Clarity

by Myanne Shelley

Chapter 14

  Back home, I barely had my jacket off when I heard the key in the front door. I turned, hopeful that Sam was arriving early. But it was Doug. He stood for a moment in the doorway, eyes meeting mine. His face was pale, skin clammy looking, eyes both dull and pained. He moved into the room, pressing the door shut behind him and then sinking onto the couch.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. I could feel my heart suddenly pounding, my psyche instantly on red alert.

  “I thought it was just a virus, maybe,” Doug mumbled. He pushed his briefcase aside and ran a hand across his forehead, which was beaded with sweat. “I just said I had to go home.” Eyes raised to mine, he whispered, “I think we should go to the hospital. I think it’s a heart attack.”

  Stay calm, an authoritative voice spoke in my head. My voice, and I said it out loud, two or three times, directed at both of us. Jacket, wallet, keys. Mine were only an arm’s length away, and Doug hadn’t even taken his off. I forced myself to move at a pace less frantic than my own heartbeat’s, and stood over him, car keys in hand. Unsure of what to do except for thinking he wouldn’t want to be helped up or coddled just now.

  Doug stood, unsteadily, a hand absently patting at his upper chest. His passivity worried me as much as his words had. Looking at his face, I could see that everything had melted away for him but the pressure of getting help.

  This I missed, I thought angrily to myself. But no time for recriminations. “Should we call 911, you think?” I asked. Like I was, you know, just wondering, the way we might choose what’s for dinner.

  He opened the door. “That’s too much. It wouldn’t save time anyway, let’s just go.”

  I followed him out. He was walking, not keeling over in the manner of movie portrayals. He’d made it all the way home already, and he was probably right about the timing; even an ambulance could go so fast in traffic.

  I drove as quickly as I could without killing us both. The hospital wasn’t far. Not knowing what else to do, I kept up a steady stream of light chatter. Making sure he was still conscious – he was, the entire trip he gripped his seatbelt, hand sliding up and down and loosening it from his chest and neck.

  I pointedly did not ask him anything judgmental – what had he been eating, had he ignored warning signs, etc. And I didn’t allow myself to think about anything further than the tasks at hand. I whizzed through a just turning light, and up to the emergency entrance. “We’re parking here,” I told him.

  Doug just nodded. Oh God. He could be a stickler for following the rules, and this confirmed he really thought it was an emergency. Together we walked down the ramp and through the double doors that hissed open in a too eager welcome.

  “Excuse me,” I announced to the first medical person I saw, “my husband may be having a heart attack.”

  “Right this way,” the young woman said cheerfully, steering us to the admitting counter.

  A second woman gave him a quick glance. “Can you talk, sir?” she asked. “Do you have your card?”

  Doug gave a choking assent, and handed me his wallet. “I can take care of this,” I told her. “He needs—“

  “Of course,” she said, “someone’s coming.” Her expression remained friendly, and somewhat disinterested. Well, naturally, she saw other people’s emergencies every day.

  As I fumbled with the admitting form, a pair of businesslike medical technicians appeared, a fast moving gurney wheeled between them. “Just come right on here, sir,” one of them said. He looked absurdly young. “Just a precaution.” Turning to me, he added, “We’re going to run some tests. Someone will be out to speak to you in a few minutes, Mrs…”

  “Prather,” I filled in. No need confusing things further with our different last names.

  They helped Doug onto the gurney, the bigger fellow kind of easing him into lying down. Like he was an old man. How they must see both of us, I thought. Doug raised his head for a moment, looking around for me. “Don’t worry,” he said.

  I widened my eyes at him. “Oh, right, good advice.” Somehow that gave us both a laugh, and I suspected he too was recalling the evening we met, the similar assurances we gave each other as we almost got locked in the back of that hotel. The medical guys frowned like we were both nuts as they wheeled him away.

  I finished the paperwork, handing it back to the young woman at the desk. The minute it left my hand, I had no recollection of what I’d just written. But it must have been okay because she nodded, and gently suggested that I have a seat.

  The lobby was small, surprisingly quiet for an emergency room. There was one other person waiting, a very calm looking woman reading a magazine. I sat on one of the wide, olive green sectional chairs, and tried to unobtrusively see what was going on down the hall where they’d taken Doug.

