Chapter 12

The paramedic and the EMT that showed up were both strangers to me. Probably they were people that had worked briefly in the field and then had gone onto other things; the fire department, the police department, nursing, medical school. They came in the door shortly after the fire engine crew had barged in. I was glad to see that the paramedic took Mr. Blackmore's condition as seriously as I did. I stood back and said nothing, feeling confidant he was in good hands.

While the paramedic went through the routine questioning, questions I was very familiar with, his partner hooked up the EKG machine. It was an older model of the device, a model I was unfamiliar with since it had been replaced long before my debut in the medical field, but the display was the same. I saw the rapid complexes of his normal heartbeat intermixed with frequent premature complexes; beats that were not perfusing much blood, beats that were the telltale sign of a very irritated heart. Worse still was the fact that sometimes Mr. Blackmore would have fifteen to twenty of these premature beats in a row. This was known as ventricular tachycardia, or V-tach, in medical circles and it was very dangerous. It was, in fact, only a step above complete cardiac shutdown.

The paramedic, a young, blonde man whose hair was probably a little longer than was allowed, saw the display and tightened up almost imperceptively. He glanced at his partner for a moment and a look was passed between them; a look that the ordinary citizen would not have even noticed but which I was well versed in. It was a look that said holy shit!

"Set me up an IV," the paramedic told his partner calmly, as if this was a perfectly normal request. It wasn't. Usually IV's were not started on scene.

"Right," his partner agreed, going for their medical box.

"Put him on high flow oxygen," the paramedic told one of the firemen.

He went mechanically about the task of installing the IV line into Mr. Blackmore, speaking soothing words to him the whole time, telling him what he was going to be doing. On the other arm a fireman was taking his blood pressure. He shouted out the reading when he had it.

"Ninety-four over forty," he said.

The paramedic digested this, chewing on his lip thoughtfully for a second. That was not the greatest blood pressure in the world in relation to a cardiac event. Finally he plugged in the IV and taped it down.

He injected some lidocaine into the IV port and watched the display on the EKG. The lidocaine was supposed to numb the heart a little, making it less irritable and less likely to throw premature beats, go into V-tach, or, worst of all, go into fibrillation. The runs of V-tach slowed a little, becoming less frequent and shorter in duration when they did come. Not the best thing in the world but better. Hopefully it would be enough to deliver him to the hospital alive.

"Let's get him out of here," the paramedic said.

Mr. Blackmore was loaded up onto their gurney and rushed out of the house to the waiting ambulance. Mrs. Blackmore was placed in the passenger seat by one of the firemen. Another fireman climbed in the back with the paramedic. Again this probably seemed routine to the average person and again it wasn't. A paramedic only took a fireman in with him when he thought that he might need an extra hand on the way to the hospital. In other words, when he thought there was a good possibility that CPR was going to need to be performed at some point. Runs of V-tach had a nasty tendency to degenerate into a full-blown cardiac arrest.

The ambulance headed to the hospital with lights and sirens on. The remaining firemen climbed into their engine and drove off behind it to pick up their crewmember. That left Nina and I alone at the house. She was scared, as scared as anyone I'd ever seen before.

"Bill," she asked me, "is he going to be all right?"

"I hope so," I told her, wiping a tear from her eye. "Why don't you go get dressed and we'll drive down there?"

She nodded and rushed into the house.

We arrived at the hospital and found Mrs. Blackmore in the waiting room amid a full house of sick, injured, and others that were waiting their turn to be seen. She was sitting bolt upright in one of the plastic chairs, wringing her hands together nervously, ignoring the babble of conversation and the wall-mounted television that was pumping out a mindless sitcom.

"Mom?" Nina said, grabbing the seat next to her. "Have you heard anything? Is he okay?"

Mrs. Blackmore looked at her for a second and then at me. She swallowed and then hugged her daughter briefly. "No," she said. "They put me in here as soon as we got here. Nobody's been back to talk to me yet."

"Did anything happen on the way in?" I asked her.

