Page 49 of Alarm Fatigue

“I am having a heart attack?” This cannot be happening.

“I am going to repeat your EKG now but you appear to having an acute cardiac event afterall. Mark, can you step back so we can get a repeat EKG?”

I can tell Mark wants to do anything but step back but instead he moves out of the way and a nurse comes in with a second IV and while a tech quickly attaches my monitor leads to the EKG machine. Another nurse reads back orders as Dr. Murray adds aspirin and a beta blocker. Someone else appears with the medications for me to take.

Dr. Murray grabs the EKG and looks at it with raised eye brows. He sighs and looks at me. “You have ST elevations in the inferior leads. When was the last time you ate, Rachel?”

“Um. Dinner.” I look at Mark, to confirm the time because I am in shock and cannot be bothered.

“We finished eating around 8 pm. She had a half a glass of wine after that. Rachel, did you eat at home?”

“No,” I almost laugh, “I thought I had heartburn.”

Gabriella is opening Lu crying and one of the nurses goes to hug her. I hear the page overhead, “Code Heart in the ER now, Code Heart in the ER now,” as Dr. Murray is going through the mechanics of consenting me for a catheterization of my heart. They are prepping to wheel me away and Gavi kisses my cheeks and hugs me hard. Then Mark is there.

“Dr. Levy, we have to go.”

Without a word he grabs my face and kisses me hard. “I love you, Rachel. See you soon.” The next moment, I am being wheeled down the same ramp that Eli went down. But that was to the OR. He was unstable. I am going to the Cath lab. I am stable, I reassure myself.

I still cannot believe this is happening, right up until they put me to sleep.

Chapter 30

I open my eyes and I am happy to do so. I say a prayer of gratitude to God for restoring my soul to this body and for all my working body parts. I always loved those two prayers but to say they have a new meaning would be the understatement of my life. I run through all that I have to be thankful for. I look over and see Mark asleep on the pull-out sofa. That first night, after my procedure, my girls all insisted on staying, forcing Mark into the call room. I heard from one of the nurses that he came out and checked on us about every hour the whole night. I feel a little pang in my chest this morning at the thought of this. The pang, which is expected, is nothing like the pressure and difficulty with breathing I had when I had the heart attack, so I relax in that knowledge.

It is then that I see Amalie appear in the window of the door to my hospital room. She comes straight to me with a quick glance at Mark’s sleeping figure near the window.

I smile at Amalie. “Hello, my sister.”

She answers back in the rhyme that was our childhood greeting, “From another mister.” Then she adds, “You want to tell me what the hell happened?” She had left town the morning after our dinner and had just come back on the first available flight after her meeting in Atlanta.

“Of course. First tell me what you know.”

“You had a fucking heart attack.”

I give her a weak smile. She must be terrified if she is busting out all the swears. She sits beside me and I take her hand. “First of all I am going to be fine.”

“Thank you for telling me that first.”

I smile more broadly. “Years of practice in giving people news they do not want to hear. So you know how sometimes I panic and cannot breathe? Well this time, I actually could not breathe and so I panicked. For once, it was not all in my head. I woke up because I had nightmare which we now think was likely induced by the heart attack causing shortness of breath, and so my panic was like an atypical chest pain. Does that make sense?”

“Sure, except for the part where you are too young and you run miles every week—yes, that makes sense.” She tightens her grip on my hand.

“I only needed a stent in one heart vessel. And I have a fairly long list of medicines now. And I have to be cleared by my cardiologist before I can run again, which will drive me nuts.”

Amalie’s eyes fill with tears. “As long as you are okay. Oh and mom and pop are coming. No way I could stop them either.”

My heart fills with that. “I will be happy to see them and so will all their surrogate grandchildren and their great-grand babies.” After a beat I add, “And they will get to meet Mark.”

Amalie seems to relax a little. She glances over at the sleeping figure. “How is that going, by the way? I mean besides being continuously dramatic.”

“Aside from the fact that it is like sharing a room with a grizzly bear that has sworn to vanquish all of my enemies, accidental or otherwise? I mean he is as crabby as ever and he scares the hell out of the daytime nurses—he has not left my side Ami.” We both look over at him. “Don’t worry by the way, he sleeps with ear plugs. He knows he will not miss anything important because the nurses are afraid not to wake him up. He doesn’t yell at anyone or anything. He just looks ferocious. He occasionally growls. Most of the night nurses know him well enough to not take any shit from him. But the day nurses wait on me hand and foot to stay on his good side.” Amalie is laughing quietly at my description.

“Seriously though, he really is showing up in a big way isn’t he?”

“He only leaves my side to shower and get better kosher food from the outside world.”

“My word.” She looks around my room. “I like your artwork. The girls?”

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