  But the doors blocked most of my view, and it was quiet, save for casual sounding pages over the intercom. The woman behind the counter typed languidly at her computer. Another one, a nurse maybe, poked her head out the door. I half rose, but she smiled and turned away with a quick shake of her head.

  “They’ll probably be a little while,” the first one said brightly. “They’d come get you if it was urgent.”

  As in, if he was about to die? None of the medical folks had indicated in any way – or at least I hadn’t been able to pick up on signals – that Doug and his condition were anything other than completely routine.

  I stood, unable to just sit there. “I’ll be right out here,” I told her. I took my phone out and went to the entranceway. Room to pace, a slight bit of privacy for a call, though I wondered who I might call now, before I knew anything.

  Doug would have my head if I went and freaked out his daughters and it turned out to be heartburn. A pair of young nurses walked past, leaning toward each other as one spoke cheerfully about her dinner plans. Not another care in the world; I watched them, feeling incredulous despite having had little else on my mind a mere half hour ago.

  Staff here barely looked old enough to drive. God knows what kind of youthful doctor they had examining Doug. Hopefully someone with at least a little experience. Someone actually treating him and not multi-tasking.

  I phoned Sam. For all I knew he had arrived at home already and wondered where I was. (Unlikely on both counts, but still, just hearing his voice would surely be soothing.)

  “Hey, Mom,” he picked up right away. “I’m still at Dad’s.”

  His voice did serve to anchor me. But I could barely speak, not knowing how much was appropriate to tell him. Not wanting Keith involved in any of this, although of course he would hear about it sooner or later. “Well, I was just calling to let you know I’m not home yet either. Actually, honey, Doug needed to go to the hospital.” I could hear the catch in my voice. I didn’t want to scare him. But at the same time, how I wished Sam was here right now, his broad shoulders and friendly puppy smile supporting me.

  “What happened,” Sam exclaimed. “Are you guys okay?”

  “Don’t know yet, they’re running tests. He wasn’t feeling well at work, and it might be, um, cardiac related.”

  “Oh, shit, Mom. Sorry. Where are you? Should I come right away?”

  Just those words were reassuring to me. That I had a grown son, that he could come and be with us. I told him where we were, assuring him that Doug walked in on his own and they hadn’t given me any further info. Knowing Sam would be home soon made me feel better, and I told him that too. I thought maybe I should call him back when I knew more, but I amended that to ask if he’d just keep me company on the phone for a few more minutes until the doctors came back.

  Sam – his voice so adult now – kept up the same kind of innocuous patter that I had in the car coming over. The words flowed in and back out of my ears. I could hear my voice answering him, conversing; I had a mental picture of myself all competent and calm. But nothing was sticking. My eyes were glued to the windo
w where I could see if anyone came out.

  A few minutes later, one of the original gurney guys poked his head out. I cut off Sam, promising I’d call right back, and raced inside again.

  “Everything’s fine,” he told me, “and you can come this way.”

  Doug was seated in a small examining room. His color was better, his eyes clearer. Without being able to put my finger on why, I was ready to believe the young technician now.

  Another man barged into the room, at a glance an actual doctor. His movements were quick but he took a moment to introduce himself, and I was relieved to note he looked at least mature enough to have attended medical school. “We were able to rule out a myocardial infraction, a heart attack,” he said. “Though I am going to advise some follow up tests, just given the circumstances and your age,” he added to Doug. “But it looks like today’s incident was a panic episode.”

  Doug lowered his eyes for a moment. Horribly embarrassed, possibly more embarrassed than relieved.

  “It’s not uncommon,” the doctor continued, now speaking to both of us. “Brought on by stress, triggered by any number of things. These incidents can have kind of a cascading effect. And the body reacts as though to actual danger. Thus the adrenaline, racing heart, cold sweat – and becoming aware of these physical reactions can only make them more intense.”

  Without realizing it, I’d been clutching my own shirt collar, and I let it go, let my breath out and took in the wash of comfort that this news brought me. Like I’d just been handed the rest of the summer, blissfully uneventful, on a platter.

  “Now that’s not to say we don’t need to address these symptoms,” the doctor continued. “There could well be underlying issues.” He went on in that vein for a bit, but what it came down to was Doug and the pressure he was under. External stuff, work stress, his reactions to it, were the problems more than actual damage on the inside.

