Antsy Does Time

mother.” He wiped sweat from his brow, then signed the document. The principal signed as witness, and Neena snatched the paper, holding it up to the audience.

“Mr. Bonano has given us two full years! We’ve reached our goal!” And the crowd went wild, whooping and hollering at the prospect of moving on to page three.

Dad shook Gunnar’s hand, turned to leave the stage ... then he hesitated. He turned to me, wiping his forehead again. It was the first time that I noticed he was sweating a bit more than anyone else onstage. He looked pale, too, and it wasn’t just the stage lights.

“Dad?”

He waved me off. “I’m fine.”

Then he rubbed his chest, took a deep breath, and suddenly fell to one knee.

“Dad!”

I was down there with him in an instant. A volley of gasps came from the audience, blending with the clatter of sleet on the windows.

“Joe!” I hear my mother scream.

“I’m okay. It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

But now he went all the way down, on all fours. “I... I just need someone to help me up.” But instead of getting up, he kept going down. In a second he had rolled over and was flat on his back, struggling to breathe.

And still my father insists that everything’s okay. I want to believe him. This is not happening, I tell myself. And if I say it enough, maybe I’ll believe it.

From this moment on, nothing made proper sense. Everything was random shouts and disconnected images. Time fell apart.

Mom is there holding his hand.

Mona’s on the stage, clutching her coat beside her, and gets pushed out of the way by the security guard who claims to know CPR, but doesn’t seem too confident.

A million cell phones dialing 911 all at once.

“I’m fine. I’m fine. Oh God.”

Gunnar standing next to Kjersten standing next to me, none of us able to do a damn thing.

The guard counting, and doing chest compressions.

The whole audience standing like it’s the national anthem all over again.

Dad’s not talking anymore.

The squealing wheels of a gurney rolling down the aisle. How did they get here so fast? How long has he been lying on that stage?

An oxygen mask, and his fingers feel so cold, and the crowd parts before us as the wheels squeal again, and me, Mom, Christina, and Mona are carried along in the wake of the gurney toward the auditorium door, where cold air rolls in, hitting the heat and making fog that rolls like ocean surf.

And in the madness of this terrible moment, one voice in the crowd, loud and clear, pierces the panic. Once voice that says:

“My God! He gave two years, and he died!”

I turn to seek out the owner of that voice. “SHUT UP!” I scream. “SHUT UP! HE’S NOT DEAD!” If I found who said it, I’d break him up so bad he’d be joining us at the hospital, but I’m pulled along too quickly in the gurney’s wake, out the door and into the wet night. He’s not dead. He’s not. Even as they load him into the ambulance, they’re talking to him, and he’s nodding. Weakly, but he’s nodding.

We pile into our car to follow, leaving Gunnar, and Kjersten, and the thermometer and the crowd. Now there’s nothing but the sleet, and the cold, and the wail and flashing lights of the ambulance as we break every traffic law and run every red light to keep up with it, because we don’t know which hospital they’re taking him to, so we can’t lose the ambulance. We can’t. We can’t.

17. My Head Explodes Like Mount St. Helens, and I’ll Probably Be Picking Up the Pieces for Years

Our lives get spent worrying about such pointless, stupid things. Does this girl like me? Does this boy know I exist? Did I get an A, B, or C? And will everyone laugh when they see my ugly shirt? It’s amazing how quickly—how, in the smallest moment of time, all of that can implode into nothing, when the universe suddenly opens up, revealing itself with all these impossible depths and dizzying heights. You’re swept up into it, and as you look down, the perspective is terrifying. People look like ants from so far away.

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