Heartbreaker

            by Robyn Brown

 

          It is February 24, 2005 and I am walking home from school. The weight of the books in my backpack and the heat of the sun pressing down on me makes me speed my steps up. I finally reach my house and notice my dad’s car in the driveway. That’s weird, I think, because he rarely gets home from work before 6 o’clock and it is only 4 o’clock right now, but I figure he must be sick, or maybe he had a conference that ended early. Sure enough, as soon as I push open the unlocked door and step gratefully into the cool haven of my kitchen, I am greeted by my dad wearing his pajamas and bathrobe, making a cup of tea.

            “Hi, baby. I came home early because I didn’t feel too good,” he explains, rather unnecessarily.

            “Okay. Maybe you can get out of coming to Open House tonight,” I reply.

            He smiles and shrugs. “We’ll see how I feel.”

            He heads back to his room to rest and I sit down at my desk, ready for a long afternoon of homework before lacrosse practice. As predicted, I only get halfway through the list of assignments written in meticulously small handwriting, filling up the box for today in my organizer. I think, whatever. I’ll do it when I get home. Right now all I want to do is get out of that house filled with sickness and homework. Mom comes home just as I am tying my shoes, the soles of which have flecks of green turf stuck permanently to them from the football field. I zip up my new jacket that we got as part of our team uniforms and go into my parents’ room to look at myself in the full-length mirror. Dad is sitting up in bed reading the business section of the newspaper. “You look pretty sharp,” he responds when I ask him how my jacket looks. Mom drives me back to school for practice and as she drives we discuss the plan for tonight. After practice is over I will meet her in the C-Building, where she will be in my French class for Open House. Dad probably won’t come, but I don’t really care. It’s not like anything important ever happens at these events anyway.

            Practice goes by quickly. I laugh with my teammates over silly things as we run around the track, my shoes thumping against the hard ground, my heart racing as the pace quickens. We pass balls back and forth, catching them with ease and hurling them back to one another. I stand in the goal and deflect balls off of my body, trapping them with my stick and sweeping them away. At the end of two hours we huddle in a tight circle and do a cheer. I gather up my stuff and wait for Caitlin, my best friend, who is also meeting her parents. We trudge away from the field to the buildings, complaining about how much homework we still have and the unspeakably early hour we have to get up for practice tomorrow morning, and comparing our plans for the weekend.

            We reach the building and split up for our rides home. I wait by the door to the French room until the bell rings, then watch the stream of middle-aged parents trudge through the door for a sign of my mom. She isn’t there. I figure that she must be in one of my sister’s classes, so I head in the direction of her math room. I peek inside and see parents crammed into desks like a class of students who have flunked so many times that their hair is graying. I do not see my mom. I wander back to the C-Building and decide to wait for her in the main entrance hall. I see my friend, who is giving directions to parents lost like freshmen on the first day of school. I talk with him for a while, but my mind is on my mom. Where is she? She is not the type of person to forget to go to something, or to just disappear for that matter. The bell signaling the end of sixth period rings and I am frustrated. I want to go home and finish my homework at a decent hour and here I am sitting at school, the last place I want to be. Besides, my hair is sweaty and falling out of its ponytail and I smell like I’ve been exercising for hours. I see Caitlin coming down the hall towards me with her mom and dad, all three of them walking with a hurried gait. “Hi. I have no idea where my mom went!” I exclaim to her, but instead of looking puzzled and offering me a ride home, she looks upset. Her mom, Marilyn, pulls me aside into an empty classroom. I have no idea what’s going on and I am confused.

            “Robyn, you need to call your mom immediately,” she says, looking me in the eye, a hand on my shoulder. She hands me her cell phone and I punch in the number of my mom’s cell phone, still confused, but now with a sense that something is very wrong. My hand shaking slightly, I hold the phone to my ear and it rings once before my mom answers it.

            “Mom?” I blurt out.

            “Baby. Don’t panic, but something very serious has happened. Daddy had a heart attack. We’re at the hospital now.”

            I have always been skeptical when characters in movies hear bad news and immediately lose it, their bodies heaving and tears pouring soundlessly out of their eyes. As I hang up the phone now, though, the same thing happens to me and I am rooted to the spot, tears welling up and spilling over, tangled in the arms of Caitlin and Marilyn, a many armed hug squeezing out the tears, a hurried hug that  followed by an exit from the classroom, then the building. We are walking across the courtyard, them with a purpose, me following, holding onto hands that appear from nowhere, avoiding questioning glances, not seeing anything but the cluster the three people have formed around me.

