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Michael Malone - Weebly

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abnormalities at the exam, nothing on the test. All of a<br />

sudden you get balled up in a stress situation, you get a<br />

severe pain, heavy pain, a fist in the chest like a vise, it<br />

goes shooting down your left arm. Angina pectoris.<br />

Nausea, pallor, trouble breathing, crushing pain. All of a<br />

sudden congestive heart failure. Necrosis of the muscle<br />

—secret fraternity lingo for dead, gone, kaput."<br />

"Just a minute, Otto, are you telling me to expect all<br />

this in the near future?" asked Abernathy with his<br />

mournful smile.<br />

"No, no, no, 'course not. But it could, that's all I'm<br />

saying."<br />

"Can you treat it?"<br />

"Sure. Thump and listen. Diet. Digitalis for some<br />

things. Aspirin for clots. Now we got heart-valve<br />

surgery. Give you a stainless steel one. Give you a<br />

hog's. Give you a whole goddamn plastic ticker now.<br />

Sure, we got lots of stuff. Nitroglycerin,<br />

cardiopulmonary massage, defibrillators. Trouble is this<br />

business does everything ass-backwards.<br />

Look here, I read in one of these damn journals<br />

over there in that pile of mess that the majority of our

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