At once, another nurse replaced her. “Can you stand?”
“Don’t know.”
“Try. I have to get you onto the table.”
She gripped his arms and helped him to his feet. Wobbling, he leaned his hips against the table and settled backward. She raised a metal bar on each side of the table to keep him from rolling off.
A male resident came in, closing a curtain.
“Pulse is ninety,” the nurse said.
“Not critical.”
“No, listen to me.” David felt as if a ten-pound rock had been set on his chest. “I tried to explain upstairs.” He squirmed from the humming pain behind his ears. “I’m a runner. My heart rate’s low. It’s normally sixty.”
“Blood pressure-one hundred and forty over ninety.”
The resident shrugged as if to say “not critical” again.
“You don’t understand.” David shivered. “It should be a hundred and fifteen over seventy-five. It’s never… God, that curtain.”
The resident frowned and turned toward the privacy curtain. “What’s wrong with-?”
The curtain was decorated with blue wavy lines. David’s mind not only spun now but wavered in imitation of those lines. Sickened, he closed his eyes again but still saw the wavy lines. His breath was so rapid he felt he’d just run several miles. The top of his head seemed to bulge.
“I’m going to…”
Faint?
Die?
Toppling toward his kitchen floor.
Floating toward the radiant doorway.
Fireflies gleaming.
(Behind his eyes?)
Power chords throbbing.
(In his head?)
Then?
Now?
Later?
“What’s happening to me?”
“That’s what we want to find out.”
The nurse unbuttoned David’s shirt. The resident pressed pads against David’s chest. Squinting, David saw that the pads were attached to wires that led to an EKG machine on a cart.
The resident flipped a switch on the EKG. Needles wavered, making inky marks on paper.
The paper rolled from the machine. The resident tore off a sheet and studied it.
“Yes, I found the problem. Here. And another one. Here. And here. Extra blips. Your heart. There’s something wrong with-”
“Let me see it,” David gasped.
“What?”
“Let me see it.”
David reached for the printout. The effort to focus his eyes was agonizing. “No, that’s… not what’s wrong with me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Those blips… normal for me.”
“Normal?”
“My EKG…”
“Relax.”
“Always looks like this.”
The resident frowned. “Have you had medical training?”
“No.”
“In that case…”
“But I’ve always had a”-David grabbed the sides of the table as it started swirling-“right…”
“I don’t understand.”
“Right… bundle.” David struggled to complete his statement. “Right bundle branch block.”
The nurse and the resident stared at each other.
“Right bundle branch block?” The resident seemed astonished, as if he’d never expected a patient to speak to him in technical medical phrases.
In contrast with David’s certainty about the septic shock that would soon kill his son-have to save him!-there was nothing mysterious about his present medical knowledge. The phenomenon in his heart had been explained to him years before. The heart is a pump, and like any other pump, it needs an energy source, “electricity” produced by the body. Nerves, like wires, control the flow of energy, and under normal circumstances, this energy flows smoothly from chamber to chamber, stimulating the heart to take in and push out blood.
But in David’s case, a cluster of nerves, a “bundle branch,” on the right side of his heart had deteriorated. Energy impulses, which usually flowed in an orderly fashion, had been interrupted and forced to redirect themselves along another branch of nerves, taking longer to reach the right side of his heart. On a printout from an EKG machine, this redirection of energy produced an extra blip within an otherwise normal heart wave pattern.
The blip was not alarming, as long as you knew what it meant, and David’s condition wasn’t considered lethal. For twenty years, he’d run an average of four miles every day, and even though he was foolishly a smoker, he could finish that run and never be out of breath. So whatever was wrong with him, he was sure that the bundle branch block hadn’t caused it.
But something was wrong. Without a doubt. Pausing often to gasp for air, he described his symptoms.
Tingling.
Shivering.
Sweating.
Rapid heartbeat.
Rapid breathing.
Pressure on his chest.
Humming behind his ears.
Swelling in his head.
And swirling.
Terrible swirling.
David thought, If you had these symptoms, what would you guess was going wrong? A heart attack? You bet that’s what you’d guess. No, never mind guess. We’re talking fear.
“Okay, the extra blips match what you’re telling me,” the resident said. “A right bundle branch block.”
“Then what”-David’s chest heaved, both his lungs and heart-“is wrong with…?”
“We’ll do more tests. Hang on. We’re trying, Mr. Morrell. We’ll do everything we can to find out.”
The nurse inspected David’s right arm. “His central vein’s good and thick.” She stuck an intravenous needle into the vein and extracted blood.
David felt too disoriented to feel the prick of the needle.
“Get lab tests as soon as possible,” the resident said.
The nurse rushed away.
7
And just then Sarie walked in.
Beautiful wonderful Sarie.
As when David had seen-too weak a word-witnessed Donna in the Bone Marrow Ward (after three hours of having been away or else half a lifetime), David’s soul swelled with love. Again, as when he’d seen Donna upstairs, he had the eerie sense of a triple image: of Sarie as a smooth-faced infant, of the glowing twenty-one-year-old she now was, of the haggard woman who wept beside his deathbed.
I’m going crazy, David thought. That’s what’s wrong. I’m not sick. I’m nuts.
And yet…
And yet…
Why am I so sure of when and how Matt’ll die?
Sarie’s blue-eyed, blond glow of young adulthood was dimmed with shock. “I just got out of class. I went up to visit Matt. Mom told me…”
“Yeah.” Despite his rushing heart, David did his best to grin. “Mom told you… I’ve got a few problems.”
Sarie clutched his hand. “She said you wanted her to stay with Matt, so I came down to see…”
“I’m glad you did.” The pressure in his head swelled, making him grimace. “It’s good to have you with me.”
Someone brushed past the curtain, entering the room. A woman. Not a nurse. She didn’t wear a gown but slacks and a blazer. “… neurologist,” she finished explaining. “I understand you collapsed an hour ago.”
An hour ago? David would have sworn he’d been in the Emergency Ward for less than ten minutes.
“What are your symptoms?” the neurologist asked.
For a second time, David described them. Tingling… rapid… pressure… swelling… dizzy… humming…
The resident enumerated David’s vital statistics.
The neurologist frowned. “They’re not consistent with a heart attack.
David turned to Sarie. “Matt?”
“He can hardly move. His girlfriend called. He didn’t have the strength to talk to her.”
It’s starting, David thought. The infection’s building. I’m seven floors below him. I can barely move, but I’m the only one who can save him.
“Grip my hands,” the neurologist said.
“What?”
“Grip my hands.”
David obeyed.
“Squeeze them as hard as you can.”