Sugar Time by Jane Adams

Author:Jane Adams [Adams, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781615501915
Publisher: booksurge.com
Published: 2009-07-08T04:00:00+00:00

If you happen to be having a heart attack, Seattle is the best place to do it. Five minutes after the clerk at the Elliott Bay called 911, the EMT’s had me in their ambulance with an oxygen mask over my face and a pressure cuff on my arm. My cell phone kept ringing until one of the guys took it out of my jacket pocket. “Hello? Never mind who this is, who are you?” He bent over me. “Do you have a son named Paul?” I tried to nod but the motion made my head hurt even worse than my chest.

I’d checked out of the hotel around eleven, leaving my bags with the concierge, and was killing time at that bookstore near Alex’s apartment until I met him for lunch. I picked up enough paperbacks to get through the next three weeks—mystery novels are better than sleeping pills, and even though eventually they rot your brain, you’re not hung over in the morning. I was on the last stair down to the basement café when I suddenly felt so lightheaded I had to grab the railing to steady myself. My chest hurt and I couldn’t breathe, so I decided not to. The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back, and a woman whose long hair tickled my nose was exhaling hot little whiffs of eau de vanilla latte in my mouth. When she started thumping on my chest as if she was trying to push it into the floor, counting “one one hundred, two one hundred,” I muttered, “Stop that!” even though it hurt even more to talk. She lifted herself off me and raised a triumphant fist in the air, Rocky-style—people around her clapped their hands, and then someone threw a coat over me, and someone else bent down and told me not to worry, help was on the way.

I could give you all the medical details, but stuff like that is very boring unless it’s about you. Suffice it to say that the punch line to what turned out to be a very unfunny bit of cosmic comedy was that while I’d had every symptom of a heart attack, I hadn’t actually had one. What I’d had was a return visit from the octopus, except that this time it really was an octopus.

“Takotsubo,” said the doctor two days later, when my heart was pumping again and they’d gotten my blood pressure back up. “From tako, meaning octopus, and tsubo, which means bottle. See this?” He held up an X-ray of my heart and pointed to a funny shape on one side, sort of like a vase with a round bottom and a narrow neck. “It’s Japanese—it’s a trap they use to catch octopus. What happens is the muscle cells of the heart go into paralysis—here, close to the aorta. Only the upper part of the heart contracts, which means it can’t pump out enough to give you the oxygen you need. It’s not very common, except in elderly Japanese women.

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