What I Learned When I Almost Died - Chris Licht [2]
“Something’s wrong with me,” I said to Mom.
I described the sensations. She was mildly concerned. As well as anyone, she knew I was never sick.
“It probably wouldn’t hurt to go to the hospital.”
She got a second call from me a few minutes later.
“I gotta tell you, my neck is starting to get stiff.”
I was beginning to have trouble moving my head in any direction, in addition to having pain. I couldn’t even lean it against the seat. Mom became more insistent.
“I think you should go to the hospital.”
Five minutes later, it was Dad calling.
“You need to go to the emergency room and you need to get a CAT scan, and I’m telling you that when you get there, you need to tell them you do not get headaches and this is the worst headache of your life.”
He was not panicked, because he never is. He was firm.
“Okay, good,” I said.
My response must have been too casual.
“Say that to me,” he said. “You do not get headaches and this is the worst headache of your life. Say that exactly.”
“I do not get headaches and this is the worst headache of my life.”
“Call me when you know what’s going on.”
Dad didn’t suspect anything specific; nor was he terribly worried. After all, I was conscious and coherent. What he wanted was that CAT scan, because that would be hard data, not a guess or a supposition. As for his pointed instruction to say “never get headaches” and “worst of my life,” I didn’t know, and didn’t ask, but that is an informal code within the medical profession. Any decent emergency room would interpret the phrases to mean I was not a habitual complainer, I was in the midst of something rare, pay attention, give me a CAT scan.
Having visited Washington so often, I knew where I wanted to go—George Washington University Hospital in the neighborhood known as Foggy Bottom. They took President Ronald Reagan there when he was shot in 1981, a good enough endorsement as far as I was concerned. And it was a short distance from my hotel. In all probability, they would give me something to knock down the pain and I would cycle back to my room and get on with the day. There was another show tomorrow to prep for, because there always is another show to prep for, and there was a black-tie dinner that night featuring Bill Clinton and Bono. Mika and Joe were the hosts. I was going.
Nothing traumatic had marred my life to that moment, and there was no reason to think the streak would end. Job, wife, kid, health, all good. Pessimism was not my default position. Setback happened to the other guy, not me.
“Can we go to the GW emergency room?” I said to the driver.
We were already headed in that direction. But while the busiest part of my day had ended when MJ did, the busiest of Washington’s was still unfolding. Traffic was thick. This was bad. My head was being squeezed without intermission, and now the landscape was only crawling past. Here’s the National Cathedral. Here’s Rock Creek Park. Here’s a bunch of embassies. At one point, we inched past the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory, the vice president’s official residence. In a couple of hours, its occupant and I were going to have a bond.
By now I had new sensations. My head was pulsing with each heartbeat, and each pulse made the hurt worse. My stomach was nauseous and I was trying mightily not to throw up. I was sweating. At some point, I asked if there were any shortcuts, but there were none.
I still didn’t envision the horrible, like disability or death, and wasn’t having anguished thoughts about Jenny and Andrew. But I wanted to get to the hospital and be given something to make the pain evaporate. It was making concentration so difficult that listening to more voice mails or making more calls was impossible.
Finally, we rolled up to the stone facade of George