Chapter 2 #2
By afternoon, the grilled cheese sandwich I grabbed from the museum cafeteria isn’t sitting well.
I’d only had time—and bandwidth—to pack a bag of peanuts for lunch.
The “butter” must actually be some hydrogenated vegetable spread.
I chew a piece of mint gum to ease my digestion and check my phone.
I quickly notice I haven’t heard back from April all morning.
I sent her an early text about buying sunscreen on the way to the beach, and another asking for a photo of their sandcastle. It’s been several hours and nothing.
Agreeing to let Hannah go to the beach today was difficult.
When April asked, my gut reaction was a hard no.
But Hannah begged, and I rationalized away my hesitation; April is an excellent swimmer and CPR certified.
Lake Michigan is still rather cold in late May, so they would likely only go in to their knees.
They’d spend most of the time in the sand surrounded by buckets and shovels.
Still, the whole idea didn’t sit well—six years ago in May, Sean drowned in that lake; we marked the anniversary of that fateful day earlier this month.
And while I’ve had to pass the lake, even watch the sun rise over it, just the sight of it throws me, if only momentarily, into fight or flight.
Either my fists clench or I stop breathing, or both.
But fueled by the guilt of missing Hannah’s graduation, and spoiling a fun start to her summer vacation, I said yes.
I call April instead, but her phone goes immediately to voicemail. I leave a message, trying to sound more relaxed than I feel.
A half hour passes, and still no calls or texts.
I try to focus on work, but can’t. I keep checking my phone, and then double- and triple-checking it, assuring myself that it isn’t on silent mode.
Worst-case scenarios flood my mind, hijacking all bodily functions.
My breath turns shallow, and my heart pounds in my chest, in my throat.
I stand and start to pace, stomach acids creeping up my esophagus.
I begin to sweat everywhere—my armpits, my forehead, my upper lip.
I can’t stay here. I have to leave. I have to drive to the beach right now and find them.
I have to make sure Hannah is alive and okay.
As I try to dash out, I run into Elena. My boss takes one look at me and stops me with a firm grip on my upper arm. “Maggie, what’s wrong?”
“I can’t breathe,” I say.
“You can’t breathe?” Elena repeats in the soothing, grandmotherly tone I wish belonged to my own mother.
“And my heart is . . .” I try to take in a full breath but seem to hit a wall inside my lungs. “It’s pounding. I can feel it in my head. It’s in my throat.”
I suddenly feel woozy, and Elena instinctively leads me to a chair and has me sit.
“I knew it was a bad idea,” I protest as she takes my pulse. “I should never have let Hannah go swimming with April. I’m going to the beach now to find them.”
Elena tightens her grip on my wrist. “Maggie, I can’t let you drive in this condition,” she says. “Of course, we need to make sure Hannah is safe. But first, I think we better go to the hospital.”
“Hospital?” I barely get the word out.
“Do you have shortness of breath?” she asks.
I nod.
“Are you sweating? Nauseous?”
I nod again.
She remains quiet as she counts my heartbeats under her fingertips.
“Your pulse is 180,” she says. “Maggie, I’m calling an ambulance.”
April finally texts a few minutes after we arrive at the hospital.
Because I’m hooked up to monitors, Elena reads April’s note.
It’s all very benign. April forgot to charge her phone the night before, and the battery died early.
She didn’t notice until they were at the beach, and she had no way to charge it there.
As soon as they returned to my house, she plugged her cell back in and received my messages.
They had a wonderful time at the beach. Hannah even made up a story about a mermaid and is now busy writing it all down with illustrations.
But even as I let relief wash over me, my heart rate sits at 150 beats per minute. It’s dropping, but slowly. The ER staff has run every test imaginable—blood tests, EKG, an x-ray of my lungs—and can’t find anything wrong.
When my heart rate drops to 120, the doctor returns to my bedside, her head cocked and soft eyes filled with pity. “When your pulse is below 100, I’ll let you go home,” she says.
“So I didn’t have a heart attack?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “You had a panic attack. The symptoms are very similar. And you’re not alone. I can’t count the number of women around your age, mid- to late thirties, who come in feeling exactly like you did. But it’s likely stress and anxiety based.”
I nod.
