Page 11 of His Heart

4

Sebastian

February. Age eighteen.

Stayingin the hospital was going to make me lose my mind.

It had been a week since I’d collapsed at the state tournament. The doctors still didn’t know what had happened to me—at least, not why. I’d had a ventricular fibrillation, which was a fancy way of saying my heart had quit working right. Something about the electrical impulses getting jammed, so instead of the chambers of my heart squeezing to pump blood through, they’d fluttered—completely useless. By the time I’d hit the mat, I wasn’t breathing and my heart had stopped.

They told me Coach had jumped in and started CPR. The arena had an automated external defibrillator, and fortunately for me, someone had found it. Right there, on the mat where I’d just won the biggest match of my life, in front of fifteen thousand wrestling fans, my parents, and my girlfriend, they’d shocked my heart into working again.

At least enough that I hadn’t died.

After that, I’d been airlifted to the University of Iowa hospital, where I spent the night in ICU. I had no memory of any of it. All I could remember was winning, then pain, then waking up in a hospital bed with no idea what the hell had happened.

They’d run what seemed like an endless string of tests. Blood work. Chest X-rays. EKGs. Ultrasounds. Still, no one could tell me why my heart had suddenly quit working.

I was eighteen years old, in peak physical condition. The best wrestler in Iowa, a state where wrestling was everything. Clean diet. I’d never done drugs, or drank much. I hadn’t even been dehydrated. I’d had plenty of fluids after weigh-in. But for some reason, my heart had freaked the fuck out, and I’d almost died.

My parents had been here every day. Our home in Waverly was almost two hours away, so they’d been staying at a hotel nearby. The first few days, I’d been grateful to have them here. Waking up in a hospital and finding out my heart had stopped had been terrifying.

But as the days had gone by—and we still didn’t have definitive answers—my parents’ presence had become stressful more than comforting. I knew they meant well, and I couldn’t blame them for being concerned. I was their son. But the worry lines etched in my mom’s forehead seemed to get deeper every day, and my dad paced all the time. They were keeping me on edge.

Every twinge or pinch in my chest made me nervous, but I tried to keep it to myself so they didn’t worry more. But I didn’t know if my heart was going to stop again. Until the doctors could tell us why it had happened, I was half-convinced I’d go to sleep one night and never wake up.

I was scheduled for one more test that day—a procedure the doctors had said should give us the final answers we needed. Knowing I’d had a ventricular fibrillation wasn’t good enough. We needed to know why.

And apparently that meant they were going to carve off a piece of my heart muscle.

They called it a myocardial biopsy. They were going to slice a tiny hole in my neck and thread a catheter through a blood vessel until it reached my heart. It sounded fucking awful, but if that’s what they had to do to find out what was wrong with me, I’d deal with it.

“How you doing there, Seb?” Dad asked. His arms were crossed and he stood near the door.

“Okay.” I glanced at Mom. She sat in a chair near the head of my bed. I hated seeing her so upset. But she’d watched her son collapse. His heart fail. That wasn’t the kind of thing a mom could brush off.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Mom, look at me. I’ll get this over with, and pretty soon they’ll tell us nothing is wrong and we can quit worrying.”

She met my eyes and I could tell she wanted to believe me. But she didn’t.

“Are you sure you’re not in any pain?” she asked.

“Nope,” I said. “Not at all.”

Dr. Senter, one of the cardiologists, came in and explained the procedure again. I nodded along as she spoke, but I already knew what to expect. My parents asked a few questions and next thing I knew, I was rolling down the hallway to a procedure room.

Bright lights blazed above me, and there was a lot of equipment—something that looked like a camera and a bunch of monitors.

“Hi, Sebastian,” one of the doctors said with a calm smile. She lowered the bed so I was lying flat. “I’m going to give you a mild sedative to help you relax, but it won’t put you to sleep.”

“Not too much of it,” I said. “I don’t like the way that stuff makes me feel.”

She raised her eyebrows at me. “You’re a big guy. And we need you to stay still. This might burn a little.”

The sedative flowed into the IV and a mild burning sensation spread through my hand. I focused on a spot on the ceiling, taking deep breaths to stay calm. In seconds, the sedative took effect. My limbs felt too heavy to move and my head swam. I blinked slowly at the ceiling, still staring at the same spot.

Activity swirled around me. I was half-aware of the doctor speaking, equipment being moved and adjusted. The needle stung my neck when they injected the local anesthetic, but I was too sleepy to worry about it.

“Okay, Sebastian, we’re going to get started now,” someone said. “Lie as still as you can.”

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