Sanibel Scribbles (10 page)

“Did Denver show you the staff house? I asked him to take you there.”

“I’m not concerned about that,” she lied. No one by the name of Denver offered her a tour of the staff house, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t possibly live on an island with no bridge, and no recliner chair to sit up in; not at this point in her life anyway. “I don’t know about all of this. I’ve got a lot of things to get done this summer.”

“Don’t we all?” Ruth picked up a ripe grapefruit left on a plate and began to peel it, dropping the peelings on Vicki’s tray before pulling the juicy sections apart. “Want some?”

Vicki took one piece. The juice burst inside her mouth, a sweet, tart taste. She’d never eaten grapefruit like this in Michigan.

“Opportunity’s like this ripe grapefruit,” Ruth pointed out. “It’s up to you if you’re going to pick it before it falls from the tree.”

Walking down the path to catch the boat, she could hear a drunken voice singing an old, familiar song.” … with Gilligan, the skipper too, the millionaire and his wife … the movie star, professor and Marianne … here
on Gilligan’s Isle.”

Wearing cut-off jeans, the barefooted singer had a beer in one hand and a rope in the other. Next to his tiny, inexpensive, rusty old boat, a seventy-foot luxury yacht and a few cabin cruisers docked side by side, and his boat fit in as well as a grapefruit on an apple tree. As she rounded the path that led to the boathouse, she caught a glimpse of a hammock hanging between two palm trees and craved sleep. She could hardly control the urge and began walking toward the bed that was slowly swaying in the breeze.

“All aboard, and I mean you, dear! I’ll take you back now,” the dock master called out to her, leading her to alter her steps.

“Do you make two boat trips to the island every day, Simon?” Vicki stepped onto the boat, determined to fully understand all island transportation options, including escape routes.

“Yes. I pick up inventory or guests staying in the rooms or couples on their honeymoons, writers looking for inspiration—all sorts who want to escape the busyness in their lives. There’s also employees coming and going from their days off.”

He stared at her and spoke again. “Dear, everyone comes out here for a reason. They don’t always know the reason until many years later, hindsight. The currents of life bring individuals to Tarpon Key. The canals we go down might not make sense as we’re cruising along, but there’s a reason why our motors run out of fuel, get caught up in a mangrove or run aground from time to time. Everyone needs to discover an island where they can stop and think: to think magnificent thoughts they have never had time to ponder before and to notice magnificent details they’ve never noticed before. You’ve got a decision to make, but if you turn it down, you might be pushing yourself against the direction of the wind.”

“You say everyone needs to find an island. What about people living in landlocked cities?”

He laughed. “For them, discovering an island might be more of a challenge, but if they take the time, I’m sure they will find one.” He turned the key in the boat’s ignition, and they were off.

She put on her sunglasses, which once were rose-tinted, but recently
had gotten scratched, and noticed a blue heron quietly stalking prey at the edge of the mangrove. She glanced back at the island, then bent down to fidget with her shoelace and to catch her breath.

CHAPTER SIX

SHE HAD SPENT AN
interesting day on her island interview. When she returned to the condo, her parents were gone. They had caught an earlier flight back to Michigan and weren’t sure how long they would be gone. The details concerning the recent sale of the businesses might take the better part of the summer to work out.

She spent the evening grocery shopping on the island, at the same store where Grandma used to take her. “Now don’t be shy, you’ve got to eat, and I don’t have much food in my refrigerator. Pick out whatever you want to eat,” Grandma would say in a very loud voice as the two would slowly make their way down each aisle. “Now why are you putting
that
in the cart? Don’t you want something nutritious?”

After putting the groceries away and cleaning the kitchen, ten o’clock at night crept up quickly. As she watched television, she tried catching her stubborn breath while fighting nausea and a watering mouth. She felt like a woman facing her fear of public speaking, only she feared night or death or falling asleep and dying in her sleep. She took a long shower, then she threw a towel around herself and rushed to the kitchen where she guzzled 7UP. She then devoured Saltines in hopes of stopping the nausea. Little ants were crawling inside her left arm as it fell asleep. She took hold of her arm—the heavy object connected to her shoulder—and shook it frantically. Her fingers stayed numb as she ran to the comfort of the living room. Brief, repetitious, sharp pains struck where she guessed her heart was, like
the blade of a windmill breaking off in a tornado and hitting her in the chest. She self-diagnosed a heart attack and silently waited for it to happen, wondering if Rebecca had suffered, if she had tried calling out for help that night, but without a voice. She couldn’t feel sorry for Rebecca, now in the arms of God. She instead felt sorry for herself, not in the arms of God.

She knew it was time to prepare for bed. In the bathroom, she examined her pupils in the mirror. Her eyes looked browner than ever, and her black pupils were too tiny in proportion to the brown. Her knees shook.

“I’m having a weird pain in my heart area,” she mumbled as she climbed into bed, choosing that instead of the recliner tonight. “I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I used to love sleeping.”

As she began taking her own pulse, Vicki noticed a spastic dark blue aura around her arm. She’d noticed things like this around everyone lately, even dogs. It meant nothing to her. She wasn’t psychic, didn’t read auras. Her brown eyes were teasing her. They were mad, grouchy, resentfully tired. She knew it. She promised she’d stop applying mascara. They were feeling weak, and makeup only weighed them down. Rebellious, they entered the dream world without her. At first they’d fixate on something for so long that a blink felt like an eight-hour sleep. Soon, they’d spastically begin to blink, enjoying rapid eye movement though Vicki was awake.

