In the Sermon on the Mount, nothing is mentioned about hiding and seeking, but rather seeking and finding. Jesus tells us that along with asking and knocking, we should be seeking and in doing so, we will find. Now, what we will find, He doesn’t specify, an idea that reminds me a little of fishing. You might catch a fish, but it could end up being an eel, a crab, a tire, a boot, or nothing at all. Even no answer is an answer, right? So, this hopeful charge to seek doesn’t necessarily end with us getting what we’re after. Rather, we get something.
My seeking was about to get me much more than I bargained for.
First, spiders. North Carolina garden spiders are harmless, but look like they belong in one of Tolkien’s caves. They are several inches long with fat black and yellow bodies. One of them dropped down to my shoulder. I tumbled over, flicking it away, and splitting the quiet open with my screams.
“You okay?” Chris called out, his footsteps thudding against the boards above me.
“Fine,” I huffed. I lay there on my back to regain my composure. I was halfway through the tunnel. To my left, I eyed the large concrete pillars that supported the building. Closer, a field of wiry beach grasses had taken up residence, soaking up the sunlight and rain from between the slats of the deck, making a sparse living. Right next to me, a clump of dried weeds had been pulled up from the dirt. To my right, another dried clump. I grabbed them in my hands, and a dark picture formed in my head of someone, desperate to hold something, ripping the grasses out of the ground. Could the redhead have crawled or been dragged under here to die?
Above me, I eyed the uniform slats and could see Chris’ shadow hovering there. Panic gripped me at once. No warning. No heads up. My mind skirted back to the black night of my attack, and I was there again. Knife pressed against throat. A dark shadow on top of me. My breathing went from hurried to shallow, gasping.
I heard voices, but they were muffled, like I’d just fallen into the water. Simultaneously, memories of my night at sea flooded back to me. The coldness of the water, the darkness, the taste of salt in my mouth.
My stomach turned. Was I going to be sick? Aches ripped over my ribcage. It felt like a knife was slipping through my heart. I was about to die. I lay there, frozen, listening to the sound of my heart pounding, expecting each beat to be the last one. Twenty-nine years old and having a heart attack. Electric shocks of pain jolted across my chest. I cried out. Loud thuds erupted.
Between bouts of nausea, pain, and dizziness, I couldn’t keep tabs on what was happening to me. How much time passed, I had no idea. The next thing I know, I was being dragged, and then the sunlight hit my face, bright and glaring.
“Delilah?” a voice kept repeating. “Everything’s okay now.” Fingers grasped on to my wrist. Chuck and his partner Jake, the same EMTs who had been at the scenes of both of my near-death experiences in Tipee, hovered over me. Chuck was checking my pulse. I was lying on a stretcher.
“She was grasping at her heart,” Chris reported.
“Let’s give her some aspirins,” Chuck told Jake, who went to retrieve the pills.
“I’m okay,” I muttered. Physically, I was. All my symptoms were slowly easing back to normal. My head, however, was racked with embarrassment, confusion, and anger. “What the hell happened?” I breathed out, more to myself.
“Let’s get you on the EKG,” Chuck decided.
“Your quick recovery indicates a panic attack,” Chris answered. I downed the pills Jake gave me.
To Chuck, I said, “I’m really fine. Chris is right. It was just a little panic attack. We don’t need to do-”
“Delilah, can you tell me what the most crucial organ of the body is?” Chuck asked, adjusting the straps that held me to the stretcher as if afraid I might bolt for the woods. I’d considered it.
I huffed. “The heart.”
“That’s right. The heart,” Chuck went on, “and if someone you know was experiencing chest pains, would you advise them to ignore it?”
“No,” I breathed out as Jake set an oxygen mask on my face.
“Good answer,” Chuck smiled. “Let’s go.”
“Fine, but can we please just try and keep this quiet?” I asked futilely.
Jake laughed. “We’ll be as quiet as church mice.” The two loaded me up in the back of the ambulance, which had already gathered a nice crowd of the Peacock’s employees and guests. Wake and Lucius Kayne stood on the back deck, Kayne angry, as usual. “What the hell was she doing under the house?” he demanded. Wake shrugged.
“Want me to call anyone?” Chris asked, leaning into the back of the ambulance.
“No!” I spat back. “Don’t call anyone.”
Jake shut Chuck and I into the back, and now hidden from the growing crowd, I relaxed, slightly. Yellow started playing. I breathed out heavily, but didn’t move.
“Cool ring tone,” Chuck noted, readying the EKG. Chuck’s calm demeanor told me that he was going through the motions, but didn’t think there was anything wrong. I didn’t even hear the sirens. Having been through this before, I pulled my t-shirt off, and tugged the sheet up over myself. “Do you want to answer it?”
“Not really.” The music stopped.
Chuck chuckled. He strapped the cords of the machine around my chest, and moments later it was outputting. “Heart rate’s good. Everything looks normal.”
My relief was tainted. It almost would have been better for there to be a problem. At least then I could excuse what happened, like having a doctor’s note to get me out of gym class. Though everything about the attack scared the poop out of me, my symptoms’ sudden reversal told me that it was all in my head. I’d imagined a redheaded woman. I’d imagined a heart attack. What was next?
The only hope I held on to as we made the hour-long journey to the hospital was that somehow the incident would be kept quiet. I must have momentarily forgotten what town I lived in.
The dispatcher who took the emergency call, Missy Malone, belonged to the Helping Hands Prayer Circle. She recognized my name, as I am often on the prayer list, and in an effort to instigate a prayer chain, she called every member of the group, starting, of course, with Grandma Betty and Mamma Rose. They called my parents, Clark, my aunts, my cousins and even had the presence of mind to call Henry.
Also a member of the Helping Hands, Beverly Teague received a phone call and by the time the information reached her, I’d had a massive heart attack, stroke and epileptic seizures. A retired nurse, Beverly knew not to overreact and made a few phone calls of her own to find out what was really going on. She, of course, called Sam.
But, Sam didn’t need a call from Beverly to know that I was on my way to the hospital. Sam didn’t need to seek out answers. Somehow, he already knew.