What I Learned When I Almost Died - Chris Licht [25]
What happened next, however, was quite ridiculous.
I began to think I wasn’t sick enough.
These notes are very nice. They reflect genuine concern. And yet, other than a really bad headache and intravenous tubes, I feel fine. I feel like me. Doctors have gone in and found nothing other than the blood. This could amount to nothing but a freak, minor thing. Am I really worthy of the attention in these e-mails? Am I going to seem like the boy who cried wolf? Will people feel burned if I turn out to be fine and they got all worked up for nothing?
At this point, remember, I didn’t know the full risk I faced because I didn’t know all the statistics, the ones suggesting that the number of people in my situation who emerge whole is only a very fortunate minority. If I had known that, I might not have been anxious about whether I warranted these e-mails and letters.
But I was anxious now.
Now came a complementary thought.
If all these people were sending all these e-mails, they must think I’m in terrible shape. They must think I’m a vegetable. If you announce, as Willie had, that someone is expected to make a full recovery, that’s crap, isn’t it? That’s another way of saying that for now, as we speak, the poor guy is not doing too well at all.
In the corridors of the national media, which were the ones I cared about, they would assume I was done, no longer young, no longer energetic, no longer a killer. Although made with the best of intent, Willie’s statement suggested that the master and commander of Morning Joe was now fragile.
I couldn’t be seen that way. In my job, everybody looks to bully and take advantage. If you’re a pushover, you get run over. And that’s what people would think. As I lay there in the hospital, I might well have stopped caring about the particulars of the next MJ, but I still cared about my professional standing, even with a brain bleed. My education-through-illness wasn’t far enough along yet for me to not care what people thought.
Three days later, on May 2, Mika and Joe did a special Sunday edition of the show from the lawn of the White House. We had long planned this, because the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner was going to take place the night before and it would be fun to rehash the jokes and the celebrity sightings and President Obama’s remarks.
That dinner is one of my favorites, and it was depressing to miss it, but Jenny and I had at least watched on C-SPAN. But without MSNBC available in my room, I couldn’t see the special MJ the next morning. So we called NBC from my hospital room, and Jenny and I listened on speakerphone to a live feed of the show on a call-in line.
Someone told Joe I was parked there, eavesdropping.
He decided this caller had to be heard.
I hadn’t prepared for this. But right away, I liked the idea. Joe seemed to sense I would be worried about my image. If he put me on the air, if only by phone, people out there would hear my voice, hear my thoughts, and realize I was still me. Even better, my health was improving already. They had done another CAT scan because my head really hurt, and it had shown the blood was being reabsorbed faster than expected.
Sitting in director’s chairs with the White House behind them, Mika and Joe looked as if they had partied way too much at the dinner. They wore sunglasses. But they and Willie were chipper as they cued up the caller from the hospital.