The funny thing about premonitions is you don’t really know when they will come true – or if they ever will. But somehow you have an eerie sense that it’s just a matter of time. And then when one does come true, the unexpected gift can be in learning just how much you love someone.
Today, I am grateful that I followed an instinct to come to the family home in Los Angeles for the Memorial Day weekend. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have been present when a recurring premonition I’ve had about my sister, Cynthia, came true.
An attorney who helps place foster children in permanent adoptive homes, my sister is a long distance marathon runner with a strong, vital heart. But lately, I’ve had this sense that one of her morning runs would come to an abrupt halt due to an issue with her heart.
This premonition may have just been an idea that came from as logical a place as knowing that our mother has had heart issues all her life, so there’s a genetic basis. Or it may have stemmed from numerous stories of runners who suffer sudden cardiac death, as with a former colleague at Pettit & Martin who was also a fit long distance runner. Or maybe it’s from believing that my sister sometimes pushes herself in ways that seem too far to me.
The doctors at St. Joseph’s Hospital know it was a supraventricular tachycardia – her heart was racing at 279 beats per minute when it should be between 60 and 80 – and are running comprehensive tests to pinpoint the precise cause and treat it so she can resume her active life as a runner.
And Cynthia is still trying to wrap her arms around the fact that she very nearly lost her life in cardiac arrest. She keeps returning to the moment at the Harvard-Westlake track, after she’d exercised up and down on the stairs, when she felt shortness of breath and pains in her chest. A trainer who happened to be nearby admiringly asked how many times she’d gone up and down those stairs, but she said actually she wasn’t feeling so well, and could he help. His name was Mike, and he was the one who called the family home to alert us to an emergency. When another runner came by to take my sister’s pulse, only to find it was racing unnaturally, while my sister was having more and more difficulty breathing, Mike said, “I’m calling 911.”
Cynthia says the first responders saved her life. They were there in 30 seconds. It took three times in the ambulance before they slowed the racing of her heart while communicating with medics in ER. “That’s when I knew it was bad,” she told me from her hospital bed.
Meanwhile, I was sitting with my feet in a pedicure tub down the street when our mother called my cell phone to say she’d gotten a strange message from someone named Mike. “I think something’s happened to Cindy,” she yelped.
Immediately that sense of a premonition unfolding kicked in, along with the queer calm I always possess in a crisis. I told my mother to remain calm until I could extricate myself from the pedicure and get home to make calls. When I did, Mike – a stranger who was our sole source of information– answered his phone to provide efficient details of what had happened at the track, but he didn’t know where they’d taken her because he wasn’t family. When I called 911 and provided her name, they were able to track her to St. Joseph’s and we drove immediately to the emergency room.
I may always be the strong, calm one in a crisis, but when I saw my sister on the gurney in ER, looking up with her tan, thin face and a brave smile, as a medic named Melissa held her hand, the tears just started rolling down my face and I was powerless to control them.
“Ah, don’t cry,” she said to me while reaching for my hand to squeeze. The shocking reality of what had happened to her hadn’t yet kicked in, but I knew right then I’d very nearly lost her and my heart was overflowing with gratitude that I hadn’t. Memorial Day will now always have a special significance as the day I didn’t lose the sister I’ll always love a little more than before.
