By R. Newell
Daniel was the most breathtakingly handsome man I had ever set eyes on, and I wanted him from the moment I met him. And, as luck would have it, he turned out to be my best friend. When he finally kissed me, my heart literally stopped. That’s the God’s honest truth.
When he finally leaned in two years and six months after we met in Dr. Harman’s office to softly place his lips on mine, I felt myself swimming in his green eyes, swooning from the heat of his body so close to mine. His breath smelled of peanut butter and hazelnut coffee, and it quavered as he hovered above me in hesitancy and fear. But, when I placed my hands on his face to draw him in, he closed his eyes, sighed deeply, and surrendered his love to me.
I tasted his last cigarette and the salt from his streaming tears as my blood pounded through my arteries like stampeding stallions and slammed to a sudden gasping halt. Then everything, suddenly, went black.
My name is Gini Braltar. At the age of twenty seven I had a heart attack and didn’t even know it. Not until I was in throws of it.
Tommy had broken up with me again and the shock dropped me to my knees right there by the pond in the park. I had just miscarried two weeks earlier and I couldn’t believe he was abandoning me to suffer the pain of the loss alone, that I had dared to trust him yet again, that I had been so stupid. So, with my hands clutching my chest, I quite unceremoniously collapsed, flat on my face, unconscious.
Disgusted at what he perceived to be an over dramatic reaction on my part, he turned his back and walked away, determined not to be manipulated, not to be swayed one inch from what he knew in his heart had to be done. And, as I haven’t heard from him since, I’m glad to know that at least he finally stuck to a decision.
I had always been active and fit, and had certainly never been conscious of any of the associated symptoms. When Dr. Harman told me that I had survived a myocardial infarction, I gaped at him incredulously.
Turns out, it wasn’t just stress from a horribly dysfunctional romantic relationship that caused my heart to seize, but rather a severe copper deficiency.
Who knew, right? I mean, I had been raised a vegan on mountains of kale and collards, and had always had a serious Jones for chocolate covered cherries—all of which contain traces of copper. Alas, my body’s inability to absorb any of it is due to an ever elusive enzyme rather than the lack of trying or dietary deprivation.
Unlike poor schizophrenic Miss Melva lying in the bed next to me who had suffered the same fate as me because, get this, she had ingested more than 600 coins in her 67 years on the planet. Why she did such a thing her team of medical experts may justly ponder to the end of their professional days, but the zinc toxicity in her blood levels from her having done so is what resulted in her copper deficiency.
Now, four years later, I’ve been diagnosed with giant coronary artery aneurysms. Yeah, because one wouldn’t have been nearly enough for a rare bird like me; it had to be multiple. Guess my grandmother’s to blame really for my having such a rare congenital heart disease, taking the slimy cad Tom off the hook. They tell me she lived well into her fifties despite her ailments, so I’m hopeful that I may yet get my life back, especially given all the new technology.
Coronary artery bypass surgery is one of the most commonly performed in the US, he said. He was one of the best at surgical resections, he said-- a master grafter, so to speak. Minimally invasive, he called it, despite the fact that my entire ribcage would be split open, my heart stopped, and body nearly frozen.
With broad gentle smile he assured me that the prognosis was generally really good. Generally, he said. I could have another heart attack, I could die even, and if I didn’t, I would most certainly lose my mind—or, at least a portion of it, he said. I was not to worry, though, because I was in the best of hands, he said.
He, being cardiothoracic surgeon Dr. Daniel James Maggio. Frankly, I’d take Danny’s lovely appendages inside me over the cold steel of da Vinci surgical robot’s any dang day.
When my case exceeded Dr. Harman’s area of expertise a few years back, he called in the specialists, one of which was Danny.
Never breaching professional protocol while in the office, we managed to become fast friends out of it—not over bleached linens and antiseptic linoleum, but on the green. As fate would have it, we belonged to the same country club and shared a few mutual friends, so our social paths crossed often.
When the test results came back showing the aneurysms, he suggested that he transfer my case to another doctor in that his objectivity may have become compromised by our friendship. But, I wouldn’t allow it, because at heart, it was subjectivity that I yearned for. This whole thing was personal to the nth degree for me.
He had, apparently, expected as much and went on to explain the fore coming procedure to me in detail. I nodded in comprehension, and after a pause to absorb the reality, had asked him if he’d do me a final favor.
“Not final,” he said. “Not final.”
It broke my heart to see his eyes begging to be set free from the responsibility of my life, not because he didn’t want to assume responsibility of it, but because having done so he dreaded loosing it. We hadn’t even kissed and I knew he loved me in a way Tommy never had, never could.
“Danny, your friendship means more to me than you will ever know—more to me than my life. Everything is just as it is meant to be.”
I smiled, but he bent his head. “What do you wished of me?”
“Kiss me.”
His head jolted up. “What? Now? Here?” Danny sputtered.
“No, silly,” I laughed. “When the time comes to put me under.”
His face froze and his cheeks flushed. I reached out my hand across the mahogany desk towards his resting on my open file to explain that if I were to die that day, I wanted to do so filled with the serenity that’s acquired through loving companionship.
“You’ve become my closest friend, Danny. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Gini. Have for a long time now.” Danny stared at me as his eyes welled. “Please, please don’t ask this of me.”
We sat looking at one another for a long time in silence until I finally whispered, “How can I not?”
~~~~
Dr. Maggio felt the pulse in his patient’s lips and wrist stop and knew that the potassium solution had done its gruesome job. He stood up and watched her blood circulate through the heart-lung machine while Nurse Nancy swabbed his face.
Looking into the older woman’s compassionate eyes, he took a deep breath, filling his lungs with essence of the woman he loved. With fear pushed aside, the surgeon pulled his face mask up to his eyes and went to work reconstructing Gini’s heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment