I dreamed myself a thousand times around the world, But I can’t get out of this place.
—DAVE MATTHEWS
NOVEMBER 21, 2010
SOMETIMES WHEN YOU wake in the middle of the night it’s only for a slippery moment, a moment to re-cozy yourself, to remember with a flash of panic that forgotten appointment from the day before or to get up to potty. Potty is a word mothers begin using from the instant they give birth and never leaves their vocabulary until death. Sometimes what wakes you is a long-forgotten memory, the thing you tried to put behind you.
Once or twice in a lifetime you wake up and just know it: You are dying, even though three hours ago you were watching Weeds and fluffing pillows on the couch and wiping down the kitchen countertops because you never know what the night will bring. And because a perfectly neat home masks the other mess that spins beyond control.
I jerk awake and move the empty wine glass to see the time on the digital clock. Two something. I should remember the precise time on the clock, but I am a date person. Dates I remember; times, not so much.
In the silent house with a staring cat and three sleeping children and again without a husband present, I struggle through sleepy, disoriented eyes to remember where I am. A sweet artificial stank hangs in the air; oh yeah, the Yankee Candle I blew out before I slammed the last gulp of wine. Nothing looks familiar as I go back and forth in my mind; which issue is more pressing, the crushing pain in my chest or where the hell I am? The glare of the streetlight shining into the window reminds me I’m home, home for now. This is our third house in less than two years, and it takes me a minute to remember where I am. Fort Campbell. Just across the Tennessee border, but with a Kentucky address, surely the result of a political fight over which state got to claim ownership of the home of the 101st Airborne. I’m back in the familiar zone I like to think of as Grey Street, a favorite Dave Matthews song about a woman who feels numbed and paralyzed by her life. Like her world has spiraled beyond her control. Where colors bleed and overlap into only gray. The vibrancy of each color not lost, just absorbed into a blanket of grayness. The gray of autopilot. The gray of another deployment, of a home with a man of the house who wouldn’t know which drawer held the spoons. He’s the man of the house in concept alone. He is three months into a yearlong deployment in Afghanistan, with no need to even own a house key.
But in this two-something wee hour, these ideas are just whispers under my blankets and inside my skin. My feet nudge around looking for the children, who sometimes wander half asleep into my bed. As soon as I move I feel it, the thing that startled me awake. It isn’t a dream or a memory or a forgotten appointment. It’s pain, the physical kind. What frightens me in that moment isn’t the gripping pain in my chest, but a wave of incomprehensible terror for its newness and unfamiliar nature. A twisting stab in my back pushes me out of bed and to my feet. I feel sweat roll down the back of my neck, but it’s almost Thanksgiving and I allow the chill from outside to come into our home at night. I prefer the insulation of blankets and flannel pajamas to warm air.
Oh hell. It’s a panic attack. My body is at long last going on strike, revolting from the stress of eight long, intense deployments. That’s what I’ve been warned of, anyway, in the “resiliency” workshops and briefings army wives sit through during deployments. Well, before deployments, during deployments, and after deployments. So all the time. Whatever you face or feel, surely it’s addressed in a binder somewhere. The army’s philosophy is that just by virtue of identifying and labeling an issue, it’s 95 percent fixed. At each available opportunity, we are reminded to pace ourselves and manage stress. I picture the PowerPoint slide: “Panic attacks are a terrifying but normal reaction: It will feel like you are going to die, but here are coping tips . . . Remember, we are ARMY STRONG!” But what were the tips? Dammit. Breathe. That’s surely one. I do feel like I’m going to die.
I grab my cell phone off the dresser and wander through the upstairs of our quiet house. Joe is almost a teenager, a stack of Call of Duty: Black Ops video games just inches from his sleeping head and a game controller teetering on the edge of the bed. The violent video games that Jack allowed because they are a reality of his job. Jack argued that the video games are disturbing with their accuracy and not gratuitous in their violence. The line between good guys and bad guys is clear, at least in the game.
Our two daughters, Bridget, who is ten, and Greta, five, are curled together in Bridget’s room across the hall. Using the term our is an effort on my part. “My children” comes more naturally; I have to make an effort to remind myself that these are “our children.” I’m not alone in parenting, at least not in theory. In reality, yes, I am alone.
In this moment of defining chest pain I am alone.
The blinding streetlight streams into the adjacent rooms and onto my sleeping babies. Sometimes, when morning comes, I find all three kids together in one bed, or all of us in my bed. But this is how they landed tonight.
My left shoulder pangs and I grip the wall without a sound. Just my palm on the ugly wall. For years the army painted the inside of our homes chalky white; then they decided to get all snazzy with the neutral tones.
At the bottom of the stairs, our wedding portrait hangs, and the light hits my neck in the photo just perfectly. I bought that double strand of mock pearls intending to wear them choker style with the wedding dress that I thought was so simple compared with the other dresses in the early 1990s. When my wedding day finally arrived, I was thankful beyond measure that the pearls were adjustable and could hang loosely around my neck instead of high on my throat. The latter would have been prettier, more chic. But I couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear to have anything choke me.
There’s some warning signal about shoulder pain I should remember now. I flounder down the stairs. Calling 911 never enters my mind. Drama queens, attention whores, that’s who calls 911 in the middle of the night in our neighborhood. According to post policy, Joe is officially old enough to babysit. It occurs to me to just drive to the hospital myself and no one would even know I was gone.
“Did you hear all that commotion last night was Angie Hawkins? She called 911 for a freaking panic attack at two a.m. Two fire trucks, an ambulance, and three MP cars. Woke up the whole block for a panic attack. And on a school night. She’s just trying to get her husband sent home.” Some roll their eyes and some shake their heads. The scenario of tomorrow’s bus stop conversation fuels my confidence that I can drive the two miles to the hospital on my own and get back before the kids even wake for school. No one will know. I can save the story of my middle-of-the-night panic attack for a boring moment during Bunco or a punch line at the next coffee.
With too many symptoms to focus on them separately anymore, I grow weak and fight tears as the pain radiates back and forth from my spine to my left shoulder. One ugly green Croc lying by the door will have to do as I head to the car with one bare foot. Maybe I shouldn’t leave the kids. What if they wander into my bed and I’m not there? The thought crosses my mind but dissipates in my brief hunt for the matching Croc. The hospital on post is two miles away, a straight shot without a single car on the road. I drive right past the emergency entrance and drive over the grass to turn around. Not even an MP on the empty roads that are usually peppered with at least one officer on each block, waiting to catch me blow through stop signs or drive on the grass. Just my luck. Not an MP in sight.
I don’t bother to park, leaving my car running and the driver’s door hanging open. I stumble into automatic ER doors and explode into tears. “I’m dying.” I half expect a reprimand and an order to move my car before I die. My mask of strength is torn from my face.
“What’s your name? Where is your ID card? Are you allergic to anything? Are you going to vomit? Where is the pain coming from? Rate your pain from one to ten. Ma’am, can you breathe?” But this ER tech says these words in a far-too-unaffected way. The workers behind the desk share glances, and a moment of embarrassment rushes over me and then past me. I want to scream at them that I was not stung by an imaginary bee and am not suffering from an imagined allergic reaction. They will realize it soon enough, and I will enjoy a moment of satisfaction, if I live that long. Somehow that’s all preferable to a panic attack.
A heart attack leaves me in the ICU for a week. Not a cardiac event, but a full-fledged heart attack that leaves my heart compromised forever and leads to surreal discussions about a long-term prognosis. Cardiologists scratched their heads over what could have caused such an absurdity. Weeks earlier, I had jogged six miles up and down a mountain. I never touched a cigarette. I squeezed my size 8 ass into size 6 jeans. A heart attack?
Hours later in the cardiac catheterization lab, my last memory is the anesthesiologist reviewing my chart, reciting my age, weight, family history, general health information. He looks at me and shakes his head. A nurse in the frenzy of prepping the operating room flips on a CD player, AC/DC’s “Hells Bells.” I’d like to laugh at her ironic song choice. Even through my morphine stupor, I marvel, watching the fluidity of the staff’s second-nature routine as a team. Not unlike army wives. Just before I drift into the bliss of anesthesia, my final memory is of the white-haired, jolly-looking anesthesiologist leaning close to my ear and asking me, “Why are you on this table? What broke your heart?”