During the period in which my car was in the body shop, I moved into a new apartment, two doors down from where I lived with Abed and Qued. This meant I didn't need my car or any other vehicle to move. While we were at it, we decided we needed to have the carpet in the two-bedroom apartment professionally cleaned while we were moving furniture around. (The management company would not replace the carpeting even though they were raising the rent.) Abed and Qued temporarily put all their furniture in my apartment while the cleaning took place. It felt like we were all getting a fresh start with new homes.
After putting everything back in their apartment, I had to get ready for work the next day. This would be the first day that I would carpool with Maurd. She would come by at 3am to pick me up. I gave her my phone number and told her to call me if there was any problem coming to get me. (This was in the day before cell phones were common. Neither one of us had a cell phone.)
I was very nervous about what was about to happen. Somehow, I was aware that Maurd did not have the best attendance record and I was afraid she was going to decide not to go to work and leave me high and dry to suffer the same attendance consequences that she did. I had a hard time sleeping that night worrying about this. I couldn't wait to get my car back.
Around 1am, the phone rang. I thought it was going to be Maurd flaking on me. She had previously told me that she lived with her boyfriend. Still dazed from waking up, I picked up the phone. A woman was telling me something about someone having a heart attack. At first, I thought Maurd was telling me her boyfriend had a heart attack and she wasn't going to be able to take me to work. But the woman kept mentioning my brother Loyd. That didn't make sense. I interrupted her and told her I had just woken up. I asked who she was. She was Loyd's roommate. I asked her who had the heart attack. She said it was Loyd. GASP! I had to take a moment to digest this. Loyd was only 33 at the time. I knew about our Mom's family history of the male members dying from heart attacks, but I never figured either one of us would succumb that early in life. She told me that he was okay and was recovering at the hospital. She said he would probably be able to call me the next day and tell me what was going on.
I couldn't go back to sleep after that. It was still going to be a couple of hours before Maurd was going to come pick me up. If I had my car, I probably would have seriously considered calling out that day. But since Maurd was coming to get me, I was obligated to work, even with this heavy on my mind.
I did get to talk to Loyd later to find out what happened. He told me that when he was in truck-driving school, he was required to watch a video that explained the symptoms of a heart attack. He said he could feel the tingling in his left arm and knew what was going on. He went to one of his other roommates and told him that he needed to drive to the hospital because he was having a heart attack. The roommate didn't believe him. Loyd insisted he was serious and was able to get that ride.
Loyd recovered just fine and only ever had one other incident later on. Today, you wouldn't be able to tell he had a heart attack. I don't know how I would react if that happened to me. It's something that's been in the back of my mind since then. I hope I'm as lucky as Loyd and will have other people around me if it happens.
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