  Doug nodded humbly, hands folded in his lap like a child. On a normal day he would be telling the doc about his workout routine, his carefully low cholesterol diet. Maybe they’d already gone over that stuff? More likely Doug was on something, somehow sedated whether from medication or just from having at last calmed down. Realizing the physical sensations were coming from unchecked nervous system reactions rather than damage to his heart.

  My God, I thought. He’s got to learn to be more observant too. It wasn’t the same as what I’d been going through recently, but it wasn’t totally different either. Our eyes met, and he managed a rueful smile under raised brows. Not the time to bring it up yet, I told myself. But eventually I would.

  The doctor handed me a sheath of papers and cheesy looking brochures, and instructed us to schedule his follow up appointment within the week. He gave us a big smile, genuine – well, this must be a welcome sort of emergency, I supposed. But now I could see in his face that he was done thinking about us, moving on in his day, even though he stayed in the room while Doug and I collected his stuff.

  Shuffling out into the hall, Doug muttered that they’d given him a shot of something and warned him he’d be tired the rest of the day so I’d better drive again.

  “Well, of course,” I said. “I’m so glad it’s not worse, but don’t expect to be one hundred percent right away.”

  He kept his eyes downcast until we were outside, but then looked up at me. “It was nothing. I feel like an idiot.”

  “It wasn’t nothing. The guy just said the symptoms are real even if they’re in reaction to a nonexistent threat.”

  He gave a grudging eye roll, and stood, again impassive, waiting for me to unlock the car.

  “Here, take a look at this stuff,” I said, handing him the paperwork. “Um, I have to make a quick call to Sam.” I took a quick glance at his expression – only mild mortification. “He was coming over, I wasn’t sure how long we’d be, you know.”

  “Did you call anyone else?” Doug plainly meant his kids.

  “Nope. Thought about it though.” I tried to explain how comforting it was talking to a newly mature Sam, as I clicked his number.

  Doug just said the girls being grown up made him feel old. Chalk up another conversation we’d need to continue later, I thought, greeting Sam with sincere relief in my voice.

  It was funny, where I might have expected to be hyper aware of the rest of the day, instead it zipped by. Minutes, hours passed in that same quick flowing way: I participated, said or did what was expected, then quickly lost track of what had just occurred.

  Only little snippets stuck. Doug’s visible relief at sinking into the couch again, home and reassured of his good health. Cooking together the way we did, like dancing. How quickly Sam had dashed into the kitchen, squeezing me close, then giving a boyish shrug as he wrapped his arms around Doug. Every ounce of the closeness that had grown between them over the years pouring from his posture; I had to turn away lest either of these most important people in my life see how much this moved me.

  I gently pushed Doug to at least call Zoe to tell her he was okay, though he protested that she had no reason to think otherwise. But they did know a couple people in common professionally. And besides, it struck me that he would need to take at least a bit of ownership here. Admit to stress being a problem, and who but his lawyer daughter would get that any better.

  Tucked comfortably in the living room with Sam, I could glimpse Doug as he slowly paced the hall, chatting with her. His voice had that fatherly quality that only arose when talking to one of the girls, I thought, a combination of all knowing and warm. He was minimizing – though at least not denying – the afternoon’s scare. Much less able to turn to Zoe as I had to Sam today, even though she was several years older, an adult, an attorney herself.

  “Keith still talks like that to you, doesn’t he?” I asked Sam.

  “Yeah, I guess.” He shrugged. “It’s okay though. In small doses.”

  We treated Sam like more of a grown up, I thought. Doug did anyway – something Sam had always liked about him was how he’d respected him as his own person, since they’d met. As I supposed I’d tried to do with Zoe and Heather. An advantage to not knowing one’s spouse’s kids since babyhood.

  And yet – I thought about my own parents. I was barely 30 when my father died, only 37 during Mom’s cancer and that quick and awful decline. But there had been a point, when I was in my 20s, when they started consulting me and Keith like peers. Or almost like we were superiors somehow, racing headlong into the expanding tech bubble of the mid 1990s while they quietly contemplated Dad’s retirement.

  He’d wanted us – he trusted us, or more, he trusted Keith – to make sure we started saving for retirement, and when Sam came along, for his schooling. At the same time he was flummoxed by the explosion of choices suddenly available, new types of funds and investments, the financial things we needed to know where his solid company pension and social security were presumed to be all he and Mom would need.

