Just Like Heaven

by Barbara Bretton

“Never.” She cleared her throat. “Absolutely never.”

  “I’m going to take your pulse again.”

  Again?

  “It was over a hundred when I checked your carotid artery. That’s not great.”

  Not every Deadhead could use “carotid artery” in a sentence with such ease. Was it possible he actually knew what he was doing?

  “No thanks.” But she wouldn’t mind an extra-strength Advil. Her shoulder. Her back. Her hand. Even her teeth hurt from the fall. Her left jaw was actually throbbing.

  “I’m a licensed EMT.” He pulled some cards from his pocket and she pretended to examine them, but the truth was she couldn’t focus on the text. “Fifteen years’ experience. New Hampshire and New Jersey.”

  “This really isn’t necessary,” she said. Or at least that was what she tried to say. She was having trouble following the conversation and even more trouble synching her thoughts with her words.

  “Do me a favor and lie down. You look like you’re going to pass out again.”

  She wanted to protest, but suddenly the thought of lying flat on her back in the middle of the Princeton Promenade parking lot sounded like the best idea she’d ever had. He opened a newspaper wide and spread it down on the ground beneath her head, but the combined smells of pickled ginger, motor oil, and chewed-up bubble gum seeped through and made her retch.

  He placed two fingers on the pulse point in her inner wrist and monitored the second hand on his watch. “One twenty. Any nausea?”

  She nodded. You felt queasy in the car. Maybe you should tell him that.

  “Any underlying medical conditions that might have some bearing on this?”

  She was perfectly healthy. Why couldn’t he see that for himself?

  “Are you on any medication?”

  “Vitamins.”

  “Are you in pain?” The man was relentless.

  “Not—not exactly pain.”

  “Discomfort?”

  Oh God. Even through the fog swirling around her, she could see where this was going. “Yes.” Admit it, French: you’re in big trouble.

  “Where?”

  “My back.”

  “Sharp pain?”

  “Not sharp . . . pressure.” Three words and she was totally wiped out. What was happening to her?

  “Okay. I’m not trying to worry you but we need to call nine-one-one.” He pulled a cell phone from his back pocket and punched in the numbers.

  The band around her chest tightened and she broke into a sweat.

  “. . . Yes, I’ll stay here with her . . . thanks.” He jammed the phone back into his pocket. “You’re probably right. I’ll bet it’s nothing too but I know you’ll feel a lot better if you hear that from a doctor and not some guy in a Dead shirt.”

  She wanted to laugh at his joke, but all she could manage was a quick smile. She was sweating. How could that be? She wanted to say, “This isn’t really me,” but that required more energy than she could muster up. He wiped her forehead with the back of his hand, and she almost wept from the gentleness of the action. “Heart attack?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he said. “There’s a good chance that’s what it is.”

  “Lie to me,” she managed. “I don’t mind.” She tried to force another laugh, but the iron band around her rib cage wouldn’t let her.

  He didn’t pull his punches, but the deep compassion in his eyes made her feel safe.

  “It could be indigestion, a panic attack, a sprained muscle. But if it is your heart, we need to get help sooner rather than later.”

  “Are you sure you’re not a—”

  She was going to say “doctor,” but the pain exploded and it blew everything else away. Deep crushing pain from the center of her body that stripped her of her identity, her memories, her future, stripped her of everything but bone-deep terror.

  “Oh God . . . oh God . . .” Was she saying it or just thinking it? She didn’t know. She felt as if she were floating above the parking lot like a helium balloon on a very fragile string.

  He leaned closer. She could feel his warm breath against her cheek. “What is it? Do you want to say a prayer? Is that what you’re saying?”

  No . . . no . . . make it stop . . .

  “Stay with me.” His voice flew at her on the loud rush of wind inside her head. “I’m not going to let you go.”

  Don’t let go . . . don’t let me go . . . I’m scared . . . this is really happening . . . oh God . . . Gwynnie . . . I’ve got to see Gwynnie . . . I have to tell her I love her . . . I don’t even know your name and you’re the one who’ll have to tell my daughter . . .