She looked at me, wanting to be offended by my presence with her family on this occasion but she simply couldn't muster the will to do it. "No." She shook her head. "The paramedic gave him some sort of injection about halfway here, but nothing else happened."

I nodded, heartened by the news that he'd hung in there on the trip. We waited, speaking little to each other.

It was about ten minutes before a doctor came out to speak with Mrs. Blackmore. Again, he was no one I recognized although I had learned to know all of the ER docs in my time as a paramedic. At some point he would probably move on to other things. I only hoped he was competent at what he did. Some weren't.

He invited Nina's mom back to a private consultation room. Nina stood and went with her. After a moment's hesitation I did too. Nobody offered protest to this. We all took seats in a tastefully decorated room with several comfortable chairs, a couch, and a telephone. Again my knowledge of how things worked in the ER told me a lot. The absence of the hospital chaplain announced the fact that Mr. Blackmore was still hanging in there.

"Your husband has suffered a very significant myocardial infarction," the doctor explained once we were settled in. "In layman's terms, that is a heart attack."

"Will he be okay?" Mrs. Blackmore asked, wiping her eyes with a tissue from the box near the telephone.

"It's too early to tell," he said. "But the fact that he was brought to us so early in the process is encouraging."

"What do you mean?" she wanted to know, encouraged by the word "encouraging".

"Well," he explained, "a heart attack is basically a clot that has become lodged in the coronary arteries, these are the arteries that feed the heart, blocking the blood flow and therefore the oxygen. If nothing is done about it, then the tissue that is deprived of oxygen will die in a few hours and will never again be able to help pump blood. I must tell you that in an attack of this size, if something like that were to happen, your husband's chances of surviving more than a month or two would seriously be in question. He would most likely develop congestive heart failure. But since he got to us shortly after the onset of symptoms there are things we can do to get rid of the clot."

"There are?" she asked.

He nodded. "Yes. There is a procedure known as cardiac catheterization. What we do is send him to a room in the hospital where a cardiologist will insert a catheter, a thin sheath, into one of his veins. We will thread this all the way to the coronary arteries and then inflate a small balloon in the catheter with air. This will push out the obstruction, returning blood flow to the tissue that is deprived. Now the science is inexact, and there will still be some damage to the heart, but it will be much less than what it would have been."

"So he'll be okay?" she asked hopefully.

"With a little luck," he said, "your husband will be able to resume a normal life in a few months. He might require a bypass operation to divert flow around the compromised arteries, but yes, if this is successful, he'll probably be all right."

"When do you start?" she asked.

"He's on his way to the cath lab right now. He'll undergo the procedure in less than an hour. This is what will happen..."

He then went into a dry, sterile description of the anesthesia procedure and the recovery problems. It took about twenty minutes. But I'd already learned what I needed to know. In all likelihood, Mr. Blackmore would be all right. Though in my when there were other means to clear a clot, namely medications that actually dissolved it, the cardiac cath was a tried and true procedure.

As he droned on I found myself wondering just what had happened to Mr. Blackmore in my previous life. He had gone to the hospital this day at my insistence, because of my intervention. Did that happen before? I didn't know the outcome of Nina's father when I knew her before because we were never close, obviously. But instinctively I felt that he'd probably died at home that night or shortly after. Was fate being thwarted again? Or was an inevitable realignment in the works?

We moved up to the cath lab waiting room on the second floor. This waiting room was smaller, though still equipped with a television and phone. It was also empty except for Nina, her mother, and myself. We sat together in a row of chairs, Nina between Mrs. Blackmore and myself. We didn't talk. Every once in a while I would receive a strange glance from Mary Blackmore as if she was wondering why I, someone who was only after one thing, was still there. Did I think I was going to try to ruin her daughter's virtue that night?

After an hour or so I excused myself and found the hospital cafeteria, returning with cups of coffee, which I distributed.

"Thank you," Mrs. Blackmore said, taking it from my hand.

"No cream, one sugar," I said. "Just the way you like it."

She looked at me puzzled, suspicious. "How did you know that?"

