9. Brian (IV)
In
his dreams, a baby cried. The shrill
sound roused him from the fog of sleep, and he struggled to sit up. It felt like there were invisible chains
hooked to his ribcage, and if he pulled too hard, he would rip himself in half,
right down the middle. Still, Calhan was
crying, and he had to get to his son. He
rolled slowly out of bed, swaying a little as he tried to stand. Nausea and vertigo made his head spin, but
the sound of Calhan’s cries quickly cleared it.
“I’m
coming, Cal!” he cried hoarsely, stumbling across the room. In his dreamscape, the darkened bedroom
looked nothing like the one he shared with Becci, yet somehow, he knew exactly
where to go. He followed the frantic
cries down the hallway and into a beautifully-painted nursery, illuminated by a
carousel lamp that cast colorful patterns on the walls and ceilings as its
scenes spun slowly by.
The
crib was in the corner. He staggered
toward it, his hand pressed against a spot just below his breastbone, where the
end of an angry red seam threatened to split open and spill his insides onto
the floor. His heart hammered against
his ribs as he reached out and clutched the crib rail, holding onto it until
the second wave of dizziness had passed.
But when he leaned over the rail and looked down into the crib, his
heart sputtered and nearly stopped, and he swayed unsteadily again.
The
crib was empty.
Brian
awoke, gasping for breath.
Panic-stricken, he tried to sit up, but the crushing pain in his chest
prevented any sudden movements. His eyes
darted around the room, and he felt some relief as he recognized his
surroundings, different from those in what he now understood to be a
dream. He was still in the hospital,
recovering from heart transplant surgery.
Calhan was at home in his crib, sleeping soundly. If he woke up crying in the night, Becci
would be there to comfort him.
Alone
in his hospital bed, Brian greedily sucked oxygen through the canula in his
nostrils. The thin tubes didn’t seem
capable of delivering it fast enough; his lungs were screaming in protest,
pleading for air. He didn’t stop to
wonder why his new heart wasn’t pounding, as it had been in the dream, until it
suddenly started to race. Only then did
he become aware of the familiar, fluttery feeling in his chest. Frightened, he turned his head until his eyes
found the monitor that displayed his vital signs. He watched his heart rate shoot up from a
normal one hundred beats a minute to a shocking one hundred fifty.
Just
as he was fumbling for his call button, his night nurse, Rita, appeared at his
bedside. “How are you feeling, Brian?”
she asked, slipping the bell of her stethoscope under his gown to listen to his
heart. “Any pain?”
He
started to nod, then reconsidered, as he realized the only real pain he felt
radiated from the incision that ran down the center of his chest, not from the
heart racing inside it. It was different
from the squeezing sensation he’d felt whenever his old heart acted up, but the
other symptoms that accompanied it – the sweating, the shortness of breath –
were the same. He slowly shook his head,
then tried to explain what he was feeling:
not so much pain as panic.
“You’re
clammy,” Rita observed, wiping his forehead.
“Did you just wake up?”
She
had turned up the flow of his oxygen, and even though it hurt, he closed his
eyes and took a deep breath before exhaling, “Yeah… a few minutes ago…”
“Do
you think you might’ve had a nightmare?”
His
eyes flew open. How could she have known
that? “Yeah,” he breathed, “that was
what woke me up.”
The
nurse nodded knowingly. “Try to relax,”
she said. “It’s just an adrenaline rush
that’s making your heart race. The
monitor’s showing sinus tach – fast rate, but normal rhythm. It may take it a little while to calm down,
but that’s normal, too.” When he
frowned, unsatisfied with this explanation, she added, “You may not have
realized, but in a heart transplant, all the nerves that connect your heart to
the central nervous system are cut. The
heart has its own electrical system that keeps it beating, but your brain can’t
send it messages anymore that tell it to speed up or slow down. It has to wait for hormones in the
bloodstream, like adrenaline, to give it that signal, which takes a lot
longer. Consider it a delayed reaction
to your dream.”
