Heart Attack, Yak, Yak: Life, Laughter and My Cardiac Arrest

By Jef R. Huntsman

This is a work of non-fiction, as perceived by the electrical and chemical exchanges within my brain. However, in a few instances, the haze of those things partially erased certain details of a memory, making a nurses name, exact features, or the exact content of a conversation elude me. In writing about those memories, I have taken a few liberties, as opposed to leaving them out, for which I hope the reader will find understanding. That being said, the bulk of the book is non-fiction. I have been as accurate as any heart patient can be when shackled with pain meds, beta-blockers, LDL-lowering capsules, stents, by-pass surgery, the twenty-four hour circus of the emergency room, EKGs , and a mosaic of other heart-healthy devices. I have also double checked my facts to correct the occasional misfiring which may have occurred in my skull, researching medical records and checking with others to verify my recollections.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 29, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483628752

Jef R. Huntsman

The author, Jef Huntsman, had a heart attack at 48 years-old. The attack came with little warning and changed his life physically and mentally. He was in the middle of going through his fourteen year old sons chemotherapy and cross country hospitalization at the time. Throughout his life Jef rarely visited a doctors clinic and had never been in a hospital except to visit friends and family. In this book he uses his sense of humor and view of the absurdities of the world to portray a patient’s journey through the rigors of our own feeble yet, courageous humanity. It is a memoir of a ten plus year journey of the author’s ups and downs of cardiac life. Jef Huntsman has written three previous books, Frenzy is about growing up in the sixties a time revolution and free love, and Survival among sharks a book about how to deal with salespeople, and Jammin, which follows two boys on a ten day wild ride. Heart Attack, Yak, Yak is the first book the author felt was well written enough to publish. Jef is now working on a new book about the trials of his son’s brain tumor.

Book preview

Chapter 1

My body was lethargic, disoriented, and pathetically weak as I urinated orange into the institutional, stainless-steel bowl. Heart disease had rendered me incapable of much more than functions devoid of thought. I was wearing a face of reddish gray-rubber attached precariously to skull. My thoughts were muddled and murky with synapses in wandering waves of frayed edges. I was bewildered, my mind fading in and out on rusty hinges.

I began coming out of the low blood pressure haze. I had full-focus eyes on the surprising color flowing forcefully from my manhood. Of course, that might be disputed by some. I was fascinated and confused at the deep, dark orange. It was as though I had drunk an Apollo amount of Tang—unusual, orange with a hint of red. I watched intently for the color to change to standard yellow. Any shade would do. Standing immobile, I dripped the last couple of orange drops and zipped up. I didn’t notice if the lid was up or down. Did I bull’s-eye it or had my aim returned to childhood meandering? I had little clue.

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My body was exhausted and dull. I robotically did an about-face, washed my hands, and turned the faucet off. My thoughts knew just enough to share this orange problem. The pee was disconcerting. I needed evidence, so I didn’t flush. My mind wavered between knowing and not quite sure. I took a minute to figure out where I was and why I was there. I never completely resolved the dilemma. A short time of adept focusing had taken me longer than necessary as I stared at the door like a lost drunk, inebriated from a faulty heart, not a bottle of fine wine.

The door was heavy wood. Pushing with strength I barely had, I entered the noise and smells and brightness of the ER. As I took a step forward, my wife, Diana, appeared at my side. Like warm vapor, I felt her presence before she grabbed my elbow and guided me towards my curtain. I don’t know if I needed her help, but it felt good and right.

I licked my lips to speak. It’s all orange, dark orange.

She had a bewildered look; her brow scrunched and then relaxed. Your face? No, your face is gray. You look… . She paused, softly pinching her arm. What’s wrong?

Nooooo, my urine, it made the toilet orange.

Orange? It was a question, but she pronounced it slow, emphasizing each letter, the way one talks to someone from another country who is not speaking our language. And, louder, because obviously, if it’s louder, I would understand it better. She was trying to make me understand the absurdity of what I had said. Things were backwards. An orange toilet? You are having hallucinations now? She dipped her head and scrunched the skin between her eyes with the last two words of her question.

