Open Heart by Elie Wiesel

Author:Elie Wiesel [Wiesel, Elie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-96185-3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-12-03T16:00:00+00:00

16

THE YEAR 2011 will forever remain for me a year of malediction.

In mid-January, Marion and I were in Florida. For several years I have been co-teaching a class in philosophy, history and literature with a local colleague at a small, prestigious college.

Ten days after I arrived in Florida, I became ill. The doctors diagnosed double pneumonia and ordered what we thought would be a week of hospitalization. After I’d been at the hospital for a few days, my condition worsened. I asked Marion to do everything, anything, to convince the doctors to allow me to leave. She argued that she was afraid I would become seriously depressed and begged them to find a way to care for me at our hotel.

At first the doctors would not hear of it. They said that neither of us had any idea of the gravity of my condition. “Pneumonia, and what’s more, double pneumonia, requires constant supervision. The patient requires medications that need to be administered intravenously. Impossible outside the hospital.”

In the end, Marion proposed turning our hotel room into a veritable hospital room, complete with round-the-clock nurses. Even I was surprised when the doctors accepted.

But I was growing weaker and weaker. Ridiculously, all I was concerned about was that, for the first time in my professional life, I had to interrupt my courses, and my students were taken over by my colleague. I felt unhappy and guilty, for teaching and writing remain my true passions. When I miss a class, I am probably more disappointed than anyone else.

Only later did I learn that during those days and nights, my life had been in danger. In truth, I had not given it any thought. In spite of the difficulty I had breathing because my lungs were filled with fluid, I was still able to read, reflect, dream.

After a few months back in New York, I resumed my “normal” existence. If someone had suggested to me that the real ordeal still lay ahead, hidden in my chest, I probably would have called him a nasty prophet.

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