Oh, my dearest F&Fs. “Mortification” doesn’t cover my mortification, even. I have been taken into A&E (this is ER for my American readers and “emergency” for the European Union ones) in PUBLIC. (I am well, before you cry in alarm!) But how! Oh, my dearests!
So, there I am, having consumed a pizza with the vegan cheese which Gunther took out with tweezers when it turned out vegan cheese doesn’t melt (vegans clearly don’t understand the point of cheese). Suddenly, I experience nausea. This is to be expected, I suppose. The hot sweats are not (I am not of the age where women get sudden hot sweats) (it’s not your business whether “not yet” or “not anymore”). But then I feel this discomfort, which I can’t quite describe, not because it’s number two which you don’t want described, but sort of… discomfortable.
“Karen,” Gunther said, crunching a Prongle and taking a gulp of Aldi Strong beer, “you don’t look too good.”
“I am being ruptured” – I groaned, too shocked for actual words which form sentences such as ones you will find in my books.
Gunther looked at the ceiling, then at me. “Aren’t you an atheist?”
“I am ruptured in the…” I couldn’t remember the words. The dumb bit in your belly where you get ruptured and then you need surgery. It has absolutely no other purpose except for rupturing, which is why I have always felt for the prophets who announced everyone would get ruptured one day. Even surgeons. “In the here,” I said, pointing. “What is this called?”
Gunther paled. “I think that will be your heart.”
I am having a heart attack. It was so obvious in retrospect when my chest tightened, giving me chest pain, although mostly in my lower chest, but at my age certain things change, and also I don’t know where exactly in my chest I keep my heart, or which bit of it is being attacked. After all this time hiding from the Colombian Maffia and the police I was now going to die either of being ruptured in that stupid small bit or a heart attack, and neither of those possibilities filled me with delight. “Call the A&E” I wheezed.
The two men, one of them rather handsome and one not so much, were with us, in our living room, within twelve minutes. Not even giving me enough time to change into nice clothes (I have indoors clothes, which are for indoors, if you are a person, you know what that means) except for the underwear, because if you are going to be dead, you don’t want them to undress you and say “but it wasn’t even Wednesday when she wore those men’s boxers because both Gunther and she blamed each other for not having done the laundry.” So, I am suddenly being glued with electrodes in places that not even Gunther gets to touch these days, by the handsome one, and the less handsome one asks me questions.
“Miss,” he asks, “do you feel pain in your chest?”
“Yes,” I groan, partly because the handsome man is taking out something that looks a lot like a needle.
“Does it radiate to your arm? Stomach?”
“Stomach,” I mumble. As for the arm, I haven’t really paid attention, because I was busy having a rupture and/or heart attack, not arm pains, but now that I thought of it, my arm was not feeling all that good either. “Arm. Please save my life.”
“Miss,” says the handsome one, “I am going to place an IV.”
The IV turns out to be the needle and I faint, because that’s what I do when there are needles too close to my body. When I come back to, the less handsome one tells me to stop coming back to, because he is taking my EEG. Or ECG. The thing that prints what your heart is doing. I was a bit nervous, you know. Then I raise my dying gaze and meet Gunther’s terrified eyes as he mouths something to me, holding a…
“Papers,” he is mouthing.
Now I am covered in all the cold sweat and my heart suddenly speeds up, the less handsome one says alarmedly to the handsome one, because papers mean giving them my real name while I live in cognito. If I give them my real name and address, it’s only a matter of time until a member of Colombian Maffia infiltrates the NHS computer systems. I almost ask aloud “do you give the heart attack victims addresses and names to the police?” but that would sound like I also hit my head and also make me sound even more suspicious.
“We’re going to take you with us,” the handsome man announces.
“Where?” I ask stupidly.
“To the hospital,” says the less handsome one, who just finished a brief and rather alarming – as if I weren’t alarmed enough – phone call. “Are those the shoes you want to wear?”
I look down at my bunny slippers and instruct Gunther to put my sneakers on me. Normally, of course, I only wear sneakers when… I actually never wear them, because I bought them for jogging and then it turned out I was allergic to jogging, but I didn’t want to wear heels while having a heart attack, my rupture forgotten. Gently and gingerly, they escort me to the ambulance – there is no space for Gunther and I am rather delit by that, because I don’t want to listen to crunching Prongles while I am dying – and what do I see there?????
MY NEIGHBOUR VASOLINE AND THE DISHWASHER MAN COMPLETE WITH THE SHIT-ZU.
You know how there is this sort of people who will gather around a car crash hoping for I never figured out what? So, there are Vasoline, the Dishwasher Man, and the shit-zu, just standing next to the ambulance, very clearly awaiting the show. And there is I, in my indoors clothes, with cables and tubes sticking out from underneath my blouse, which has seen better days and they took place many years ago, seeing them.
