When Darkness Falls(14)

His thoughts raced. He was dying. He was suffocating. His heart would burst. How much blood was going to it? Too much? Not enough? Haley was waiting for him, and he wouldn’t be there. My God, oh, God, a heart attack? He was too young. Twenty-seven. Getting married. Everything in his life was going right. Finally. He couldn’t breathe.

He stumbled back inside and hit the buzzer for The Underground’s office, but no one answered. The bar wasn’t open yet. With shaking hands, Devon maneuvered his cell phone from his pocket, but the battery was dead. He was trying to drag himself up the stairs when his neighbor, a young guy with a crew cut, came out of his place.

He grabbed Devon’s arm to keep him from falling.

“911.” Devon slid to the floor beneath the tarnished brass mailboxes.

The neighbor crouched next to him and called an ambulance. “Breathe. In. Out. Again.”

Devon tried, but though his lungs expanded, he still gasped, as if the air he’d inhaled lacked oxygen. Twice he heard sirens that were not for him. His chest ached. At last, the paramedics arrived, asking as they worked around him what he’d taken.

“Nothing. No drugs,” Devon said. He said it again to the nurse in the emergency room and the doctor who examined him. After the blood test, they believed him and gave him medication they said was a beta-blocker. His heart slowed. The EKG had showed him at 220 beats per minute.

“What were you doing when it happened?” the doctor asked. He had heavy folds under his eyes and a large nose and reminded Devon uncomfortably of his father. He loomed too close, the fabric of his green scrubs nearly brushing Devon’s bare knees as Devon sat on the examining table, but there wasn’t much room in the curtained cubicle.

“Nothing. Walking out the front door of my apartment building. On the way to my girlfriend’s. My fiancée’s.”

“Getting married soon?”

“Sunday.”

“Oh.” The doctor nodded, scribbled something in his chart, and closed it. “You’re fine.”

“It wasn’t a heart attack?”

“No heart attack. You’re an extremely healthy young man.”

“Then what happened?”

The doctor shrugged, scratched the back of his head. “Sometimes this happens. Usually from stress. Do you smoke?”

“Not much.” He’d been cutting back because Haley disliked smoke, and because he’d been an idiot to adopt the habit in the first place.

“You might want to quit.”

“That’s it?”

“See your doctor for a complete physical, but you can go home now. There’s nothing more we can do for you.”

Devon cleared his throat and, palms sweating, asked the question he most feared asking. “My father is schizophrenic. Could this be a symptom of something like that?”

The doctor laughed, and Devon’s shoulder and neck muscles relaxed. “Symptoms that mimic a heart attack and the symptoms of schizophrenia have nothing in common.”

“And you’re sure my heart is fine?”

“I should have a heart as fine as yours. Go home. Rest.”

After meeting with the discharge nurse, he called Haley from a pay phone in the waiting room. Two older women sat in vinyl seats near him, hands of bridge spread out on the coffee table. A little boy raced his truck around the potted plants in the corner. A group of what looked like college students gathered in the sitting area in front of the triage desk.

Haley answered on the second ring. Twisting the phone cord around his fingers, he told her what had happened, barely pausing for breath between sentences. His voice trembled, and he willed himself to sound calm and confident. He couldn’t bear to have her think it was about the wedding or her, as the doctor had implied.

“They don’t know what’s wrong?” she said.

“They said it happens sometimes. Especially to men my age. They called it atrial tachycardia, but I’m pretty sure all that means is my heart was beating fast.”

“I’m glad you’re all right. I mean, I know you’re not exactly fine, but I was afraid there’d been an accident.”

He held the phone receiver nearer to his mouth as if it would somehow bring her physically closer to him.

“I’m fine. Sorry I didn’t call sooner. They had me hooked to machines back in a cubicle and my phone battery was dead.” A dark-haired woman rushed through the double doors, clutching a toddler in her arms. Devon silently wished her well. At least whatever was wrong with him wasn’t life threatening.

“I thought maybe you’d changed your mind,” Haley said.

“About coming over? About getting married? You know I wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t really think you had. But it was possible.”

“No, it’s not.”

“It’s okay, Devon. I know that’s not what happened, but I want you to know something. When I met you, I was depressed. I was trying to get used to living alone and afraid I wouldn’t find a job that would pay my bills. If you’d asked me if I could handle another relationship falling apart, I would’ve said no. But I realized tonight that it would be hard, but I wouldn’t crawl under the covers and never come out. I’d get through it. I’d be okay.”

He pressed his forehead against the wall above the pay phone. “But that’s not happening.”