Go look. It’s like the fruit, only darker. I had a heart attack. I’m dizzy, disoriented, and I walk slowly. But, my mind is fine. I peed orange. It doesn’t seem… good. I knew my mind was hazy, but I’d seen exactly what I said I’d seen. I wasn’t sure if the gown they gave me was open in the back, though I held on to enough reality to understand that I wasn’t sure. My focus was slow and methodical, and hesitated at instances, trying to catch up, but I knew reality from fantasy. At least, I was seventy-five percent sure.

Ok… ok? Let’s get back to the bed, she whispered, trying to sooth me, as I was guided back to my gurney with an elbow hold one uses for getting children back to their beds.

The nurse waited with other-things-to-do tolerance, hands on hips, a perfect, but comfortable posture. A tech waited to her right, at attention, appearing to count tiles on the ceiling.

That is not a bed, I protested weakly, pointing to the narrow mattress with rails and electronic buttons and wheels the size of a Frisbee.

Halfway there, I stopped, trying to recall if I had washed my hands, listening to faucet sounds and towel movement within my mind. I turned to Diana saying, I can’t remember if I washed my hands. Stop for a minute, I need to catch my breath, my head’s spinning. ADHD and illness were bouncing me all over the place.

Diana recognized my dilemma, Your hands are still holding the paper towel. We stopped while my breath caught up and my heart rate lowered. It didn’t take long.

Oh, yea. Here. I handed her the wadded paper. Relieved, I began the forward approach.

I was lucid one minute and not the next. I needed to lie down. This heart problem was incredibly frustrating. I wanted my old heart back. I needed the one from my college years.

I seemed to have developed a whole new set of autonomic functions. Walking back to my gurney was autonomic. My head swirled as though gravity had separated my cells, floating in a grouping, like bees. Autonomic Jef bees, controlled by my nervous system, just like my heart and glands.

I tried to exert a fleeting amount of personality, smiling at the nurse waiting at my ER space. The curtains, the machines, the gurney, they all seemed inviting in an absurd, sanitary way.

Just take your time, said the lean lady with a stethoscope hanging as a broken necklace around her slight neck. The nurse was thin, young and tanned hard like an overcooked, bronze string bean. Her arms and neck were all gristle and cords. The neck cords going out to bony shoulders that poked out, even through her flowered, operating-room scrubs. The arms were more of an anatomy lesson with small, firm muscle attached at a protruding, bulbous elbow. Her face was kind and wind worn, reminding me of a picture of a hundred-year-old Navajo I had once seen. She had thick dark hair, braided down her back, and well-plucked eyebrows. Pale red lipstick curved in a smile that was surprisingly comforting.

Logic told me the distance to my designated bed was ten feet; however, my eyes viewed it as so far away. It was a perspective drawing, with a nurse at the end of a tunnel, and the curtain leading into infinity.

This is me walking fast. You don’t have to wait up. I surprised myself by joking.

You’re doing fine, pale red lipstick encouraged.

I looked at my feet, sliding and pausing, sliding and pausing. So, this is fine?

After the trauma your heart went through, yes.

Crawling onto the ER bed with lethargic motion, I reclined to my preset head elevation and took a much needed, strong breath. Then another. I felt much better. The nurse hooked me back up to all the necessary beeping, buzzing, and inflatable cuff machines. The doctor arrived.

My new, and only, cardio doctor appeared to be in his early forties, with happy, yet concerned eyes, and a learned brow. Thick brown hair curled downward, covering his upper ears. It was neither combed, nor out of place, but plainly natural and flowing, like a well-watered thick shrub. Stubby fingers connected to athletic arms and a slightly softened torso. He had no Band-Aids or scars on his fingers. I took that as a positive sign. The things that distinguished him as a doctor were a name tag, take-charge manner, and the stethoscope draped around his neck. Oh, and that noble, caretaking stance.

