A. Homes: This Book Will Save Your Life

The seriousness with which they treated him made him nervous. It was no joke; they acted as though they were saving his life.

"Are you allergic to aspirin?"

"No," Richard said.

The paramedic put two tiny baby aspirin in his hand.

He chewed. The pills made a paste, a dry, pink, powdery paste that tasted like childhood.

"It's nice you're here," he said to no one in particular.

"Base to field number four, the strip looks good, you're clear to transport."

They lifted him onto the stretcher, and as they lifted he cried out; he didn't know why. There were firemen, paramedics, and policemen all around him, carrying him — no one had carried him in years. He tried to help them, to make himself light.

A cop asked where his house keys were — in a silver bowl on the kitchen counter. They locked the door and handed him the key.

As they wheeled him out, the ride, the bumpy rocking, made him sleepy.

"Does everyone feel sleepy?" Richard asked.

No one answered.

They wheeled him into the night — the red lights of their trucks ricocheting off the house. He breathed deeply — oxygen.

They drove him down, winding round and round the canyon. The farther they went, the riding backwards, the siren's dampened wail, the stop and start of the meat wagon's wobbly waddling, all conspired to make him disoriented, nauseated, lost. He could almost see it coming; as they backed up into the hospital bay, he closed his eyes, dropped his jaw, and puked. Widescreen, he vomited everywhere, spraying the back of the ambulance with black BB pellets of lentils, spraying the faces of the men as they hurried to free him. They threw the sheet over his face to protect themselves, to absorb. As the stretcher was pulled out, as the wheels dropped to the ground, he passed out.

And as fast as he was unconscious, he was conscious again, fully alert, as if launched from a cannon. Had they given him something, a little picker-upper, a shot of the secret sauce?

"Mr. Novak, can you hear me?"

He was afraid to speak, to open his mouth, but he nodded.

"Do you know where you are?"

He nodded again.

They lifted him off the gurney, onto a bed, and wiped his face.

"I'm sorry," he said when it felt safe to talk.

"No need to apologize," someone said, which prompted him to repeat, "I'm sorry."

His mind raced; he was no longer sleepy, he was awake, very awake. His thoughts skipped: Were his papers in order? Who did he leave the Rothko to — MOCA or MoMA? Should he have done things differently? If he died, would his lawyer even know? For comfort he added up his money — how much was in each account, how much was enough?

Had they given him something, a drug that made him speedy? Should he say something, should he tell them that everything was happening too fast? He watched the second hand of the clock — slow, so slow.

"Take a deep breath. Just keep taking those deep breaths. I need you to relax. You're in good hands, Mr. Novak, very good hands."

They were poking him, drawing blood, checking and re-checking his pressure, his pupils, looking at the endless EKG. With cheap ballpoint pens, they wrote on his clean white sheet.

An impossibly skinny woman came to the side of the bed, a twig, a lifeless tree. "Do you have your insurance card? Who do you want us to locate if…" Her bones were sticking out, elbow, wrist, collar, every bone was practically bare, picked clean. "We need a name and number." She was like a contact from the other side, booking passage. He expected her next question to be: Do you have any dead relatives that you'd like to have dinner with? I could make you a reservation.

He gave her his lawyer's name. "I don't know his number."

It was all so surreal. The fluorescent lights were so harsh, he kept thinking that at any moment they would overwhelm him, bleach out everything; at any moment he'd be going towards the euphemistic white light.

"How did it start?" A resident stood at his knees with his chart in hand.

He couldn't remember, couldn't remember when he could remember, he had no sensation of suddenly not remembering, no one thing or another slipping his mind, but more the sensation that there was nothing. He was searching and seeing nothing, no pictures, no memories, no idea where he'd been.

"Mr. Novak, do you understand what I'm asking? When did the pain begin?"

"I'm not sure," he said. "Not sure if it just started or if I just noticed it. The more attention I paid, the worse it got. Is Patty here?"

"Who's Patty?"

"I talked with her earlier, the woman on the phone."

"I don't know anyone named Patty," the resident said, annoyed.

"My sister's name is Patty," a nurse said.

"She's very nice, Patty from Minnesota or Mendocino," he said.

The resident walked away.

"I can offer you this," the nurse said, handing him a portable phone. "Is there anyone you'd like to call?"

He shook his head.

"Sometimes people feel better if they talk to someone."

"Are you a pink lady or a nurse?"

"Nurse. I retired twenty years ago, but now I'm back. It's my second act."

"What brought you back?"

"My husband died and, truth is, I can't bear to be home alone at night. I wasn't sleeping, and so I thought, why not work nights, it keeps me off the streets and out of the bin.

"There's no one you want to call?" the nurse asked again.

Who would he call?

He parents were snowbirds, still somewhere in Florida — where? His brother in Massachusetts? The nutritionist who suggested the lentil soup that may have been the culprit? His housekeeper, the only one who would actually notice that he wasn't home when she arrived tomorrow morning? His trainer was also coming in the morning, and his masseur was due in the afternoon, and at some point the decorator was going to stop by and tell him what color the guest bedroom should be — if he had their numbers he'd call them all and tell them to forget it, cancel everything.

He lay there realizing how thoroughly he'd removed himself from the world or obligations, how stupidly independent he'd become: he needed no one, knew no one, was not a part of anyone's life. He'd so thoroughly removed himself from the world of dependencies and obligations, he wasn't sure he still existed.

"There has to be someone," the nurse said.

"You're nice," he said.

"I'm old," she said.

"Do you mind if we…" Someone pulled the curtain around his cubicle closed.

Who would he call if he was never going to call anyone again, who would he want to speak to just once more — his son, Ben? He wouldn't do that to the kid, they didn't have that kind of relationship. Hi, Ben, it's your dad calling from the emergency room; just wanted to check in, see how your life is going, wanted to wish you BOL — best-of-luck. Hope you do better than me, kid, hope you get what you want, what you deserve and then some. Remember, son, this is IT.

His ex-wife. She left a message on his machine yesterday, or maybe it was a few weeks ago. He never called back — he didn't know why.

"Think about it," the nurse said.

His ex-wife runs a company that publishes life-style and self-improvement books, books that tell you how to live — what to do based on what sign, blood type, or color you are, coffee-table books on living simply and how to find time if you have no time and what to do if none of the above applies.

Over the two-way radio he heard the paramedics communicating with the hospital, calling in a Code Orange.

"What's Orange?"

"Celebrity," the nurse said. "They let us know so we can be on the lookout for photographers — sometimes the photo guys get here before the patient. The worst is a dead celeb, that's the money shot. Any photo of a celeb covered in blood is worth thousands."