I don't think I will ever forgive myself if anything were to happen to my father ...
Yesterday morning, I was awakened by a very loud "Thump"; it sounded like someone had fallen upstairs. I got scared, so I went upstairs, to discover, to my horror, my father lying on the floor in a heap. He wasn't moving.
Naturally, I got scared. I screamed for Mom. She came and told me to call for an ambulance; soemthing had happened to Dad. He looked so bad: eyes closed, face gray and sweating.
He looked more ... dead ... than alive. I figured he must have suffered a stroke or something.
I raced to the phone on winged feet. I punched the number and screamed for them to send an ambulance, as something had happened to my dad. I was never so terrified in all my life.
It seemed like it took forever, but it was only moments before the paramedics were banging on our front door. I let them in; they were soon tending to my father. They said he had suffered a possible heart attack; he needed to be taken to the hospital and treated as quickly as possible.
Dad lay there, oblivious to what was going on around him; he looked eighty years old. It broke my heart to see him lying there, hooked up to oxygen and on a heart monitor; he looked so vulnerable.
The paramedics soon had Dad on a stretcher and wheeled him out the front door to the waiting ambulance. They loaded him in and told us to follow them to the hospital. Mom went with the ambulance crew while I called a neighbor and explained the situation. She said she'd take me to the hospital, so I could be there with (for?) Mom and Dad.
At the hospital, we waited for what seemed like an eternity. I couldn't concentrate on the magazine I tried to read: all I could think about was the image of Dad lying on the hallway floor, not moving, looking like death. It was all I could do to keep from crying.
I wondered what Mom was doing and what she was thinking; she'd gone into the back with the ambulance crew as they brought her husband to the ER. I hadn't seen her since the ambulance had left. I wondered if I'd ever see Dad alive again. It was taking too long!
About an hour later, Mom came out from the back. She looked scared, but relieved at the same time. She was happy to see me.
I figured it was bad news; I started blubbering right there in the ER, right in front of God and everybody. Mom said that Dad was still alive, but he'd had a massive heart attack and that he was being admitted to the Cardiac Intensive Care ward, where he would be tended to by doctors and nurses who knew what Dad needed and how to care for him.
Somehow I wasn't convinced.
Dad was a heavy smoker; maybe this was what had contributed to his heart attack. Now he would have to give up cigarettes and watched his diet: he was already too big now, and when he coughed, it sounded like he was going to cough up a lung (or perhaps his heart or kidneys) ...
It would be difficult, but Mom and I decided that we would help dad in any way possible to get his health back once he'd recovered from his heart attack. He would probably be in the hospital a good week or two, according to Dr. Lipschitz, the doctor in charge.
*To be continued.*