Lying in my curtained bedroom, I explained to both him and the nurse my concern and amazement over my new pee color. I told them I hadn’t flushed. I assured them I did wash my hands (I assumed they were as concerned as I had been about that part). I told them that orange had never come out of me before, and it didn’t seem right. I didn’t want to pee again until it was fixed. The medical staff only wanted to check my heart. I pushed the mis-colored urine to a point where I believe I may have had them wondering if my heart had leaked orange into my bladder. I believe they started to almost wonder if it were true.

My wife, the cardiologist, and the nurse left to check out the offending color. They all came back agreeing it wasn’t normal. They all agreed it was deep orange. A decision was made by my doctor; the color had nothing to do with my heart. He referred to it as, not a problem, but, he would have someone from the urology clinic visit me.

So not only was I getting a cardiologist, I was to see a urology specialist. My body was a puzzle with pieces falling apart under minimal resistance. These thoughts did nothing for my dwindling ego.

Dr. Edwards, my cardiologist, tried having me put nitroglycerine under my tongue. It was supposed to help ease the pain. It did not. I did get light-headed from it, though.

They would later give me morphine, after realizing my teeth were clasped in a grinding lock of misery. Morphine made me more nauseated, while my pain level seemed to still hover above ten. I preferred the pain. At this point, they were under the misconception that the tiny nitro pill would relieve my clamped jaw.

I was weak but suddenly alert. The talk of the orange situation had brought me out of my cardiac stupor. I looked at Dr. Edwards. So orange is not a problem, but, it is abnormal, right? At least he’d agreed it was orange, and that orange was not normal. I truly needed some type of agreement on that. The heart thing wasn’t as blatant as my personal dye job on the toilet.

Your heart condition is the immediate difficulty, said Dr. Edwards. Let us work on that, and you just rest.

I had a heart attack at forty-eight years, my urine is orange, this is the first time I have ever been a patient in a hospital, and I’m somehow supposed to rest?

My doctor could tell what I was thinking. He patted my forearm. I know this is a lot to take in, but your heart needs you to relax for it to recover, he said sternly, in that no-nonsense tone doctors use.

I’m not going home tonight? Am I? I questioned foolishly, knowing I was right, while hoping I’d had something simple like a tooth ache or a pulled tendon.

Not likely. His firm voice was tinged with a touch of humor, as if I’d made a joke. They’re going to run some tests, and I will check back periodically. Don’t worry so much about the orange urine. Your heart is primary. Anything else, we will look at after we have more information on your heart. Does that sound ok?

Fine, but if my pee is orange, what color is my blood? I said, trying to nod my head pompously, which only made me lightheaded and sick to my stomach. I thought, It’s hard to be a smart ass and so damn sick at the same time.

Jef, just relax and keep your head down on the pillow, Diana said, in an attempt to curb my incessant push at humor.

That’s another thing. This isn’t a pillow. It deflates where I lie and billows where I’m not.

Diana looked at me, took in a soft breath, and said, Do you want me to get another pillow?

No. I’m just not very good at being sick. I haven’t had a lot of practice. Give me some time and more meds, I’ll mellow out.

Dr. Edwards walked away without answering about the color of my blood. I guess it was rhetorical, though deep in my mind, I didn’t think so. He held an amused look on his face as he glanced back.

The entire time Dr. Edwards talked to me, he held my shoulder, and he looked directly into my eyes. I had just met him, but I trusted him. He didn’t give me false promises. He described facts as he knew them. He took time to answer my questions. He laughed at my sarcasm. Dr. Edwards had the ability to convey genuine concern, even after years of patients. I had only seen that in a few of the physicians I had worked with during my college years as a scrub tech at the University Medical Center. Most of the interns had it, but they lost that deep human concern after a few years of handling the sick and afflicted. Dr. Edwards was one of those rare, immediate friends, where rapport exists after a brief conversation. Yes, I trusted my new doctor very much.

I lay back on the ER gurney. My upper body was elevated about thirty degrees. My head was engulfed in a pillow that ballooned around my ears. I was suddenly satiated with tiredness and anxiety, falling in and out of sleep, as a parade of insertions, proddings, and x-rays began, which would continue for hours, flowing through my curtain wall.

I blinked a few times. I was still in the ER suffering through unacceptable orange pee and a heart thrown out of whack by clogged arteries.

I was in a big room with all the other off-the-street cases. I hadn’t been checked enough to be admitted to my own room yet. It was only a nurse’s promise. My hospital stay was still in the beginning stage. I had hardly even been mistreated by the normal routine, yet. There was still a lot to unfold, a lot of skin to be poked, a lot of chest hair to lose from EKG adhesive pads, an abundance of pharmaceuticals to ingest, and surgery quotas to fulfill.

I lay back on my three inches of foam, sheltered within black cleanable vinyl. Over the black vinyl is a hospital-white, corner-fitted sheet. I was almost resting, but my mind wandered and thought about absurdities and inconveniences. My heart attack was the biggest inconvenience. It was something hard to hold, inspect, and understand. The heart attack gave birth to other inconveniences, IV hookups, the unsurety of my body being inspected and probed, dizziness, being taken care of like some small infant, and the new heart gurgling that I felt in my chest. Being immobile was one of the hardest inconveniences of all.

I couldn’t sleep on this fume-laden, antiseptic-smelling sheet. I kept thinking about it being washed hundreds of times in caustic chemicals which relieved it of blood and urine, sweat and skin cells, Betadyne and drool, and other varied forms of human suffering and illness. This single sheet had probably had burn patients, cancer patients, motorcycle trauma patients, fungus—infested patients, broken arm patients, child patients with hair lice and runny noses, patients with bladder retention problems, elderly patients sucking hard on their last breaths, and birthing mothers. All forms of human frailty and economic status had laid their sweaty backs on those rewashed sheets. Groans of pain had been imbedded in the fabric. My logical mind wanted to believe my brighter-than-white, clean sheet was sterile, but the reality of use made me want to levitate just above the white covered mattress. Here was one more thing to keep me awkwardly stirred up, far from relaxed. Hopefully, fatigue would win over my traveling mind, and my eyes could close without being haunted by years of imagined sheet stains. Though, as I looked a little closer, I noticed a couple of faded, gray spots that I wasn’t too sure about. I slid a few inches away from them and tried to look at something else.

I drifted into negative-land, a place of depression and dark, rainy nights. I forced my mind to wander to happier thoughts. I envisioned a field of clowns and balloons. Bad sheets were replaced by picnics in a well-trimmed forest. I remembered the smiles and laughter of my children when they were young, running through lawn sprinklers on a warm day. I was engulfed within dreams of river rafting under a hot summer sky, and walking on mosaic-tiled floors, stunned by the beauty of ancient Italian art, displayed below high, curved ceilings. I thought of my first date with my wonderful, blonde, intelligent wife. I worked hard at my imagined fantasy, but the overcast kept coming back. Those two gray spots somehow kept creeping into every happy vision I brought up.

I closed my eyes and tried to relax. I listened to my breathing. Relaxation happened in spurts and sputters. Reality kept my senses on alert. Each inconsequential noise pulled me toward it.

As most patients know, hospitals are not a place of rest. Even the name the medical staff uses, patient, suggests waiting and a lack of involvement on your part. New hospitals are designed with several floors, each containing a series of small rooms with adjustable beds, where one has a TV, a remote to change channels, a call button to summon people on a whim, three meals served in bed, and even bed pans to take away any self esteem you may have had, as if walking four steps to your personal bathroom takes too much effort. Everything is set up so that an individual never has to get out of bed. You are there to wait.