“That’s
weird,” whispered Brian. He supposed it
made sense, but it was strange to think that, while he had realized right away
that what he’d dreamt wasn’t real, his new heart had yet to receive the news. It was still racing away, as if he were
trapped in the middle of a living nightmare.
Rita said there was no reason to worry, but he couldn’t calm down while
his heart was hammering so hard.
“When
you start exercising again, you’ll need to incorporate longer warm-ups and cool-downs
into your routine, just for this reason,” said Rita. “It takes some getting used to. I’ll check with your doctor about giving you
something to help you relax.” She patted
his arm and made a few notes on his chart before she walked away.
Brian
lay in a heightened state of panic for several more minutes until Rita
returned, a syringe in her hand. “This
is just a mild sedative,” she said, injecting it into his IV line. It only took a matter of minutes for the drug
to work its magic. As his heart started
to slow down, Brian drifted back into a dreamless sleep.
***
“I
heard you had a bad night,” was the first thing out of Becci’s mouth when she
came to visit the next morning. She gave
Brian a look of sympathy and smoothed his hair back off his forehead, as if he
were a small child, Calhan’s age again.
He
forced himself to smile up at his wife.
“It was nothing. Just a
nightmare.” He explained to her what the
nurse had told him about his heart needing more time to react to being
startled.
Deep
furrows appeared in Becci’s forehead as she frowned. “Well, what did you dream that got you so
worked up, hon?” she wondered.
“Something about the surgery?”
“No…” Now it was Brian’s turn to frown. “It was about Calhan.”
“Calhan?” Becci cocked her head, looking
concerned. “What about Calhan?”
“I
dunno, it was weird. It was like one of
those dreams you used to have right after we brought him home from the hospital
as a baby – you know, the ones where you could hear him crying, but couldn’t
find him?” Brian remembered many a night
spent holding Becci as she sobbed on his shoulder, distraught after another one
of the disturbing dreams.
“Ohh,
I hated those!” Becci shuddered. “So that’s what you dreamed? Calhan was crying, and you couldn’t find him?”
“Yeah…” Even after the sedative, Brian found it
wasn’t difficult to remember his nightmare.
It still stood out vividly in his mind.
“I could hear him crying, so I got out of bed and went to his room –
only it didn’t look like his room; you know how things are always different in
dreams – and the crib was empty. Then I woke up, and I couldn’t breathe.”
“My
OB always said those nightmares were caused by anxiety. I bet that’s all it was… just anxiety about
everything that’s happened in the last few days.” Becci sounded confident, but something in her
eyes told Brian she was more concerned about him than she wanted to let on.
“Yeah,
you’re probably right,” he agreed. He
wasn’t worried. He’d been feeling better
every day, and if there was anything wrong with his new heart, it would show up
in the bloodwork and chest X-rays he underwent daily. As Rita’s prompt appearance the previous
night had proven, every function of his body was being closely monitored, and
so far, all signs pointed to a successful transplant. He couldn’t wait until he was well enough to
be released from the ICU. “As soon as
I’m in a regular room, I’d love it if you’d bring Cal up,” he told Becci. “I’m dyin’ to see him, especially after that
dream last night.”
Becci
nodded. “You bet,” she said, and he
could tell she was smiling behind her mask.
“He’ll be glad to see you, too.
He misses you.”
Brian
felt a pang in his new heart that had nothing to do with the surgery. “I miss him, too.”
***
When
the results of his latest round of tests came back clear, Brian was released to
a private room. There were fewer
restrictions in this part of the heart institute, so Calhan came to visit the
very next day. Becci beamed as she
brought him in, and as grateful as Brian was to see his son, he was just as
glad to see his wife’s smile again. For
the past three days, she’d had to hide half her face behind a surgical mask to
protect him from germs. Now it was his
turn to wear one.
“C’mere, Cal!” he cried, his voice muffled by the mask, as he extended his arms
toward the toddler. For the first time
since his admission, Brian found himself free of most of the tubes that had
tied him down. He could sit up, even
walk around without worrying he was going to tangle his oxygen line or tear out
his chest drains. The IV in his arm and
the ECG leads attached to his chest were the only leashes left to contend with,
and they couldn’t hold him back from hugging his son. But when Becci set Calhan down on the bed,
the little boy stared at Brian, screwed up his face, and started to cry.
