“Stay here, Kate. You’ve done enough,” Walter said. She looked crushed.
Grant didn’t like hospitals. He was already starting to panic. He wanted Kate to come with him since his father put him so off balance. He wasn’t sure how to act around him. He always felt as if he wasn’t doing the right thing and his father was silently judging him but was too polite to say anything. He never felt like that with Kate.
“You look sick,” his father said. “I bet it’s infected.”
Grant didn’t think so. He thought it was the fact that the sides of the car were closing in on him and he couldn’t breathe. He started to gasp for breath.
“I’m dying,” he gasped out. “I’m dying. I’m having a heart attack.I’m dying.” He barely registered it as they pulled into the hospital. The nurses rushed out with a gurney, and Grant collapsed out of the car.
“I’m dying,” he told them. “I’m having a heart attack.”
“He cut his hand,” his father said urgently. “I think it’s infected. It could be in his heart.”
“We’ll see,” the nurse said skeptically as Grant was loaded onto the gurney.
“Where’s Kate? I need to say goodbye,” Grant pleaded as they cut away his clothes.
The doctor came over, looked at him critically, and then said, “He doesn’t have an infection. He’s having a panic attack.”
“I’m dying,” Grant insisted. “My heart.”
“Your heart is fine. Breathe in this paper bag. You’re hyperventilating.”
Grant struggled to calm down as his father held the paper bag over his mouth and nose. One of the nurses inspected his hand.
“There’s nothing wrong,” she said after a moment. “I’d give you a tetanus shot, but I’m sure you’ve probably had several in the past few years. He’s military, right?”
“Marines,” Walter affirmed.
“That panic attack should subside in twenty minutes or so. We’ll check back on him.”
The curtain to the room was drawn back, and Kate rushed in.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Walter, “but I needed to be here.”
“I’m dying,” Grant said, his voice muffled through the bag.
“What?” Kate said, alarmed. She rushed over to him and cradled his head in her arms.
“He’s having a panic attack,” Walter said dryly.
“Oh my goodness!” Kate said, placing a hand on her chest. “I thought he might have sepsis or something. Google really can be alarming.”
She petted Grant’s head while he struggled to control his breathing. Looking up into her eyes, he felt his heart rate start to slow down.
When the nurse returned, she checked his pulse. Then she hooked up an EKG machine to his chest.
“I think he’s going to be just fine,” Walter told her.
The nurse sniffed. “We’re doing some blood work just to be safe. The last thing we need is to release him and suddenly we’re on the hook for a dead war hero. Sit tight, Marine. We’ll have you out in no time.”
It was not no time—it was the entire night, it felt like. Several hours later, Kate was dozing on the chair in the corner under the TV. His father would periodically step out to make a phone call. Grant tried not to think about the last time he was in a hospital, when his ears wouldn’t stop ringing and he was covered in cuts and burns and couldn’t remember what happened. The smell of the disinfectant, the sounds of the sheets rubbing together, the constant beeping. Grant hated hospitals.
Just stay calm,he told himself.It’s almost over.He closed his eyes and tried to pretend he was somewhere else.
“Absolutely not,” his father said, walking into the room. “Someone change that channel.” Grant looked up at the small TV mounted on the ceiling. There was an anorexic-looking woman wearing very revealing clothes, drinking, and screaming at an equally skinny, equally scantily clad woman.
“I can’t believe that woman is running around on that stupid show, bilking the fact that she and her boyfriend murdered my children. Turn it off,” he demanded of Kate.
