I WAY overslept and was nearly late for work. Aymee, using The Force and sensing I was still asleep, called me and I sprang awake seeing that I had 10 minutes to get to work. I had spent Thanksgiving doing what most Americans do; eating and drinking too much.
My mom and younger bro and sis had come up two days prior to spend the holiday with us. At first I was a bit put off by the self-invitation. For Aymee and I, Thanksgiving isn't a holiday spent with family cheer. For the past 7 years she and I have been working for Guitar Center which means we try to go to bed early and get ready for the retail onslaught that begins the day after Thanksgiving and runs til New Years.
So back to T-day, my fam drove from St. Louis to the barren wastelands that is Minnesota, gave me a hug and my mother asked me "Why is it so damn cold up here?!" Now you have to know my mother. She will often ask me questions that sound angry and accusing. Picture a mother sternly asking her kid "Why is there weed in your sock drawer?!" Now we've never had this conversation. Really, we didn't! I kept beer in the toilet tank but she never found it. So with the accusatory speech pattern firmly in your head, you will now understand the mixture of annoyance and amusement I feel when my mother asks me things like "Why is it so damn cold up here?!" or "Why does my car make this funny sound?!" and my personal favorite "When are you going to move back home?!"
Mother diatribes out of the way, Thanksgiving was fun with my mom and Aymee cooking a wonderful non-Thanksgiving feast of pot roast, potatoes and carrots. My mom and I had a good and long talk over 2 bottles of wine, beer, and whiskey with water. They went back to the hotel around midnight and I passed out full and hammered. Cut to 6:50 in the morning and Aymee calls me and wakes me up. I have 10 minutes to get to work for a 10 to 12 hour shift. With no time for the two things I really needed (a shower and a shit-load of coffee to battle my impending hangover) I pulled on some clothes, brushed my teeth and ran out the door hoping I didn't reek too badly of Jim, Jack, or Jose. Fortunately I didn't smell of at all of the Big 3. I'm rather sure I did smell of the best "J" which is Jameson Irish whiskey which is what Ma Kettle and I were drinking. I made it to work with about 9 seconds to spare and settled in for a long day with my body in some dangerous location between still drunk and not quite yet viciously hung over.
The day wound up being fine. I made a much needed run for coffee and a muffin. The hangover of doom I was anticipating never showed. I had good day at work that got really scary in the early afternoon.
Around 1 or 2 in the afternoon, I went outside to the side of the building to have a quick smoke. Two of my coworkers were already there and I wound up bullshitting with the two of them for a few minutes. Shortly after I got out there, I noticed a woman in her early thirties trying to move quickly to her car across the parking lot but was doing it while doubling over and coughing profusely. While chatting with my friends I kept watching her. She walked over to her ride, a green Ford Escape, and threw the door open forcefully. She was still coughing up a lung and at the time, I thought she was just really crying hard. At this point I was, for all intents and purposes, out of the conversation with my coworkers. My eyes were firmly on her. I was watching this coughing, weeping, retching woman trash the interior of her car. She was tossing shit out of her SUV left and right, obviously searching for something. I don't know what I was waiting for her to do but if she pulled out a gun and started walking back into the store, I figured someone should probably be ready do something.
She apparently found what she was looking for and started staggering towards us with what appeared to be a Magic Marker in her hands. She was still coughing horribly and her checks each had a blazing red spotlight on them. The rest of her face was awfully pale. My friends had quit speaking and were just staring at her with mouths agape. When she was about 10 feet away, I spoke to her.
"Hey, are you okay?"
No answer from my friend, the coughing blonde. I tried again.
"Do you need help or can I call someone for you?" Still no answer. Just her staggering towards me. At this point I started walking towards her and as we were near arm's length, she simply fell into my arms. I slowly let her down to the ground so she was in a sitting position with me crouched behind her, supporting her with my arms. I kept telling her shit like it'll be okay and do you need an ambulance and the like. She just kept coughing, gagging and crying. Finally, with all her strength, she whispered "Mike" and I realized I already knew my new friend, the coughing blonde. She was Mike's girlfriend, Dahri and I had met her a month prior on Halloween. I didn't recognize Dahri because she was in a costume when I first met her. Mike is one of my coworkers and a good friend of mine. I turned to one of the smoking coworkers and told him to go grab Mike and to call an ambulance. He left to fetch Mike and I continued to hold her while cussing myself for not remembering her name. If I knew her name it would help in maybe calming her down. I didn't know what was going on with her but I knew it was serious and I was rather certain she was scared.
She started slapping me on the leg and arm really hard and over and over. I asked her if she was choking but she rapidly shook her head but kept hitting me. I kept holding her, not knowing if she was trying to tell me to "fuck off" or not. She then held up the Magic Marker I saw in her hand earlier, only this time I got a good look at it. It wasn't a Magic Marker. It was an Epipen. I'm as dumb as the next guy but I knew that an Epipen meant Anaphylaxis. I knew an Epipen was basically a shot of adrenaline called epinephrine like what John Travolta gave to Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction when she was overdosing on his heroin. For the record, I didn't know how to spell epinephrine til I looked it up for this post. I'm not that smart.