Lying on her back again, her heart pounded. She placed two fingers on her neck—
b’dum, b’dum, b’dum, b’dum
. Two fingers on her stomach—
b’dum, b’dum, b’dum, b’dum, b
…
b’dum
. It skipped a beat.
B’dm, b’dm, b’dm
… it sped up!

Was this what Rebecca felt before dying in her sleep? Imaginary ants crawling from her left arm into her feet?
Where’s my paper bag?
Turning over to her left side to reach for it on the floor, she suddenly felt a powerful wave of energy shoot up from her toes and spasm in her chest, like being slapped by an octopus all over her body.

Fearful that she might die unnoticed in her bed, she bolted up from her prone position, clutching her chest, and heaved back a silent scream. Her throat felt dry, yet she couldn’t stop heaving. As if escaping the dark, the
bed, and the room, Vicki sprinted into the dining room and turned on the overhead light, just as someone nearly reaches the end of the haunted house and sprints past the final creature and makes it through the door.

“A heart attack. I’m sure of it. I’m sure I just had a heart attack,” she cried out loud in the car, just after running a red light on her way to the hospital. “Honk at me all you like, idiot. If only you knew why I’m driving like this.” She crossed intersections as if she had sirens and emergency lights on her car, and her only comfort came from knowing that shortly she’d be in the company of medical professionals, who were awake and alert, as she was, at one o’clock in the morning.

“I’ve got a heart attack victim on her way,” she shouted into her cell phone. “She’s only twenty-one years old. I’ve given her aspirins. We’ll be right there. Have everything ready.” The phone went dead.

Running into the hospital’s emergency room, Vicki accepted a nurse’s offer and sat down in a wheel chair.

“Are you the one who called us?”

“Yes. I am.”

“You look so young and healthy,” said the skeptical nurse. “Have you been taking any drugs that might induce a heart attack?”

“Drugs?”

“Yes, cocaine.”

“Of course not. I can’t believe you’re questioning me over this. I’m possibly dying, and you’re asking me if I’m on drugs.”

“The doctor will take a look at you in a minute.” And the nurse walked away.

“A minute? I don’t think I’ve got a minute. This is the emergency room!” yelled Vicki. She turned around to look at an older woman pacing back and forth. “I’ve just had a heart attack!”

“So did my husband,” she said. At that moment, nurses wheeled a man wrapped in white sheets past them, his face nearly green. “Oh honey, I’m here, I’m here.” The woman ran alongside him. “You’re going to live, they tell me. You’re going to be fine, sweetie. I’m with you.”

As Vicki lay on the table, the doctor hooked her up to an electrocardiograph.

“This records the electrical activity of your heart. We’re going to look for irregularities in the muscle, blood supply, or neural control.”

Vicki looked up at the doctor as he placed sticky things all over her chest. Inwardly she felt guilty because she liked the wheelchair better than the recliner tonight.

“Describe your symptoms to me, Vicki.”

“A viselike squeezing sensation beneath my breastbone, pain radiating from the front of my chest.”

She did feel that way, but in truth the vivid description came right from the pages of her grandmother’s medical encyclopedia that she had carefully studied the night before. She figured she’d get further by communicating with the doctor in his own terms.

“You are describing a heart attack. But no, rest assured, it is not a heart attack. Have you been under any kind of stress lately, Vicki?” the doctor asked. “Because it might be that you’re experiencing extreme anxiety, which is routinely mistaken for cardiac or respiratory disorders.”

“Anxiety? No. I’m a pretty stable person. Extremely in control of my life, Doc.”

“Have you been under any kind of unusual stress lately, like a traumatic event or something?”

“No, none. Well, just finals at school.” She wanted badly to tell the doctor, this stranger, that her friend died of a heart attack in her sleep, and that she had skipped the funeral. She longed to share with someone that her grandmother had also died recently of a heart attack in her sleep. She craved attention from someone who might listen, someone who would put his arms around her and cry along with her. Maybe the doctor would have time for coffee. Maybe he would want to listen.

“I want to assure you that you are not dying of a heart attack. You’ll be fine, although your blood pressure has literally skyrocketed. You just went through serious progressive stages of hyperventilation, and the next step, after the wave, would have been to pass out.”

“So my heart itself is okay?” she asked.

“I’d say so, yes!”

“Can you prescribe something for me?”

“There are options, but the problem with some of the medications is that once you go off them, the attacks may start again,” he explained. “You could talk to a psychiatrist about that. My suggestion is that if it starts to happen again, Vicki, and it probably will, you should try talking yourself out of it. Convince yourself that you’re not going to die from this, and just relax when you start feeling the shortness of breath. Hopefully you can stop it from getting to this point again, but it’ll take some strong convincing on your part.”

“Am I going crazy, Doc?”

“Absolutely not! Anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders in the United States.”

“Mental disorder?” How dare he diagnose her with a mental condition! She was the one studying psychology. She was the one wanting to help
others
with mental conditions.

“I’m not saying you have a serious mental or anxiety disorder. Just that you let your thoughts affect your body. If you let it get out of control, you may need treatment. This might mean drugs, psychotherapy, behavior modification, or relaxation training. Alone or in any combination.”

“What triggers this sort of thing?”

“Well, some learning theorists say anxiety is learned when innate fears occur together with previously neutral objects or events. I don’t know. You need to figure out what your fear is.”

“What my fear is?”

“Yes, what do you fear most in life?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, figure it out, then face it in whatever way you like. It might require time. I hope you’re ready to embark on a journey because facing one’s fears is no simple trip.”

Back in bed again that night, the spastic wave returned. It was not nearly as bad as being slapped by an octopus. It felt more like the sharp tingles from picking up a jellyfish.

She eventually fell into a light sleep, but frequently she’d wake and breathe into the paper lunch bag that slept next to her.