I couldn't reach $WIFE on her cell phone, so I abandoned my previous plans and went home, the better to track down someone at her work who could interrupt whatever she was doing. I called Jared, hoping he had her work number; he raced off to $CARDINAL_HOSPITAL, a short walk from where he worked, and proceeded to spend the next hour and a half with (a) the emergency room denying they had any knowledge of $BEST_MAN, (b) nobody telling him anything, and (c) a crushing worry that $BEST_MAN might be dying and could be dying alone.

I started trying to track down the information about how to get in touch with $WIFE. Jared called back; he had gotten her on the phone, she knew, and was already on the way. I got off the phone with him and started to get ready to leave for the hospital; my phone rang again.

"Hi, $BROTHER. What's up?"

"How are you doing?"

"Really fucking sucky. What's up?"

"Uhhh ... i'm sorry to hear that; what's up?" Surprise: he's calling me two days before my wedding and i'm clearly in a terrible mood ... he wanted to talk about the speech he's giving at the wedding. This conversation did not happen. I hurried him off the phone, then the phone rang again; it was $WIFE. Wanting to know if I would wait for her so that she could have company on the way to the hospital.

I couldn't say no to that; but it left me with nothing to do but read wikipedia entries and look forlornly at #husi wishing for a conversation.

There's very little more terrible in the world than sitting there, waiting, worrying, knowing that one of your closest friends could well be dying this very minute, could be dead before you see him again, and there's nothing you can do. Wishing for something to distract you, and unable to pay attention to it even if it's there.

Eventually $WIFE got here, and we took off; she babbled the entire way down, which is what I wanted to do, but it was sort of cute listening to her, and it spared me the pain of actually acknowledging what I was feeling ... (not that she was, either; this is something you don't want to acknowledge, the fear, because acknowledging it makes it real, takes this nebulous possibility, this thing that may be, and makes it something concrete that looms over you until it consumes you). And, besides, it told me some things I hadn't known:

  * $BEST_MAN had been feeling uncomfortable chest pressure for several days and had driven himself to the hospital this morning.
  * $BEST_MAN had been in the emergency room for four hours describing his symptoms and having them go "well, we don't think it's a heart attack" before the heart attack actually started.

OK, this is the best of all possible worlds: he was in an emergency room when he had his heart attack. But still ...

We get to the hospital and pay the valet to take our car away. (How much does that cost? How much do I care? Just park the damn thing and let me see my friend.) Jared had updated us with what little he knew (they're in the cath lab!), but we saw no signs to take us there, so I stopped at an information desk.

"Hi, we're trying to find her husband, who was just admitted to the ER with a heart attack."

"What's his name?"

"$BEST_MAN"

"Hmm. He's not in our computer. What did you say he came in for?"

"We were told he was in the cath lab. Where is the cath lab?"

"That doesn't make any sense. Let me call the emergency room."

Overheard on the phone with the emergency room: "oh, he's in the cath lab." roll eyes "But they're going to be moving him down to the CCU."

"OK, where is the CCU?"

We got to the CCU; Jared was outside, $BEST_MAN had just been taken in. Jared had been told to wait twenty minutes for him to get settled before he could go in. $WIFE went in; I waited with Jared. (Had $WIFE not been there yet, I would have forced the issue: hey, look, i'm his secondary emergency contact and you guys called me, you WILL let me in to see him; but she was here, and I figured that was your job ... and Jared needed me. He was ... devastated. I've never seen him like this before, and I hope not to ever again).

So we waited. We waited near some service elevators. The elevators had a sign: "Do not enter the elevator with the robot."

I want to know about this robot. I want to hear its story. I'm sure it's fascinating.

Time passed. Someone who looked like a disheveled vietnam vet appeared at the pay phone next to the elevators and talked, taking notes on a notepad. Time passed. I went to the bathroom, and then to the cafeteria, where I got bottled water which I clung to like a security blanket. Time passed.

Eventually, I hit a point where I didn't care if it was twenty minutes or not (I own no watch, and like a good boy I turned my cell phone off in the cafeteria --- and it turned out to have been half an hour), and Jared and I wandered into the CCU.

The people at the desk had no idea who I was talking about; it was the wrong desk.

------------------

$BEST_MAN is fine, or as close to fine as you can reasonably claim to be after a heart attack. He had been examined by a woman doing a study on people who report heart pain (to see if they can produce a model for who will and will not develop into a heart attack); she had drawn blood and done an analysis while he was in the waiting room and had predicted his heart attack several minutes before it started, so the cardiac team was already on its way for an emergency intervention. (?!) They fed him blood thinner and performed an angioplasty; he remained lucid the entire time. And in remarkably good spirits, except for being hungry.

I think the good spirits are false armor; but that serves its purpose. I stayed with $WIFE until 8pm, when we went off to get dinner. Jared ran home to get $BEST_MAN books and a portable DVD player, with DVDs, to replace the insipid television. Nothing notable happened; it was a long several hours of bearing witness, and of providing support through companionship and periodic distraction. Time passed both slowly and quickly.

The angioplasty was successful. All in all, if you're going to have a heart attack at 33, this is the best case scenario.

But still.

One of my closest friends could have died today had the die roll been a little bit different, or had he ignored his symptoms.

We think there will be enough time for everything we want to do; we can put off our lives, bit by bit, until tomorrow. We're wrong. Life is fragile, and time is fleeting, and we only have what we have --- and that quantity can never be known until it is exhausted. Now is truly all we have.

And now is not enough.