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Arrhythmia

The dangerous secret & the little black book

By Christine AnnettePublished 3 years ago 10 min read
2

I can’t let my pocketbook disappear, thought Laney, a middle-aged mother with a dangerous secret.

Hospital technicians calmly strapped heart monitoring devices on her legs and chest. She felt like she was having a heart attack. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart was palpitating. Her mind was racing with thoughts of her leather coach bag; in it, Laney stored a secret so dangerous, some people would kill for it. She knew this, and it added to her anxiety and increased her cold sweat. She clenched her clammy hands, peering ever so often at her pocketbook, which rested on a chair in the emergency room, partially beneath her jeans and sweater, which she was told to remove in place of a hospital gown. The room was cold and loneliness permeated the ward, which was mostly silent outside of a few whispers and the constant loud beeps of equipment tracking the vital signs of other patients.

Though she had no idea, her husband, sister and children waited in the hospital waiting room. On the way to the hospital, she left a message for her husband with hands-free calling. “I’m on my way to St. Gerard’s. I think I’m having a heart attack.”

To her, it seemed that everything took so long in the hospital. She didn’t have her charger, so she didn’t want to preoccupy her time on her phone, so she left it in her bag. There were no magazines. The room didn’t have a TV. She forgot her phone was on silence, so she missed all the calls checking in on her. She felt cold and lonely. She pulled the thin, knit blanket over her legs and counted the dots on the ceiling panels, waiting for the test results.

“We are going to roll you down for an echocardiogram,” a cherub-faced-looking brunette nurse explained, with a quick pat on her shoulder. “It will be fine. Your bag and stuff will be fine. Don’t worry.”

Sudden panic consumed her. My bag, I need my bag! In that moment she had to let go, like a trust fall. Suddenly breathing was harder and it felt like her lungs would not let in enough air. A tall, stocky blonde male nurse appeared and rolled her down to the technician. She tried to let go and not think about it.

Laney’s sister, Becca, encouraged Laney’s husband Vincent to head on down to the room to be with his wife, while Becca sat with their teenage children, absorbed with their phones. “It’s fine, go Vince. We will wait here, or be in the cafeteria.”

He was directed to head to the second floor and then the curtained room, second-to-last, on the right. When he arrived, he saw Laney’s clothes, but no Laney. The familiar, fuzzy brown sweater he bought her for her birthday sat bunched up on the chair over her bag, which she never left unattended. This puzzled him. He sat there, waiting and waiting. Cherub nurse returned, but she was no longer looking angelic-like. “What are you doing here, sir? This is an occupied room. You must leave immediately.”

“I’m Laney’s husband. I was told I could visit. Is she okay? Where is she?” The nurse eyed him up and down and peered into his face to discern his honesty.

“Here, see, I’m her husband, Vincent Stanton.” He pushed his license close to her face, so close she had to take a step back to receive it. With a pause, to investigate, she returned the license and instructed him to head back to the waiting room. She swiftly turned to leave, muttering that Laney was in for an echocardiogram.

“Echo-what?” he asked with eyes widening, but she was gone. He headed back to the waiting room and shared the news with the family.

Two hours later, Laney was rolled back into her curtained-off room, startled to see an actor roll by in a gurney. The buzz of the floor suddenly amped up, bringing an excitement to a place with much fear, sadness and uncertainty. It was Micky Rourke, with a little road burn from a motorcycle accident. She felt relief hearing he’d be okay, through nurse whispers beyond the curtain, though she didn’t even know the man.

“Laney, Dr. Abba. Nice to meet you,” said a confident, dark-skin male cardiologist who appeared briskly in her room. “We’ve run the tests and reviewed the results. You had a panic attack. Your heart looks fine. Your palpitations are likely the result of perimenopause. You just turned 50, right?”

“Yes, just a month ago,” Laney said, releasing her clinched jaw in relief.

“We’ll have the nurse come back with a prescription for Xanax or Valium. Please get dressed. You’ll be released shortly. Oh, by the way, your family is in the waiting room. Have a good day.”

“Thank you, Dr.”

Cherub-faced nurse reappears and hands her all the paperwork and the prescription. She wishes Laney good luck. With a big smile, she says, “It’s my quitting time. We’re both going home!”

Laney pulled the curtain back to get changed and grabbed a tissue to wipe off some of the remaining goop on her chest from the echocardiogram and then rushed to change back into her clothes.

“Mickey, Mickey!” a woman started screaming. “Can I have an autograph?” Startled by the commotion outside her room, she rushed even faster to get outside to get a better glimpse. Halfway down the hallway, she saw a few young medical students in scrubs circling the actor like a hawk. A doctor, clearly annoyed, was heading straight for them. The nurses began to clear them away from the patient.

As soon as Laney exited, the door clicked behind her and locked. Only then did she realize she forgot her purse, the purse with the secret. She panicked, and started banging on the door.

“Ma’am, you can’t return. You’ve been released,” said one attendant behind the glass. He pointed her to the exit sign at the end of the corridor.