            Caitlin’s dad, Wayne, has parked in an illegal spot close to school and once we are in the car he is speeding down the streets, powering his way between other vehicles. The radio is on and a new song is playing. I listen to it intently, trying to block all other thoughts out of my mind, knowing as the words of the song filter through my mind that I will never be able to hear them again without thinking about this car trip. Marilyn’s words of comfort and reassurance continue at a steady beat, while Caitlin holds my hand and Wayne grips the steering wheel silently. We arrive at the unfamiliar hospital and park. After a quick decision to bring as little as possible in with me, we hurry inside. We walk through a lobby filled with potted palm trees and automatic doors and join a line at a desk, which I assume will tell us where to go. The floors of the lobby are carpeted and it has the air of an official building, a place where important things go on. After waiting in line for an agonizing couple of minutes, it is our turn and Marilyn asks where we can find Jeffrey Brown. There is some confusion. The person at the desk is not sure where Dad is and suggests we go upstairs to the Intensive Care Unit. We go to the bank of elevators and ride one up to the fourth floor, where we are told that he is not there, but still in some branch of the emergency room. I am not listening to the details, only registering the fact that he is not here. The thoughts going through my mind right now keep leading back to two things: he must be somewhere in this hospital, and we have to find him quickly.

            We ride the elevator back down to the first floor and as soon as the doors slide open to the calm dinging noise we are on the move again. We power walk past the desk that misdirected us and I wonder if you are allowed to run in a hospital. Somehow Marilyn and Wayne have discovered the right direction to go and they steer us down a narrow hallway, which opens up to a larger area. I see my sister, Bonnie, sitting in a chair along the wall, her back slumped and her head resting in the cradle of her hands. She doesn’t see me yet, but before I can call her name, my mom is rushing towards me from out of nowhere. I fling myself into her arms and she holds me. I feel the pressure of her hand against my head as she strokes my hair. My grandmother Gigi is there too, and she pulls me to the side and out of the way as a paramedic walks briskly down the hall and through a door. Caitlin’s parents talk to Mom and Gigi for a few minutes, but make a timely exit with reassurances that Caitlin will tell our lacrosse coach why I won’t be at practice tomorrow.

            Once they are gone there is nothing to do but sit and wait, which we do, lined up in chairs along the wall facing the door behind which Dad lies. Gigi, always prepared, has brought along Goldfish crackers and Snapples for us, along with a newspaper and box of tissues. She is used to packing up these essentials from when my grandfather was in the hospital being treated for leukemia. I am not used to the hospital and I look away from the brisk, purposeful steps of the doctors walking into and out of the room. I glance down at a bag sitting at Bonnie’s feet and immediately recognize Dad’s maroon bathrobe and gray Cal sweatshirt, now ruined by the gaping openings the paramedics cut down the back to take them off his body. I fight the lump in my throat as I realize that we will have to throw the sweatshirt away, the sweatshirt he wore every night after coming home from work. As we wait, Mom tells Gigi and me what happened while Bonnie stares straight ahead.

            Apparently, Dad had felt better, good enough to eat dinner at the table with the rest of the family, but as Mom was dishing up the Mexican casserole in the kitchen, he slumped over in his chair. Bonnie called 911 and ran to get a neighbor while Mom performed a rudimentary version of CPR on him. A neighbor, who happened to be a nurse, came running back to the house with Bonnie and took over for Mom, trying to breathe life back into Dad’s body. The ambulance arrived then, and rushed them to Alta Bates, the nearest hospital with an emergency room.

            Mom finishes the account and Gigi talks to us for a few minutes, filling up the silence with her voice. All of a sudden, the door to the room we are all watching opens and a doctor comes out. After ascertaining that we are all family members, she leads us into the room. A man is lying on a wheeled bed under bright lights in the middle of the room. He is surrounded by doctors and the doctors are surrounded by machines attached to electrical cords that snake all over the floor. The man is covered by a blanket and is shaking violently. There are tubes stuck to his face and body, a plastic mask over his mouth and nose. The man lying on that bed is not my father, cannot be my father. The man does not respond to us as his body continues to heave around the bed in jerks. This is not the quiet man who combs his hair every morning. This is not the man who watches TV with me and taught me how to drive. This man is unrecognizable, a sick man who has lost contact with the world. I do not believe that this is Dad, but nevertheless I follow the gurney as it is wheeled into the hallway and listen to a nurse as she tells us which elevator to take upstairs. We board the elevator, which is roomy, spacious enough for hospital equipment to travel up and down in, but despite this the four of us stand in a cluster, close together. We get off on the fourth floor and go to the same group of desks that I was directed to before, when I was with Caitlin’s family. Once there we must once again wait. Why do we have to wait now, of all times? When we are not prepared and have too much on our minds? Gigi saves the room from turning into a silent, tear-filled chamber by talking to Mom, distracting her, and asking me and Bonnie about lacrosse, school; any subject is fair game for Gigi, who can talk for hours if the need arises. Bonnie and I try to play a card game, but neither of us really knows the rules and even if we did, we would have pretended not to. Gigi is still conversing with Mom, a mostly one-sided conversation, but she looks over at me and Bonnie and says, “Oh, girls! They really love their daddy, don’t they.” It is not a question, but a statement, and it surprises me. Who doesn’t love their dad? I wish that we could switch places right now with that family. If they don’t care then let their dad be lying unconscious in the hospital right now because it is not fair that we have to go through this. It is not fair because Dad wasn’t overweight, wasn’t old. He ate healthful food and played softball. He loved us and we loved him and this shouldn’t have to happen to us.