  “The ambulance is on its way . . . you’re going to be fine . . . just hold on a little longer . . . I’ll stay with you . . .”

  I can’t hold on . . . I want to but I can’t . . . don’t let me go . . . don’t let me go . . .

  “Talk to me . . . come on . . . look at me . . . open your eyes and look at me . . . grab my hand and hang on . . . I’m not going to let you go . . .”

  Somewhere in some other universe he took her hand and held tight, but it was too late. His words were the last ones she heard.

  Two

  He knew the moment it happened. The spark that made her all that she was went out. The ambulance was still a good six or seven minutes away. She didn’t have six minutes. The window of opportunity was shrinking with every second.

  “Come on!” he urged her. “Don’t leave us now!”

  She wasn’t breathing. That rapid pulse was still.

  “What’s going on?” A woman with two kids paused to look.

  “She passed out,” he said as he stretched her flat and tilted her chin up. This wasn’t the time for full disclosure.

  “What’s up?” A man leaned out of his open car window to look.

  “He says she passed out,” the woman said.

  “Does he know what he’s doing?”

  The woman with the kids moved closer. “Do you know what you’re doing?” she asked.

  “CPR,” he said as he cleared the airway. “I’m trained.”

  “Is she sick?” another voice from behind. “Want me to call somebody?”

  He cleared the redhead’s airway and tried to block out everything but the task at hand.

  “What’s he doing?” a man asked. “Did anyone call the cops?”

  “She’s having a heart attack. The ambulance is coming.”

  “Who are you?” the first voice demanded again. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  They were all talking at once and the voices got tangled in the wind and the birdsong and the low roar of cars moving along Route 1 while the red-haired woman drifted farther out of reach.

  Focus, he told himself.

  In the far distance he heard a siren.

  Block everything else out and focus.

  He checked her carotid artery for a pulse. There was no sign of respiration.

  A surge of anger filled his chest. This wasn’t her time. He knew it in his bones. Nothing happened without a reason. God had put them in this place at this moment and it was up to him to take it from there.

  He filled his lungs, tilted her head back, pinched her nose, and then slowly blew air into her open mouth and watched her chest slowly rise.

  He waited a second, refilled his lungs, and then did it again.

  Still nothing.

  The sound of the siren grew closer.

  He placed the flats of his hands on her chest and pushed down hard and fast.

  Onetwothreefourfivesixseveneightnineten . . .

  “You’re hurting her!” A shrill voice pierced his concentration.

  “He knows what he’s doing.” A different voice, also nearby.

  Nothing. Still no pulse. No respiration.

  He tilted her head back, pinched her nose shut, and then tried to breathe life into her still body, once, then twice.

  Again he placed his hands on her chest. Her bones felt delicate and breakable. She would have bruises
when this was over. He positioned his hands and pushed down quickly again and again and again. “Come on . . . come on . . . I’m not going to let you go . . . work with me . . . breathe . . . you can do it . . . breathe!”

  The commentary around him didn’t let up.

  “That’s not how you do it.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  “She moved! I saw her arm move!”

  ... eleventwelvethirteenfourteen . . . fifteensixteen-seventeen . . .

  The sound was harsh, rasping, the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. She was breathing on her own. Her pulse was shallow but it was there, and he sent up a prayer of gratitude. Her lips were moving, but he couldn’t make out what she was saying. It didn’t matter. She was still with him.

  “You’re going to be okay,” he said as the ambulance screeched to a halt a few feet away from them. “Help is here.”

  Their eyes locked. He started to say more, but realized his words didn’t matter. She was looking straight through to his heart. He took her hand and she clung to him, and for a moment nothing else in the world mattered.

  “So what have we got here?” a tall female responder asked. The name Emily was embroidered across her breast pocket.

  “Possible heart attack,” Mark said. “She stopped breathing and I did CPR.”

