6. Miller
Miller
Collie looked tiny and fragile in the hospital bed. An IV dripped steadily into his arm, and a monitor displayed his vital signs.
I’d been staring at the zigzag pattern of his heartbeat for hours before he finally woke up and looked around. When he saw me, he whispered, “Miller.” His voice was weak and scratchy. “What’s going on?”
I got up and took his hand. “You’re in a hospital, because you passed out.”
“How long was I unconscious?”
“A few minutes. You came to in the ambulance, but you were extremely agitated, so they had to sedate you. If you feel groggy, it’s probably because the sedative is still wearing off.”
“I don’t remember an ambulance.” He shut his eyes. I thought he might have fallen asleep, but after a minute he asked, “What time is it?”
“It’s almost one a.m. I lied and said I was your husband, so the nurses would let me spend the night in your room. I thought you’d be scared if you woke up alone in an unfamiliar place.”
“I’m so glad you stayed. I would have been terrified.” After another pause, he asked, “Do the doctors know why I passed out?”
“They think they do.”
He opened his eyes and met my gaze. “What was it?”
I gently brushed his hair back. “It’s better if you hear it from a doctor. They’ll be able to answer your questions and—”
“Why? Is it bad?” His eyes went wide. For the first time, I saw that they were a true gray. “It is, isn’t it? You look so serious.”
As much as I’d wanted a doctor to explain this to him, he was getting himself worked up, so I said, “You have a congenital heart defect, which forces your heart to work harder than it should to pump blood through your body. You might already know this, because it’s something you would have been born with. ”
“I had no idea. How could I go through my whole life with no clue that I have something like that?”
“The doctor said a lot of people don’t show any symptoms until adulthood.”
“So, I’ve lived with this for twenty-seven years,” he said, “and today, out of the blue, it made me pass out?”
“They’re not positive that’s why you passed out, but it’s a definite possibility. Have you ever felt like you were having an irregular heartbeat?”
“My heart feels like it’s racing sometimes. I figured I was hitting the caffeine too hard.”
“Did it feel like that before you passed out?” He nodded. “Then that probably confirms it. Also, you mentioned feeling tired a lot. That might be from poor blood circulation.”
“I knew there had to be some kind of explanation.”
“I really need to apologize for overstepping,” I said. “None of this is any of my business, but because I’d told them I was your husband, the doctor shared this information with me.”
“No, it’s totally fine. I would have told you anyway,” he said. “Now I guess the big question is, can the doctors fix what’s wrong with my heart?”
“Yes, with surgery.”
“Are there other ways they can treat it?”
“I don’t think so, but the doctor will have more information for you when you see her.”
He thought about it for a while before asking, “If I hadn’t passed out today and they hadn’t found the defect, would it have killed me?”
“I don’t know. But your heart is working much harder than it should, and it can’t keep doing that forever.”
“Okay.”
I was horrified when he started to climb out of bed. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t afford surgery right now. I don’t even know how I’m going to pay for this one night in a hospital, let alone whatever tests they did while I was knocked out.”
“You can’t go, Collie.”
“Watch me.”
“But this is really serious!”
“It’s probably not going to kill me today, though. Probably not tomorrow either, if I’ve been living with it for twenty-seven years.”
“But it could be getting worse! You passed out.”
“They don’t really know if that’s why, do they? People pass out for all kinds of reasons.”
“But you haven’t even talked to a doctor yet.”
“They’ll just try to insist that I stay in the hospital, get a bunch more tests, and have surgery, all while running up a bill that’s going to be thousands and thousands of dollars.”
“Yeah, they might, if that’s what it takes to save your life.”
“They can’t say for certain that this thing will kill me in the next six months, can they? Not if it’s already been twenty-seven years. But I know for a fact that I’ll drown in debt if I stay here. I can come back and have the surgery after I find a job with health insurance.”
I exclaimed, “You can’t take a gamble like that, Collie!”
“I have to. My other choice is to end up so deep in debt that I’ll never dig myself out from under it. Literally never.”
“There have to be options. What about Medicaid?”
“I looked into all the state and federal assistance programs last year, because I wanted to get some tests done to find out why I felt rundown all the time. Turns out I make too much money to qualify. Isn’t that hilarious?
My puny thrift store salary kept me just a hair above what they consider the poverty line, so they couldn’t help me.
I even looked up programs in California to see if the situation would be different here, but nope. I’m just screwed.”
“There’s private insurance, too. Maybe you could buy a policy.”
“They always exclude pre-existing conditions, so that wouldn’t do me any good.”
“Please, Collie. Don’t run away from this.”
“You can’t stop me, not unless you plan to tie me to the bed. Normally, that would be a good time, but not in this case.”
I flailed around for something to say and came up with, “This isn’t a sleazy motel that charges by the hour.
You’re already here, a lot of tests were already done, and running off in the middle of the night accomplishes nothing.
If you stay until the morning, you can talk to the doctor and get a lot more information about your condition.
You can talk to someone about financial aid, too.
They might know about some sort of program that you’re unaware of. ”
He paused and mulled that over. I was actually guessing that hospitals didn’t charge by the hour, but it sounded right.
I breathed a sigh of relief when he muttered, “Alright,” and climbed back into bed.
“I guess I’ll try to get some rest. But I still plan to leave after I hear what they have to say. ”
I turned off the harsh light above his bed.
We could still see each other in the soft glow from a pair of wall sconces, and I gently brushed his hair back from his face as I said, “Do you promise not to sneak out if I doze off?” Collie nodded and shut his eyes, and I moved my chair closer to him before taking a seat.
After a while, I assumed he’d fallen asleep. I rested my crossed arms on the edge of his bed and dropped my head onto them. I’d been running on worry and adrenaline for hours, and now my exhaustion was catching up to me.
A minute later, Collie began gently stroking my hair.
He said, very softly, “I really, truly hate hospitals. I watched my dad die in one, and my mom, and Aunt Sue. I would have panicked if I’d woken up alone here, and I’m so grateful that you stayed with me, Miller. You don’t know what that means to me.”
When I sat up and looked at him, there were tears streaming down his face. He whispered, “I’m really scared.”
“Scoot over.”
He did as I asked. After I kicked off my shoes, I climbed onto the bed and gathered him in my arms. He rested his head on my chest and said, in that same little whisper, “I don’t want to die.”
“You won’t. The doctors are going to help you, and you’re going to be perfectly fine.”
I had to believe that. I absolutely had to.