In the next few days I would learn more about hospitals and patient care than I ever wanted. Hospitals, in actuality, are kind of similar to vacations. They’re places where one would hope to relax. There are schedules and business papers to sign, and personnel swooping like scavenger birds, picking at your carcass, and then flying away, horrid sights that keep your mind rolling frantically.

Hospitals are forced recuperation, certainly not restful. There are pills to take and interns to enlighten. Nurses waking you up, to make sure you are sleeping. Machines continuously beeping and humming. Others that spit out paper and go whoosh-whoosh. Floor polishers spinning on a hard surface, and laughter, and crying in the distance. Mops whishing and metal pans filling up with all sorts of vile liquids from within places of the human body. Ladies with heels, celebrating the sound of Clydesdales on a corrugated tin roof. Visitors with obnoxious loud voices, telling hospital stories patients do not want to hear.

And those interrogation lights flipped on and off, and on and off, to check this, that, and the other. Also, there’s always that one light that’s on twenty-four/seven, with the hidden switch, making complete darkness an option only in your dreams.

Just when your eyelids start to drop, and your body is at the edge of rest, visitors show up with balloons and carnival acts. They say, You look terrible. And, How do you feel? They turn on the television because they’re bored, and they sit on the edge of your bed to comfort you. Visitors accidently pull tubes that are adhesively attached to red skin and short hairs. Visitors stay too long and bring in food you can’t eat. I have coronary artery disease; could you please bring me a super-size order of fries, dripping with foul, perfidious fat? I think sarcastically. They put pollinating plants all around the bed, so your allergies are provoked and you wonder if you’re already at your funeral. If you are lucky enough to finally fall asleep, you’ll invariably wake up with everyone whispering in a soft roar. They obtrude their thoughts of related and irrelevant illnesses and medical care, until you wish you had the strength to put a closed fist to their jabbering jaws.

The times I was not feeling well, visitors were an annoyance. When most of the pain subsided, I enjoyed their visits. They were heartwarming and encouraging. Most of my appreciation of visitors came after I left the hospital. During my hospital incarceration, I was medicated enough, and filled with enough anxiety, to just want to be left alone. In better health, my visitors were anointed saints. I have a split personality on the subject of guests.

This was my first visit, but I was learning quickly that rest and relaxation weren’t happening. As I tried following my doctor’s advice, I couldn’t help thinking, I need to get out of here, go home, and close the bedroom door. It is no mystery why your own bed is paradise after being discharged. I have wondered if all those distractions are the reason patients need sleeping pills and pain medication in the hospital.

Chapter 2

I pulled myself from a deep, hollow place. Bits of warmth embraced me, even though hospital smells and a hospital sunset surrounded me.

I glanced at my wife with a devious smile, to see if she shared my thoughts of hospital hurry and wait. She was staring off in the direction of a collapsing saline bag, dripping through tubes into a taped-over vein of my neighbor’s arm. She was lost in another zone… in the place I’d just visited, and had barely returned from, the intimate, overwhelming darkness.

She had that tight-lipped, raised forehead look on her face of the unknown answer. I could see questions rotating around behind her eyes. Is he ok? How bad? Am I going to be a young widow? What are the chances? Will this happen again? There were a hundred more questions, circulating neural synapses, traveling in an arc of destruction, like machine gun fire. All of them just as deadly. The queries were growing exponentially as her forehead crinkled with the bursting list of the unanswered. I saw it breaking her things-are-ok façade as thoughts rotated and rolled with the rhythm of stampeding buffalo.

I worried about her. She looked emotionally drained. I realized my whole physical being was how she looked. I was wilted. I started to drift into exhaustion. Then, as my body floated away on a give-in-to-tiredness wave, the hospital parade began, with the noise of clanking wheels and abundant, energetic youth pushing machines our way. We were both back with crippled vigor. Our attitude tasted sour. Our tongues were dry and lifeless. A gulp of air and I watched their arrival.

