The ambulance headed to the hospital with lights and sirens on. The remaining firemen climbed into their engine and drove off behind it to pick up their crewmember. That left Nina and I alone at the house. She was scared, as scared as anyone I'd ever seen before.
"Bill," She asked me. "Is he going to be all right?"
"I hope so." I told her, wiping a tear from her eye. "Why don't you go get dressed and we'll drive down there?"
She nodded and rushed into the house.
We arrived at the hospital and found Mrs. Blackmore in the waiting room amid a full house of sick, injured, and others that were waiting their turn to be seen. She was sitting bolt upright in one of the plastic chairs, wringing her hands together nervously, ignoring the babble of conversation and the wall-mounted television that was pumping out a mindless sitcom.
"Mom?" Nina said, grabbing the seat next to her. "Have you heard anything? Is he okay?"
Mrs. Blackmore looked at her for a second and then at me. She swallowed and then hugged her daughter briefly. "No." She said. "They put me in here as soon as we got here. Nobody's been back to talk to me yet."
"Did anything happen on the way in?" I asked her.
She looked at me, wanting to be offended by my presence with her family on this occasion but she simply couldn't muster the will to do it. "No." She shook her head. "The paramedic gave him some sort of injection about halfway here, but nothing else happened."
I nodded, heartened by the news that he'd hung in there on the trip. We waited, speaking little to each other.
It was about ten minutes before a doctor came out to speak with Mrs. Blackmore. Again, he was no one I recognized although I had learned to know all of the ER docs in my time as a paramedic. At some point he would probably move on to other things. I only hoped he was competent at what he did. Some weren't.
He invited Nina's Mom back to a private consultation room. Nina stood and went with her. After a moment's hesitation I did too. Nobody offered protest to this. We all took seats in a tastefully decorated room with several comfortable chairs, a couch, and a telephone. Again my knowledge of how things worked in the ER told me a lot. The absence of the hospital chaplain bespoke the fact that Mr. Blackmore was still hanging in there.
"Your husband has suffered a very significant myocardial infarction." The doctor explained once we were settled in. "In layman's terms, that is a heart attack."
"Will he be okay?" Mrs. Blackmore asked, wiping her eyes with a tissue from the box near the telephone.
"It's too early to tell." He said. "But the fact that he was brought to us so early in the process is encouraging."
"What do you mean?" She wanted to know, encouraged by the word "encouraging".
"Well," He explained. "A heart attack is basically a clot that has become lodged in the coronary arteries, these are the arteries that feed the heart, blocking the blood flow and therefore the oxygen. If nothing is done about it, then the tissue that is deprived of oxygen will die in a few hours and will never again be able to help pump blood. I must tell you that in an attack of this size, if something like that were to happen, your husband's chances of surviving more than a month or two would seriously be in question. He would most likely develop congestive heart failure.
"But since he got to us shortly after the onset of symptoms there are things we can do to get rid of the clot."
"There are?" She asked.
"Yes." He nodded. "There is a procedure known as cardiac catheterization. What we do is send him to a room in the hospital where a cardiologist will insert a catheter, a thin sheath, into one of his veins. We will thread this all the way to the coronary arteries and then inflate a small balloon in the catheter with air. This will push out the obstruction, returning blood flow to the tissue that is deprived. Now the science is inexact, and there will still be some damage to the heart, but it will be much less than what it would have been."
"So he'll be okay?" She asked hopefully.
"With a little luck," He said, "Your husband will be able to resume a normal life in a few months. He might require a bypass operation to divert flow around the compromised arteries, but yes, if this is successful, he'll probably be all right."
"When do you start?" She asked.
"He's on his way to the cath lab right now. He'll undergo the procedure in less than an hour. This is what will happen…"
He then went into a dry, sterile description of the anesthesia procedure and the recovery problems. It took about twenty minutes. But I'd already learned what I needed to know. In all likelihood, Mr. Blackmore would be all right. Though in my when there were other means to clear a clot, namely medications that actually dissolved it, the cardiac cath was a tried and true procedure.
As he droned on I found myself wondering just what had happened to Mr. Blackmore in my previous life. He had gone to the hospital this day at my insistence, because of my intervention. Did that happen before? I didn't know the outcome of Nina's father when I knew her before because we were never close, obviously. But instinctively I felt that he'd probably died at home that night or shortly after. Was fate being thwarted again? Or was an inevitable realignment in the works?
We moved up to the cath lab waiting room on the second floor. This waiting room was smaller, though still equipped with a television and phone. It was also empty except for Nina, her mother, and myself. We sat together in a row of chairs, Nina between Mrs. Blackmore and myself. We didn't talk. Every once in a while I would receive a strange glance from Mary Blackmore as if she was wondering why I, someone who was only after one thing, was still there. Did I think I was going to ruin her daughter's virtue that night?
After an hour or so I excused myself and found the hospital cafeteria, returning with cups of coffee, which I distributed.
"Thank you." Mrs. Blackmore said, taking it from my hand.
"No cream, one sugar." I said. "Just the way you like it."
She looked at me puzzled, suspicious. "How did you know that?"
I smiled. "Nina told me." I answered. "She takes it the same way."
She nodded thoughtfully and we continued to wait.
Shortly after our coffee was consumed a doctor entered the waiting room. He was dressed in surgical scrubs and his hair was mussed from the sterile cap he'd just been wearing. Everyone tensed up. Again, the absence of the chaplain spoke volumes before a word was even said.
"We think we cleared the obstruction." He told us. "Mr. Blackmore is in the recovery room now. He's doing fine."
He spoke a lot more. He told us that they had discovered a large amount of occlusion in Mr. Blackmore's coronary arteries during the angiogram that had been done prior to the catheterization. Was he in the habit of eating high cholesterol food? He was? Well that was probably what had started it. He said that he would be transferred to the hospital where I worked the next day and, if he continued to recover well, would undergo a triple bypass operation. That, in addition to a change of diet, would probably take care of the problem.
By the time the doctor left we were all feeling better. Nina came over to my chair and gave me a hug, a tight, squeezing hug of gratitude. Her mother watched this impassively, not saying anything.
"Thank you Bill." Nina told me when she released me. "You saved Daddy's life."
"I don't know about that." I said modestly. "I just helped him see what he needed to do. I'm glad he'll be okay."
"You saved him Bill." Nina repeated. "And I'll never forget that." She turned to her mother. "Don't you think you owe Bill a thank you Mom?" She asked sharply.
"Nina, I…" I started.
"Hush." Nina told me, continuing to stare at her Mom. "Mom?"