Missed call from mum

This works.

Here is my piece;

I’m not a religious person, I could never grasp the idea of “blind faith”, however looking back at the moments leading up to that call, I can’t help but to question what forces are actually out there.

I’m always asleep that time of the morning, the world at 7am is for runners and retirees not me.

I fumbled for the phone when it rang, only just waking up enough to register its jarring ringtone.

Missed call,

Mum

Suddenly I felt my heart fall to my feet, my mind immediately wakes, I can feel my veins thumping as my blood pressure suddenly spikes.

“Shit, I think dads having a heart attack”

Now I should mention at this point that my father had always been in good heath and didn’t have any heart issues that we were aware of.

But for some reason, some cosmic reason, I immediately knew what that missed call was about.

I call back before my mind could even finish my thought.

Mums hysterical, dads in the ambulance being rushed to St Vincent’s hospital, she wants me to come quick.

Calmly I tell her that he’s having a heart attack, she insists that they haven’t told her what’s going on yet but that he’s very very sick.

I calmly repeat mum he’s having a heart attack, I’ll meet you at the hospital.

Those moments, that handful of seconds, between missing her call and calling her back, we in some surreal way the most real moments I’ve ever felt. So real that they almost feel like they have physical form- like I could reach out and touch every millisecond and feel it’s pounding pulse beneath its sharp and hard surface.

The memory exists in my mind as some strange artists installation piece.

What made me assume it was a heart attack I will never know.

Maybe I was just an innate educated guess based on family history or maybe it was something else, something explainable only through faith and beyond human forces.

Whatever it was, those moments will never leave me.

When I was calling mum back dad was being revived in the ambulance en route to the hospital, he had had a massive cardiac arrest - doctors told us that no one could have predicted it, he had a silent electrical cardiac condition that was a ticking time bomb waiting to go off.

Only 10% of people survive a cardiac arrest like his

And thats only if they receive professionally administered CPR within 4 minutes of the arrest happening.

Almost no one survives when an inexperienced person is the one to provide the immediate cpr, and if they do manage to beat the odd they almost always have some left over brain damage from the lack of oxygen.

I look back at how calm I was on the phone to mum “he’s having a heart attack I’ll meet you at the hospital” I don’t remember feeling scared in those moments.

Dad made a full recovery, “a miracle, touched by god” said the doctors.

I wonder if those moments immediately after I woke up, the phone call with mum, the absence of fear and the confidence I had in my diagnosis….

But then I stop and remind myself, I’m not really a religious person.