Running Against the Clock

Driving away from my high school graduation ceremony in high spirits, my slightly banged up red Ford Taurus was tuned to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," blaring on my radio. I can still hear that song ringing in my head all these years later, and part of me remembers the feeling of freedom I would never again attain. The wind from my open window whipped at my hair, and I felt like I could just—fly.

I had become Icarus, trying with all my might to fly so that this time the sun wouldn’t melt my wings again.

A month later I was having so much pain I had to use a cane to get around; it was retrieved from my mother’s farmhouse years earlier after my grandparents had moved out.

“You can’t keep going on like this, Aaron,” my dad said, shaking his head, always looking for a way to fix a problem. He wasn’t reproachful in any way, but sad. Worried. “How much sleep did you get last night?” He asked me. “Not enough,” was all I could say. What father wouldn’t want to see their son relieved from pain every day? Or to get some actual sleep freed by the nightmare that was called Pain? “Make sure you call the doctor this week.” He kissed my mother’s cheek before going back to work after his lunch break. He paused by my chair at the table in our small kitchen and placed a gentle kiss on the crown of my head.

I waited until he had gone outside to his car before breaking down into tears. One man—no, one nineteen-year-old—could only take so much before he breaks. Pain, insomnia, depression. This rail thin Humpty Dumpty had started cracking a long time ago. I just hadn’t realized it. The pain wracked my body day and night, and I had gone from being seemingly healthy (though still thin) to…this, in the span of a few months.

Wanting to go back in time was a constant wish. I wanted to go back to the days when summer vacation—devoid of anything that reeked of school—was free of pain and worry, when my friends Evan, Eric, and I played videogames for hours on end, spending as much time at each other’s houses as we did at our own. My ability to recall certain memories with perfect clarity is rare and fickle these days, but I thank God for allowing me to remember a certain summer when the prettiest girl I’d ever had the fortune to meet had freely offered her number to me, all before the world’s axis tilted and sent my ass into freefall.

THEN: “Hey, Aaron, wait up a second!” I heard the girl call out to me from behind as we exited Driver’s Ed.

It took me a second to reply, thinking there must be some other Aaron, or a girl named Erin, mixed into the class, but the hallways were clear of everybody else. To say she was pretty would be like calling Helen of Troy cute.

“Oh, uh, hey Anna,” I replied nervously. I wasn’t used to gorgeous girls speaking to me. Hell, I wasn’t used to any girls talking to me.

“Hi!” She said breathlessly as she caught up to me. “I was going to ask…um…do you have any plans this weekend?”

Plans? Me? I couldn’t plan what I was going to eat that night, let alone what I would do over an entire weekend. As for her, though, I’d move heaven and Earth.

“No, I rarely, if ever, have plans on the weekends. Nobody to have plans with, I guess,” Letting out a shy chuckle.

“Would you…gosh I never do this, but would want to get together and see a movie this weekend?”

Almost before the sentence was finished, I eagerly replied (in a manner that was not suave at all) “Absolutely! I mean, uh, yeah that sounds good to me. Anything you want to watch?” My brain was saying, Who cares, you nitwit, this is how people go out on dates. Another voice in my head, warring with the other, dourly said, Ease up there partner. You never know, she might just be looking for a new friend. Pfft, who thinks like that?

She gave me her number, and we planned on seeing what was ultimately a forgettable movie. What could never be forgotten was her. Unfortunately, going to two different schools was like having a long-distance relationship, at least in that town.

God, how I wish I could go back and do things differently. If I had a DeLorian with a flux thingamajig, I’d…well, let’s just say my life today would be different, at the very least a little happier.  Ah, those were the days. Those memories, however, weren’t just memory lane, they were the Memory Walk of Fame. I walk those silent streets alone, the only passersby the ghosts of my past talking to each other.

NOW: “Aaron, I’m sorry to have to give you this news, but your heart is enlarged on one side, and your aorta is in severe danger of rupturing. Marfan Syndrome is most dangerous to the heart and the aorta. It is my strong recommendation that you schedule the surgery as soon as possible.” My doctor told me at the other end of the phone while Fate listened in and began snipping away the threads that had kept me tethered in the center of its web.

“All I need is a date. Ideally it would be this month or next month,” my cardiologist from St. Louis told me.

His call that evening gave me the measure of the man’s dedication. Not only to me, but my whole family as well. For him, being a doctor didn’t mean he left the job at five in the afternoon only to take his leisure in the evening; no, it wasn’t even a job so much as a vocation, a need to do right by his patients.

“Can we do something in the second or third week of next month, Doc?” I asked him, unsure of what might happen between now and then. I knew the risks, certainly. They were as follows: if I don’t do it, I’ll likely die by the end of the year. I weighed all of a hundred and seven pounds, and at six feet in height it showed how I was just wasting away. If I do go through with the surgery, there is still a risk of not surviving, even though I don’t doubt the competency of the surgeon. The simple fact was that he had done a whole lot of these surgeries because there were precious few patients who had Marfan Syndrome.