“My bag, I need my bag,” wailed Laney. “It’s in the room at the end on the right.”

A different nurse returned. “Sorry, no purse. You can call lost and found at the front desk.”

Laney shuffled a few steps down the hall and then leaned against the wall, breathing heavy and feeling lightheaded. Her feet fell beneath her and her back slid down the wall until she was sitting against the wall, legs extended, on the floor. She started bawling, with a flashback to earlier that morning.

It was right before work – a usual Friday morning. As a treat for finishing another grueling week at work, she did the usual. She bought a scratch-off ticket – something she had done weekly for years. She never expected to win big, but she did imagine doing some nice things with a few hundred thousand: saving for her daughters’ college expenses, redoing the kitchen, and paying off all four of her family’s cars. But that day, as she scratched her $500,000,000 (half a billion dollars) ticket, she saw her winning number. She thought, oh, probably the usual $20 or $75. She never won more than that. So, she scratched off all the numbers before checking the winning prize. Then she scribbled it off. “JACKPOT!”

Her heart started to palpitate. She felt pain in the center of her chest and couldn’t breathe. Her hands started to sweat. She took a few minutes to try and calm down.

She called in sick to work and drove herself to the hospital. She thought she was having a heart attack.

“What good would this money be if I’m dead?” she thought. While waiting to be taken into the emergency room, she sat in the admittance area with her little black Moleskine book, to detail exactly how she wanted to break down the money. She allotted several million to charities. She planned to put money into retirement accounts, divvy among family, and also perhaps set aside some for a new business. She would keep some, but wanted to do a lot of good with it, too.

Cherub-looking nurse saw her on the floor. “You OK, dear?

“I thought you went home.” Laney said with a sniffle, whipping back tears.

“Heading out now. Let me help you,” she said, as she reached for Laney's arm to pull her to her feet.

“I loss—I loss—I lost my pocketbook,” Laney stuttered.

“Usually, these things turn up. I will look for you. Don’t worry! You’re healthy and that’s the most important part!” the nurse cheerily stated.

Laney’s panic and rage began to fade, recognizing the truth in these simple words. She was happy and fine before the money, and she would be, either way, with the ticket lost or not. Laney pushed through the door, to the waiting area. Her family rushed to her and circled her with wide smiles and hugs. “Why are you crying, mommy?” asked one daughter, Mandy.

“I lost my handbag,” Laney whimpered.

Vince, laughing and smiling, presented it to her like a gift, arms extended. “I went down to your room to wait with you but you weren’t there, so I grabbed it when I saw it just sitting there. What’s in this thing? It’s heavy!”

Laney giggled and gave off a big, heavy sigh.

Her sister offered to drive her car home, and in the parking lot they said their goodbyes. “I have a surprise for you, but I can’t tell you yet,” Laney whispered. Laney had planned to pay off her sister’s mortgage and give her a hundred thousand dollars after taxes. She knew it would help a lot.

On the long drive home, she told the girls and her husband about the ticket, which she dug for in her bag. It was still there, tucked in between the pages of her little black book. Before telling them the amount she won, she told her husband to pull over, in fear he’d drive off the road. They all passed it around in disbelief. They were millionaires.

Once home, Vince started calling his attorneys and accountants and the bank.

The next day, Laney called in a personal day and as soon as business hours opened, she called the Lottery office and explained she won the $500,000,000 Win It All ticket. She was put on a long hold by a grumpy man with a gravelly voice. Suddenly she started fearing for her life again. This money is dangerous, she thought. What if someone shady works at the Lottery Commission? What if someone tries to steal it?

Two hours later, Laney was still on hold. She sunk down onto a stool at her kitchen counter. She poured a little white wine to calm her nerves.

The man returned on the line. “That lotto game, Win It All, has expired,” the gravelly voiced man said.

“What?” shouted Laney.

“Expired. That game has expired. Sorry.” Click. The phone call terminated.

Laney, determined, called back, this time asking to speak to a manager. By 1:00 p.m., she was on her second 2-hour wait, when a manager answered.

“Hello, ma’am. Could you please read the numbers on the back of your ticket? "

She slowly articulated each numeral.

“When did you purchase the ticket?” he asked.

“Yesterday,” she said, with one hand holding the wine glass near her lips and the other arm bent on the counter, holding up the phone to her exhausted head.

“Good news. The game expired today. It can’t be sold anymore. But you bought it yesterday, so you have a year to claim your winnings. The ticket is registered as being purchased yesterday, so your winnings are valid. Go online, schedule an appointment and we will take it from there. Congratulations!”

Months later, from the porch of her family’s new waterfront cottage, she placed a final checkmark in her little black book—for sending cherub nurse, Ruth Nizza, $20,000. It was Laney’s final act of charity for a stranger’s kindness.

In a heartbeat, life can change forever.

literature
2

About the Creator

Christine Annette

A good imagination, like a good dream, can take us to worlds that don't exist. Adventures await, with imagination.

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