  “Good thinking. How long was she gone?”

  “Ten seconds. No more than that.”

  Emily bent down over the red-haired woman. “I’m Emily and that’s Bill over there. We’re here to make you comfortable. Are you in pain?”

  Her hazel eyes fluttered closed then open again.

  “I’ll take that as a yes. Can you tell me your name?”

  She tried but couldn’t. Her grip on Mark’s hand tightened. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and he could sense that she was slipping away again. Her hands were long and slender. Her nails were painted a pale pinkish ivory color. Her only jewelry was a man’s round-faced watch with a black leather strap. Emily reached for the small shoulder purse slung across the red-haired woman’s body, opened it, and looked inside.

  “Good. She has a wallet. Admissions can check for ID.”

  Emily pushed back the crowd of onlookers. Bill pulled a stretcher from the ambulance and wheeled it over. The two technicians quickly lifted the red-haired woman onto it and rushed her back to the ambulance.

  “You can’t go with us,” Emily said to him. She was a physically intimidating woman. He had no doubt she’d use force if she had to.

  “I’m not leaving.” Not with the red-haired woman’s hand gripping his. Not with her hazel eyes fixed on him as if he were all that stood between her and the great unknowable.

  “I promised I’d stay with her,” he said.

  “Are you related?”

  He shook his head.

  “Sorry. You can follow if you want.”

  “I’m staying with her,” he said, then pulled out his own ID and flashed it. This was a promise he didn’t intend to break.

  Emily looked at it and shrugged.

  “I guess we can make an exception,” Bill said, looking over Emily’s shoulder.

  It was a tight fit inside the ambulance. Bill climbed back behind the wheel and Mark tried to stay out of Emily’s way as she affixed the leads to the red-haired woman’s chest and legs. They were going to attach a twelve-lead EKG that would transmit information straight to the ER via cell phone so they could take her to the best facility.

  “Shit.” Emily checked her monitors.

  Fear turned his blood to ice. “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t get a good connection. We’ll have to take her straight to St. Francis and let them sort it out.” She shook her head in disgust and reached for the receiver attached to the side wall. “The connection’s down . . . We’re bringing her in . . . female . . . thirty-five . . . breathing on her own . . . pulse one twenty-two . . . respiration seventy-eight . . . BP ninety-eight over fifty-two . . . complained of chest and back pain, nausea before she passed out . . . passerby administered CPR after she stopped breathing . . . We’re four minutes out . . . okay . . . will do.”

  A light film of sweat covered the red-haired woman’s face. Her beautiful hazel eyes were wide with fear and pain.

  Emily opened a packet and popped out a pill. “Chew this.” She forced the white tablet between the woman’s lips. “It’s aspirin. It won’t hinder further treatment.”

  The red-haired woman looked up at him and he nodded. He felt ridiculously happy when she started to chew. He wondered if she understood what was going on or if she was running on autopilot. It had been a long time since he had been this important to anyone. Not even to himself.

  “We’re almost there,” he said to her, his mouth pressed close to her ear. “They’ll run an EKG, check your blood gases . . . you don’t have to worry . . . it’s all going to be okay.”

  This wasn’t the place for the truth. He didn’t know if she would be okay. This was the real world, a place where unspeakable things happened to people who deserved so much better. You had to hold on to something bigger than yourself, a belief in something that could make sense out of chaos.

  If he could give her that much, he would be happy.

  She was trying to say something, clearly frustrated by her inability to make herself understood. He leaned closer still, but he couldn’t make out her words. The oxygen mask hissed softly. A lock of auburn hair lay across her cheek, silky and cool to the touch, and he gently tucked the strands behind her ear. She smelled of spring. He didn’t want to know that.

  She pressed on his hand and looked past him. He turned around and saw the metal box resting on a jump seat. “That’s yours, right?” Again the closed/open movement of her eyelids. “I’ll make sure it stays with you.”

