What I Learned When I Almost Died - Chris Licht [35]
That first day, Phil Griffin took me to lunch at a sushi place. The president of MSNBC had been shaken by my illness in a way that had nothing to do with any problems my absence created or threatened to create for one of the network’s best shows. It made him feel vulnerable, as it probably makes everyone feel. He never asked in so many words at lunch, but I sensed he was curious how I saw the world now, not as an executive producer, but as a person. How was I different?
My answer was a plug for myself, which might have been smarmy but it does show that the brain bleed has killed none of my desire to be a player. In fact, it heightened it, as I now told Phil.
Bigger things. I want to do bigger things, I told him.
The message wasn’t that I was itching to leave MJ. Hardly. I merely wanted Phil to know that not only had illness not finished me, I hoped to be even more of a player at the network, have a bigger role.
In my business, young talent is often told something like this: Wait your turn. Don’t try to get it all at once. Don’t overreach. Put your head down, work, good things will come to you. Be patient.
But what if you don’t have unlimited time to wait as the line slowly moves and you inch toward the front? What if you carefully map a five-year plan but don’t get five years, because an aneurysm gets you in three? My brain bleed was an official public notice that no one can count on having the time they expect. If you’re ready and capable, reach for the next level of whatever you do. If something looks appealing and challenging, have a go. Otherwise, it’s a pretty average life.
I haven’t wandered so far into the realm of cliché that I now have a bucket list—win Iditarod, excavate Mayan ruins, stomp grapes—but I’m far more open to spontaneity. You sometimes hear that illness is a way of telling the victim to slow down. That’s not the message my illness sent me. Mine said, “Get moving.”
At the end of that first, low-key day back, I went home and crashed. I was surprised by how exhausted I felt. But by Tuesday, June 1, it was me in the EP’s chair as Morning Joe began. There was no way my return would pass without formal recognition on the air. I knew they would inflict something upon me, but figured Mika and Joe would do no more than ask that the control-room camera be turned on so the audience would know I was back and I could wave. Oh, they did much worse.
Without telling me, they had lined up Dr. Deshmukh as a guest, as well as the chief operating officer of the hospital, Kimberly Russo. They ordered me to come out of Control Room 3A, march down the hall, and sit with them on the set, on the air, no makeup, no prep. If you see the video, I look uncomfortable, because there is always a risk that this kind of thing comes across as self-indulgent. At least I knew which cameras to look at.
“Awwwww, he’s back,” Mika said, “and I’m so glad for so many reasons. Do you remember that morning?”
“Yup,” Joe said.
“Yeah, I do, too,” she said, slightly miffed.
Joe realized she was making a joke.
“Oh, is this the blame Joe thing? Is this the blame Joe thing?”
They were referring to how, on that day in Washington, Joe had gotten irritated at my inability to get him the camera angle he wanted, and minutes later I had commenced a brain bleed, as if his irritation and my event were cause and effect, even though they weren’t.
Explain what the bleed was like, Mika said to me.
“To say it was the worst headache of my life doesn’t really describe it,” I said, “because it was like nothing I ever felt before.”
“You looked horrible,” Mika said.
“Thank you,” I said.
Dr. Deshmukh told the audience I was in that mysterious class of cases for which no cause for the bleeding is found. But my prognosis was good, he said.
Aside from what they had done for me on that first frightening day, the segment was the best gift Mika and Joe could have given, because it showed I was fine in every way and it made me feel so normal to be back and teasing with them. A blogger wrote: Licht Looks Mah-ve-lous in Morning Joe Return. Some e-mailers