The Bradbury Report Read Online Free PDF Page B

been driving all night. She would nap in her truck, she said, for an hour, then come on. When did I think she’d get there? I guessed she was five or six hours away. She would see me, then, around seven. I told her whenever she arrived, I’d be happy to see her. At three that afternoon—Anna would have been in Albany or western Massachusetts—I had my first heart attack.
    I was vacuuming the study. “Study” is grandiose. The room, which is towards the rear of the house and looks out, past my nondescript yard, on the back side of a teetering, aboriginal barn owned by a neighbor to whom I’ve never spoken, is without decoration. It is a room we meant to get to, Sara and I, but didn’t. That I’ve left
it as it was is due neither to reverence nor fetish. There is a small kneehole desk, a wooden ladderback chair, a desk lamp, a computer, and a freestanding bookcase, with room in it, still, for books. (When Sara died, I got rid of all my books and, for the most part, stopped reading.) On the floor is an oval hooked rug. There are two windows with pull-down shades. Except for a calendar, which I update each year, the walls are bare. No studying, no real work of any sort has ever been done there. When I had exams or problem sets to grade, classes to prepare—over time, there was less and less need for preparation—I set up at the kitchen table. Except to use the computer, I avoid going in.
    I bent over to pull the vacuum plug out of the wall socket, and I felt light-headed. This often happened to me when I bent over or stood up too quickly. This time, the dizziness persisted. I sat down in the desk chair. I spread my left hand flat against the desk. I felt a pull, a tightening in my chest. I rested my elbows on my knees, let my head droop. I spent several minutes looking at the floor. There was no pain. The dizziness did not subside, and my chest felt heavy. It did not, then, strike me I might be seriously ill. I began to feel nauseous. Then a numbness in the two outside fingers of my left hand. My chest felt heavier. The numbness spread to the rest of my hand and up my arm. My breathing became constricted. These were common, textbook signs I failed to interpret. I stood up. I thought I’d go to the kitchen for a glass of water, that I would feel better if I could drink some water. I sagged to the floor. During none of this was I afraid. I began to wonder, in a detached way, if I might be dying. It seemed I was not afraid to die. From my knees, I reached up to the computer and struck the shortcut for emergency services. Within seconds I heard the voice of the dispatcher.
    â€œHow can I help?” the voice said. “Are you in trouble?”
    Although it felt as if it were coming from a long way off, in space and time, it was a human voice, kind, dispassionate, of indeterminable gender.
    â€œYes,” I said. “I think I am.”

    â€œWhat is the trouble?”
    â€œI don’t know,” I said. “I think I may be dying.”
    â€œAre you in pain?”
    I did not find this question bothersome. I found it interesting.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAre you bleeding?”
    â€œNo.” Then, with a clarity and concision that struck me even then as odd, I enumerated my symptoms. “I’m dizzy. My chest is heavy. I’m nauseous. I can’t feel my arm. I’m having trouble breathing. I can’t stand up.”
    â€œYou’re having a heart attack,” the voice said without hesitation.
    â€œI am?”
    â€œYes. Where are you?”
    â€œIn the study. I’m on the floor.”
    â€œStay there,” the voice said. “Help is on the way.”
    What a wonderful phrase, I thought. What a wonderful system. If I’d died then, thinking this, I would have died happy.
    I lay on the floor. I was calm. I began to feel as if I—I mean, precisely, not the room or any part of the world outside myself—were getting smaller. As