© 2012 Erin O'Brien

Flesh and Blood

October 24, 2002

9 a.m.

My five-year-old and I are in the kid's play area at the fitness center.

"Forgot my damn cell phone again," I mumble to myself.

"Mom forgot her cell phone," says my daughter to the nursery attendant.

"You play and be good," I say and kiss her sweet soft hair; and then head to the cardio room, where I spend 60 minutes sweating and grunting in an effort to improve my 37-year-old body.

Back home, my cell phone rings on the kitchen table.

10:30 a.m.

The answering machine is blinking as I step into the house. I hit the message button.

"Erin? Erin? Oh, I'll call your cell," says Mom's voice. Something is wrong.

My cell phone has two messages.

"It's Mom. Call me. Dad's having a problem. He's going to the ER. I'm-" says the first. "Erin?" says the second, her voice faltering.

Something is wrong.

There is no answer at my parents' house. Dad does not answer his cell. I bound up the stairs, tearing off my sweaty tee shirt. My clothing is completely soaked through with perspiration. I strip and pull on a pair of jeans and a sweater that are on the bathroom floor.

A bag.

I need a tote bag. The canvas one in the closet. Snack size Cheetos. A can of peanuts. Juice Box. Crayons. Sesame Street's Elmo Goes to the Circus Coloring and Activity Book. My purse.

"Come on baby girl," I say as I load my daughter into the Honda. The strange tingling and popping that has been dancing around my heart for the previous couple of weeks flits through my chest once again. Until this moment, I have been paying little attention to the odd sensation.

"We have to go find Grandpa."

11:15 a.m.

"I'm looking for Bill O'Brien," I say to the receptionist in the emergency room.

"William O'Brien?" she says, pecking at her keyboard.

"Yes," I say. "He's here, right?"

"Do you have Mr. O'Brien's insurance information?" This is just another day at work for her.

"No. I'm his daughter."

"Can you verify his address?" she asks.

"Can I have the fruit chews, Mom?" says Jessie from the floor where she is pawing through the tote bag.

I rattle off the address. "Has my mom come in? Judy O'Brien?"

"No. You're the first one here for Mr. O'Brien."

"Mom?" says Jessie. "Mom?"

"Can I see him?" I ask.

"First I'll need his telephone number."

Finally, we step through the oversized automatic doors into the singular smell of hospital. White. Blue. Beeping. Unflattering lighting. Tubes. An unexpected disorder.

Dad sees Jessie first. "Hi honey," he says with a gratitude in his eyes that is so deep, it borders on desperate.

He does not say, what the hell are you doing here? You didn't need to come here.

He does not say, why did you bring Jessie here? I don't want her to see me in here. She's already afraid of me, this will just make it worse.

He does not say any of the things he would normally say in this situation.

"Hi," I say.

The predictable conversation ensues, stress test, chest pain, possible heart attack. Despite all the terrifying words, he seems okay and reassurance washes over me.

Mom comes in.

And the woman who constantly referred to Dad as "your father," the woman who barked endlessly at him to light the barbecue, get in the shower, fix the garage door, mow the lawn, husk the corn and move the car for 43 years, takes Dad's hand and says, "Hi sweetheart."

The white coats and blue scrubs move around us and say their hospital things.

"It's called an angiogram."

"You may not use your cell phone anywhere in the hospital."

"This is just a simple oxygen monitor."

My husband Eric walks in and the number of members on our team increases from four to five. Explanations. He hoists Jessie onto his hip.

"I'll take her to school," he says. She turns to Dad. "Bye Grandpa."

"Bye Honey."

Our team is quickly back down to three.

They take Dad away. Mom and I are to wait in a specified room. Someone will update us.

3 p.m.

A man in white coat with a clipboard leads us back to a dark office where a computer screen flickers.

"As you can see," he says, "there is a great deal of disease." He indicates all the white areas on the angiogram image of Dad's chest. "All of this is disease. Even here," he says, pointing at a web of arteries, "in the collateral system."

"Collateral system?" I say.

"When the traditional arteries become increasingly impassable, the heart will begin to use other arteries in order to do its job. Basically, the collateral system is the heart's way of self-bypassing."

"A regular cardio automat." I say.

"I can't believe he's walking around," says Mom, squinting at the screen.

The doctor nods and bobs his head in his maddening, sympathetic doctor way. This is all he can tell us. The cardio surgeon will have to look over the situation, but something must be done immediately. Arterial stents are one possibility, but open-heart bypass surgery is more likely, given the severity of the blockage.

5 p.m.