  All moot as it turned out, his sudden heart attack before either of them had adjusted to his even being retired. I’d been thinking in the back of my mind about my father all afternoon, I realized. Of course, how could I not, the parallels when I thought it could be happening to Doug.

  I’d only had an inkling about Dad’s death, just vague hints in one of those near waking dreams. But then again my mom hadn’t had much time to process it either, neither of us had been aware that anything was wrong. He’d been home, both of them having their typical quiet evening, when he had suddenly pitched forward, as she later described it. An ambulance had come, and she’d at least been able to go too, and sit with him, as he lay unconscious.

  They didn’t know how bad the damage was – recounting later, the doctors were sure he had ignored earlier symptoms, likely had one or more prior heart attacks already. He hadn’t ever revived; he had died before Mom even called me, early the next morning. She’d been waiting, I guess, for something definitive before s
he bothered me with any of it, or incurred the tiny expense of the call.

  They both felt unworthy, somehow. Not just then, it was something central to both of them, a meekness that must have come from the harshness of their upbringing and the things they were expected to do without. Anyway, it just wouldn’t have occurred to him to take note of his milder symptoms, to demand appointments and medications or anything but the most urgent care. And she wouldn’t have pushed him. Would have accepted whatever happened as their lot. She no doubt waited quietly and patiently for a doctor to tell them what to do, not realizing that by that point there was nothing to be done.

  I remembered taking that call early in the morning. Expecting bad news, though surprised still at its totality. How she had apologized for not calling sooner, saying she had expected – she still expected – him to wake up any minute. And I had tried to comfort her as a I could, over the phone and numb with the confirmation of a vague premonition that something was wrong. This just clinked into place, now, allowing myself to relive that moment – more evidence that my mom had been the conduit somehow, the first link in the chain to my unexplained sudden awareness.

  Why had I tucked all of that away so quickly, I asked myself now. At the time, during the intervening years, I would have said his death did not affect me very much. Not the way other people’s losses did. As for the premonition, it didn’t seem important, not compared to my busy life at home with a young child, or to my poor mother’s quiet grief.

  But tonight, just sitting here with a bit of time on my hand – with a grown son, a husband for whom I was weak with relief that he hadn’t suffered something serious, a mature person’s experience to understand that this is it, life has no dress rehearsal – I was ready and willing to take it all on. Sorrow about my parents, even after all these years. Regret of a thousand questions I had not yet thought to ask and now never could. And acceptance of my own oddities – my earlier semi-psychic connections with my mom, the subconscious reading of faces or moods or whatever it was I apparently still could do.

  I would take this stuff on, embrace it, drag Doug kicking behind me down this path and away from the drearier parts of our recent life together. My sublimation and denial of my own abilities, his extreme but yes, absolutely common level of stress. Both of our complacency in accepting middle age doldrums. We needed to turn ourselves around, face forward again, both of us.

  Doug came back into the room. His face expressed the usual optimism and amusement from having talked to Zoe, though the rest of him appeared exhausted. “Zoe’s coming up for dinner tomorrow. I couldn’t say no.”

  I smiled at him; as if he’d tried to. “You too?” I asked Sam.

  “Totally.”

  I patted the couch next to me for Doug, and Sam told him the baseball score. Doug sat carefully, then relaxed backward with the give of the soft cushion. We leaned toward each other almost simultaneously. I sat up, and wrapped an arm around him. Sam glanced away, his grin both embarrassed and appreciative – he was happy for me, for both of us.

  I took a deep, comfortable breath. Wish I could bottle the fleeting sense of comfort.

  “I’ve been thinking about my dad,” Doug muttered.

  “Me too,” I said. “Both of them. Things I missed.”

  “Yeah. He’d have had a hell of a pep talk this afternoon.” Doug’s father had been known for his loud, up-by-the-bootstraps advice. “But he got pretty stressed out too.”

  I felt him exhale, a forgiving and gentle release, and felt both of our upper bodies move in unison. The warmth, the aliveness of him, of us both. Still here despite those losses. How crazy complicated the structure of bodies is, the miracle of biology and the complex circuitry that gives us thoughts and emotions. And yet, how simple it still felt, sitting here together.