I.
I walk out of the rental car office and take a deep breath, glad to have handed over the keys, dreading the inevitable bill they’ll send me. My $275 dollar rental is now on the path to costing me well north of $1000, thanks to the flat tire and hail damage that they’ve earnestly assured me are now my financial responsibility.
Beside me, my 15 year old mutters “this is some bullshit”, testing out what it’s like to swear when his mom can hear him. He glances at me and all I can do is nod. This is some bullshit.
II.
I’m waiting to board the plane, grateful to be heading home. I message my husband that we’ll be in the air soon.
He messages back that he’s fallen and hurt himself, we should take a cab home from the airport. His words don’t make immediate sense to me. He always gets me from the airport. We joke about our “airport privilege”, how lucky we are to live less than 15 minutes away, but not under the flight path. I message him back, half convinced he’s joking.
How did he fall? It isn’t even icy outside.
III.
Four minutes later and I’m boarding the plane. Another message from my husband. I see the words “don’t have any more details” flash across my watch as I put my backpack in the overhead bin. Again, those words don’t make sense to me. What details could he not have about his own fall?
I sit down and swipe my phone. Three messages from my husband in less than a minute. I open and read the message. My brain reads the words but it takes me a long moment to understand them. As the plane fills around me, I Google a familiar name.
A hit-and-run in the early morning. A truck driver discovering a body. My brother-in-law woke up with a wife and will go to bed a widower.
I look at my son, who has just had a practically perfect weekend at his first out-of-state soccer tournament. He’s gazing out the plane window and I decide I cannot tell him this news on the plane.
And then I cannot stop myself from crying. He turns to look at me, confused and then worried. I show him my phone. We don’t talk again the rest of the flight.
IV.
My son and I are home. I hug my daughter exuberantly, my husband carefully. My son, eyes red, asks to go to a friend’s house. I want him to stay here, want him to want my comfort. But I remember being 15 and how nothing feels real until you tell a friend. I let him go and watch as he runs up the street in the rain.
I start to unpack my suitcase in the laundry room, peppering my husband with questions about his fall and whether he has talked to this brother or the other one for more information. I ask him something, but he’s gone silent. He is sitting in a rocking chair, head low. He tells me in a gruff voice that he’s dizzy again. Sweat breaks out across his head. My daughter, who was alone with him when he passed out this morning and fell into the windowsill in her bedroom, goes wide-eyed and begs me to call a doctor.
My husband lifts his head, wipes the sweat off of his forehead. I have never seen him look like that before.
V.
After a call to a nurse line and text to one of my dearest friends, who happens to be a nurse, I’m grabbing my car keys.
I text my son that I’m taking his dad to the ER and that he needs to come home and take care of his sister. I promise my daughter that we’re just going to be on the safe side, I’ll text them as soon as I can.
On the way to the hospital, I think how odd it feels that I’m in the driver’s seat. In the 20 years we’ve been together, I’ve never taken my husband to the ER. Or even urgent care. I find that I can’t actually even remember the last time he went to the doctor for an illness. He never gets sick, even working in an elementary school1, he might be the only adult I know who has never had COVID. Our infrequent trips to the hospital have been for me: having babies, rupturing an ovarian cyst, a kidney stone.
He tells me not to worry. I tell him that I’m not. Somehow, this feels true. I tell him that there’s no way he’s not coming home with me when all of this is over.
We check into the ER and start the long wait. I look at my watch and am stunned that it hasn’t even been a full hour since I got home from the airport. I find that I’m glad I didn’t get a chance to unpack my backpack. Now I have snacks and chargers and plenty to read.
I message some neighbors, letting them know the kids are home alone, that we are at the ER, asking them to be adults on call if the kids need them. I text some friends, grateful for the distraction of our never ending group chat. I ask my husband if we should text the big sons, who are far away. We decide not too, they’ve already had tough news today, we’ll wait and see.
I hear the sound of my husband’s phone hitting the floor. He is slumped forward in the chair, his eyes open but unfocused. I call his name. I call it again. I touch his arm, my voice more urgent. He doesn’t respond. Sweat beads on his forehead. He is next to me. He is not with me at all. His arm jerks, once and then again.
