Robin Licata was getting ready for work. She’d showered, drunk her coffee, let her yellow Lab and silky Yorkie out for a romp. Now her hair and makeup were done, and all she needed to do was pull the day’s top from the dryer and fold the rest of the load, because she hates to leave home with undone chores. That’s what had made the past few months hard—she’d been more tired than usual, out of breath going up stairs, and seesawing between bursts of energy and dragging fatigue. And nobody had commented, but she knew she looked paler than usual. No matter how much blusher she used, she could never seem to get any real color into her face.
Today, stroking on the rosy powder, her stomach had clutched with indigestion, but she ignored it. She wasn’t, as they say, a breakfast person. Weirdly, though, she’d had a hard time swallowing her coffee; it felt like she had a lump in her throat.
She went downstairs for the laundry, routine carrying her past the minor complaints. With no warning, she was soaked in sweat. The back of her head, her carefully made up hair, her arms even. Pain seared the middle of her chest, breastbone up to collarbone. Oh my God, she thought. She went upstairs to the kitchen and found some Tums, but she couldn’t even chew them, let alone swallow water. She tried to sit down in the family room, get herself together—but the pain was so bad, she stood and paced, unable to get away from it.
She went upstairs, thinking she’d better get something else to wear to work. An odd presence of mind, but Robin hardly ever gets sick, and she kept thinking the pain would go away.
It got worse instead, her arms tingling and shaking like they were superchilled, like they had frozen metal inside them. She found herself in her 22-year-old daughter’s bedroom gasping, “Melissa, get up. You have to help me.”
Melissa’s a nursing student, but her eyes held instant, stark fear. She called 911 and, phone in hand, wet a cool rag while she gave the address. Her mother was vomiting by now, the pain like somebody had thrown bricks on her chest.
Five years ago, she lost her husband—a firefighter who’d also been a sturdy, healthy person—to cancer. Since then, stress had doubled, as she tried to parent their two kids alone. She took care of everybody else, ate wrong, rarely got serious exercise. But now the pressure was easing, as the kids’ lives found their own shape. And it wasn’t like she smoked. She’d never even had high blood pressure. And nobody in her family had heart problems.
I just never thought I’d have a heart attack, she thought, the instant the pain let up enough to think at all. My kids lost their father. They can’t lose their mother.
Luckily, the Licatas live in the city, close to the firehouse where Robin’s husband worked. When the firefighters saw the 911 call come through, they recognized the address.
They were there two minutes later.
Her blood pressure had dropped to 60/40, and the pain had passed description. One of the firefighters drove the ambulance so the emergency medical service guys could both be in back with her. Barnes-Jewish Hospital (where she works, ironically enough, as an operations analyst in program management) had the cardiac catheterization lab already set up for her.
She’d make it, they assured her daughter.
Tomorrow: Robin Licata’s recovery, and remarks from her doctor.