A pretty blonde, three weeks past a bleach job needed to remove her dark center stripe, came bubbling in. All smiles and dimples, with her tray of vials and a master-of-the-obvious statement, I’m here to put in an IV and draw some blood.

My eyes met hers with slits of annoyance. I had given enough blood to make Dracula undo a belt buckle. I thought about the corny response, Well, where are your pencil and paper? Instead, I rolled up my hospital gown in a gesture of willingness, saying, Ok, you get one try.

She looked at my arm, tapped it a few times and smiled. With those veins, one try is all it should take.

I am quite thin for a heart patient so my blue veins are like road maps. I weigh one hundred and sixty-five pounds, stand at five foot eight inches, and have few fat creases, though they are becoming more abundant above the belt. I inherited a faulty heart and a thin purposeful smile from loving parents.

You have just become my favorite blood-taking person, but remember the supply is limited. After a pause of silence, I said, You know, in college, I used to sell that for pen and beer money.

And, which did you buy more of? she asked, with full dimples and a smirk.

You are quick. Actually, I received the pens from my Mom.

My veins lacquered with alcohol, she inserted the needle with a steady, skillful poke. I grimaced, but didn’t need to. After flushing the tube and connecting all the plastic parts, the IV line was taped down with skill and quick wrists. One at a time blood rushed eagerly into various top-colored vials. She ran the gizmo over the pull-out tab on my blue wrist band. With hospitals working on balance sheets, I would be billed for this bloodletting within the hour. She labeled each vial with my name, patient number, and insurance information. My blood was packed and off to the lab.

She stopped five feet away, turned around and motioned with her forehead down to the vials. You know, I’m not paying you for this. Her eyes smiled deliberately. She smacked her lips with a light touch of fingertips. Her blonde hair flipped with a sudden jerk of her head. She turned and left.

My face turned to my wife, Yeah, I’m supplying the pen and beer money now.

Next, a portable x-ray machine was driven in with a humming sound by a balding technician. It made jerky, quick movements, like Janet Jackson dancing. It came to an mmmm… mrrrrtt stop, after banging the IV stand and the corner of the gurney. The x-ray machine looked crane like, though bulky and without the grace. The top bobbed in sporadic movements, as the technician maneuvered the head of the metal bird over my chest. He placed an uncomfortable square plate behind my back, repositioning it several times to find the exact spot that produced barely tolerable pain for me, the patient. He pressed on my shoulders, making sure the x-ray plate was hard against my sore back. I grinned, as though I was enjoying all of it. He put a protective vest over his blue shirt, and asked my wife to step out for a moment, so she wouldn’t absorb the rays. I started to wonder why the sickly patients bombarded with x-rays were not protected, LIKE THE HEALTHY PEOPLE. I asked.

There was little comfort gained in hearing, It’s just a small dose. Never enough to harm you, coming from the protected tech.

Then why is everyone else hiding behind barriers, as though grenades are being tossed?

I was ignored, as he exchanged one hard plate for another behind my back. He knew I was too sedate and ill to fight the madness of the x-ray.

So we can know the situation, he mumbled absently. I did know that if I was healthy, I would want to be behind the barrier with a lead vest, helmet, and safety goggles. The technician could stand in front of me, deflecting or absorbing any particles that made it through the barrier. I made a mental note to be healthy the next time I entered a hospital. Good advice.

After the machine made a lot of mmmmmm mmmmmm noises, folded itself up, and drove away, Diana was back, holding my hand. Holding my sweaty fingers and clammy hand. She must actually love me, to hold a palm so offensive. I told her I felt much better now that I had lain on a stiff, square plate and been bombarded with invisible particles everyone else was hiding from.

Diana assured me with a soft, almost scolding, You’re going to be fine.

I responded, Do I have a different color? I feel as though I should be glowing florescent green, or have patchy, purple blotches on my skin. I glanced around for a mirror, with no luck. Be straight with me, what color am I? I proceeded to turn my arms, rotating from the elbow, as though looking for color changes. I held them out to her for inspection.