For the first time, I feel very, very worried.
VI.
We are in an ER room. We’ve been here for… some length of time. I can’t keep track as the minutes turn to hours, time compressing and stretching around me. My husband has given his version of events several times now and each new medical professional seems surprised at the way his medical history gives nothing away: he’s not on any medications, he’s never fainted in his life, never had issues with high blood pressure, his blood sugar is fine. The list of things he doesn’t have wrong with him grows longer every test they run: no blood clots, no infection, nothing concerning on his brain scan. “They looked at my brain and didn’t find anything!” he jokes. When he’s not passing out, he is fine. He’s his normal self, the wires attached to his body seem excessive.
My book sits in my lap. I can’t make myself follow the story, so I watch him as he dozes in the hospital bed, glad he was able to get comfortable enough to sleep. He hurt his back when he fell and getting into the hospital bed had him wincing in pain.
Suddenly there is a loud noise and a light is flashing urgently on his monitor. He rouses as the room is suddenly filled with medical staff.
I know with instant certainty that he won’t be coming home with me tonight.
VII.
“You are the healthiest person I’ve ever admitted to the hospital”, the ER doctor tells my husband. I’m not sure what to do with that statement.
The doctor has just explained that the monitor went off because my husband’s heart rate had fallen dangerously low. They’ve add extra machines to the room, placed defibrillator pads on his chest.
They’ll take him for more tests now, carefully moving all the wires to make sure he stays attached to the machines that record the beats of my favorite heart. They tell us that if his heart rate goes that low again, he’ll be in surgery tonight.
I text my stepsons and hope, in vain, that they don’t worry too much. I text their little brother and sister, tell them to go to bed. I hope, in vain, that they can sleep, alone in the house for the first time.
A minute or an hour or a day later (time is now just an abstract concept now, I am so tired), my husband is pushed back into the room. He tries to tell me to go home. I inform him that there are no circumstances where I leave him in the ER by himself.
Another doctor comes, we tell the story again, we answer the same questions (no, no meds, no, no heart issues), she tells me that they’ll kick me out when he gets into a room. She mentions the prospect of a surgery. She asks him to confirm that, in the event that his heart stops tonight, he does wish to be resuscitated. His eyes meet mine and I am in very real danger of crying for the first time since I was on the plane. He makes a joke about me still wanting him around and the doctor is more firm, needing to hear what he wants to be done to save his life if things go terribly wrong before morning.
I bite the inside of my cheek and blink away tears. I know, dimly, that I will have to cry sometime, that a wall is coming for me, but for now, I send another text and fold his clothes, and trail behind his bed as they finally take him up to the cardiac wing.
VIII.
I drive home alone, pulling into our garage just after 2am. I enter the house quietly, hoping the kids are asleep. I find my son in the living room. We have a family rule that the kids aren’t allowed to have phones or iPads in their rooms after bedtime. He’s followed that rule and has laid down next to the cart where we charge the phones, his hand inches from his phone.
I go to bed and set my alarm for earlier than my body will want to wake up. I’m determined to be up before the kids. I don’t want them to get up and come looking for their father. I toss and turn, exhausted but wired. I finally fall asleep sometime after 3:30am.
A few hours later, I wake up and tell the kids that their dad is in the hospital, but that he’s okay, we’ll go see at the hospital when visiting hours open. My daughters chin quivers, fat tears sliding down her face. She wants to see her dad, but she’s afraid. I tell her she has to go with me; I know the reality of seeing her dad in the hospital will be better than whatever images her imagination is trying to give her.
Once we are at the hospital and my daughter has kissed her dad’s head and caught her breath, we find out that the person who hit Laurie has been arrested. I still can’t quite believe that all of this happened less than 24 hours ago. We text some of his family, but not his oldest brother. We can’t be another thing for him to worry about.
IX.
Our niece comes to the hospital with lunch and family news. My husband gets cleared to eat and I realize that means surgery is off the table for today. His heart rate dipped again will he was sleeping, but not quite as low. I find myself hoping that he won’t have any more dips. Well, except for the small part of me that wants him to have another one so the hospital can see it, can figure this out.
