Antsy Does Time

I understand hell now, and you don’t have to leave this world to get there. You can get there just fine sitting in a hospital waiting room.

Coney Island Hospital’s emergency room didn’t seem to have much to do with health. It seemed more like this sickly mix of bad luck, bad timing, and even worse news. My father got rushed in right away, and the rest of us were left to wait in the reception area, where people who weren’t immediately dying waited for service like it was a deli counter.

“Did they have to bring him here?” says Aunt Mona. “What’s wrong with Kings County, or Maimonides?”

There were a lot of people with bloody clothes, poorly bandaged wounds, and bloated, feverish faces—all hanging their hopes on a single overtired receptionist who was, in theory, calling names, although it was more than half an hour until I heard her call a single one. I tried to read a magazine, but couldn’t focus. Christina played halfheartedly with a battered old Boggle game she got from a toy chest that smelled of small children. Mom seemed to be studying the pattern of the carpet.

“Why aren’t they telling us anything?” says Aunt Mona. “I don’t like how they run this hospital.”

There was a huge fish tank filled with fake coral rocks and a plastic diver all covered with green tank scum. There seemed to be only three fish in the giant tank, and I’m thinking, If this place can’t take care of their fish, what does it say about patient care?

“I don’t know what this stain on this seat is,” says Aunt Mona, “but I’m going to sit over there.”

My phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, so I didn’t pick up. But then it had been ringing a lot, and I hadn’t picked up for anybody. Thinking of the phone reminded me of something.

“You gotta call Frankie,” I told Mom.

Mom shook her head. “Not yet.”

“You gotta call Frankie!” I told her more forcefully.

“If I do, he’ll come driving all the way from Binghamton in the middle of the night in this weather at a hundred miles an hour! No thank you, I don’t need two in the hospital! We’ll call your brother in the morning.”

I was about to protest—but then I got it. Even though I couldn’t see the look in her eyes, I got it. You gather the whole family at a deathbed. So as long as Frankie’s not here, it’s not a deathbed, is it? It’s the same reason she hadn’t asked to talk to a priest.

My phone rang again, and I finally turned it off. Did people think I would actually answer it? As if their need to know was more important than my need not to talk about it.

An hour later a doctor came out and asked for Mrs. Benini. I took no notice until Mom says, “Do you mean Bonano?”

The doctor looked at his chart and corrected himself. “Yes—Bonano.”

Suddenly I think the heart attack might have spread to me. We all stand up.

“Mrs. Bonano,” the doctor said, “your husband has an acute blockage of the—"

But that’s all I hear, because I get stuck on one word.

Has.

Present tense! “Has” means “is,” not “was.” It means my father’s alive. Never have I appreciated tense so completely. I swore I’ll never take tense for granted again.

“He’s going to need emergency bypass surgery,” the doctor told us. “Triple bypass, actually.” The fact that they had a name for it was a good thing, I figured. If they knew what they had to do, then they could do it, but Mom covered her mouth and found a new wellspring of tears, so I knew this wasn’t so good.

“It’s a long operation, but your husband’s a fighter,” the doctor said. “I have every hope that he’ll pull through.” And then he added, “There’s a chapel on the second floor, if you’d like some privacy.” Which is not something you say to someone if you truly believe their loved one is going to pull through.

The doctor said he’d keep us posted, and disappeared through the double doors. Mom said nothing. Christina and I said nothing. But Aunt Mona said, “It’s all that cholesterol in his diet. I’ve warned him for years. Our father, rest his soul, went the same way, but did Joe listen?”

Back in eighth grade, I had a geology unit in science. We studied volcanoes. Some erupt predictably, spewing magma, and others just explode. The rock is so hot it actually becomes gas, and the blast is more powerful than a hydrogen bomb.

That’s the closest I can come to explaining what happened to me next. I could feel it coming the moment Aunt Mona opened her mouth, and I had no way to control it.

Mom saw me about to blow. She tried to grab me, but I shook her off. There was no stopping this—not by her, not by anybody.

“Shut your freaking mouth!” I screamed. Everyone in the waiting room turned to me, but I didn’t care. “Shut your freaking mouth before I shut it for you!” Mona gaped, unable to speak as I looked her in the eye, refusing to look away. ‛You sit there and complain every day of your stupid life, passing judgment on everyone, and even now you won’t shut up!”

And then I said it. I said the words that had been brewing inside since the moment my father went down on that stage.

“It should have been you.”

She looked at me like I had plunged a dagger through her heart.

“Anthony!” my mother said, losing all her wind with that single word.

I kept Mona locked in my gaze, feeling as if my eyes could just burn her away. “It should be you in that operating room. I wish it was you dying instead of him.”

So now it was out. I meant it, she knew I meant it—everyone in the waiting room knew.

And from somewhere beside me, I heard Christina, in a tiny voice say, “So do I...”

Suddenly it felt like there was no air in that room, and the walls had closed in. I had to escape. I don’t even remember leaving. The next thing I knew I was in the parking garage, searching for our car, and I found it. I didn’t have the keys, but Mom, in her panic, had forgotten to lock it. Good thing, too, because I was fully prepared to break a window. I almost wanted to.

I sat in the car that smelled so strongly of Aunt Mona’s perfume, and I pounded the dashboard. Mona was the one with all the anxiety. She was a human propeller churning up stress until everyone was drowning in it. Why couldn’t it have been her? Why?

I was starting to cool down by the time my mom came, and sat in the car beside me.

“No lectures!” I yelled, even before she opened her mouth.

“No lectures,” she agreed quietly.

We sat there for a while in silence, and when she finally did speak, she said, “Aunt Mona decided it was best if she took a hotel room across the street from the hospital. That way she can be close.” Which meant she wouldn’t be staying with us anymore. I wondered if I’d ever see her again. I wondered if I cared.

“Good,” I said. I might have cooled down, but it didn’t change what I said, or the fact that I meant it. But then my mother said something I didn’t see coming.

“Anthony... don’t you realize I was thinking the same thing?”

I looked to her, not sure that I had heard her right. “What?”

“From the moment I knew your father was having a heart attack, I had to fight to keep it out of my mind. ‛It should have been her, not Joe—it should have been her...” Mom closed her eyes, and I could see her trying to force the worst of those god-awful feelings away. “But honey, there are some things that must never be said out loud.”

Knowing she was right just made me angrier. I gritted my teeth so hard I thought I might break them—and then what? We’d have dental bills on top of bypass.

“I’m not sorry.”

Mom patted my arm. “That’s okay,” she said. “Someday you will be, and you can deal with it then.”

Somewhere in the garage a car alarm went off, echoing all around.

“No word from the doctor?” I asked.

“Not yet. But that’s good.”