We wait with Dad in his hospital room, where he lays breathing into a chest through which a hopelessly insufficient amount of blood flows. Tension racks my shoulders. My stomach is empty and sour. I don't have any underwear on.

Dad is edgy and uncomfortable and confused.

"Just don't do anything until I get home," he barks at Mom, referring to the construction he's been doing on the house. They are in the process of adding a solarium. "I have to figure out the soffit problem before we do anything else."

Mom clucks her tongue and rolls her eyes.

"Bill," she says, exhaling in disgust. "Of course I'm not doing anything. What would I possibly be doing?"

I attempt to diffuse the situation with my idiotic banter.

"Look!" I say, picking up the newspaper. "It's a ten percent off coupon from the coffin store!"

Dad does not laugh.

7:30 p.m.

The surgeon finally comes into Dad's room. He is young and attractive and infuriating. He addresses us with stolid authority. Dad requires extensive bypass immediately. He will bypass the blockage by using veins taken from Dad's arm.

"Hear that, Dad?" I say. "You've all ready got all the parts on board."

And don’t worry, says the surgeon. Open-heart surgery is much more routine than people realize. These procedures are done all the time. By this time tomorrow, Mr. O'Brien, says the surgeon, you'll be up and talking. You'll be on your way home in a week. The surgery is scheduled for 8 o'clock the next morning, barely twelve hours away.

The talk works and we all melt with relief as the surgeon gives us a punctuating nod and turns into the hallway.

9 p.m.

I sit at the kitchen table before an uneaten plastic dish of lasagna. Eric sits across from me, asking questions. I answer and stare out the window as those tiny inexplicable pulses course around my heart.

October 25, 2002

6:45 a.m.

Mom is standing in front of Dad's room when I arrive. The door is shut.

"I've been here since four," she says. "They're shaving him."

A man in scrubs emerges from Dad's room. His atrophied left hand curls against his chest, apparently unusable. He carries the shaving tray in his right hand. I don't say anything.

"You can go in now," he says.

"Erin's here." Dad states the obvious. And the fear I saw in his eyes in the emergency room the day before is back.

The impossible minutes unravel. Mom is stoic.

"We'll just get this behind us," she tells Dad as she sits next to him on the bed.

Another nurse appears and tells us it is Time. We walk alongside the gurney as they push Dad through the labyrinthine halls.

"You can stay for a few minutes in the pre-op area," says the nurse.

The anesthesiologist comes in. She is fortyish and strikingly attractive. I wait for Dad's inevitable charisma to surface.

Like the time at the yacht club cocktail party when he slipped from the dock, fell into Lake Erie, emerged as though nothing had happened, walked to the bar and said, "Canadian and water." Soaking wet, he leaned on his elbow and sipped it with casual panache as a puddle formed at his feet.

Or like the time he was working on the XKE in the driveway and three women who were strolling down Lake Avenue stopped to coo over the car. Dad, with his blackened hands and in a filthy tee shirt that featured a flock of cartoon penguins, invited them to take a closer look. Within minutes, he was urging them to stay for a drink.

"Well if you won't have a drink, then at least let me take your picture. Come on, come on. Stand by the car." The women, of course, complied with girlish, giggling coy.

Or like the time Dad and I waited while Mom underwent a mastectomy at the Cleveland Clinic. He was reading a magazine, Design News. The cover had a picture of chunky metal devices and the words, "The New Stepping Motors."

"Who the hell reads that?" I said. "Who the hell reads about stepping motors for chrissake? Nobody reads that."

"Yeah?" said Dad. "Just watch." He walked to the magazine rack in the center of the crowded waiting area, cleared a space, and set his Design News on the shelf, pushing the competing stacks of People and Time and Life aside. He turned and gave me a smug nod as he walked back. He sat and crossed his arms, facing the rack. "We'll just see how long that baby lasts."

And while my mother was having an intimate part of her body amputated a few hundred feet away, I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Hence I know that the beautiful anesthesiologist is soon to be charmed. She moves around Dad with the easy manner of a medical professional.

"Here you go, Mr. O'Brien," she says. "And now a little pinch."

And dad does not say, I would consider any pinch from you a compliment.

"We're going to have to put you in one of these funny hats," she says.

And Dad does not say, You're wearing one too, let's call it a party.

"The procedure should last about four hours," she says.

And Dad does not say, That's a tall order, but I'll see what I can do.

Dad does not say anything at all, instead, his chest heaves upward and he lets out a terrible bark. Then he stares into space.

"Honey?" says Mom. "Are you okay?"

"He'll be fine, Mrs. O'Brien."

And they roll him away, staring beneath his funny hat.

9 a.m.

