Faery Land
1. Now, I’m Disney
The bear’s eyes are green. Jim’s are almost black, dark little beads. The ER, Wednesday morning. Jim’s on his way home. Me, too. Jim doesn’t say what brought him here. Me, it was the usual: my troubling heart. Or maybe just its echo. Distant now from the heart attack that nearly did me in, I still feel the ghost. “Phantom pain,” they say. Slicing down my left arm, straight through the hand. “Just a little PTSD,” guessed the attending who came to visit my hospital bed at 2 a.m. The ache in my sternum made him wonder. Spreading between my shoulders like a cold hand. “You did the right thing,” said the doctor. He meant calling; he meant coming in, after the kids were asleep, so they wouldn’t notice me gone. “Don’t take chances,” he said. “Given your history.” But chances, not history, are what we’re given. That which we receive, if we’re willing.
Awake, 3 a.m., 4 a.m., my eyes resting on the curtain between my bed and the hall, grateful for the softened light, like a sunrise not yet arrived.
Sixteen hours. Electrodes, blood draws, IVs, X-rays, treadmills, ultrasound, oxygen tubing wrapped around my ears, nitro hot beneath my tongue. What remains? “Phantom pain.” Or maybe it’s real. The nurse-practitioner considers. “It’s hard to say.” She—“we,” the all realize that word, , it’s a gamble. A good bet. Excellent odds. It’s a confidence game. Take it with you, when you leave.
