The Heart Speaks by Mimi Guarneri

Author:Mimi Guarneri
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria
Published: 2006-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

SIX

Sacred Revelations

My first encounter with angels occurred when I was seventeen and working for the emergency ambulance corps in Brooklyn.

We’d picked up a middle-aged man named Lou Esposito who had collapsed from a heart attack at a social club in downtown Bensonhurst. It was a balmy Brooklyn night, and by the time we rushed the stretcher out of the club and into the ambulance, we had to push through a crowd of drinkers, lined up to get into the club.

This dramatic scene was one I’d learned to savor—the rush of adrenaline, the whirling lights, and the heroic sense that if you were swift and efficient enough, you just might save someone’s life.

After we turned on the siren, I couldn’t believe how usually belligerent New York drivers pulled aside, allowing us to barrel by in our lit mobile rescue capsule. This show of respect was beautiful to me, a sign of the unifying spirit of humanity in the face of disaster, one of the few times when we all banded together.

Lou Esposito was a well-known neighborhood character, a butcher by day and a bookie by night. I was used to seeing him behind the counter of his meat market, handling the demanding housewives who wanted their veal breast or bracciole sliced just so. Tonight he was dressed in his usual after-hours attire—gold chains, aviator sunglasses, and a knit shirt that we volunteers had unceremoniously reduced to shreds to get at his chest. As far as I knew, he wasn’t the type for religious visions or visitations. But while we were struggling to get him hooked up to a heart monitor, he suddenly cried out: “Oh God! Look at that! There’s an angel in here.”

It was a testament to my scientific orientation that even at seventeen, I didn’t turn around to peer in the direction he was gesturing but continued assisting my coworker, Mr. Gwynn, a placid, middle-aged man who was the epitome of blunt, cool efficiency.

As a Catholic, I’d been raised with angels—hazy creatures featured in hymns and hovering in the background of paintings—but that didn’t mean I literally believed in them.

In the third grade, my friend Sara told me that she had a guardian angel who’d watched over her during her tonsil surgery. When I asked her to prove it, she became furious. “It’s faith, Mimi, you can’t prove everything.” This was a retort I would hear many times in the following years.

But I was a literal-minded student who liked the controlled atmosphere of the laboratory and the certainty of science.

That night, as Lou Esposito continued to rant about the angel, Mr. Gwynn said, “Okay, Mr. Esposito, we’ll take your angel along to the hospital with us,” and he slammed the ambulance door shut.

The two of us sat over him during the trip to the hospital wearing the knowing looks of the levelheaded, certain there was no room in that ambulance for an angel or any other celestial creature.

It turned out my attitude that day was a perfect fit for the mentality I encountered once I entered medical school.

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