Don’t worry, Diana said. Once you take a shower, I’m sure it will wash right off. If it doesn’t, I’m sure we can find shirts that match.

Real funny. No, I mean it! What color? I feel very different. I held one leg out, shaking it, imitating a seizure.

Playing used up too much energy. I inhaled deeply to alleviate the dizziness. My stupid heart couldn’t even take joking around without kicking me a bit.

With a deep breath, Diana responded with sarcasm, You are the color of absurdity, and you wear it well.

Then, in a whispery voice, she leaned down, kissing my forehead. You doing ok?

My speech was slightly frustrated and breathy. I’d rather have an éclair.

Her soft voice rose an octave, backing away from my forehead. They said you couldn’t even have a drink of water. I’m no physician, but I assume an éclair is out of the question.

As long as they don’t make me lie on that garden brick again.

The soft voice came close to my ear again, with the inflection of a smile. You’re silly!

That’s what draining me of all those vials of blood does. That and lying on this stupid bed in a room full of sick people.

I was losing energy again and fading. A heart attack is a silly thing, I slurred. I began falling into the type of sleep where you hear voices and movement, but resist answering or moving. The strength just wasn’t there. I was worn to frayed fibers. The exterior whisperings quit making sense. I tumbled down the path to dreamland. It had a blank screen.

Later, my wife told me I slept a full thirty-five minutes before the next round of machines, and techs, and nurses. Thank God for other patients! It was a busy day in the ER. I welcomed other people getting attention, or abuse, depending on your point of view. Others were sick, too. Bother them. Test them. Drain their fluids. Let me have my moment of peace.

My drape was partly open now. I could see other patients, instead of just hearing groans and loud eeeeees. I began noticing real people, with looks of concern, and fright, or indifference. We were all under the spell of being ill and violated. We were all somewhat whole before our hospital adventures. Something happened to each one of us to deprive us of that. We ended up here, with our curtain privacy, arms attached to tubes and needles. Yesterday was better for all of us. Yesterday, we saw basketball games, or drove children to dance lessons, or had ice cream cones. Today, we were using our health insurance. If we had a choice, we would all go back to yesterday.

The insurance industry would prefer yesterday as well, I presume. Their charts were changing and premiums expanding, as more of us crowded for our places in the ER They sat back in those tall glass offices, with hair-pulling worry about the bottom line. The stockholders were grumbling. Paper prices were rising. Secretaries wanted more days off, and salespeople demanded better commissions. And we lay, restless, waiting for expensive tests and overpriced rooms.

I perused the ER with my eyes, my neck held firmly in place by an abundance of pillows built of air and very little stuffing. Almost-pillows, I would call them. If you bunched five together, perhaps a real pillow would emerge. I looked out at my companions in pain. Complaisant, yet worried faces glanced back, then quickly turned, so I wouldn’t know they were looking. I stared on.

Fear was in the air, so thick one could scoop it up in a cupped hand. It darkened eyes and brought tears that wouldn’t wipe away. It quivered slowly down spines. It thickened breathing and held fast, like a foreign object grasping each gut. It was the binding we all shared. It was the thing we could all have done without.

Across from my space was a husky girl, probably eighteen, with blood on her arm and the front of her blouse. She was crying in spurts, with her head rocking back and forth. A man in a Raider’s t-shirt held her good arm and consoled the top of her head as it swayed. The eyes of fear and pain glanced at me without change, without focus. Earlier I had overheard the words, compound fracture and decided the reference must be to her. A young doctor was cleaning her wounds with large q-tips and a plastic bowl of something, presumably sterile, and definitely lime green. Not my thought of a color for sterility. I would think blue or maybe light purple, or maybe those are just the popsicles I enjoy. Some days it’s hard to separate the two.

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Next to me, I could see the feet of an older man, a curtain, and a gray-haired head. The curtain obscured my view of the rest of him. His feet