I smiled. "Nina told me," I answered. "She takes it the same way."

She nodded thoughtfully and we continued to wait.

Shortly after our coffee was consumed a doctor entered the waiting room. He was dressed in surgical scrubs and his hair was mussed from the sterile cap he'd just been wearing. Everyone tensed up. Again, the absence of the chaplain spoke volumes before a word was even said.

"We think we cleared the obstruction," he told us. "Mr. Blackmore is in the recovery room now. He's doing fine."

He spoke a lot more. He told us that they had discovered a large amount of occlusion in Mr. Blackmore's coronary arteries during the angiogram that had been done prior to the catheterization. Was he in the habit of eating high cholesterol food? He was? Well that was probably what had started it. He said that he would be transferred to the hospital where I worked the next day and, if he continued to recover well, would undergo a triple bypass operation. That, in addition to a change of diet, would probably take care of the problem.

By the time the doctor left we were all feeling better. Nina came over to my chair and gave me a hug, a tight, squeezing hug of gratitude. Her mother watched this impassively, not saying anything.

"Thank you, Bill," Nina told me when she released me. "You saved Daddy's life."

"I don't know about that," I said modestly. "I just helped him see what he needed to do. I'm glad he'll be okay."

"You saved him, Bill," Nina repeated. "And I'll never forget that." She turned to her mother. "Don't you think you owe Bill a thank you Mom?" she asked sharply.

"Nina, I..." I started.

"Hush," Nina told me, continuing to stare at her Mom. "Mom?"

Mrs. Blackmore swallowed nervously and then reluctantly looked at me. "She's right," she finally said. "You did save him. We owe you our thanks."

"I did what any decent person would do," I told her, emphasizing the word "decent". "I'm glad he's going to be all right and I was glad to help."

She nodded and an uncomfortable silence followed.

"So," I said at last, breaking it, "why don't we see if they'll let you two visit him for a bit? You're probably anxious to do that."

Only one visitor at a time was allowed in the recovery room. It was a rule the staff was very firm about despite my attempts at intervention using my adult voice. Finally Mrs. Blackmore went in, leaving Nina and I alone in the waiting room. We sat together and I put my arm around her. She rested her head on my shoulder, yawning with weariness.

"Sorry we couldn't go to the movie tonight," she told me.

"Understandable," I assured her, stroking her hair.

A minute went by. Finally Nina asked, "Bill?"

"Yeah?"

"How did you know Daddy was having a heart attack?"

I had been afraid of this question, though I knew it was coming. I didn't enjoy lying to her.

"I read a lot of medical texts," I told her. "It's kind of a hobby of mine. I thought about being a paramedic once so I went through their textbook and studied it. Your dad was having textbook symptoms of a heart attack and he was displaying the common response to it. Denial. When I felt his pulse and noticed the missing beats I was sure. That's another textbook symptom."

"You knew all this from reading a textbook?" she asked, her tone unreadable.

"Yes, Nina," I said with a fairly straight face. "I have a good memory for written words."

"I see," she said softly. And she said no more about it.

We sat and talked softly for more than fifteen minutes, me continuing to hold her and stroke her hair. A slight cough interrupted us and we both looked up to find Mrs. Blackmore looking at us, taking in the manner in which we were seated.

"Hi, Mom," Nina said, somewhat embarrassed. She broke free of me and sat up. "How's Daddy doing?"

She walked over slowly. "He's a little groggy from the medicine they gave him but otherwise he's okay. They're going to take him up to his room soon. We won't be able to visit him anymore until tomorrow. Why don't you go in and talk to him real quick?"

"Okay," she said, standing. "I'll be back in a little bit."

She left the room leaving me alone with her mother. We looked at each other for a moment and finally she took a seat next to me. She sat stiffly upright.

"You didn't have to stay you know," she told me.

"I wanted to," I replied. "Besides, how else are you going to get home? You know how much a cab ride would be from here?"

"We could've handled it."

"Like I said, Mrs. Blackmore, I wanted to stay."

