The gentlest of voices drifts down to the dark, dark bottom of the well, prodding aside dreams and pulling me tenderly back up toward light and sound and the familiar, waiting world.
“Time to get going.”
Groggy and stiff, I grapple with sheets and poke for slippers and stagger through the wee small hours toward the still far-off day, and the surgery awaiting. (It’s a procedure, my wife would clarify, but hey – if they cut holes in you to stick things through, and spend a few hours swimming around inside you, rearranging the anatomic furniture, well … close enough, says the guy who’ll be laying on the cold table, looking up at masks and gizmos.)
Making the bed, tying my shoes, trying not to think about the possibilities. Wonder what these before-dawn moments must have been like for those, across the centuries, for whom the first gray light brought the order to attack … a warning cry, amid the rising thunder of a coming assault … the faces of a firing squad … the silhouette of a gallows against the brightening sky.
Come the dawn, come what may. “It is good for me to draw near to God,” reads my morning meditation. Hmm. How close am I going to draw, before this day is over?
Into the car, onto the already crowding freeway. A long, quiet drive. We’re sleepy, after all. If what’s coming goes smoothly, there’s not enough to talk about. If it goes awry, there’s too much.
Hymn music drifts from the stereo, as bright lights fly by. Precious Lord, Take My Hand, I Need Thee Every Hour. None of those were programmed for this early expedition. They didn’t need to be. Hymns, my soul has found, have their own way of knowing when they’re needed.
The neon-lit lot of the hospital. “A waning moon,” my wife says, pulling her computer bag from the back seat. “Waning” is not a preferred word this particular morning, and the moon is a lonely thing, thin and gray against the black sky behind the spidery branches of a bare-limbed tree.
Coming ‘round the car, my eye catches a bright spot of green on the pavement. A praying mantis, engrossed in his morning devotions. Haven’t seen one of those in 10 years, at least. But he’s here now, green and praying. For a man fond of both, he’s a sweet entomological comfort.
Half an hour later, ‘m lying on my back, feeling the cold alcohol on my arm. This is always the hard part, as the world’s thickest needles meet the world’s scrawniest veins. Nothing coming in the hours ahead, I have reason to expect, will hurt as much as this next minute or so.
Waiting to wince, I gaze up into the black eyes, whiskered chin, and gaping mouth of an astonished old man. At least, that’s how the fire sprinkler head on the ceiling appears. Some people see angels and elephants in the clouds; I see comically stupefied old men in sprinkler heads. His expression is so wide-eyed it kind of tickles me, enough to mostly distract from the moments of pinch and thrust and ache in my arm.
They let my wife back to see me. She has no idea how lovely she is, in the too-bright lights of a 6 a.m. prep room. Women strive and hope to be a vision on their wedding day. They will never know how much rarer their beauty is in a husband’s moments of vulnerability. Or how effortlessly the warmth of their smiling eyes holds back the coming chill of a hospital hallway.
A cheerful nurse whisks me away – past gowned strangers, who look on me from their own prep beds like men on death row watching the guy whose call from the governor never came through. Around jarring corners, bumping onto and off the elevator, the nurse chats happily about her children and the family’s new trampoline and the scrub nurse’s new puppy and how nice that fall is finally here.
And then, we sweep into the operating room, and it’s lights and laughter and “she’s the one with the puppy” and what looks like a thousand heart sensors that will soon be taped to every conceivable non-heart part of me, and blinking colored lights on long monitors, and the doctor is here … a smile in her voice as she slips her hand gently into mine and speaks warmly of things to come. She makes a day trip through my ventricles sound like a restful stroll along the beach that she and I and about 12 of her associates are going to be taking together.
“What kind of music you want to listen to?” a nurse asks. Will I be hearing music through all this? What’s the best tune to be ablated by? “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart?”
“Country, I guess.”
“Old, new, or … ‘90s?” I sense a pause in the brisk pre-surgical action, as if the whole room is holding its collective breath. Seriously – anyone watching the monitors?
On impulse, I go with the ‘90s, and gratifying cheers ring out over the murmur of the anesthesiologist behind me. “Pick out a nice dream,” he says. And the fog rolls in.
* * * * *
I live to tell about it. Evening brings early release, pillows and pajamas and a good old movie, a cool milkshake on my aching throat. And relief. Glad relief. And a spirit of thanks. God is good.
The handful of people who knew the sudden turn of events pledged, and gave, their prayers. And in a hundred little moments – of song and quiet, laughter and touch, warm bed and sprinkler head and milkshake and mantis – those prayers were abundantly, tenderly answered.
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