“Oh
no,” Becci groaned and quickly went into consolation mode. “It’s okay, Cal, look – it’s Daddy!”
But
Calhan just clung to her until he could get down from the bed, wanting nothing
to do with the stranger sitting in it.
His reaction stung, but Brian tried not to let it show. It must have been the mask, he thought. Cal just didn’t recognize Brian behind
it. To a one-year-old in an unfamiliar
place, he must have looked different with half his face hidden. So he lowered the mask, despite Becci’s
squawk of protest, and put on his biggest smile. “Look, bud, it’s me!”
Sniffling,
Calhan warily lifted his face from Becci’s leg and turned to look at Brian, who
took it as a good sign when he didn’t immediately burst back into tears. “See, Calhan?” Becci cooed softly, squatting
down to Calhan’s level and pointing up at Brian. “Daddy’s all better now. Don’t you want to give him a hug? He’s missed you!”
Teardrops stained his chubby cheeks and sparkled in his long lashes, but at the
word “hug,” the toddler opened his arms wide.
Smiling, Becci scooped him up again and brought him back over to Brian’s
bedside. She perched on the edge of the
mattress, holding him on her lap, and leaned in so Brian could hug them both. “Be gentle,” she warned Calhan, who was
sandwiched in the middle, but Brian knew nothing could make him feel better
than a big family hug. He ignored the
tenderness in his chest as he held his son, the nightmare of losing him a mere
memory.
***
Brian
spent another week in the hospital, during which Becci brought Calhan by every
day. Brian always looked forward to
seeing his family, but found that their visits left him exhausted. Calhan was a bundle of boundless energy, with
an equally endless need to be entertained.
Just watching Becci chase him around the room left Brian feeling tired,
and he worried about what it would be like when he came home from the hospital.
He
confided in the hospital social worker, Joan, who assured him his fears were
perfectly normal. She was one of the
many members of his transplant team, whose job it was to oversee every aspect
of his recovery, including the transition from hospital to home. “Of course, you’ll need to take it easy at
first,” she said, during one of their sessions.
“It’s going to take three to six months for you to fully recover, but in
that time, you’ll slowly build back your strength. Just remember, moderate exercise is good for
you and healthy for your heart. Playing
with your son won’t make you pass out, like it might have before the transplant. Your new heart can handle it.”
Brian
couldn’t wait for the day when he’d be up to running around and roughhousing
with Calhan. He’d never been physically
able to before. But even though he could
feel himself gradually getting stronger, that day still seemed far away. Just walking the halls of the hospital sapped
him of the little strength he’d regained.
It felt good to be up and moving again, though, so he followed his
doctor’s orders and completed his daily exercise routine without complaint.
His
goal was to be home by Thanksgiving, and he made it with two days to
spare. He was released from the hospital
on a Tuesday, and that Thursday, he was treated to a homecooked Thanksgiving
dinner with all the trimmings and, more importantly, the people he loved most.
He
had a lot to be thankful for, this year more than ever, but as he looked around
the table at the smiling faces of his family – his mother and father, his wife
and son – Brian realized that something was missing. Somewhere, there was another family with an
empty place at their Thanksgiving table, a family who was mourning the loss of
their loved one, whose heart beat inside his chest. They had given him a priceless gift, and
Brian was grateful. But he also felt
guilty, guilty because while he and his family were celebrating, his donor’s
family must be grieving.
That
thought would have made his old heart skip a beat, but the denervated donor
heart was much slower to react. His
father was in the middle of saying the blessing when Brian’s heart finally
responded to the flood of emotions he’d felt.
As he listened to his father thank God for the family whose generous
gift had saved his son’s life, Brian could feel his pulse pounding in his
throat. He took a deep breath and
swallowed hard, trying to relax and willing his new heart to follow.
***