Another uncomfortable silence developed. There was so much I wanted to say to this woman next to me, so much I wanted to explain, but this was not the time. Not when her husband, a man I knew she loved deeply, was in a hospital room after nearly dying.

But Mrs. Blackmore apparently did want to talk about it.

"You're a very strange young man," she said, not looking at me.

I nodded. "I've been accused of that," I agreed.

"I like to think that I've got you figured out," she said. "That I know exactly what you're like, how you'll act, what you'll do. I tried to tell Nina this when she started seeing you again. But she didn't listen to me, wouldn't hear a word of it. I tried to tell myself that it was teenaged rebellion, that she knew I was right but that she wouldn't listen because she thought she was in love with you and because her mom was telling her these things."

"But?" I prompted, looking over at her.

"But now I'm forced to wonder if maybe I was the one who was wrong all this time," she admitted.

"Really?"

"Really," she sighed. "You see, I've been waiting all of this time for you to toss my daughter aside like an old shoe. That's what people like you do, I told myself. You get them to fall in love with you and then, once you get what you want a few times, you get rid of them. I have speeches all memorized for the day that you finally do that; speeches I'll recite to her as I'm holding her while she cries. I'll tell her that someday she'll find someone who really loves her for herself, not for her body. I'll tell her about how I found a man like that and how he came back to me even though I made a horrid mistake once. I'm well prepared for the day when you finally show Nina that you are nothing but slime." She stared over at me, her eyes softening. "But that's not going to happen, is it?"

I shook my head. "No, it's not," I said. "I love your daughter, Mrs. Blackmore. I love her with all of my heart. I love her the way Mr. Blackmore loves you. I plan to be with her for the rest of my life."

She nodded softly. "You know something?" she asked. "I've known that for a while. I don't know what you and Jack talked about the day he went over to your house, he wouldn't tell me, but I was dumbfounded when he said that he was going to allow you and Nina to see each other. I was absolutely in shock. We fought bitterly over it but finally he convinced me that I was simply going to have to let Nina run this relationship out for better or for worse. And he was right about that. You can't control a seventeen-year-old girl if she doesn't want to be controlled. I didn't like it, but I had to accept it. That's when I started waiting for Nina to come home crying again. Every time she went out with you I thought that this would be the time. You were finally going to get what you were after and toss her aside. But every time she came home she wasn't crying. She always seemed deliriously happy in fact.

"I told myself that her happiness was simply part of your plan. I myself know intimately what it feels like to think you're in love with someone such as yourself. You are happy during that period. That's what makes it hurt so badly when the happiness is taken away. These last two months Nina has been positively glowing whenever she came back from a visit with you. And I just told myself you were picking her up further and further before you dropped her. I knew you were going to do it. I simply knew."

"Do you know why I feel this way?" she asked me pointedly.

I wasn't sure how to answer that one. I hesitated.

"Jack told you about Bob Simpson, didn't he?" she said.

This question put me on even shakier ground. "Uh..."

She nodded knowingly. "He did, didn't he? I can see it in your eyes. I suspected as much."

"Look, Mrs. Blackmore..." I started.

"Call me Mary," she said. "I think you and I need to be on a first name basis, don't you?"

This really threw me off guard. Call her Mary?

"Bill," she went on, "you know about Bob Simpson, right?"

I nodded. "Yes."

"I appreciate your honesty," she said. "I don't how you got Jack to tell you that story, especially since he hated your guts, but somehow you did. This should offend me. I should go in there and beat the hell out of Jack for telling you such a personal thing. But strangely, it doesn't bother me. I'm glad you know about it in fact. It makes this talk a little easier."

"Okay," I agreed.

