The alarm reminding him to take his medicine alerted every two hours. If he forgot, the alarm grew insistent and demanded he satisfy its need. He put the alarm on snooze. Sometimes he couldn’t take care of the plea. The pills sat in a drawer far away. This time, he finished mile four on the indoor cycle and started uphill.
The alarm made him ashamed; a grown man tethered to a pill bottle. He tapped his phone to squelch the alarm. It went off nine minutes later. A reminder of the reminder of the first alarm. He grew anxious and put it on snooze again. He looked at the trainer, then his phone. He could see the dust falling around the bike wheel.
The trainer’s mouth became a painful slow motion movie of round vowels and hard consonants. The clock hand grew larger beating out every deliberate second. Then, the trainer sparked a nerve. The alarm went off again. He looked at the phone and back at the trainer.
The medicine could wait.
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