“No. I just woke up with pain in my chest, and my arm. My left arm.”
“And now, chest pains, anything else? Shortness of breath? Dizziness? Nausea?”
“I don’t know. Maybe a little.”
“Okay.” She spoke into her collar. “Female, forty-four, suspected M.I., vitals good, en route to UPMC.”
She was given oxygen and put on a gurney and wheeled toward the door. The ambulance was waiting, lights flashing.
Todd and Sunita rushed after her, their faces encased in worry.
“Can we come with?” Sunita asked. “In the ambulance?”
“Your flight?” Maribeth said.
“Is tomorrow,” Sunita said. “Can we come with?”
“And you are?” the medic asked.
“We’re her—” Todd began.
“Children!” Maribeth lifted her head off the gurney. “They’re my children.”
The two medics exchanged an eye roll.
“What? He’s bio; I’m adopted,” Sunita said.
“We’re like the Jolie-Pitts,” Todd added.
Neither medic looked convinced, but they let them in the ambulance anyway.
ON THE RIDE to the hospital, Todd and Sunita held her hands.
“If I die . . .” Maribeth began.
“You’re not going to die!” Todd interrupted.
“But if I do, my name is Maribeth. Maribeth Klein. My husband is Jason Brinkley. In New York.”
“Okay, Maribeth Klein,” Todd said. “Now you can’t die because Sunita and I made a bet over what your real name was and I just won ten bucks and it would be bad taste to collect if you were dead.”
“Don’t make me laugh,” Maribeth said, clutching her chest. “It hurts.”
“Then don’t die,” Todd said.
IN THE HOSPITAL, Todd and Sunita were sent to the waiting room. Maribeth was ushered into triage. She explained her history, her recent bypass.
“Who’s your cardiologist?” the intake nurse asked.
She didn’t know what to say. Stephen was in California. Dr. Sterling was fired.
“I don’t think I have one anymore.”
SHE WAS USED to it now. EKG. Blood work. Waiting.
Todd and Sunita were not permitted in but they kept texting her from the waiting room. Are you okay?
Not dead yet, Maribeth texted back.
Still not dead.
Sunita, give Todd $10.
Not until you walk out of here, they wrote back.
“FINE, FINE, FINE, everything looks fine,” the ER cardiologist said. He was tall, tired looking, and had an excessive handlebar mustache that made Maribeth like him immediately. “Your EKG and your blood work, your pulse ox, all look completely normal.”
“But that happened last time, too,” she said. “It didn’t show up right away.”
“Which is why we’ll monitor you for a few hours. Tell me, is the pain similar to your first heart attack?”
“No. That was more gradual. This I woke up with.”
“And how would you describe it? Crushing pain?”
“No. It’s more like a burning. But I also felt it in my arm.”
“Burning. Okay. Have you eaten anything unusual in the last day or so?”
The chicken jalfrezi. “I had Indian food for dinner.”
“Spicy?”
“Very.”
“That’ll do it,” he said. “It could be reflux. I’m going to give you an antacid to take care of that. It might also be pain related to your heart healing. We’ll keep an eye on you for a while, but given you so recently had bypass, and that all your numbers look perfect, I’m not that concerned.”
“So I’m not dying of a heart attack.”
“Not presently.”
“Do you think I could see my friends?” she asked.
“Oh, you mean your ‘children’ out there?” He smiled. “They’ve been scratching at the door. Want me to let them in?”
“Please.”
“OH, MY GOD, I feel awful,” Sunita said. “My cooking gave you a gas attack!”
“Just don’t let it get around Hyderabad,” Todd said. “You’ll never find a husband. Oh, wait. Fritz can do the cooking. Mmm. Nut loaf.”
Maribeth was laughing. She hadn’t stopped laughing since they had come back to keep her company. It didn’t hurt anymore. Now that she’d taken the antacid, the pain had vanished.
Around six, Sunita started checking her phone. Her flight was at one, but she had to be at the airport by ten.
“You should get going,” Maribeth said. “You have your flight. And, Todd, you should get a few hours sleep before you leave for Altoona.”
He clutched his chest. “Altoona. You had to remind me.”
“You’ll be fine,” she told Todd. “And so will you,” she told Sunita. “And so will I. Everything is going to turn out fine.”
She stopped abruptly, shocked that she’d said that. And perhaps even more shocked that she actually believed it.
72
She waited until six-thirty to call Jason. She didn’t want to wake him, but she didn’t want him to wake up to that voicemail message either. She wanted him to know she was okay, really okay.
She fished her phone out of her bag and saw that there were several missed calls from a 413 area code. Which was a Pittsburgh number, she thought, but not one she recognized. Maybe it was Stephen, though that wasn’t his cell number, or Sunita and Todd calling her from a payphone, though that didn’t make sense either because several of the calls overlapped with when they’d been with her.