Mom and I go in search of the waiting room. An orderly walks by, one withered hand curled against his chest. I snap my head to look at him.

"Mom," I whisper, "was that the shaving guy?"

"No," she says, "it wasn't."

"That's what I thought. But his hand?"

Mom shrugs.

We find the waiting room and I settle into an activity to which I feel entirely too accustomed.

Television. The crossword puzzle. Bags of pretzels purchased from machines.

A man in scrubs walks by and one of his hands is curled against his chest. I can't tell if it is the orderly or the shaving guy or someone else. Mom watches him pad by.

I shoot a conspiratorial look over either shoulder.

"Do this," I whisper to Mom, curling my hand against my chest. "They’ll think you already have it."

And while Dad lay on a cold table with his heart and aorta and ribcage exposed a few hundred feet away, Mom laughs and laughs and laughs.

1 p.m.

They had given Mom an in-house communication device.

"Just push this button at any time and a phone extension will display," the woman said. "You dial it on any house phone and a member from your husband's surgical team will give you an update."

Mom looks at her watch for the fifth time in as many minutes.

"So push the button," I say.

"I don't want to bother those people," she says. "If they had something to tell us, they would tell us."

She fingers the device.

"Call already," I say and after a beat of indecision, she does.

Walking back to the table where I am seated, Mom's face has softened with relief.

"Good news," she says.

Things have gone well. The surgical team is minutes away from taking Dad off bypass and closing him up. It will be about 45 more minutes.

Eric arrives. With the update and his presence, our spirits are high.

"Let's play Gin," I say, popping a potato chip into my mouth. "Three way." I deal the cards.

The droning hospital intercom has long since become white noise to me. Hence, it is not without some amazement when I regard my mother as she says, "Isn't Beach the other cardio surgeon?"

"Yeah, I think so." Dad's surgeon is Franzini. "Why?"

"They just paged him," says Mom.

"Who?" says Eric.

"Beach," says Mom. "They just paged Beach on the intercom and asked him to call ext. 4531."

"So?" I say.

She holds up the device. "That's the same extension this thing told me to call."

2 p.m.

"It's your turn," I say to Eric. We are alone in the small waiting area save for a number of fish in their gurgling aquarium.

We wait. We play cards.

"The ten of hearts? What the hell sort of card is the ten of hearts?" I say to Eric. "You warlock!"

A woman in scrubs steps into the waiting room.

"The O'Brien family?" she says.

We look up.

"Please follow me," she says.

We step into a narrow office.

"There's been a complication," she says.

Mom's hands started to shake.

"It appears there was an aortic failure," she says. "Mr. O'Brien has not had blood flow to the brain for hours."

"What?" I say.

"There has been no blood circulation to the brain," she says. "After four minutes without oxygen, the brain effectively dies."

"Dies?" I say.

"The surgeon will be able to explain the situation in more detail," says the woman in the scrubs, "but right now there is the matter of the bypass machine."

"The bypass machine?" says Mom.

"Yes," she says. "There is the matter of disconnecting the bypass machine."

"You are saying there is no blood in his brain?" I say. "I don't understand."

"But if the blood isn't going to the brain," asks Eric, "where is it-" He crumples off the chair, falls onto the floor and begins to snore.

I stand, walk to the doorway, and grip either side of the jamb with white fingers. I clutch the doorframe and breath and watch.

People rushing in to revive Eric.

An immediate need to move my bowels.

Mom's hands shaking.

Two people helping Eric back to the waiting room.

Going to the bathroom.

"Mrs. O'Brien? Do you understand? We must get written permission to remove the bypass machine."

Questions, spoken and unspoken.

"But isn't the machine keeping him alive?"

"It is simply circulating blood," she says. "He will not regain consciousness. The surgeon will explain."

Dad?

Standing behind Mom and putting my arms around her to help steady her shaking hands enough to sign the form.

"The team will remove the bypass machine and the surgeon will be in to see you as soon as possible."

The waiting room.

"Can we call the clergy?"

Mom's friend Rini arriving.

Collecting the playing cards, fitting them into their box and putting them in my backpack.

Crouching in the corner so the hospital officials cannot see me use my cell phone to call my friend Sara.

My opposable thumb working in sync with my forefinger to pick up the potato chip bag and the same two digits releasing it over the wastebasket.

Time passing.

My friend Sara walking in.

"Oh, baby," she says and embraces me.

Everyone hugging everyone else. Not crying.

Worrying about the cars.

The surgeon arriving.

The word "aorta." The word "dissection." The word "blood." His stolid authority and confidence of yesterday are stripped away. He is only a human being, frustrated over his inability to communicate the mechanics of the situation.

