A REAL LIFE MEDICAL DRAMA IN 3 ACTS

ACT 1: THE AMBULANCE

The scene opens with the screech of a siren.  A camera shot of the dashboard radio, playing the surreal “Jingle Bell Rock.”  The camera focuses on my face as I clutch my knapsack to my chest in the passenger seat.  Next to me, the ambulance driver muscles the steering wheel to maneuver through thick rush-hour traffic on the Expressway.  Despite our lights and sirens, one car blocks our way.

“Hey!  This is an ambulance, buddy,” the driver grumbles.  Finally the car grudgingly inches forward to let us squeeze through.

In the midst of this noise, the sound my ears tune into is the ping-ping-ping of the heart monitor clipped to my teenage son’s chest.  In the back of the ambulance, my son "G." lies, strapped to a stretcher, his face turned the other way, his heart monitor my only measure of how he's doing.

“Sorry, ma’am,” the driver says to me, “I just can’t get over how some people won’t pull over for an ambulance.”

I put on a smile.  My own heart is only just now starting to slow down. 

The camera turns to the back of the ambulance.  The EMT, a young man in a Phillies cap bends over the bundled patient.  He sees me and smiles, “He’s doing fine.”

My ringtone, “Ode to Joy,” emerges from my knapsack.  I fumble among my belongings, past my son’s phone and iTouch to answer my cell phone.

 “Hi,” says my husband’s voice in an unfamiliar octave.  “I can see an ambulance.  Is that you?” 

I scan the tangle of traffic below me, two crowded lanes, with snow piled up on either side, but I can't pick out my husband’s tan Acura on its parallel route to meet us at Children’s Hospital.  “I don’t see--”

“Mom!” comes my son's voice behind me, “There’s Dad’s car!”

“Hey,” my husband says, “Ask the driver where I should park when I get to the hospital.”

So the driver feeds me directions which I repeat without understanding as we slide between the cars, one of which I know is my husband’s, although I still can’t find it, the traffic a blur, my senses still focused on the steady ping-ping-ping behind me.

I lean back in the seat.  “We were supposed to be shopping for a Christmas tree tonight,” I murmured, not sure who I was talking to.  The driver nods.

The flashback begins the siren drones and the monitor pinges, and we jerk our way through the darkness. The image returns to me, the intersection of two major roads where, just a few hours before, in my own car, I had been sitting at a red light, my son in the passenger seat beside me.  I flipped on the right turn signal to go to the Emergency Room.  I reconsidered, hit the left signal, toward home.   I glanced at my son’s hand resting on his chest.  Then I changed my mind again.  That last time, it was with a clear mind, not a trace of doubt or fear, that I signaled to the right, and turned my car toward the local hospital. 

Flashback further, to the carpool lane at school.  “You know that funny feeling I get?” my son had said as I picked him up from wrestling practice.  He placed his hand on the rock band logo on the front of his T-shirt.  “I’m having it right now.”

Of course I knew the “funny feeling.” 

Fade back in time even further.  My son first complained about it two years before during soccer season in sixth grade.  “When I run too many laps, sometimes I get this funny feeling, like I can’t catch my breath,” he’d said, his sweaty brown hair stuck to his forehead. 

“Maybe it’s just a stitch in your side,” I said, without giving it much thought.  I was never much of a worrier, and this was my third child.  I was confident, if anything serious ever happened, I would recognize it and know what to do.

“You probably just need to build up your endurance.” I’d said -- words that would haunt me later.

My husband and I continued to hear about the funny feeling every once in a while, but our son went on playing soccer.  Sixth grade, seventh grade.  Our son started wrestling.  The funny feeling came and went.  The summer after seventh grade, he went on a demanding school-sponsored canoe trip in Canada and came home, tan and somehow taller, spilling over with stories of the trail, but no mention of the funny feeling.  But in August as eighth grade soccer season began, it was back, more frequent than ever.

“Maybe we should get it checked out,” Bart said.

“Yeah.  Maybe he has a touch of asthma.”

During September, at a series of doctor’s offices, G. pointed to his chest and described his symptoms as best he could.  He was instructed to blow into plastic tubing, but the verdict was ‘no asthma.’  A trial of reflux medication ruled that out too, and that brought us into October. 

 “A cardiologist?” I blurted when the pediatrician made the referral.  “But there’s nothing wrong with his heart!”

“That’s the next step.  Just to rule it out.”

But I dragged my feet, it seemed like an overreaction, a waste of time.  So it was November when he and I finally sat in the waiting room of the Children’s Hospital cardiologist, surrounded by children with pale faces, some in wheelchairs.  I wondered how their parents found the courage to deal with true emergencies.  I gazed at my own healthy athletic child, his fingers on the tiny keyboard of his ever-present iTouch, updating his Facebook status to “Another doctor’s appointment.”  I looked at the other, sicker children and felt out of place, and grateful.

In the exam room, G. scrunched up his face as he struggled all over again to describe what it was he sometimes felt.  He pointed out the site of the funny feeling.  “Right here.  I can’t catch my breath.”  They stuck a bunch of electrodes to his chest and took an electrocardiogram. 

“I see nothing wrong with your heart,” the doctor said.  He addressed G., not me.  I liked him for that.  G. was the patient; I was only the mom.  Maybe G had an old injury to his chest wall that was causing the pain.  He should continue with all his sports: soccer, wrestling, lacrosse.  Not to worry.  I went home relieved.

Soccer ended.  Wrestling began.  It was December, exam week, and the funny feeling persisted.  “Sometimes I have to sit down for 45 minutes before it stops,” G. said, “It feels like my heart is racing.”

Noting that “heart racing” was a new way of describing the funny feeling, I decided that once Winter Break started, I would call the pediatrician again.  But I never got the chance. 

Flash forward again, to the carpool lane.   His last midterm exam only hours behind him, G. dropped his heavy backpack into the passenger seat of my car, put his hand on his chest and said, “You know that funny feeling?”  Close-up of my face as I struggle with my decision, biting my lip.  Right turn or left?

TO BE CONTINUED!!!

Stay tuned for Act 2 of this 3-Act medical drama, on Open Salon later this week!