Preface

“Please don’t die. Please don’t FUCKING die!”

“They’re close, Tim”, assured the 911 operator.

I looked at my phone. Elapsed time of the call: over eight minutes! I felt our five year old daughters arms tighten around my leg.

I pressed down as hard as I could on my wife’s motionless body. A blast of air came out of her.

I released.

Air rushed back in. It made a loud sucking sound. (Think of the sound people make when they unexpectedly run into zombies. Only longer.)

Ten minutes earlier, I was checking my eyelids for pinholes. A loud noise woke me up. I think I remember deciding that the cat must have knocked something off the counter. I turned my pillow to the cool side… closed my eyes…

We don’t have a cat.

I reached over… Malia wasn’t in bed. Uh-oh…

On my way out of our bedroom I ran into our boys leaving theirs.

“What was that?”

Before I could attempt an answer our attention was hijacked by strange, guttural noises coming from the next room.

A badger!

I don’t know why I thought it was a badger. I’ve never seen or heard one in person. I don’t even think they live where we were living. Nevertheless, that was my diagnosis.

TV had taught me not to take such a meeting lightly. Badgers can be fierce when cornered.

So I sent the kids in first. My plan was to watch how the badger fought… and come up with a counter strategy. Hopefully before it killed one of them. (For the thirty percent of you that have lost the ability to recognize humor… that’s a joke.) I told the kids to wait in the hallway until one of us… hopefully me, came out.

What I saw shook me to my core.

Malia was flat on her back. Her eyes wide open and lifeless… like a doll. Her breathing (the source of the badger noise) was ragged… irregular.

The intensity of this moment was total. I have never felt so alone.

“Holy Fucking Shit!!!”I yelled. No, that’s not entirely accurate. I think it was more like… “Holy motherfucking Shit!”

“No bad words Dad!” Our daughter Kaila, reminded me of our rule.

“Really!?” I asked. “Not even now?”

“No Dad! You promised.”

She did not get her zero tolerance from me.

Something… maybe a ghost, whispered to me. “She fell. Check her head.” I knelt down and felt the back of her head. No injury.

I didn’t need to check her pulse. The veins in her neck were chaotically dancing to some wild and discordant beat.

“Open your eyes,” I yelled to her, “please tell me what to do!”

And as I knelt beside her… yelling her name… begging for guidance… wondering what in THE HELL to do…

She…

Stopped…

Breathing…

I know what deafening silence sounds like.

“She’s breathing”, I thought. “You just can’t see it. She’s gotta be breathing.” THIS CAN”T BE HAPPENING!

But she wasn’t. And it was.

Immediately, Malia turned blue.

I now had something concrete to deal with. And I cursed myself for wishing for something concrete to deal with.

An inner howl assailed me. My past and future merged into a singularity of time. There was nothing but this moment.

Somewhere in the back of my mind an ominous countdown began. Two minutes.
Two minutes to brain damage, to death, to… I had no fucking idea what. I don’t know where I got that two minutes from but I was gonna make damn sure that we didn’t hit it.

The ghost whispered to me again. It gave me the structure to handle the crisis. “Get help.”

I sent our oldest son Wyatt (11) to call 911.

“Begin compressions.” The ghost commanded.

I collapsed her chest.

As I was administering CPR I gave the 911 operator the vitals. Sitrep, address, cross street. The operator stayed on the line.

To my relief the blue tinge quickly left her skin.

I sent the boys to the end of our driveway to meet the ambulance. We shared a long, confusing, driveway that had defeated many pizza deliverymen.

I collapsed her chest.

It was cold and dark. They didn’t want to wait down there alone.

I explained the math of the moment. if I stopped what I was doing… Mom would die. It couldn’t be me waiting down there.

I collapsed her chest.

“We’ve got one shot,” I said to them. “But if that ambulance misses us we’ll miss it.”

A look of seriousness crossed their faces. “Ok Dad, we’ve got this.”

I knew they did.

That left Kaila. She was five – and a HALF years old – as she reminded us daily. Quietly sitting behind me holding onto my leg.

“Kaila, go into the big bedroom.”

I collapsed her chest.

“No Daddy, I want to be here.”

End of conversation. There she stayed as I focused on the rhythm of compressions.

“ Hang in there Tim.” The 911 operator periodically encouraged me.

This wasn’t like the movies. Sweat dropped from my face, darkening Malia’s shirt. I was exhausted.

The reaper was in the room with us. I saw it in the corner. Eagerly rubbing it’s hands together… like a fly perched over a bit of hamburger… kept from its prize solely by my efforts.

I reached out to it in my mind. “I have money… ”

The reaper laughed.

I lifted my body off the ground and collapsed Malia’s chest again… and again… and again…

I heard the sirens.

Our daughter touched my shoulder. I wasn’t going to stop.

A stronger hand grabbed me. I looked up. It was a paramedic.

I slumped back into the wall behind me. Fatigue hit me like the gnarled fist of an old sailor. My clothes were drenched in my sweat. Blood, my blood… from my torn up knees, was all over my legs and the floor.

Standing, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My eyes were red. My lips stuck to my teeth. I looked like fire marshal Bill… after the Wayan brothers kicked the shit out of him.

More than eleven minutes had passed. One hundred compressions a minute. I was too tired to do the math.

EMTs surrounded her. They cut her shirt off, attached her to a machine, gave her an injection.

“Charging…”

“Clear.”

They put the defibrillators paddles on her.

Puh-thunk. Her body tensed. This wasn’t like the movies either.

No pulse… nothing.

“Charging.”

The machine beeped.

“Clear.”

Puh-thunk.

It went on like this for a few minutes. Maybe more. (I can’t remember.) Her heart would not beat on it’s own.

They transported her to the hospital.

The fire trucks and police cars slowly filed back down our driveway. The Sheriff was about to get in his car. He came back and hugged me. That was a first.

I needed to keep moving. I started cleaning up. The kids silently pitched in. I threw the shirt they cut off of her into the garbage. Wrappers and torn packages too. Then I mopped my blood from the floor. When I could delay no more we drove to the hospital.

I knew she was dead. I was a funeral planner now. On my way to make the arrangements.

We pulled into the parking lot. I silently vowed to myself that I wouldn’t fall apart. Not in front of the kids anyway. We walked into the ER holding hands.

My sweat pants clawed at the raw flesh on my knees.

A person calling themself an intensivist pulled me to the side.

Assuming intensivist was hospital speak for billing, (hospital bills are intense) I pulled out my insurance card. It turns out an intensivist is a Doctor who cares for the critically ill.

“Your wife’s heart is beating again!”

The floor turned into jello… or… maybe it was my legs.

She’s still very sick. Nowhere near to being out of the woods. But… she’s alive!”

I had to see her.

I passed the reaper in the way in. Being careful to keep the intensivist between us.

“See you soon,” the reaper said confidently.

“Cocky fucker.” I thought to myself. I guess being undefeated will do that to you. (Not that I would know anything about that.)

I got a brief look at it’s face when it passed. It wasn’t a skeleton, like I assumed. No, there was some skin on it’s face and hands. Wrinkled skin that was collapsing like old fruit. I couldn’t tell if it was a he or a she.

Too bad. It would have been nice to put that question to rest.

In a university setting a professor would probably have to refer to it as “they”. Funny world we’ve created for ourselves.

Malias face was flush. Incongruously peaceful. Her hair was wet. Pushed back away from her face. I’ve seen this face so many times. This is what she looked like after giving birth to our children. It’s what she looked like laying on the beach after a swim. Without all the tubes and wires.

It was as if I had no memories that didn’t include her. It was suddenly obvious how deeply interwoven our lives were.

Why do we forget this stuff?

We got Malia back home just in time for for Thanksgiving. What a Thanksgiving it was! I doubt that I shall ever have one quite like it again…and that’s ok.

When our guests were gone, the kids were in bed, and the dust from the night had completely settled, I looked at her standing there wearing the portable defibrillating vest – that she had to agree to wear to get out of the hospital. For the first time since it happened… I allowed myself to take a full breath…

I completely broke down.

There were setbacks and surgeries. Slowly she got better.

Months afterwards her cardiologist and I talked like two family guys.

“I’ve been doing this for thirty- five years,” he said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Ninety-nine percent of people don’t survive such an event. And ninety-nine percent of those who do… are vegetables.”

I held up my arm and made a muscle. “My CPR is strong.”

He laughed. “That or you’ve got friends in high places.”

I thought about the reaper. “I’m quite sure I don’t.”

He paused thoughtfully and put his hand on my shoulder. “Listen… if there’s something you guys wanna do together. I recommend getting to it.”

Everyone’s got a dream. And we’re all waiting for the “right” time to live it.

The right time rarely looks like we think it will.

What do you hope to do with your one “wild and precious life”?

At your current rate… what are your chances of doing it?