            I am thinking this when the nurse finally summons us forty-five minutes later and tells Mom that she can go in and see Dad in the room where they have set him up, where he will be monitored by doctors around the clock and hooked up to machines until he wakes up. Bonnie and I aren’t allowed to go in and all we can do is wait in the hall with Gigi and look through the window in the door, but we can’t see anything.

            After Mom comes out of the room we decide that the best thing to do right now is go home and get some rest because God knows that we will need it the next few days. When we enter the house after the silent car ride home, it is exactly how my family had left it. Walking into the kitchen you would never know anything was wrong. The casserole sits on the counter, partially dished out onto a plate that sits beside it, ready to be taken to the table and eaten. When I enter the dining room, though, the presence of the attack is more obvious. My dad’s chair has been pulled away from the table and there are little black skid marks on the wooden floor around it. Small pieces of reddish fabric are scattered in a five foot radius around the chair and after a minute I realize that these are threads from Dad’s bathrobe, which was cut off his body by the paramedics. I feel numb as I come to this realization and I can’t believe that this is my house that I am standing in. Home is no longer the safe haven I have always felt it was. Now it is the scene of the crime, the dreaded place people avoid. But I cannot avoid it.

            I decline Gigi’s offer of reheated casserole and decide to take a shower instead. It seems like it has been days since I was running around the track at practice, but I guess it was only a few hours ago. In the stinging heat of the shower I collapse against the wall and let all of my tears out. They stream down my face and I am hoping that if I get them all out now I won’t have to cry anymore and that that will make me strong, strong enough to get through this. The steam of the shower and the hot droplets of water beating down on me mix with my tears and I wash them off. After my shower I am about to go to bed, but Mom sticks her head inside my door and tells me that she is going back to the hospital, that she will be there all night and will call in the morning. I do not know what to say, so I say nothing. Once she leaves, Gigi comes into my room. “Honey, this is going to be very hard for your mom and you have to make sure that you help her out the best you can. Make sure she’s not alone.” I nod, but inside my head I am thinking what about me? Who’s supposed to help me? How am I supposed to help her when I barely know what’s going on? I fall asleep deciding to think about everything in the morning. The simple mantra of everything will be all right beats in tandem with my heart.

            The next morning I wake up to the telephone ringing. Bonnie answers it before I have cleared my head of sleep and worry. I shuffle into the dining room. “That was Mom,” she says. “She said that Dad’s still not awake and she’ll be home soon.” We decide to clean up the house before she comes home and we set ourselves to the task with a purpose, furiously scrubbing the black marks on the floor and trying to vacuum all of the bathrobe remnants up. Mom comes home, but has little to tell us. His condition hasn’t changed. While Mom sleeps, the phone calls start coming in. Neighbors, friends, and family all want to know how he’s doing. And I have to tell all of them the same thing. “Well, his condition hasn’t really improved. He’s not getting any worse, but he hasn’t woken up yet.” The words come out of my mouth past the lump in my throat and I hate them. The day passes and Mom returns to the hospital, Gigi comes and goes, and more people call. But still Dad’s condition does not improve.

            I wake up once again on Saturday to the sound of the phone ringing. I answer it and it is a neighbor saying that with our permission his religious group will pray for Dad. I tell him with indifference to go ahead and pray, and hang up feeling nauseated. What is praying going to do that the doctors won’t be able to? If God is really up there looking out for us is he just going to stand by and not help until we put out the call? No, I do not think that God is there for us or he would have done something by now because it has been too long and Dad has still not woken up.

            It has been five days and he is not awake, but today they are starting to take him off of the drugs and hopefully his body will respond and be able to wake up. After school, a day consisting of being pulled aside and asked hushed questions, peoples’ faces furrowed with concern, I am going to the hospital. It is early evening and the ride to the hospital has become a familiar one for our family. We get to the large room where Dad’s bed is, in the Intensive Care Unit. Looking around on our way in I see other beds, with other dads and moms, and grandmas and grandpas. The nurse greets us and leads us over to Dad, who is in bed, tubes secured to his face and arms, covered with a blanket. I am not sure if he can see me or hear me, or if he even remembers who I am. Nevertheless, I hold his hand and talk about school, lacrosse, and TV shows. Bonnie tells him about a scholarship she won and how all of our neighbors are bringing us food every night. Sometimes he twitches or opens his eyes, or moves his toes and I hope with all my heart that this means that he is listening and knows that we are there.

            The days are moving in slow motion and our house is often empty, with one or more of us at the hospital. The doctors call Dad “the miracle man” because he is improving so rapidly. When I had gone to see him the other day he was sitting up in bed and could talk to us, but he didn’t because his throat was sore from when they had taken all of the tubes out. When Mom came home today she made the announcement that they are moving him to a different hospital because he is doing so much better than before and doesn’t need to be in the ICU anymore. This is one step closer to him coming home to us, a home that has been waiting for him and misses him. Soon he will be here, within these walls, where I still find little red fibers in crevices around the dining room now and then. He will come home to Mom, who has recently taken CPR classes, and to Bonnie, who has called all the relatives, and to me, who is just waiting for the family she loves to be together again, not separated by hospital beds and cardiac reports. I am waiting here at home, where my heart was broken.