My car.

My daughter.

Blood.

How will I to get my car home? Can I manage to drive my car? No one else can drive my stick shift.

It is a straight line home, with just a few turns. My car.

Jessica.

"Can you drive?" Me asking Eric.

"I'm fine." He is still pasty white from the fainting.

Eric. Jessica. School. Eric will get Jessica.

Jessica. Dad.

Johnny.

"He'll be in the morgue here until your funeral people contact us."

Dad. Morgue. Blood. Mom. Aorta. Jessica. Dissection. Car. Brain. Dead. Johnny. Dad. Dead.

Eric. Eric leaving to get Jessica.

Shaky Eric driving Jessica. Mom.

I can drive in a straight line. I can turn the car. I can grip the steering wheel with my hands and rotate it. I can do this.

Sliding to the floor and squeezing my knees to my chest.

Green scrubs asking, "Why are you on the floor?"

Forms. Mom. Mom's car.

A woman from the surgical team arriving and telling us we can see Dad one last time.

"I'm not going in. I'm going in." Mom. "I'm not going in."

The woman helping me stand. The woman helping me walk.

Dad.

Dad dead.

"Talk to him."

The woman holding me up.

He is there on the gurney. His face is familiar. His body is covered with hospital blankets, hiding the gore of the surgery. There was no reason to sew him up. There was no reason to tend the wound of the procedure.

"Thanks, Dad," I say. "I love you and I promise to do right by your granddaughter."

"Touch him," says the woman. "Touch his hand."

My hand reaching out. My shaking fingers brushing Dad's cold, dead hand.

5 p.m.

I step out of the hospital into the pouring rain. I get into my car and drive it in a straight line and through one turn, then another and another. Red light, green light. I pull the car into my garage and park, the strange electrical pulses popping in my chest.

It rains all night long.

October 26, 2002

I blink awake, verify I am alive, and shower and dress.

"I have to go to Mom," I say to Eric. Jessie is with my in-laws. Eric nods and dresses.

We drive the nine miles that separates me from Mom.

There are buckets and pots everywhere inside the area under construction at Mom and Dad's house. They are catching rainwater as it sluices in through the unfinished seams of the unfinished roof of the unfinished solarium.

In Dad's utter vacuum, his presence is everywhere. His boots. His stained work vest, tools. Hand drills, table saws, hammers.

I touch the yellow Stanley measuring tape, which had been hooked to the front pocket of Dad's Levis every single day of his life.

(Being fifteen years old, curled on the pillows of the couch and watching 60 minutes with Dad on the other end of the couch and noticing a slight tickle on the bottom of my foot and glancing over to see that it was just Dad with one of his favorite Dad tricks, wherein he would slowly and silently unfurl his measuring tape so it would remain stiff until he could tickle the bottom of my foot [or tug on my shirt pocket or tap my Diet Pepsi can or push a potato chip out of the bowl at my elbow] and, with the irritating voice of a 15-year-old girl saying, "D-a-ad!" and he would hissle and giggle and let the metal tape measure snap back into its sheath and clip it back on his belt and sip his drink and hissle and giggle again)

"I'm going down to the shop," I say to Mom.

"The shop?" she says. "How can you go down there?"

"I have to go down to the shop."

I step into the cold basement and the familiar smell of metal and machine oil.

Screwdrivers and files and wrenches litter the tops of the steel workbenches. The floor is an eerie landscape of mountains fashioned from fallen wood and metal shavings. They lie in piles around the 7-foot-bed Monarch lathe, the hulking 1,800-pound Bridgeport Milling machines and the table saws and the grinders and the drill presses.

The radio comes on as it has ten thousand times before, exactly 12 seconds after the motion detector turned on the lights. Moon River.

I pick up a handful of the tiny spiral shavings that I have plucked from the bottom of my feet my entire life. The impulses around my heart respond with a rash of pops and tingles. I sit on his filthy plastic shop stool.

The warmth recedes from my fingers.

I let the shavings fall.

My stomach contracts into an impossible painful knot.

A feverish heat flushes my face. The rest of my body goes cold as death. I begin to shake.

I step back up the stairs, hugging myself and whispering, "freezing cold freezing freezing freezing cold freezing cold freezing freezing cold freezing freezing freezing cold"

I roll into a tight ball on the couch. People pile blankets on me.

"freezing freezing freezing cold"

I shake uncontrollably.

"Erin's cold," says Mom, her face blank, her face vague, her face confused. "Erin needs a blanket."

I freeze.

© 2012 Erin O'Brien