Danny James

The Heart Murmur

This post is written for Friday Fictioneers.

jhc7
PHOTO PROMPT © J Hardy Carroll

 

Growing up he had wanted to play in all sports. Dr. Rulney didn’t like the “lub-DUPP”  sound he heard when he put his stethoscope to his chest.

He used to practice basketball free throws in his back yard. Sometimes he could make ninety five out of a hundred. He just knew he could have made the high school basketball team.

Later on in life he would learn these murmurs are common in healthy children. Many children will have heart murmurs heard by their doctors at some point in their lives.

This diagnoses did have one benefit: he would never see Saigon.

18 comments

  5. oh….I remember the lines and lines of young men, appearing with back braces and body art and self-induced high blood pressure trying to avoid the Vietnam war. We lost too many.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Indeed. The benches reminded me of where I took a physical for the Army standing buck naked with my clothing in a plastic bag waiting for that doctor that said I was unfit for duty. Took a bus back home and surprised my mom.

      Thanks for commenting.

      DJ

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  6. My mum used to say, you never know what it’s good for. Lovely story of a lucky young man even though his dreams of being a basketball star were shattered.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  14. Great story. Regret, dissapointment, fate, salvation. All the ingredients of an everyday ‘ordinary’ life are captured brilliantly here.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Tell me your thoughts!

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s