So my choking, coughing blonde friend hands me this Epipen. Nearly yelling at her (I was that freaked) I say (yell) "Do you need this?!" She just keeps slapping me over and over in my leg. I keep asking her if she needs "this." "This" being the Epipen. She keeps slapping me in the leg and after a few seconds, I realize she might be giving me The International Sign for 'I need an Epipen Injection in my Leg!' To which I ask "Do you need this in your leg or in your chest?!" Visions of Pulp Fiction again flash through my head. She just keeps slapping my leg. I look at the pen and it says something to the effect of "Inject in the upper thigh."
At this point, her face was completely pale and her lips were blue. I force away the impending panic and start pointedly asking her if she needs this right now? She responds by slapping me over and over in the leg. I decided this indeed meant that she needed it right now. I took the Epipen from her and give the side of the pen a quick read: Remove black cap. Bring pen forcefully into thigh and hold until pen 'clicks' and hold the pen in place. Alright, I can do this. I'm not sure how I looked but I probably looked like this if I'd been kneeling over her rather that kneeling behind her and holding her.
Okay, I didn't look quite like that. I didn't have Eric Stolz and his weird wife next to me. I gripped the Epipen in my right hand, held my arm up (not unlike Mr. Travolta above this paragraph), and brought that fucker down hard on her thigh.
And nothing.
No click. No deep breath from her. No bloodied Uma Thurman rising from the dead.
I tried again. And again. And again. Pretty soon I was just hammering it rapidly down on her thigh over and over. Still no click. I all but gave up on the Epipen and just started gently rubbing her shoulders and softly saying that everything would be okay. That Mike would be there really soon (I hoped). Her breathing had all but stopped when I heard footsteps behind me.
I looked over my shoulder to see Mike standing there. "What's going on," he asked? I held up the Epipen.
"Mike, make this fucking thing work!" As if he'd done it a hundred times before, he took the Epipen from me, made some click noise near the tip and then stabbed it into her thigh. There was no Uma-Thurman-gasping-wake-up but she did take a somewhat deep breath. Mike then turned to me and asked me to call an ambulance. I pulled out my phone and had the following conversation.
"Edina Emergency."
"Yes, I need an ambulance at 3650 Hazelton Road. It's the Guitar Center."
"What's the nature of you're emergency?"
I've got a huge crack in my ass. "There's a young women having trouble breathing-" At this point, Mike looked over his shoulder and told me she was having an allergic reaction. "-an allergic reaction. We've administered an Epipen but she is still having problems breathing and we need an ambulance with oxygen immediately." At this point, every cop movie and hospital show I'd ever seen came back to me and I was trying to be as succinct as possible so they would have all the info the need yet at the same time, trying not to piss my pants. Ego aside, I think I did pretty well on the phone. Helluva lot better than I did with the damn Epipen. She put me on hold for about 30 seconds which, true to form in emergencies, felt like 10 fucking minutes. During the hold time, Mike looked over at me. Now neither Mike or I are panicky types. We're, by nature, pretty level-headed. The look in his eyes wasn't panic but I could see we were about to enter dangerous territory with Dahri.
"How long til they get here?"
"I'm on hold. Not long." Now I had no idea when they were getting there but I was subscribing to the age-old creedo of emergencies: hope for the best and when in doubt, lie your ass off.
The emergency operator came back on and said an ambulance was on it's way.
"Do you have an ETA?"
"Unknown. Not long. They've already left."
Although I work in Edina, I only know where the Burger King and the liquor store is but I figured we had 3 minutes tops til help came. Not long but my mind started wondering to medical articles I'd read about oxygen deprivation to the brain. Something over 6 minutes and you were royally fucked. I wasn't sure how much oxygen Dahri was or wasn't getting but it was at least 3 to 5 minutes of watching her stagger to her Ford Escape and fumble for her Epipen. Then maybe another 2 minutes from the time she came to me and collapsed until Mike showed up and gave her the Epipen. Now another two minutes had passed and I silently cursed myself for not walking over to her sooner. As soon as I saw her thrashing about inside for ride, I should've run over. Instead I stood 30 feet away and watched with some internal commentary in my head about how it's not often you get to see someone spaz out in your parking lot. I felt like a fucking idiot for not trying to help sooner.
90 seconds after hanging up the phone, I heard the glorious sound of multiple sirens. My instant dose of hope was doused upon glancing at our parking lot. It was Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the whole year. From Hazelton Road I could see 6 or 7 cars waiting to make a left into the lot. There were another 3 or 4 cars trying to leave our lot. To top it all off, I could see another 5 or 6 cars in parking spots with their reverse lights on waiting to leave their respective spots. With out making too much of an ass of myself, I started moving around the vicinity and getting cars to stay put in their spots.