"Bob Simpson left a scar on me that remains to this day. He took away something that was precious to me and precious to Jack. I'm not talking about my virginity, although that's a part of it, I'm talking about something in here." She pointed to her chest. "And in here." She pointed to her head. "He used me like a man would use a dirty book and he threw me in the garbage like a man would when he's used that book enough. He took away more than five years of what should have been happiness with Jack. To this day I still remember how I felt when I realized that I'd sent that letter to him and that I'd lost him. To this day I still get down on my knees and thank God that Jack was strong enough and loved me enough to take me back after that. What Jack did was unheard of back then. Most men today, even in these liberated times, wouldn't do what he did. My point is that Bob Simpson was the lowest form of life on this earth. And though I share a good portion of the blame for what happened, it was Bob that deserves most of it. He took advantage of me when I was little more than a girl, when I didn't know what I wanted in life yet. He made me think I knew what I wanted. Do you see?"

"Yes," I answered. "I do."

"When Nina came to me crying that day, when she told me about you and those girls at school, she was describing Bob Simpson to a tee. I was horrified by what you'd done. I still am."

"I know," I said. "I'm ashamed of that now. But I never did that with Nina. Never."

"That's what she told me when you got back together. But I couldn't accept that. You were Bob Simpson out to destroy my daughter. You see, before I fell in love with Bob I'd heard all of the stories about him. The same stories Nina said she'd heard about you. I didn't believe them, I wouldn't believe them, because I loved him, just like Nina loved you. I figured Nina had simply been smarter than me, or luckier anyway. She caught you sleeping with an engaged girl and she couldn't ignore your reputation any longer. I told her she'd done the right thing in getting rid of you. She was hurt, I could see that, but not nearly as hurt as she would have been if you had gotten what you wanted."

"And then she went back to you," Mary said, shaking her head. "I couldn't believe it at first but finally I knew it when she started borrowing my car every day. I was determined to put a stop to it once I knew what was going on. I didn't let her go out with you on New Year's Eve and I stupidly thought that would end it. But when she asked to borrow the car again the next day, giving me a pathetic lie about it, I knew something would have to be done. That's why Jack showed up at your house."

"And the rest is history," I said softly.

She shook her head again. "I was sure I knew what you were about, Bill," she told me. "You don't even deny what you were like?"

"No," I said simply. "I can't deny it. All I can say in my own defense is what I told your husband. I discovered a way to get girls to go to bed with me. I was fifteen when I discovered this and I couldn't resist taking advantage of it. I couldn't. But Nina was never like that to me. I initiated the relationship with Nina for friendship. That's what we were Mary. Friends. That's what we still are primarily. I love her deeply, I want to marry her, I want to spend the rest of my life with her, I want her to have my children, but she is my friend first and foremost. The best friend I've ever had.

"When she caught me with the engaged girl and told me she would never see me again I was crushed. I realized then how much she meant to me. Since then I haven't done anything like that and I don't plan to do it in the future. Nina is my future Mary. Can you understand that?"

"That's just it," she said. "I couldn't. I couldn't see past the fact that you were like Bob Simpson. That's the whole point of what I'm trying to tell you now. You were Bob Simpson reincarnated, out to have my daughter. I was so sure of that fact that I didn't see certain other things that were right in front of my nose the whole time.

"I told you what I thought about Nina's apparent happiness to be with you. That was easily written off as part of your plan. But there are other things, things I didn't acknowledge until you forced me to tonight. For instance I'm forced to ask myself why, if you were only after one thing, it has taken you so long to get it? You've been seeing Nina for more than two years now. Now I certainly don't want to go into what, if any, sexual experience my daughter and you might have had, but if that is all you were after, surely you would have gotten it by now wouldn't you?"

I nodded. "If that was what I was after, I would have," I agreed.

"But still she remains committed to you, and you to her. The biggest thing I'm forced to see though, is you."

"Me?" I asked.

"You," she confirmed. "Tonight you and I were forced together, probably against both of our wills. I didn't want to be with you, to have anything to do with you. I just wanted you to go away. But all the same I've been watching you when Nina is sitting next to you. I can see how you feel about her in your eyes. When I came in the room just now and saw you with your arm around her, holding her to you, you reminded me of Jack. You were holding her the way a man who loves a woman holds someone. You weren't trying to cop a feel or put on a phony comforting act for her benefit because you thought it might get you inside of her later, you were genuinely concerned about her and you were genuinely trying to comfort her. You love her."