Death was staring at me from all directions, and I was only twenty-two.

Silence was on the other end of the line, and I felt like I’d been put on hold. Time shrank in front of me, and I had no idea whether I’d even live long enough to make it to the surgery. Finally, my doctor returned and offered me a time. “We’ll do the third week of next month, which suits the surgeon well, and it’ll be the twenty-forth. Sound okay?”

Stupidly, I nodded, but couldn’t find my voice. “Hey, Aaron, I want you to know this: I will be with you every step of the way. I’ve been with you this long, I’ll look in on you during the surgery, and I’ll check up on you afterwards. Everything will work out okay. I firmly believe that.”

“Thank you, Doctor. I…uh…I really appreciate it. Have a good evening.”

Putting the phone back on its charger, I told my parents and sister the plan. I think we all took turns crying, but I felt…deflated. Life over the course of the next month-and-a-half was surreal, almost meaningless.

THEN: Remembrance: it was the only time machine I had, and this time my two best friends and I were fourteen, playing a videogame tournament of our own devising late into the night and into the wee hours of the morning. When we came up to fix ourselves some hot tea (our tastes were a bit…eclectic), the sunlight hit our eyes and I could almost feel myself turning to dust. I can’t help but smile at the memory, even though one friend remained as loyal and true as was possible, and the other—well, let’s just say we had a falling out that was never repaired. I wish so fiercely that I had tried a bit harder to hold onto that friendship. We had stayed friends through most of school and then midway through high school—poof!

It was gone.

The beauty of those priceless days cannot fully be appreciated at the time of their occurrence. To truly comprehend them and the impact they had on my life, or anyone’s life for that matter, is to see how they fit in the great weave of the grandest tapestry that is still being woven into existence. The Fates may be crones, maidens, or mothers, but they sure know how to work with a needle and some thread.

NOW: Sitting in the hospital bed the night before my surgery, I felt so utterly alone and isolated in a way I had never experienced before. A nurse had come in to shave off my chest hair with an electric razor, which was…well, it was certainly a new experience. To my befuddlement it was even sterile. In the month leading up to this moment, I had felt a strange level of detachment; there was no nervousness, no dread, just…acceptance. I had the easiest job in the coming battle for my life, you see, because all I had to do was lie there on the operating table and wait for them to put me under. After that, the hardest part would be up to the surgeon and his team. Perhaps Grace had been given to me because Someone Up Above knew I would need to be calm and collected as I neared a possible ending to this chapter in this life. Maybe I would float in the ether as a form of life where I am not quite alive, yet not quite dead either. Maybe I would find myself in Limbo, running through an endless maze that stretched as far as the eye could see, waiting until the maze walls collapsed and I was left alone amongst the rubble.

I had been calm and relatively emotionless through the time between my phone call with my cardiologist and now, but for some reason being alone in a hospital—knowing that my family was staying at a nearby hotel—sucker punched me. Just the previous night I had been with them, and I could imagine being with them now, maybe watching TV with them, but now…now the dark night of the soul began.

THEN: “Doctor, what caused all of this? The arthritis, how thin I am, the issues with my heart?” I wanted—no, needed—answers.

My doctor leaned back in his chair. “What you have, my young friend, is a disease of sorts, what we call a connective tissue disease. There are a lot of types, you see, because it comes from mutated genes. And this mutation is a dominant gene passed from parent to child. I would recommend that your parents get tested, just to make sure. Some people can go fifty to sixty years without medication and surgery, but others—like yourself, for instance—develop arthritis at young ages, or are tall and thin in relation to the rest of their family. Poor eyesight is another marker for this disease. What you have is called Marfan Syndrome, and aside from some cranio-facial mutations you don’t have, you are the exact illustration of a Marfan patient. The most dangerous part of this disease is in what it can do to the heart.

“As if it wasn’t bad enough,” I muttered, but my doctor put a reassuring hand on my shoulder, saying, “Hey, I promise I will do my utmost to take care of you. You have my word. And if one of your parents, or your sister has it, I will take care of them as well.”

I nodded, tears that were begging to be released came to my eyes. “You already know what it can do to your heart, Aaron. The aorta can become enlarged, creating an aneurysm…

The rest of the conversation went by in a blur, but I’ll never forget his promise to me and my family.

NOW: I don’t remember the day of my surgery, of the passage of words between me and my family. The only thing I can remember is my dad’s face being there when I woke up two days later.

My eyes fluttered open to reveal…blurs. Everything was skewed and, for a moment, I thought I’d gone blind, then I remembered I needed my glasses. Suddenly someone slipped them on me—and had done a remarkable job of cleaning them. He looked tired, worried, but now there was something else I hadn’t seen in a while: Hope.

“I thought I’d lost you, boy,” he said warmly, smiling and squeezed my shoulder. “Welcome back to the land of the living.”

Time, it appeared, was not finished with me. Yet.

Spend your time wisely, because you can’t get more of it, you can’t save it, and don’t try hoarding it like Mr. Scrooge.