I tell Natalie I’m not calling 911 until she sends the thank-you note for yesterday’s job interview. I tell her, “I’d rather die from a heart attack knowing you sent that email.”
She tells me I sound like the people who stayed at their desks on 9/11, and she dials 911 herself.
The EMT asks if I have medical conditions. The list is too long, so I say no.
Natalie says, “She has autism.”
They ask me how bad the pain is. I have no idea what to say. Relative to childbirth? A one. Relative to how embarrassed I am for calling 911 for a heart attack? A three. I think my embarrassment is a four.
We are two blocks from a world-renowned hospital because it’s Boston. I have thought about many scenarios where there’s a terrorist attack and I’m okay because there are so many doctors in Boston that the whole city is a triage unit. I tell the EMT I can walk to the hospital.
“Mom, no. You are not walking to the hospital. There are people here to help you.”
I shield my face while they wheel me out on a gurney. Really I’m just embarrassed. I’m too young to be having a heart attack.
The EMT wheels me into the ambulance and asks if I’ve ever had a panic attack.
I consider telling him he should not minimize women’s medical symptoms. But the ambulance quarters are too tight for soapboxes, and likable people get better medical treatment. Not that I’d know. For me the idea is aspirational. So I tell him I had a panic attack right after 9/11. “I was there,” I say.
He says, “Then you’d probably recognize it now, right?”
Wait. What? We are not going to talk about 9/11? If he were my age he’d tell me where he was that day. If he were a millennial he’d say, “Wow. I’m sorry you had to go through that.” But he’s Gen Z. He doesn’t care.
I feel grateful that Natalie always looks for exits. It’s her Gen Z nod to my incessant training.
Natalie says goodbye. The EMT takes my pulse. I tell myself I have to treat myself like precious cargo. I wouldn’t walk toward burning buildings like I did on 9/11, but I feel that feeling coming back: It’s so over the top to fret about my own wellbeing.
I think: What would Kim K do? She has a grand sense of self, and she would feel it was very important to have someone rule out a heart attack. I channel Kim’s self-esteem long enough to settle into my gurney.
Z calls because Natalie called him. He asks if I have a will. I tell him I’ll be fine. He asks me to put the EMT on the phone.
I remember when I ended up at someone’s apartment on the Upper West Side after 9/11 and Nino told me to put someone else on the phone. When he tells the story, he says when he finally got me on the phone I sounded completely out of my mind. I wonder if Z thinks I’m completely out of my mind right now, or if he’s just internalized the routine from hearing the story so often.
At the hospital entrance there are four people on ambulance beds. I think it’s the maybe-I-had-a-heart-attack entrance. The guy next to me tells the nurse he got off a plane because he wasn’t sure if he was having a heart attack, but he didn’t want to be in the air. I feel less alarmist about calling an ambulance.
The guy’s voice has the spunk and verve of a football announcer. The nurse asks what medicine he’s on and he explains the list by way of surviving brain surgery and stomach cancer. He’s a living miracle. I try to look a little perkier, like we’re all living miracles. But I can’t muster it. I have to work on not dissociating so much that I forget why I’m here.
They call my name and I realize that when I die I’ll die as Adrienne, not Penelope. There are no pen names in the ER.
Now a nurse is hooking stuff up to my breasts and there’s an understanding that I’m too old to flinch or take cover. Then she asks, “Did those socks get dirty from walking around here?” I tell her I forgot shoes. But really they’re always that dirty.
There’s a mom with two little boys. The kids keep asking about their dad. The mom says they can see him soon. They ask and ask until she gives them paper. One boy says, “What should I do?” The mom says, “Do some j’s and b’s.” I’ve been in that mom’s position for so long that I have to remind myself I’m not anymore.
I wish I brought my laptop. So I must be fine now. Dying people don’t ask for their laptop.
Though I wonder if I might, because I wrote during labor. The second time, when I got an epidural. The first time I was ignorant enough to commit to natural childbirth even though the doctor induced labor. I told Nino, “Don’t let them give me an epidural. It’s us against the nurses.” But I told him that in the first trimester, when I still thought a mom had control over the baby. In labor and delivery the pain was so bad I told Nino to get me a gun. If you’re wondering what Nino did, he did nothing. He just sat in the chair for the dads.
My chest still hurts.
I think I might be having a panic attack because I’ve had a plan for two years to do something for the 25th anniversary of 9/11, and it’s two days before and I have nothing. Well, I have two suggestions from the kids.
Natalie says I should write about new evidence that New York knew the air after 9/11 was unsafe and told people to go back to work anyway.
I ask her, “What’s your point?”
She says, “The point is our government killed more people cleaning up 9/11 than the terrorists killed knocking down two buildings.”
Z says I should write about how when his friends need an example of why his family is weird, he tells them his mom was at 9/11. He says, “The real reasons would overwhelm them.”
I’m scrolling through 9/11 notes on my phone looking for where there’s a story. The nurse tells me my bloodwork is fine. She says, “It’s good you came in. At your age you shouldn’t take any risks with your heart.”
I nod. They discharge me.
Nino walks me home from the hospital. He tells me Gil Scott-Heron came up on his feed.
“Who’s that?”
“Remember? He’s the poet who was arrested when I volunteered in the jail after 9/11. The security guard asked for his autograph.”
“What? I don’t remember that. I think you told someone else.”
He says, “Who else would I have told? There’s been no one but you.”