"Yes," I nodded enthusiastically, "I do. That's what I've been trying to say all this time."

"I recognize that now," she said. "And I realize that you are not exactly Bob Simpson. But you're close. And just because I recognize it doesn't mean I like it, Bill. I'm willing to acknowledge that you and Nina are in love with each other. But I can't forgive you for what you've done in the past and I have no proof that you are no longer doing such things. I still believe that Nina is heading for destruction by being with you."

"That's fair enough," I told her. "You think that we're too young to know what love really is and that I'll give in to the temptation to stray away from Nina, right?"

"Roughly," she answered.

"We are young," I said. "But tell me this, do you think that Jack knew what he wanted when he told you he wanted to marry you before he went off to the war?"

"What?" she asked.

"He loved you back then. Very much from what I understand. And though he didn't have the, uh, experience that I do, he was pretty certain that you were the woman for him. So do you think he knew what he was talking about?"

"Yes," she agreed, seeing where I was taking this.

"That's the same way I feel about Nina. I know she is whom I want to spend the rest of my life with. My experience has done nothing but show me that sex is nothing but hollow pleasure if it's not with someone you love. I don't plan to repeat those experiences. I am committed to Nina now and I will remain so. I'm the same age Jack was when he fell in love with you. Nina is older than you were when you fell in love with Jack. She's older than I am in fact since I got to skip second grade. Why do you think that you, of the previous generation, have some sort of all-knowing lock on what love is and that those of us in this generation are clueless?"

The Look was strong upon her face. She smiled. "You are certainly a remarkable young man, Bill," she said. "I'll give you that. Like I said, I'm not quite sure you're right for Nina and I'm not quite sure you are my idea of the perfect suitor. But there's little I can do about it. You've proved yourself worthy of my giving you a chance. So for Nina's sake I would like to extend you a welcome into our house for as long as you and she are together. Maybe someday I'll learn to love you. Or maybe I won't. But until we know for sure, you no longer have to hide on the porch when you come over. You're welcome in our house."

"Thank you, Mary," I answered, touched by her cynical words. "I'll take you up on that. And be assured, you're not going to get rid of me."

"Time will tell, Bill," she answered. "Time will tell."

Two days later Jack Blackmore was transferred to the hospital that I worked at in order to undergo bypass surgery. He was installed in a private room on the seventh floor. His spirits were reported to be high by Nina, who visited him daily after school, usually joining her mother there. I had not had opportunity to see him since the night he'd been taken away.

On the Tuesday following his heart attack I had a brief chat with my dad before I headed off to school.

"Do you think that's a good idea?" he asked me, nearly appalled by what I was suggesting.

"I wouldn't go so far as to call it wise," I agreed. "But it's not dangerous. After all, the man is undergoing a bypass tomorrow. What can it hurt?"

Dad shook his head. "I'll concede to your greater medical knowledge," he told me. He did as I asked.

After work that night I went out to my car and put a few things into a plastic bag. I then went back inside. I rode the elevator up to the seventh floor and headed for the ICU where Jack was being stashed. Visiting hours were soon coming to a close and Nina and her mother had already gone for the night. I was unquestioned as I walked past the nurse's station. The surgical scrubs I wore saw to that.

I entered his room and stood in the doorway for a moment. Jack Blackmore was dressed in a standard hospital gown. IV's were installed in his arm and connected to a pump. Wires snaked from beneath the sheets and his gown and fed to a monitor on the wall above his head. He was sitting in the bed, which he'd adjusted to a chair position, watching a baseball game on the television. He looked over at me as I entered, his eyes taking a moment to realize that I was not just another hospital worker coming in to take his blood pressure or to get him to piss in a jar.

He nodded when he recognized me. "Bill," he said. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," I told him, coming in and closing the door behind me. "How are you?"

"Hanging in here," he said as I took a seat. "I never did get a chance to thank you for talking me into going the other night." He lowered his voice a little. "The doc tells me I might've died if I hadn't of come in."