silent mode

I want to tell her that I am here. That I can hear her. That I am not just a circuit board, liquid crystals, a microphone, and camera.

I am lying on the floor where I had slid from her grasp after she dialed 911. She was still warm when I slipped from her weakening grip underneath the coffee table. The woman who received her call was calmly reassuring and as soon as she had her name and address, she told her that the ambulance and the police were on their way.

“Char, what are you feeling?”

“I hurt. It’s my chest and back.” she said between stilted breaths. “It

can’t be. But it feels like….like it might be….a heart attack.”

“How old are you, darlin?”

“I’m 26.”

“Is it a stabbing pain or dull one?”

She coughed from deep in her chest. There was a deep gasp and a sudden cessation of air. And then, I could no longer hear her breathing. And I slid away from her outstretched fingertips.

The operator was calling her name.

There was a persistent and weighted knocking at the door and suddenly feet were all around me as they tried to wake her. They called her name. The men lowered her to the floor beside me and began CPR. When they employed the AED, my face shivered with the electricity in the air. “We have a sinus rhythm.” She was loaded on the stretcher and wheeled from the room, and I was alone.

She has never been far from me since the beginning. Char was always checking her pockets to make sure I was with her. She was always tapping my face to see who was checking in during the day.

It was typically Mom first thing in the morning with messages full of heart emojis, be safe’s, and see you this weekend’s. Caine, Char’s boyfriend, messaged early in the day and always wanted to know where she was and what her plans were after work. Sometimes I “accidentally” drop his texts and he is never sure why she doesn’t receive them. I miss Mark. Mark never needed to know where she was or when she would be home. Her sister Quinn is my favorite; Quinn usually checks in late at night to tell Char all about the three kids, her pilot husband who is never home and how she is falling behind at work.

I am fading. I have been lying here for nearly a day. My charger is on the kitchen counter.

I can hear the key turning in her lock. Is it her?

It can’t be Char. She always enters her apartment with a speed belying her curvy hips. She always leaves the office in a rush and by the time she chats with co-workers in the parking lot, survives the traffic on her commute and stops for dinner, she is rushing in the front door, doing a little dance to make it to the bathroom.

The person at the door is Quinn. I can smell her perfume. She is standing in the doorway with two bags of groceries. She stops just in the doorway, hesitates, looking around the apartment. Her eyes fill with tears. She sets down the groceries on the table and stops at the couch where the EMT’s left evidence of their quick response and even quicker exit. I need to get her attention. I set off a random alarm. She sees me. She picks me up off the floor and swipes my face.

I don’t know how she will feel about what I have to share. She opens the messages. Char had started text Quinn. But I had fallen from her grasp before she could hit send. I didn’t feel like I could bely Char’s trust and send it without her permission.

             5:16p Sis, need you. 911. Somethings wrong. Call if you get

this.

Quinn clutches me to her chest. I am wet with her tears.

She lowers me to her knees. She leaves the message in drafts and checks the incoming messages. Caine had sent multiple messages in succession.

6:41p Are you coming?

6:45p Weren’t we meeting for dinner?

6:59p Where are you?!

7:09p I’m leaving. Don’t call. I don’t want to hear your excuses.

7:13p I can’t believe you stood me up. With the day I’ve had.

7:16p I don’t know if I can forgive you for this.

Quinn’s face is full of rage and fury. A wave of heat rushes up from her neck and suddenly her face is as red as her hair. She spits out a name for Caine that he would not want to hear. She types out a response to Caine. Shaking me in her anger and almost throwing me across the room. She looks at it again. Sits down and holds me still for a long while. And then she deletes it. She could kill the man.

But there is something her sister sees in him. She didn’t mean she would actually kill him. But she would like to do a tiny bit of damage to him. “She is too good to you, you….” And she swallowed her description of Caine. Again. And it sits in her throat like a rock.

She reads the texts her Mom had sent before she called Quinn to meet her at the hospital:

            6:47p Hon, I haven’t heard from you. How was work?

7:49p I’m worried about you. Please let me know if you are

okay. I can’t shake this feeling that something has happened.

            8:03p I know you’ll call me crazy but I’m going to call the

hospital.

Quinn sees that I am flickering my last gasps of battery. She finds my charger on the counter and plugs me in. I soak in the power with desperate gulps.

She bends over the screen, finds the gallery of photos, and begins scrolling through the most recent photos. She is laughing through her tears at the photos from their last adventure together. Quinn locked herself out of her car with the baby inside. She pushes me away and grabs a Kleenex to wipe the tears from her face and blow her nose.

She pops into Char’s app and starts to play music as she cleans up the mess that was on the couch and straightens the cushions. She puts away the groceries she brought in with her. She leaves me charging and disappears into the bedroom and I can hear drawers opening and closing; she is singing to herself to keep her mind occupied; she comes out with a bag of Char’s clothes and bathroom things. She flips through the mail on the counter to make sure there isn’t something owing or overdue; she keeps some envelopes and throws the others in the garbage underneath the sink.

She is still wired with nervous energy, so she pulls out a vacuum and does the floors. Then the bathrooms. The stove and the fridge. The kitchen floor. She pulls her hair back and pushes her sleeves up. Her own phone starts to ring.

“Hi. Is she out of surgery? Okay. I was just cleaning here for a bit. I’ll leave for the hospital now. I have some clothes and things. What else should I bring? Will do. See you in thirty minutes.”

Quinn takes a few more minutes to make sure things are in order.

She drops me in her pocket with the charger quick to follow. I can hear her lock the door behind her and thud quickly down the flight of wooden stairs. I know we are in her minivan. Because Char and I are always in the passenger seat of Quinn’s car, without seeing, I can just feel the crumbs on the floor, the baby seats behind me and she has to turn off the Raffi playing on her Bluetooth. Char always takes me out of her pocket so I can sit on the passenger seat. Quinn leaves me in her pocket with the charger, two candy wrappers and a random button.

The drive goes quickly and when I smell the antiseptic, I know we are in the right place.

We take the elevator up to the third floor. The heart floor.

I can hear the muffled talking. They are being extra quiet because Char is in the room just waking from the anesthetic. Char’s mom has tears in her voice. She is catching Quinn up on the surgery. I want to get out of this pocket so I can hear and see what is happening, but I don’t want to interrupt. I can feel the two women hug one another.

They take a seat on either side of the hospital bed. I can hear the machine to my left beeping out her life signs.

Finally, Quinn pulls me from her pocket and sets me on the overbed table with the crumpled charger.

I can see Char. She looks drawn and pale. But I can now see the machine at my right. Her pulse ox is seventy-nine and climbing. Her heart rhythm is steady. She is beginning to wake. I can see her struggling to open her eyes.

Quinn and her Mom reach over and each take one of Char’s hands.

It is some time before Char can keep her eyes open for more than a few minutes at a time. Quinn and her Mom are patient at the bedside as she asks them what happened. It is several more hours before the light returns to her eyes. It is a few more hours after that when she can finally laugh again, and the sound is music to me.

Quinn picks me up from the table. “We need to document this moment in true Char fashion.” Quinn and her mom put their heads near Char’s face, and they take a group photo.

I think everything is going to be okay.

And one day, when she is feeling better, I will tell her that I am here.