Robert Has a Heart Attack, part four

Robert Fields was not injured in an accident at work. That had been a lie his coworker Smitty told Leta in order to keep her composed until she arrived at the hospital. Robert actually had a heart attack. He had just spoken to a coworker and turned away. The coworker was turning back to his own work, but caught a glimpse of something in Bob’s demeanor that kept him watching Bob. First, Bob wobbled as if he lost his balance. Then he clutched his chest as if someone had just punched him. Finally, his right leg crossed in front of the left, he twisted to the right and fell to the ground.

By the time the ambulance arrived, they could not tell whether or not he was breathing. While he was taken to the hospital, Smitty called Leta. “Tell her it was an accident,” another coworker ordered. “They can explain everything at the hospital.”

Leta waited in the hospital for more than two hours before her daughter Vivian was able to compel a physician to speak to them. When the doctor told her that her husband had died and not from injuries sustained from something at work, but from a heart attack, Leta felt more stunned than she should have. She was stunned that her husband had died, but she also felt betrayed by the deceit perpetrated against her. In fact, her feelings were so twisted that she seemed as though she hadn’t heard.

“Ma?” Vivian said gently, her own eyes filled with tears. “Are you all right?”

Leta felt a tear roll down her right cheek, and she instinctively put her hand there to wipe it away.

“Yes, of course, darling,” she answered without turning her head toward her daughter, staring straight at the cold pale wall of the waiting room.

“Do you understand what the doctor just said?” Vivian asked, becoming more alarmed by the second.

“Well, I’m not deaf,” Leta replied. “He just said that Bob wasn’t injured at work, that there was no accident. He just had a heart attack all on his own. All by himself. And now he’s gone.”

Suddenly, the realization of what happened struck Leta like a missile, and she exploded.

“He’s gone? He’s gone! He’s gone.”

Leta did not cry or sob. She wailed like a child, thrashing her body in her chair violently. Vivian reached for her, but the grief was too strong. She could not restrain her mother. The doctor stepped back defensively. A few minutes later, when her physical reaction had ceased and she was simply weeping openly, she felt the doctor pull back her sleeve, pat her forearm and poke her with a needle.

“This will calm her down a little bit. Then you can take her home,” a voice said.

From that moment, Leta knew that her life once again would go into turmoil.