  The ambulance wheeled into the driveway at St. Francis and braked to a stop at the entrance to the ER. The back doors swung open and the woman was swept away from him on a wave of urgency. She cried out, whether from surprise or pain he didn’t know. He grabbed the metal box and ran after her but was turned away at the door.

  “Patients only,” the burly security guard said. “Use the entrance around the corner.”

  “Look, can’t you make an exception? I promised I’d stay with her. She’ll—”

  “She’s not going anywhere. Use the other entrance.”

  He ran full out to the corner and then realized it was the wrong corner. He doubled back, maneuvered around a pair of ambulances, turned the other corner, and waited for the automatic doors to open into an empty hallway posted with signs for the cafeteria, radiology, physical therapy, and emergency. He wound his way through a labyrinth of corridors with offshoots leading deeper into the interior of the hospital. He flagged down an intern, who assured him he was running in the right direction.

  He passed the turnoff for radiology and had just cleared the door to physical therapy when he heard his name.

  “Mark? Mark! Hey, man, I thought that was you.”

  He looked over his shoulder. Jacob Margolies, one of his neighbors, was grinning up at him from his wheelchair, fresh from physical therapy.

  “Jake, I’m in a rush. Can we catch up later?”

  “Is everything all right? You don’t look—”

  He loved Jake like a brother, but he didn’t have time. He barreled around the corner, down the straightaway, and burst into the waiting area to the emergency suite.

  “How can I help you?” A pleasant-looking woman in a security guard uniform sat at a plain beige desk. She slid a sign-in sheet toward Mark.

  “I’m looking for someone . . . a woman, cardiac . . . They just brought her in by ambulance.”

  “Name?”

  “Mark Kerry.”

  A small smile. “Her name, sir.”

  “I don’t know.” He quickly explained the situation.

  The guard checked her computer screen. “I’m not showing any female cardiac patients admitte
d this morning.”

  “They took her in the back way. It was just a couple minutes ago.”

  “It would still be on the screen, sir.”

  “Can I go back there and look?”

  “Let me see what I can find out.” She lifted a pale-green receiver and pressed a series of buttons. “I’m looking for a female cardiac . . . just admitted . . . thanks.” She looked up at Mark. “She’s gone.”

  His head emptied of everything but despair.

  “Oh God, I’m sorry.” The guard touched his hand. “I don’t mean gone that way. They moved her to another hospital.”

  Relief almost brought him to his knees. “Where?”

  “Oops.” She picked up the phone and dialed again. “The cardiac transfer, where did they take her . . . Well, where is Jen . . . She would know . . . So you didn’t log her in . . . Okay . . . Thanks anyway.”

  He didn’t need a translator. “You don’t understand. I’ve got to find her.” I made a promise. I said I wouldn’t let her go. “I’m holding something of hers. It should be checked in with her belongings.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to tell you, sir. She’s not here, so I guess you’ll have to hang on to it. I’m sure you’ll find her.”

  But he knew life didn’t work that way. Sometimes people slipped through your fingers and you couldn’t bring them back no matter how hard you tried.

  Kate’s hospital room—four days later

  They all said it was a miracle, that God had been watching over her, and Kate supposed there was some truth to that. A complete stranger had stepped out of his own life long enough to save hers. Even she had to admit there was an element of the miraculous at work.

  She remembered accidentally swiping a parking spot from a guy in a pale-blue car and then the next thing she knew she was in the CCU wondering what all the fuss was about. Something life-changing had happened between those two events and she wished she could remember what it was.

  “The details will come back to you,” Dr. Lombardi had said to her. “You’ve been through a traumatic experience. Just give it time.”

  But the thing was she wanted to know now. The story of a Good Samaritan in a Grateful Dead T-shirt who had performed CPR in the parking lot of the Princeton Promenade was attaining the status of suburban legend. A rescue squad worker told a receptionist who told another rescue squad worker who told the admitting clerk who told the emergency room nurse who told Dr. Lombardi who told her.