Polite Dissent

Strangers in Paradise #61, 62, 63 “David’s Story”
Terry Moore, writer/artist
Yousaka Takahashi picks a fight with David Qin, and beats him nearly to death. Actually, he did beat him to death. As Yousaka puts it himself later: “I beat a kid with asthma and acute arrhythmia and told him that the world hated him. After that he went home, laid [sic] down and died.”

After the fight, when David is lying bleeding in the street, his sister brings him an inhaler because of his asthma. Physical activity can certainly cause an asthma attack, as can extreme stress (such as being jumped by a gang of guys). Lying down is not the best way to use an inhaler, but David’s not exactly in good shape at the end of the fight, so I’ll let it pass.

An arrhythmia is an abnormal heart rhythm. There are many kinds of arrhythmia, some are dangerous, but many are not. For instance, the way the heart speeds up and slows down with breathing is known as “sinus arrhythmia”, and is completely normal. Some arrhythmias can last for years; others just a few seconds or minutes.

Stating that David has an “acute arrhythmia” is somewhat confusing. If he has a constant irregular heart rate, then it is a “chronic arrhythmia”, not an acute one. A chronic arrhythmia wouldn’t cause death in this scenario.

On the other hand, David could have a rare condition known as Wolffe-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome. In this condition, the heart has an extra conduction pathway that can lead to an arrhythmia. These irregular rhythms almost always involve the atria (the top of the heart), not the ventricles (the bottom of the heart), and are more annoying than dangerous. Physical exertion is one trigger for arrhythmias in WPW, and in very rare cases they can degenerate into a fatal rhythm.

However, I suspect that what Yousaka means is that David died of an acute arrhythmia caused by the injuries he received in the fight itself, not because of a pre-existing rhythm problem. In a myocardial contusion, the heart itself is bruised, and this can lead to fatal arrhythmias. Usually, it takes a severe blow — such as a steering wheel impact in a motor vehicle accident — but there are recorded cases of it happening after a direct blow. This is the most likely cause of David Qin’s death, though WPW Syndrome is a possibility too.