“The heart rate increased again,” says the handsome one. They are now both holding my arms. I turn my face away from Vasoline & Co., trying to channel my designer Paolo to pixelate me or make my face look in cognito, wishing that I was unseen and it was middle of the night, and as a result I don’t even get a glance at Vasoline’s new face!!! “This is such a disaster,” I mutter to the handsome one, who doesn’t quite get it, understandably. I am placed on a… it’s not quite a bed, but on a mostly horizontal thing, and I am CHAINED to it with something like seatbelts, but not for sitting. It quickly turns out the less handsome one will stay with me, while the handsome one drives at dangerous speed and definitely breaks all the rules, while I can’t see, which is good, because I would faint again from yelling at him.
“It’s going to be alright,” says the less handsome one, protectively holding my hand in a protective way. “We’ll have you up and running soon.”
“I don’t know about the running,” I mutter. I curse Vasoline from returning from Minorca or Majorca just in time to watch me in my indoors clothes with cables sticking from underneath. (If I had known, I would have worn a frock with buttons, although the thought of the cables sticking out literally out of my chest or, worse, hanging under, doesn’t make me feel better.) I now feel all the symptoms of a heart attack that I know of, and pray not to be asked about others, because I am probably having them too. I pray to the atheist God and beg for my survival.
We arrive at the hospital and I am being driven into the emergency cardiology ward. I hear and smell death around me (although that might also be my many cold sweats). The doctor is a very nice young lady, who checks, prints, listens to my chest, frowns, listens to my belly, then my back, and I want to ask how big she thinks my heart is, when she sighs and looks deep into my eyes. “Miss,” she says, “you’re having indigestion.”
I find myself wishing it was a real heart attack as the electrodes are being removed from me. I faint when the needle is being taken out. And no, they do not drive me home. Gunther followed in our Fort Siesta, it turns out, and tried to burst dramatically into the A&E, but was stopped, because A&Es are not to be bursted dramatically into when there are people with heart attacks all over the place. And one with indigestion.
This is the second biggest shame I have ever experienced. (The first biggest one was when we went to a rather posh Asian restaurant. They brought us those bowls and I knew from countless books and movies that they are to wash your delicate fingers in, so I put my fingers in and notice there is some sort of pasta rather than rose petals. It was soup. I washed my fingers in soup as the waiter gawked and Gunther laughed so hard he got the hiccups.) I apologise a thousand times and they are very nice and polite, and tell me this happens a lot. “Have you eaten something that disagrees with your system, miss?” I am being asked and suddenly I remember Andreas’s vegan cheese.
Under the influence of anti-indigestion pills I stupidly took immediately rather than wait until I am home, I tell him to drive around the back, so I don’t risk being seen by Vasoline again, I skulk into my house, welcomed by overjoyed Lassie, but I can’t devote much time and attention to her, because I am about to perform a number two (I will spear you the details, but they were worthy of grim dark epic fantasy minus fantasy). I can’t believe that those amateurs took indigestion for a heart attack, but then, it was me who told them I had pain in my arm (I had a needle stuck into it!) so maybe it is a bit of my fault, but mostly Andreas’s cheese’s.
“Vasoline just posted another holiday picture on Instagran,” says Gunther disbeliefably.
I somewhat cheer up, because it is more than clear as day now that her face must be a disaster of proportions bigger than me washing my delicate fingers in soup. I feel itching that feels like a heart attack symptom, but it’s just another electrode they forgot to remove. (These days they just plop those sticker-like electrodes all over your body, like it’s “glue one, get eight more for free.”) I am immensely thankful for the NHS and also I hope they threw the paperwork with my real name on in the bin while cackling at the stupid woman who ate vegan cheese. I am gloriously alive (and much, much thinner, all of a sudden). Lassie hugs me, or rather I hug her, keeping her from licking the wound (puncture) from the needle I have been injected with only to waste two faints and a needle.
The next morning, Gunther is on his way to the Aldi, when the Dishwasher Man stops him. “Gunther,” he asks, apparently with real care, “how is Karen doing?”
Gunther says that he sort of froze and paled, which made the Dishwasher Man pale as well, then muttered (Gunther) “could have been worse, could have been better” before bolting away. Vasoline is not to be seen. Shit-zu is to be heard. And I am thinking that nobody can ever find out about my near-death experience, which is why I will not be telling anybody ever, except you, my dear F&Fs, and I know you would never tell anybody, so I feel safe with you.
Yours shamefully,
Karen xoxo
PS. I am considering starting an Instagran account to post comments under Vasoline’s fake holiday snaps and request lots of selfies.
PS2. For obvious reasons, the picture above does not show me, since it lacks a hundred cables and also she looks pretty dashing in this blue. I am never wearing blue again.
PS3. I can’t decide whether to tell Andreas that his cheese literally got stuck where the sun don’t shine and thus reveal my ailment, or not. But I will sternly inform him that it was disgusting. Since I am British, that means my nods at his questions will be slightly stiffer than usual and I will think passive-aggressive thoughts while assuring him it was definitely different than I expected.