Our niece takes our daughter to a friend’s house for the afternoon. Today was supposed to be the day that we had an early birthday outing to the Mall of America so she could go to the amusement park with her bestie. She doesn’t complain about missing it, doesn’t complain about anything. I want to tell her that she’s allowed to feel all of the feelings she has right now: grief and worry and, yes, disappointment to not be at the mall. But she’s slipped out the door, following her cousin to the car.
The ER doctor comes up to check on him. He tells us that “I know I told you that you were the healthiest person I had last night, but you were also the one who scared me the most.” He seems surprised that my husband doesn’t already have a pacemaker. Everyone assures us that coming to the hospital was the right thing to do, that he needed to be seen. The cardiologist seems much less concerned than I think he should be and tells us that sometimes stuff like this “just happens” and suggests that my husband make sure he doesn’t lock his legs when he’s standing. This advice annoys me, given that six of the seven times he’s passed out in the last 24 hours were when he was sitting or sleeping.
He gives us the option to go home or stay another night in the hospital. How on Earth is it up to us to decide that?
X.
We are home. A friend comes over to help make sure his home heart rate monitor is on correctly. He hobbles around the house, his back stiff and painful from the fall, the hospital bed, the car ride home (20 minutes of agony).
We are so tired.
We try to figure out what to do next. How will we get to the funeral? Can we get to the funeral? When is the next appointment, what is the next step, what should be on our list of questions?
We call his brother, who is awash in grief and casseroles from nice church ladies. We set a schedule for pain relievers. My husband, who has a PhD in rhetoric and composition, looks at me and asks if acetaminophen and ibuprofen are the same thing. He asks me three times how often he can take his medicine. He can’t remember what day it is and when I remind him, we both agree that it feels impossible that it is only Tuesday. I look in my address book for an address for a thank you card. I cannot find my friend’s address, but I know I have it, I know it is she is on the Christmas card list. I look under “L” for her first name, under “W” for her last name. I’m stumped. How could I have lost her address? I know it was in the book. I look her up on Facebook and stare at her profile which has a “F” last name. It takes me too long to remember that “W” was her maiden name and that she’s been going by “F” for seven years now.
Our brains are mush and I can’t tell if it is grief or exhaustion or having too many new questions competing for space.
I put my husband to bed, trying to arrange pillows and heating pads so he can get some relief and some sleep.
I put my daughter to bed with promises of a rescheduled birthday celebration.
I put my son to bed and remind him he’s allowed to cry. He ignores this and asks if he’s still allowed to go to soccer tomorrow and I tell him I don’t know, that plans feel impossible tonight. He hugs me for longer than usual.
I sit in the quiet of my house and I think about my brother-in-law, the one who everyone in the family agrees is the sweetest of the five brothers. I think about Laurie and all the terrible questions we have about her last moments and whether she could have been saved if help had come faster.
I wait for tears to come but they don’t.
I am so tired.
***
We’ve been home for not quite 48 hours now. My husband’s back is getting slowly better. He hasn’t had another dizzy spell or noticeable heart rate dip since we left the hospital. He’s had one follow up appointment but we still don’t have the answers I’d like. We know mechanically what is happening to his body but we don’t know why it happened now or what made it stop happening.
We’re still figuring out logistics of getting to another state for the funeral and have many unanswered questions about what comes next for my husband’s sweet brother and for the person who killed his wife. We know the what on that, but not the why.
The only thing I feel completely certain of at the moment is that I love my family and that my family is loved by a lot of people who’ve reached out to help in the last few days. I am so grateful.
Oh, one more thing I’m certain about: Thrifty Rental Cars continues to be my sworn enemy.
I’m coming for you, Thrifty, just soon as I’m averaging more than four hours of sleep a night.
He’s one of the few (maybe only) who still regularly masks at school, which surely helps)
Woof. Thinking about your family and also wanting to thank you for sharing all of this. Real life is too real sometimes.
How tough, but you are tougher. Sending hugs. Thanks for sharing.