dropping onto the bed, cane on the nightstand, lifting my right leg up and sticking the pillow under it, grab the bottle, pop the lid, swallow the pills, waiting, waiting, waiting for the Vicodin to kick in, hurry, hurry, hurry, oh God how my leg hurts, my back, my shoulder, my hand, my memory -- no, stop -- stop it --



A hospital bed, years ago. An IV and a PCA button taped to my right hand. Eileen holding my left.

"Greg... do you want to tell me what's happened?"

"Do you want the whole saga or just the basics?"

"Just what you want to tell me."

I closed my eyes and leaned back into the pillow as I collected my brain and tried to decide where to start. I was getting tired. "My mom told you I had a stroke?"

Eileen nodded. I could see fright spreading in her eyes.

"Well, I didn't really. It was an infarction, like a stroke or a heart attack, but..." I rubbed my face with my right hand and tried again. "Okay. There wasn't a stroke to my brain. There was a blood clot in one of the arteries to my legs."

Her fear started to dissolve. "What caused it? Do they know?"

"They've got some ideas, but nothing's for certain. I'm supposed to see a guy from Hematology on Monday; he's going to see if I have some kind of heme factor -- a blood condition -- that makes me clot more easily or something like that. You'll like this part, though -- I've been an ex-smoker since Monday night."

She just smiled. I was touched by her completely refusing the chance to say I-told-you-so -- and by her accepting the fiction that quitting had been my rational decision instead of one forced on me by circumstances. I also felt kind of dirty for not admitting that I'd been smoking much more heavily during the past few months.

"But the blood clot -- what does that mean? I mean, it was in your leg, how did you get so sick? Your mom said you were in the ICU. "

I started to answer but a sudden crescendo of pain took my breath away. I clenched my teeth to keep from gasping. I looked up to the door; Eileen nodded and went to close it. I pushed the PCA button while she was up. She sat back down and squeezed my hand again.

The morphine bolus hit, and I had to wait for the first dizzy wave of relief to to pass before I could speak again. "Well, it happened pretty quickly. My leg started hurting... last week, I guess, and the pain got so bad I ended up going to the ER. They did some tests and they found out there was a blood clot in one of the major arteries that supply the leg." I pointed to a spot just in front of my right hip. Eileen nodded. "This was on, um... Monday night.

"They tried to use medicine to break up the clot, but it wasn't working quickly enough. So they did an operation on Tuesday morning to take out the clot. Well, it turned out the clot was worse than they had thought. And during all that time the clot was in there, the muscles and the other tissues in my leg weren't getting any oxygen."

"Is that why your mom thought they might have to...."

"Amputate? Yes. When she came, I don't think they knew exactly how much damage had been done. But they did do the operation in time, so they didn't have to amputate."

"Oh good! So what comes next?"

"Well, they won't have to amputate, but... some of my thigh muscle died because its blood supply was cut off for so long. I had more surgery..." -- I thought for a moment -- "...yesterday. It's called debridement, they take out all the dead tissue. They're going to go back on Monday and check to make sure they got everything."

"So three operations in one week."

"Yeah." I looked down at the PCA button.

Eileen gave my hand another squeeze. She followed my gaze to the button and then followed the cord back up to the locked pump. "You're still having a lot of pain, aren't you."

I looked up at her and then looked away.

We sat in silence until Eileen asked, "So what comes next?"

"Well, surgery on Monday, and if all goes well that will be it. Then... finish the antibiotics, get back on my feet, and then some rehab, and then..." I shrugged. "Back home, back to work."

"I'm so glad you're okay," she said. And her smile was so lovely, so full of relief, I couldn't help smiling a little myself.