The only time I lost my cool during the whole scenario was returning to my perch, which was at the apex of our L-shaped parking lot which is also where Mike and Dahri were. I was about 12 feet away from them so I could see the parking lot entrance so I could wave the ambulance over. I was standing at the rear bumper of a Buick. The driver of the Buick decided he didn't have to look in their rear view mirror or pay attention the multiple wailing sirens descending on the area. While looking ahead to the entrance and waving my arms to the ambulance slowly making it's way through holiday shopper's cars, I felt a hard bump against my leg. I look left to see this car backing into me. I slammed my hands on the trunk and screamed "HEY!" The Buick stopped I went back to waving over the ambulance.
In front of the ambulance was an Edina cop car. The proverbial Bandit to the ambulance's Snowman. The cop blocked parking lot traffic while the ambulance came over to where I was waving them. Two EMT's came over and Mike and I quickly filled them in. Allergic reaction. Epipen administered. Pros that they were, they carried Dahri into the back of the ambulance and started working on her. Once the pressure and responsibility was off my shoulders the adrenaline left me in a hurry and I danced with nausea for moment but it subsided. I chain-smoked two cigarettes and was suddenly thirsty. Mike then asked me if I would go into our employee break room and fetch him a soda. I ran in grabbed a soda for him out of the 12 pack he keeps in the employee fridge. After a quick second thought, I grabbed one too for myself. I was shaking, parched, and wanted the sugar. After that was pretty anti-climatic. The EMT's took Dahri to the hospital. Mike and I went back to work.
A few hours later, I came home from work. I was exhausted. Not only from my parking lot endeavours but from working yet another Black Friday in retail. I wanted a nap but knew that my fam was still in town and we had to have dinner with them. I got home before Aymee and reached into the fridge for a much deserved beer. Midway though my Rolling Rock (shut up, I like it) Aymee came home. She had stopped at Target on her way home and picked up a pregnancy test. About three and half weeks prior, we had decided to eschew birth control citing "whatever happens, happens."
Faced with the immediate consequences that stem form condom-less fucking, I decided I needed a cigarette. I told Aymee to piss on the stick and we'd view the results together when I got back from the gas station. I left our apartment and drove to the gas station. Could I be a father? I've always wanted to be. No question about that. Was I ready? I think so. Much of my selfishness is gone and all I want is to raise a child and be a parent. Were Aymee and I ready? Yes, I told myself as lit a smoke on the way back to the apartment. Aymee and I have been through a lot. Having work move us twice into states that contained no friends or family forced us to be pretty much everything to each other. It hasn't always been easy but it's always been pure and we always come out on top: as best friends and soul mates.
I walked in the door of our apartment. The way our place is laid out, when you're standing in our doorway you can look straight into the bathroom; a thought I always hold when Aymee's running a quick errand and I'm taking a quick shit with the door open. Anyway, I opened the door to our place and see Aymee in the bathroom with this big, yet weird smile. I walk in and ask "what's up?" She just keeps smiling that smile. I shrug off my coat and make my way to the bathroom. She says nothing and just points at this plastic stick on the bathroom sink.
I stare at this for a few seconds. I ask her "What does this mean?!" She starts laughing. I start smiling but again ask what it means. In her sweetest voice, my glorious and fabulous wife answers with...
"It means you're going to be a daddy."
My heart jumped into my throat. We embraced and kissed. On top of the already experienced fiascoes this day, I contemplated passing out but decided otherwise.
It was official: we were going to be parents. Even now as I write this a month after the fact, I can't quite believe it. Parenthood. Me? Us? Well, sure it makes sense in the grand scheme of things. We've always wanted it. It was always just a matter of when. I guess when you throw the "when" away it becomes the "now."
We left a few minutes later to meet my mom, my sis, and my bro at a nearby sports bar. Not that any of us are huge sports fans but the restaurant was near our place and their hotel. Aymee and I hadn't planned exactly how to spill the beans but there was a concern in telling my mother. Mainly a concern of her reaction. As you will remember from reading earlier, my mom has a seriously strong tendency to overreact and speak really loudly like she's angry. I didn't feel like having 150 people in the joint suddenly turn from watching two French-Canadians fighting over a sphere of rubber to watching a women in her fifties screaming about being a grandmother. One thing's for certain, she wouldn't look like this:
Right after our drinks came, Aymee and I make eye contact and I nodded my head. I then told everyone we had an announcement. My mom, who was sitting to my right, immediately stared at me with her mouth open.
I told her she couldn't freak out as we were in a public place. She said nothing. Just kept staring at me with her mouth open. I then told everyone that Aymee and I just found out that we were having a baby. There was no pandemonium. My mother smiled, started crying quietly, and I was spared certain embarrassment in the form of an overly emotional and outspoken mother.
Since then, Aymee and I have been working quite a bit. We've been reading all the books we can. I've been spending an inordinate amount of time talking to Aymee's growing stomach while Aymee's been spending an inordinate amount of time rolling her eyes and smiling at a new, excited will-be father. Here's her the other day at 8 weeks.
That's about it for now. This was lengthy post but there was a lot to toss out there so thanks for sticking around for the ride. I hope everyone is doing well and I'll write more soon.
Happy New Year.
-80T
