I've had enough ER for now

She was standing at the counter eating hummus and pita bread. Her shorts and tank top were soaked and salty.  She didn’t want to sit down because that would stink up the chair cushions and she was going to be showering any second anyhow.  When the phone rang, she glanced quickly at the number. She considered letting the answering machine deal with this, because the number wasn’t familiar. She wasn’t in the mood to talk with a telemarketer, and she badly needed a shower.  Then the word “hospital” flashed onto the digital screen. She picked up. 

It was her mother, her voice soft, enunciation perfect. 

A chill went down her spine. She inhaled deeply. She’d heard this tone just once before. “You are at the ER with dad? Okay. I will be there in 15 minutes. I will see you soon.” Her own voice matched her mother’s, a bright song.  It sounded like they were planning to meet for cocktails. 

Yum. Cocktails.

She hung up the phone and her legs started shaking, so to quiet them she moved fast. To the bathroom first to wet a towel to sop up what sweat she could, then to the bedroom for a quick change of clothes.  She wondered if she would regret taking the time to wash up and change. What might she miss? What was really going on in that ER with her father – her father the healthier one of the two, her father the caretaker. 

Though her mother had said that everything was fine, should she believe her? Why had her mother ended the call with “Ah. very good. That will be lovely,” rather than, “Oh don’t rush it’s really nothing?”

She always made a point of driving slightly below the speed limit on the city streets she was now plowing through. There were often lots of runners on these roads. She always felt it her duty to keep them safe. Screw that, she thought now. She was riding the bumper of a gold Corolla going ten miles below the speed limit. “Will you fucking move?” she said. She enunciated clearly. It’s what her mother would want. 

She thought of all the times drivers had ridden on her bumper and sometimes even given her the finger. She’d watch them in her rearview mirror and feel just a tiny bit superior. Now she wondered if those drivers were dealing with life and death situations. She wondered if that’s what she was headed toward. 

It had been 19 years since the last time her mother had used that tone of voice with her. It was a Sunday evening in early April, at dinnertime. She was waitressing at the Italian place. The owner, a young mustached guy who didn’t pronounce his suffixes properly and who never used the letter r, called her to the phone at the bar. Sundays were always busy. That day was no exception. She had a full station. Every seat was taken. He looked pissed.  

A pretty typical Sunday night at the restaurant.

She mouthed sorry and put the receiver to her ear. It was her mother, that strange, softly enunciated version, telling her she should probably come to the hospital when she had a few minutes because her father seemed to be having a little heart thing.   

I got off the phone and faced my boss. He was much bigger than me and had a deep voice and I was still dependent on waitressing to pay the mortgage. I was afraid of many things back then. I was afraid of big men. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to feed my kids. I was afraid I would lose my house. Up until then though, losing my father was not one of my fears. 

“If you don’t mind, I think I need to leave soon. Two of my tables are done and the other two are eating. If you don’t mind I’d like to leave when they finish. I’m so sorry.” I explained what my mother had said. He told me to leave right then and to not worry about it.  His kindness frightened me more than the phone call from my mother.   

It took just a few minutes to get to the hospital. I found my mother standing in a hallway, staring into a glass-walled room where a bunch of doctors and nurses were sticking wires into my father’s arms and legs. My father was having a massive heart attack. They’d given him a clot buster to unplug his arteries and get his heart pumping again. The clot buster wasn’t working. We stood there and watched as my father was dying.  

In the car now, I wondered again if I would regret taking the time to change out of my gym clothes. I muttered Hail Marys and Our Fathers and as I entered the garage couldn’t help but notice that the hills, Grafton and Vernon, where my mother and father had grown up, were right in front of me. The landscape of my family’s history was laid out before me. It was comforting. 

Nineteen years ago, seventy percent of my father’s heart died. But thirty percent lived and therefore so did my dad.

Still, we all knew he was living on borrowed time. Thirty percent is not much. We always knew that one day what was left of his heart would stop. He was always upfront about it. He always wanted us prepared. He’d be the first to tell you that every single one of those days since his heart first died, (it died a few more times in those ensuing weeks in intensive care - getting him stabilized was a miracle), every single second of every day, has been a gift.  It’s a cliché, I know. It’s a paragraph of clichés. But it’s true and it works here. It stays. 

It turns out, so does my dad. 

There were no doctors and nurses around my dad when I found him in the ER. My mother was not separated from him and watching from behind a glass wall.  The two of them were sitting there calmly, she in a straight-backed chair, he in a hospital bed. Both were complaining about how so much of life lately has been spent waiting in hospitals.  My father was connected to one monitor, just one. It showed his pacemaker-assisted heart beating an athletic 60 beats per minute. His blood pressure was low and his oxygen was fine. 

His heart only has a certain, finite amount of beats left. I guess that’s true for all of us, but for him it’s truer. There will be a time soon when it will get so worn out it will tire and stop. But for now, it goes on. The problem today is that the pacemaker stopped working, not my dad. 

As part of the ER protocol, an intern came in and asked my dad’s wishes. This was at the beginning of last night, when we were waiting for test results, when we still weren’t completely certain. We still thought that perhaps it was his heart saying good-bye. The intern came in then and asked my dad if he would want to be revived if his heart should stop.

 

I held my breath and waited. I know what I wanted my dad to say. I wanted him to say yes please let me live. But it’s his life. His choice. Two decades ago, he chose life. But he didn’t have arthritis then. He hadn’t lost so many friends. His skin didn’t bruise and bloody then at just the slightest hint of contact with walls and bandages. There are doctor’s visits every three months now, and sometimes more than that. I worried if my dad, now nearing 84, had had a change of heart.

My dad used to be an elementary school principal. He knew how to give a look that would shake a misbehaving kid to his pencil-stealing test-cheating core. My dad was quiet for a moment. He appeared to be studying the young man, this pup new enough to be a grandson. He narrowed his eyes. His mouth was grim.  Then one edge pulled up ever so slightly. 

I smiled a little because I recognized it.  It was the look; the white hot scary look that every kid at Lakeview School had known and dreaded. The one two certain little trouble-making girls on View St. had run from many, many times. His voice was a growl, his enunciation as muddy as the dirt brown fields of Grafton Hill in March: “If there’s any hope at all, of course revive me. I want to live.”

 That’s how he said it nineteen years ago too. 

They called it the Paris of the 80s. We called it home.