After a man died at my gym, I thought about the life I don’t want to leave |
I was walking toward the showers after my workout when I heard a commotion and a thump. People ran past me. I did not see the man fall. There were a few seconds when I wondered if I might have to use what I remembered from a CPR class 40 years ago. By the time the thought occurred to me, quicker minds and limbs were moving toward the fallen man with an automated external defibrillator. I backed away.
Access to the showers was cut off, so I washed at the sink and got dressed. I went out into the public area to wait for Karen, who had been swimming. An ambulance pulled up, lights flashing, and EMTs brought in a gurney. A few minutes later I saw a couple of them come back out, urgency drained from their faces.
Then Karen appeared, her hair still wet. Someone in the women's locker room had told her a man had had a heart attack and asked, "That's not your husband, is it?"
She was relieved to see me. When she told me about the question, I felt queasy, though it took a little while to understand why. Karen had been in the pool while all this was happening, and somebody had made her consider, before she got dressed, the possibility that she would come out and I would not be waiting for her. I could picture her looking for me, and for a moment I had to live with what it would mean if she couldn't find me.
We didn't learn until a couple of days later that the man had died, though I think I knew it when I saw the suddenly slowed pace of the EMTs. I had seen the man around the gym without knowing his name. He looked like a character actor who specialized in small-town........