And then the flat line grew a single blip. It went flat for another second or two and then two more blips occurred. After that, they kicked into gear, blipping one after another in a regular pattern. Matt felt the drain of consciousness reverse and energy came flowing back into him. The pain in his chest faded off and disappeared. He took in a few breaths and never had the air tasted so good.
The medic let out a great exhalation of breath. “All right,” he said. “You’ve converted back to a sinus rhythm at ninety-two.”
“It worked?” Matt asked carefully.
“It worked,” the medic assured him. “That was a little bit of a butt-pucker moment there, wasn’t it?”
“Imagine it from my end,” Matt told him.
“Good point,” the medic said. “That first couple of seconds after cardioversion seems to take an hour. I just pushed the reset button on your heart. It necessarily stops for a bit after I do that.”
“Yeah,” Matt said. “It hurt like a motherfucker when you did that shit, but seeing myself in a flatline was worse.”
“I think you’re going to be all right now,” the medic said. He turned back to his partner. “Let’s get another BP.”
“I’m on it,” she said.
She pumped up the cuff and took her reading. She smiled as she recited it to the medic. “One thirty-eight over seventy-six.”
The medic gave a thumbs up and then looked down at Matt. “Let’s get you to the hospital, Matt.”
“Do I have to?” Matt asked. “I feel a lot better now.”
“Yeah, you have to,” the medic told him. “I don’t know that you’re not going to go back into SVT at any second. And if I were to release-at-scene someone I had cardioverted, they would take my paramedic card and use it to start the fire at the base of the stake they tied to me.”
“All right,” Matt said. “I’ll go, but I have a show to do tomorrow in Dallas.”
“I don’t think you’re going to make that show,” the medic said.
“The fuck I’m not,” Matt told him. “The show must go on.”
They took him to the emergency room of Houston Methodist Hospital, which was both the closest facility to the arena and, according to paramedic, the best cardiac center in eastern Texas. He was treated well there, brought immediately to a room where he was hooked to dozens of wires, tubes, and other doodads. The medic had started an IV on him on the way in, but the nurses started another one anyway. They drew blood from him, had him piss into a bottle so they could send it to the lab, and ran some IV fluids into him, which made him have to piss every ten minutes or so.
Through it all, Matt continued to feel pretty good. True, his chest and flank hurt as if he’d been sunburned badly in those regions, but otherwise he felt the best he’d felt all day. He was well enough to even try picking up on one of his nurses—a hot looking brunette with a thick southern accent who smiled and teased back at him, but shot down every advance he made with the skill of a long-term gunner.
The emergency room physician assigned to his case was Dr. Goldstein, a late thirties guy who looked like about the squarest motherfucker Matt had met since Nerdly himself, but a guy who knew his shit.
“I have to say,” Goldstein told him once the tests were all back, “that you actually tested positive for every single thing we check for on our urine toxicology screen.”
“Yeah?” Matt asked.
“Yeah,” the doc told him. “Cocaine, marijuana, opioids, and amphetamines. That is quite impressive.”
Matt shrugged. “I don’t do opioids normally,” he told him. “The medic lit me up with some morphine on the way in though.”
“Yes, of course,” Goldstein said. “And the cocaine and the amphetamines?”
“Well, I don’t normally use meth either,” he said. “It’s kind of raunchy for my tastes, you know what I’m saying?”
“I really don’t,” the doctor told him.
“Anyway, I think the meth might be what triggered this whole fuckin’ thing. You see, I was kind of tired from the bus ride yesterday and the coke wasn’t really doing it for me like it normally does, so one of the roadies set me up with a couple lines of their meth to get me in the mood for New Year’s Eve.” He shrugged. “I guess that was a mistake. I ain’t doing any of that shit anymore.”
“I would hope not,” Goldstein said. “What about the cocaine use?”
“What about it?” Matt asked.
The doctor blinked. “You use it a lot, do you?”
“Oh, fuck yeah,” Matt said. “Like every day, dude. It’s the elixir of life out on the road. I don’t use it before a show, of course, but after the show, when they roll the groupies on back and they start slurping on some schlong, that’s when the coke feels the best.”
“I ... uh ... I see,” Goldstein said slowly. “Well ... I think maybe you might want to stop doing that in light of what happened to your heart today.”
“Stop having groupies suck my schlong?” Matt asked. “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”
“Uh ... no, not the groupies thing,” Goldstein said, “although I think I’ll suggest that Dr. Fator add a standardized STD panel to your admit labs. What I was referring to was the cocaine use.”
“Stop doing coke?” Matt asked. “Fuck that! You and that medic both seem to think that it was the blow that did this to me. It can’t be the blow, doc. I’ve been doing that shit for years and nothing like this has ever happened before. It has to be that meth. That’s the only thing that was really different.”
“Uh ... Mr. Tisdale...”
“Matt,” Matt told him. “Call me Matt, doc.”
“Matt,” he said. “Just because cocaine has not caused these symptoms in the past, does not mean it wasn’t the primary cause of them today. Damage done by stimulants—methamphetamine and cocaine both—is cumulative, not immediate. You say you’ve been using cocaine for a number of years?”
“Well, I first tried it when I was about fifteen, I think, but I didn’t start using it like really regularly until Intemperance hit the big time. That was back in eighty-two.”
“Then we’re talking about nine years of heavy, daily cocaine use?”
“Well ... not exactly daily, per se, but ... yeah, for the most part, that’s an accurate statement.”
“Nine years of heavy cocaine use is quite enough to cause cumulative damage to the heart conduction system and lead to the dangerous rhythm you displayed today. I understand you’re a smoker as well?”
“Yeah, a pack a day or so,” Matt admitted.
“That factors into the damage as well,” Goldstein said. “And I couldn’t help but notice that your liver enzymes were quite high despite the fact that you did not have any measurable alcohol in your system when you came in.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means your liver is quite unhappy with you, and it probably has been for some time. The usual reason for this is alcohol abuse. How much do you drink, Matt?”
“As much as I can,” Matt assured him.
“So ... you drink every day?”
“Pretty much, although never before a show.”
“Of course not,” Goldstein said. “And if you don’t drink, do you get shaky, or tremors in your hands, or anything like that?”
Matt shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never go long enough without drinking to find out.”
“I see,” the doctor said. “Well, I’m going to be honest with you, Matt. You’re thirty-three years old and you have the body of someone fifteen years older. If you keep living the way you are right now, it is doubtful that you will see your fortieth birthday.”
Matt shrugged again. “That’s the same shit they told Keith Richards and look at that motherfucker. I’ll tell you what I’ll do though, doc. No more meth for me. That’s a promise.”