Sunrise above the helipad marked the third day of my stay here. Upon the perch that is a cliff above the Monongahela, I can see the white garage door entrance to the place of the job that afforded me the healthcare that facilitated this recovery room. Just three mornings ago I was fighting back the trepidation of my arrival here at Mercy Hospital. Just about two weeks ago marked the thirty-first anniversary of the day of my double-rainbowed birth in Cheektowaga, New York. Although, on that day of this year, the skies above Pittsburgh required no clearing of clouds.
Unlike today, that day was as clear and as Autumn-cool as it was last year when I returned from my long two-wheeled journey. After such a mild summer, it is of no surprise that the leaves were still holding on to their green. A few honey locust had begun to peek gold along their lower fringes to match our bridges, but as I rode home, I found little other mention of the change. It would all come at once, the fleeting burst of color, so I certainly did not mind this absence.
I crossed the Monongahela, then through the urban core and its lingering diesel exhaust, and up to the shores of the Allegheny. Here I found a trail less traveled, and took it to a place of rusted warehouses and the flats known as The Strip. Before locks and dams, I am sure this area flooded annually. And before us, those who tamed the three rivers, there thrived a people we knew as the Seneca. I wondered about the randomness of my being placed here, right now on the edge of another civilization. I wondered why so few people take the long road these days, and why it took another anniversary of my birth for me to do so. All I wanted for my birthday this year was some time. On that day, I took mine.
I wrestled with the decision to arrive at Mercy Hospital for over three years and just as many sober birthdays. I took time, this time, because I still have my health. My heart is healthy and functions perfectly, mostly. The some of the time that it has not is what brought me to this decision to trust my cardiologist and voluntarily submit my mortality to the collective millions of hours and dollars dedicated to the study of fixing the bad wiring in human hearts. The arrhythmia known to those plagued with it as AF, was kept at bay in me with good food and good exercise until this summer for a reason some could guess but no one really knows. I had grown equally desperate and confident in my doctor's ability to fix this in me.
I arrived on Friday at 10:00 AM. It is now 9:00 AM on Monday. I have cycled through three roommates, all male, two black and one white. Joe, Darnel, and Mr. Billski, who is still here after his second heart attack with his oxygen and phlegm bucket. Joe occupied his half of the room when I had arrived, snoring upright in his chair. Eighty-seven and chewing tobacco since he was celebrating that day I had a few weeks ago by taking the long road home. He lived his whole life thus far up the street in The Hill and must have known its hayday. I could not determine if he happens to frequent this, the ninth floor, or if his stay was simply wearing thin the nerves of the entourage of nurses who continuously had to replace his remote heart monitor stickers. He would say they fell off in his sleep while feigning knowing full well that their adhesive was too strong for such an incessant occurrence. It was this or his propensity to knock over things that might clang and spill fluids all night long that kept the hurried ladies busy. And yes, there even were a few fire alarms as well to help mark that first night of bad television and thin sleep.
My second roommate Darnel arrived to the ER earlier in the day complaining of incoherence and lightheadedness. He attributed these things, almost proudly, to eating only two meals supplemented with unchecked volumes of Mountain Dew and sweetened tea, while fighting against separation from his wife for the entire week. Hospital imposed bedrest and regular meals and fluids, sans caffeine, seemed to take hold immediately. That night the forty-two year old father, fireman, and struggling husband slept like a breastfed baby. And so did I. By noon the next day, and in time to watch Sunday's game, he was gone and the second half of my room was mopped, sprayed, and turned over with fresh linen again, just in time for Mr. Billski – a reminder that I was still here.
Only half the procedure happened–the study part, not the fixing part–so here I sit, post-procedure, unfixed and with stitched holes in my thighs and a half-shaven chest, wondering if ever I should be fixed at all. This condition I have is lineage, as I am not the only Welsh with it. It is a bane, but it is also my watchman for restorative living. I hate what it has done to obliterate my teenage psyche of invincibility, but I am surely no longer a teenager. I danced a song with modern medicine but now I must tell her "don't call me, I will call you." For now, they gave me a drug to take to suppress the problem rhythms. I was told it should help bide my time until science can play catch-up with the burden I will still be carrying as I soon walk out the front doors of this place.
The Southside neighborhood of Pittsburgh has been my place of employment since I was first diagnosed with this heart condition. As the earth would tilt to bring the southern hemisphere its share of warmth, I would often find my bicycle commute to and from work to begin and end in darkness. From my perch here that is a cliff above the Monongahela, I have watched for three days the neighborhood take on its various forms of light and shadow from darkness to darkness as if it was a model train set town brought to life by a single source of artificial light. Cars, trains, people, blimps, planes, boats, birds, and rainclouds passed throughout these days here behind this glass, all mute to the hum of the recycled hospital air. I suppose it is time I begin to face with wider eyes and a clearer head that which we must all face as humans. However, I am encouraged: if not for death, I would never know fervor and how to live life.
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