So, I’m trying a new thing. This is a very personal post and its not about ADHD, so I’ve decided to make it available in full only to my paid subscribers. Anything about ADHD will be free the majority of the time, as that is part of my mission. I could start another Substack just for personal essays, but that seems like a lot of work and hassle. Here goes…
PS - everyone in this story is fine, not counting my poor adrenal system
PPS - If you are already a subscriber and would like a paid sub but can’t afford it, please message me
When you have to call an ambulance on a Tuesday night in a torrential rainstorm with COVID once again ravaging the city, along with RSV and flu and god knows what else, because your husband has lost consciousness three times and told you he thinks he’s having a heart attack, your brain does some crazy things.
For example, I find myself joking around with the EMT in the ambulance. I am so scared that I am funny. I am never funnier than when I am absolutely terrified. Thank god, he’s also a professional at gallows humor. I joke that I hope they give me some Ativan. He says, “Well, Mount Sinai on 30th Avenue doesn’t have a psych ward, but they MIGHT have some Haldol.”
Sounds good, I think. Knock me the fuck out. Strap me to a bed. Put me in a rubber room.
I have never ridden in an ambulance before. What I didn’t realize about an ambulance is that you can’t really see which way you are going. I couldn’t tell if they took 30th or 31st. I think about how many times I have walked up and down 30th Avenue. Maybe thousands. This year, we have lived in Astoria for twenty years. And now I’m lost in my own neighborhood. The lights are on, but they aren’t using the siren.
When we get into triage, they do an EKG immediately. They tell me that they are leaving pads on his chest “in case we have to defibrillate him”. I don’t breathe for what feels like minutes.
The tech hands the report to the doctor, who looks at it, types something into a computer, and calmly walks away. The tech also calmly walks away.
No one comes running. I assume this is a good thing. Or I watch too many medical dramas. Maybe its quieter than I think.
This is the best case scenario of marriage, ironically. One of you watches the other die. They put it right in the vows. Don’t say you didn’t sign up for this.
This is why people have kids, I think to myself.
Because if this is it, and this is the end, who will remember me? No one knows me better than him, or ever will. Who will tell our story?
Then a voice in my mind - hey dumbass, you’re a writer. You can tell your own story. You don’t have to procreate to do that.
Then I’m glad I don’t have a kid, since I inevitably would have had to drag them here. They don’t have to see the guy in the other curtain tear his IV out, screaming at the staff, blood flying everywhere. They don’t see the very sick woman in the next curtain, who’s dirty soiled diapers have been placed in a chair within my eyeline (no one came to clean them up), and they don’t see the brown liquid gurgling into a canister coming from whatever the fuck she’s hooked up to.
This ER is nightmare fuel. I text my friends.
This is like Grey’s Anatomy if it took place in a dumpster.
She’s got jokes. She doesn’t have sanity, but she’s got jokes.
Then, a strange feeling. I am starting to find everything funny. I start laughing randomly, and everything feels separate from reality. At first I think it’s trauma, but then I realize a terrible fact - I am stoned. I had taken an edible a couple of hours before, because they help me relax and sleep. IT IS A TERRIBLE TIME TO BE HIGH. My plan was to do yoga and go to bed. Instead, I am high in a New York City emergency room during a plague resurgence in a massive rainstorm. Feels downright biblical.
My husband looks so small and sick in that gurney, pale, sleeping but not sleeping, far far away from me. When I talk to him, he is somewhere else. For a second I’m really pissed off at him, and then I’m pissed at myself for being pissed off. I also realize we’re in it for the long haul. I wisely decide to take a very small dose of Adderall, as I can feel my brain function screeching to a halt.
My friends are texting non stop. They are wonderful.
But I have never felt more alone in my entire life.
I head to the bathroom and without warning, a wave of nausea hits me. I dry heave into the sink. I splash some water on my face and get a look at myself and start laughing hysterically. My eyes are red from the weed. I look like Towelie from South Park.
A song lyric pops into my head, unbidden:
You can laugh, its kind of funny
the things you think at times like these