“So the question is, Maggie, why does a perfectly healthy thirty-five-year-old woman have a resting pulse over 100?” she asks, gesturing to the beeping monitor.
I let her question linger between us.
“She was worried about her daughter,” Elena chimes in from her bedside chair, quickly taking an advocate role.
“Your daughter?” the doctor repeats.
“She was at the beach with her babysitter, and I couldn’t get ahold of them,” I explain.
“My imagination got the best of me. That might sound very irrational—and I guess it is—but my husband died in . . .” I pause, the word is still so bitter in my mouth.
“My husband drowned in the lake,” I say instead.
The doctor nods. “And did you see someone, a professional, about that?”
“Yes, for a whole year but . . .” I pause, then shrug. “Maybe that wasn’t enough.”
“Maybe not,” she says. “So that’s also why, while I’m not sending you home with any prescriptions, I’m giving you a referral for a therapist. And it would be a good idea to take it easy for the next few days. Try to do activities you find relaxing. Meditation, yoga, reading?”
I nod again, agreeing to her terms, and thank her.
When the doctor leaves, I lock eyes with Elena. “I guess I’m taking the rest of the afternoon off,” I say. “Doctor’s orders.”
“The afternoon?” Elena arches her eyebrow. “More like a week. Boss’s orders.”
“A week?”
Elena scoots her chair closer. “Maggie, you just had a panic attack that landed you in the hospital. You’ve been burning the candle at both ends. Sleeping less, eating less. Doing too much. I don’t think you realize what a toll it’s taking.”
She’s right. I haven’t slept more than three to four hours at a time. My meals the past month have mostly consisted of French fries or packaged protein bars pretending to be nutritious. Not the diet you’d expect a gourmand food anthropologist to follow.
Elena lays her hand on mine. “I think your body is trying to tell you something.”
“Like what?”
“Slow down,” she offers. “You haven’t taken more than a day or two off since I took this position three years ago.”
“You’re going to make me take a vacation? Is that legal?”
She shakes her head, but her coiffed hair, streaked with gray, doesn’t budge.
“I can’t make you, but I can highly advise you.
Things are definitely slower now that the exhibit opened.
Summer is always calmer than the school year.
And I’m still here full-time until the fall.
This is actually an opportune time to take a week off before everything that’s ahead of you. ”
She’s talking about the job promotion, taking on her role as museum director, without actually talking about it. Nothing is official yet, though I know she wants me for the position.
When I don’t seem convinced, she adds, “You heard the doctor. Why does a perfectly healthy thirty-five-year-old woman have a resting pulse over 100? It’s a valid question and worth a week to ponder. Don’t you think?”
It is a good question. I’d like to blame it on the greasy sandwich, or April and Hannah’s trip to the beach, or April’s phone dying, but I wonder if it’s more than that.
Once upon a time—when Sean was still alive, when I was younger—I was different.
Calmer. Easygoing. Fun. But being a single mom, knowing I am the sole breadwinner—that the balance of our life rests fully on my shoulders—has changed me.
How many times since Sean passed have I thought, Stop the world, I want to get off.
It’s as if every day I’m opening a new business, but before I can set everything up the way it needs to be, someone opens the front doors and lets all the customers in.
And they just keep coming, so I have to keep the business going.
But everything behind the counter is still a mess, and all I really want to do is push all the customers out the door, lock it behind them, and post a sign that says “Closed for Renovation.”
The problem is, I don’t run a business. I run a home. I run a family. I run a life. And you can’t close a home or a family.
You can’t close a life.
But you can vacate it.
“Okay,” I finally say to Elena, so soft, it’s almost a whisper.
“Okay?” she repeats.
“I’ll take some time off.”
“Good. Because I was already planning to lock you out of your office if you tried to show up tomorrow.” She laughs, and I do too.
I feel my pulse slow down a few beats.
“And think about actually going somewhere,” Elena goes on. “Take Hannah on a little trip. It’s good to get away. Is there anywhere you’ve wanted to go? Somewhere you’d like to show her?”
On my long list of travel destinations are New York City, the Outer Banks, and Key West. But oddly, none of those places come to mind. I turn to Elena and say, “St. John’s Ferry, Wisconsin.”