The men grinned back at her.
“Come and do some reps,” Ethan responded in jest.
Nancy turned away with a laugh and a dismissive wave. She was looking for somebody else and had a fairly good idea where she’d find him. Nancy opened the heavy door to the furnace room and walked in. Sure enough, Ern was in there, somewhere. She could hear him tinkering with something behind the water heater.
“Honey, don’t you think you should take a break?” she asked her husband, knowing that he wouldn’t take her advice anyway. Asking the question was just going through the motions, after all these years together.
“I almost got it, Nance,” Ern replied.
Nance? That was weird.
“Ern?”
“Suh minuh,” Ern slowly moved around the water heater. He staggered, like he was drunk.
“Ern?” Nancy repeated. She took a step forward but stopped short when she saw Ern’s face.
One side of his face drooped like it was melting off his skull. Nancy could see the fear and panic in his other eye.
“ERN!”
A SCREAM SHATTERED the focus of the men working out. Keith was closest to the door and out of the gym before a second scream rang through the school. The screams came from the furnace room. Keith ran into it to find Nancy kneeling beside her husband.
“What happened?” Keith called as he joined her.
Nancy’s face showed pure fear. “I think he’s having a stroke!”
Keith stared down in shock at the slack-faced Ern. The old man met his eyes and tried to smile reassuringly. It only upset Keith more.
“S-okay. Juss ti-ahd,” Ern said, frowning as he heard his own voice.
The other men had arrived. John immediately knelt beside Ern.
“Go get Shelley and Joe!” John ordered.
Ethan and Jack ran out of the room. Keith had not moved, his eyes still locked on the old man.
Shelley came running in with Ethan at her heels a minute later. She ran straight to Ern and started talking to him. John moved over for her.
“Hi Ern, it’s Shelley. Can you say something for me, please?”
Ern mumbled something unintelligible in response. Shelley nodded, but kept smiling calmly at the stricken man. “OK, good. Can you try to lift your arm for me?”
Ern’s arm rose about a foot from the ground and started to drift down after wavering for a couple of seconds.
“Can you do that one more time? And try to hold your arm up for me, all right?”
His arm rose a few inches this time and started drifting down almost immediately. She tested him some more, asking him to repeat a couple of words for her. With one final reassuring smile, she got up and asked John to keep Ern company for a moment.
She pulled Nancy off to the side. Her smile was gone. “I don’t think this is a TIA. He’s having a stroke.”
Nancy shuddered at the news. “What do we do?”
Shelley had already turned. John knelt beside Ern, and Keith stood a step behind. “Don’t let him go to sleep!” she warned the men. “Keep talking to him and get him to engage you if possible.”
“Shit. Shit. Shit! We don’t have any Alteplase,” Shelley berated herself.
Nancy felt the needles of panic setting in. She watched as the young woman thought hard for a moment, frowning in concentration.
“Aspirin.” She turned to Ethan. “Ethan, run up to Christine and have her find any aspirin or any drug we have that contains acetylsalicylic acid.”
“Acetyl...” Ethan tried to remember the complicated word.
“She’ll know! That’s the main ingredient in aspirin. Otherwise, have her bring down any blood thinners we have. Like warfarin. Now, go!”
Ethan shot out of the room. Shelley turned back to Ern, stepping up to Keith, who was wringing his hands as he stood over the old man.
“We need to make him comfortable. Keith, go get a couple of blankets.”
Joe had arrived by the time Keith returned with blankets. The veterinarian knelt on one side of Ern while Shelley sat on the other. Nancy sat at Ern’s head and softly stroked the tufts of hair on the old man’s head. John had backed up to the furnace and looked extremely uncomfortable.
They lifted Ern onto a couple of blankets and covered him with another one. Keith watched as Shelley talked to Ern the whole time, maintaining a soft, calm voice. Joe was squeezing his muscles, looking into his eyes, and moving around Ern rather frantically from Keith’s perspective.
“Don’t move his limbs,” Shelley reproached Joe. “It might loosen more clots and make things worse.”
Joe took the reprimand in stride and put Ern’s arm down carefully.
Keith stepped back and stood beside John. The two exchanged a worried glance.
Christine arrived a minute later with some medicine. “This is the best I could find!”
The young woman was clearly distraught as she dropped several pill bottles next to Shelley. The nurse quickly scanned and discarded several bottles until she found something appropriate. She opened the bottle with a well-practiced twist of the wrist and dumped several pills into her hand.
“Water bottle,” she requested. Ethan once again sprinted out of the room. “Can we get him to dry-swallow these?” she asked Joe as she held up the pills.
They tried one, but Ern was incapable of swallowing. Ethan had returned with a water bottle, and Shelley dug the pill out of Ern’s mouth. She quickly crushed several pills and poured the dust into the bottle, shaking it vigorously.
Carefully, she poured some into Ern’s mouth. Again, the old man could not swallow. Instead, he started to gag and choke.
“Damn it!” Shelley said in frustration as she turned Ern’s head and let the liquid pour out. It was the first moment Keith saw a crack in the nurse’s calm exterior. He took a step forward and asked if he could do anything else.
“First aid kit.” Shelley’s eyes were wide with fear. “I think I saw a defibrillator in the front office. Bring that too.”
Keith noticed Nancy gasp in dismay at hearing Shelley say “defibrillator,” but the nurse didn’t have the time to reassure the old lady.
Ern was clearly
