Makings of a Heart Attack | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Makings of a Heart Attack | Previous Challenge Entry
By Carol Sprock
12/12/13
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“Well, Chad, what do you want me to do?” my mother hissed in her This is not my decision to make and don’t you dare make me decide voice. The tense undercurrent of feigned calm laced with fear and anger had startled me awake. I staggered out of bed, opened the door.

To my left in the bathroom doorway, my father was doubled over. His right hand gripped the frame; his left arm coiled his waist. Panting slightly, he angled his head toward me, his face a mottled purple-grey-white. Mom was to my right, just outside their bedroom door, clearly perturbed.

“What’s going on?” I gasped as Dad groaned, straightening himself. He was still dressed in the slacks and shirt he’d worn that day, a greasy spot midway down his chest from the fried chicken he’d devoured for dinner.

“I'm not sure, Ruth. Maybe … um … I think I’m having a heart attack.” Dad’s attempted smile became a grimace, and he clutched himself with both arms.

“Mom?” I turned toward her.

“I don’t think so, sweetheart,” she said, “but I can’t get him to think any differently. Still he doesn’t want me to take him to the hospital. Says he can drive himself. That just doesn’t make sense, does it.”

Neither she nor Dad was making any sense to me. This situation didn’t seem to require discussion but action. Dad saved me from answering as he barreled to the kitchen and said he was calling for an ambulance.

Maybe I was having a nightmare. Each moment its own bubble of coherent reality that burst into chaos before the next floated up.

“Mara, where is the number for the ambulance?”

Mom glanced at me with the wistful Here we go again but I can’t do anything to stop it expression that always flashed across her face right before she took over a dicey situation and sorted everything and everyone into their rightful place. She hauled out the phone book, flicked to the first page, punch-dialed the phone, and thrust it at Dad.

Mom hustled passed me, “I’m getting dressed.”

“Shall I…?” my voice faded because I had no idea what I should do or offer to do.

“You stay home, get some rest. You have work tomorrow. I’ll call you with whatever news.”

“Oh.” I was 27 years old and according to my Dutch upbringing, you kept your cool no matter what happened. You also honored your parents’ wishes. I wanted to ride with my mother to the hospital, particularly if my father was having a heart attack, which appeared less likely now yet far too possible an occurrence. I also understood staying home supported my mother’s position that the panic flooding Dad disabled his ability to think straight so he couldn’t understand he wasn’t having a heart attack.

Dad bustled toward us, “Yes, stay home, honey. The ambulance is coming; I’m all set. Mara, you stay too.”

“Not on your life. You think you have to go to the hospital; well, then I have to as well. Who’s going to take you home?”

“No, I don’t want to bother you. Why not wait until I call you … or come in the ambulance with me?”

“Nonsense, Chad. There’s not enough room; besides we wouldn’t have a car. Ruth would have to come get us. Stop and think a second. And turn on the outside lights so the drivers know where to come.”

Lights blazed in all the rooms but I found myself feeling part of the jagged shadows angling the walls. Dad paced the living room with intermittent pauses to grab his stomach. Mom dressed, then dabbed make-up onto her stark, strained face.

Dad greeted the paramedics at the door, their faces bewildered after asking for the man having a heart attack and my father saying he was the one. They asked him to lie down on the couch. Dad said it hurt too much, so they tested him while he stood, asking about his history and last meal. Mom frowned a warning at me to say nothing, as if we were accomplices in duplicity.

The paramedics didn’t think Dad was having a heart attack. Mom slanted another look my way. But he needed to go to the hospital. Dad said his wife could take him. Mom sighed. No, they had to monitor him.

Eventually, they all vanished into the heavy humid-hot August night pungent with piquant overblown chrysanthemums and tart, trampled, early Fall-en leaves.

(Fiction)

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