apparatus with my hand, connecting the tube to the binaural and the other end to the diaphragm, staying as inconspicuous as I could with my eagerness. “The expansion and contraction of cardiac muscle creates a sound ‘lup dup’” was the last thing I managed to hear from the speaker as I connected all the pieces. Anxiety rang through the class. Commotion and noises started to arise along with students as they rushed against one another to try out their stethoscope. Like a kid with a shiny new toy, I thought. Of course, I wasn’t excluded from the norm.

Stuffing the empty plastic bags back into the box, I turned around, looking for a specimen to prey on. On the other side of my head, I faintly heard Pn. Noraini’s voice, belting out instructions at the top of her voice, “Class, try to locate the ‘lup dup’ sound!”

“Shawn, Shawn! My turn to try that doctor stuff!” Emery cried out. Politely, Shawn passed the stethoscope to her. Oh ya, Shawn. “Shawn!” I called out. He turned towards me, his golden brown fringe falling over his crystal blue eyes. “Err…” I stuttered for a second, partially stunned by his looks. This wasn’t the first time my tongue tied whenever his around and since I had known Shawn for almost five years now, you can guess the thousands of times I stuttered around him. Well, it wasn’t exactly my fault that he was so cute. But, we’re not going to tell him that now, are we? Nope!

“Yes, Sammy?” he smirked. He knew calling me Sammy annoyed the hell out of me, which was the only reason he LOVED calling me Sammy. However, I was too distracted to notice that. Who would when the oh-so-adorable dimple adorned his his lower cheek as he smirked? My heart skipped a beat. “Sammy?” he asked again.

Snapping back to reality for the second time of the day, I hastily wiped an imaginary drool from the side of my mouth. “May I hear your heartbeat?” Firstly, I need to make it clear that I was not flirting. Not at all. It was only because he was a male and he could take a button off his top, enabling the diaphragm to be pressed nearer to the heart. Well, girls couldn’t do that now, could we? At least not without igniting a rouse of lustful boys in the lab. But then again, I wouldn’t mind igniting Shawn attention towards me if I was to take a button off my top. Shut up, Samantha!

For some unknown reasons, Shawn hesitated for a moment, scrutinizing the situation and pondering the pros and cons. Then, unbuttoning a button, he pressed the diaphragm of my stethoscope against his chest. Dang, those tight muscles. Thankful that I did not say the aforementioned out loud, I forced myself to focus on the matter at hand that was to find the heartbeat. I focused my sense of hearing towards the binaural pinned onto my ear buds to check for any sound. No luck as the only thing I heard was Emery’s voice on the other end of the class demanding for an answer to why she can’t hear her own heartbeat. Slightly frustrated, I pushed his hand away and probed the left side of the torso, searching for that ‘lup dup’ sound. Still no hope…

Determined to not fail this experiment, I closed the gap between us, pressing the diaphragm onto his tanned chest. Still no sign of any ‘lup dup’. I continued inching nearer to him until out of the blue, I heard a weird sound; almost like a gulp. No, I definitely wasn’t a ‘lup dup’. It was an ‘engh’. Perplexed, I straightened myself and looked up, only to find Shawn’s face hovering barely an inch away from mine. Since when was I this close to him? I looked into those soft blue eyes that I adored for so long. They looked like the sea emblazed by the sunrays. I stiffened uneasily. Calm down, Sam. But really, how could I when his lips were getting nearer to mine. Those soft pink lips.

‘Lup dup’ ‘lup dup’

I finally heard as the binaural transferred the soft thumping of his heart into my ears.

‘Lup dup’

My heart beat against my rib cage as he closed in.

‘Lup dup’

His hand caressed my cheek. I closed my eyes.

‘Lup dup’

The slight brush of his lips against mine.

‘Lup dup’

Was the last thing I heard as I dropped the diaphragm and his arms wrapped around my waist.