Book 2, Chapter 35

The ambulance seemed to take forever to arrive but with traffic being light it was less than 10 real minutes and it was after the professionals swung into action that we had to face the more mundane problems of who went where and when. Although Victoria might have saved Aunt Sophie’s life she now happily relinquished responsibility to the ambulance crew telling them that she had given Sophie 300mg of aspirin before her heart stopped. She clearly felt her work was done. That's when Avril told us Victoria was a medical student who had to get back to Oxford for the morning so it would be best if she and her family headed off home. Litara, who was by now fast in with Avril, swapped details and promised to get news to Yorkshire.

We'd been told the ambulance was going to Southmead Hospital but there was no need for all of our group to go to the hospital so we insisted that Bill and Grandma Tina head home taking Serena, Litara and Da with them. It all made a kind of sense as our other two cars followed the ambulance's route to the hospital. We didn’t know what to expect but the news came through the system as we waited helplessly that Sophie had suffered from something called a ‘ST segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI)’, and had been taken straight into a specialist unit for a ‘Primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI)’. In terms I could understand her aorta had become blocked and they were doing what they called non-invasive surgery with tools that were inserted through an artery in the groin and threaded up to the aorta to unblock it. Her saving grace might be the speed of good emergency treatment and of getting her straight into surgery because such a heart attack could easily have killed her or left her with severely damaged her heart muscles.

For a change in a hospital I wasn't the patient but I soon realised that didn't make hospital any easier to bear. We waited. We got foul drinks from machines, walked backward and forward and waited more but only after 4 hours was Uncle Jack eventually called and told he could see Aunt Sophie who was awake. What I wasn’t expecting was that she wanted to go home! Medicine is not as I imagined where first you get sick or injured, second the diagnosticians make their decisions so that third the medicine men and scalpel wielders can do their work and only after a period of recuperation would you be sent home. The reality it seems more like taking a car to the garage where it is plugged into a computer which says which parts need replacing. At worst the car is promptly scrapped but if worth saving with parts that are available the car is quickly fixed and back on the road good as new. Difficulties arise if the car is salvageable but the parts are from discontinued lines for then although the car is still quickly patched, cobbled and bodged to put it back on the road it is not fixed. Aunt Sophie it seems was in the last category, quickly back together but a lifetime of the wrong food and little exercise meant she would never regain her previous performance levels.

Thankfully despite Sophie's request it would be at least 3 days before they let her out. Matthew, Mark and Beth were too relieved that their mother was still alive to worry about the changes her heart damage would make to their lives but those changes started when Sophie asked Mum if Beth could stay with us for a few days to ease the load on Jack. It made me very aware that being sisters doesn’t stop when you become an adult and I wondered if Litara and I would ever share the load of raising children.

Despite not getting to bed until midnight I was up at 6 for a run and not alone - Beth was with me having been frightened that she was following in her mother’s footsteps on the road to a heart attack. It did slow me because I didn't want to discourage Beth by ‘going for the burn’ and she seemed to enjoy the way I and other early risers swapped ‘Hello’s’ as we passed each other.

"Can I have a photograph of you for the shop," asked Mr Patel when we popped in for our paper. "I saw you on Panorama and you are now my most famous customer!"

I thought he was joking but he pulled out a camera from beneath the counter and asked me to pose out in front of the shop. Beth joined in by taking a second of Mr Patel and I together but couldn't stop herself from giggling once we got back to our run.

"Imagine, I've got a famous cousin! What does it feel like to be famous?" It wasn't an easy question to answer.

“Weird even though I'm not very famous. It's as though the whole thing it isn’t about me. In my head I know I’ve been doing things that are unusual in the eyes of others, but in my heart I’ve just been getting on with my life, which means I feel the same as you would if the next person we met came up and asked for your autograph.”

The last half mile to the house we took very gently as I emphasised to Beth the need for a warm-up and cool-down period when exercising. She took it well but when after showering she came down to breakfast and I insisted she try some of my muesli mix with yoghurt and added fruit and nuts she teased with "Whatever you say Mum."

My own mother looked at me quizzically but it was Da on the way to the yard, after dropping Beth at her school bus stop who put me straight.

"On top of everything else you've gone through recently Sophie's heart attack is just one straw too many for you isn't it?" and just like that I dissolved into tears.

Once Da pointed it out I had to acknowledge that I hadn't followed Dr Stanhope’s advice on having outside interests. At the time I stunned Dr Stanhope with the image I gave her of myself as a modelling, scuba diving, dancing and kick-boxing Wonderwoman but circumstances meant I'd been doing less and less of those things that I enjoyed while at the same time taking on more and more responsibility for satisfying, helping or like in the case of ‘the parrot man’, just protecting myself from other people.

"How long do you think it will be before I can start practicing sailing Dumblebit alone?"

"Too long. If you wait for that before then you will have turned into your mother trying to control everyone! Bill's Molly is several weeks away from launching as well but I'll have a word with Ian about using his boat, Cyflym. You might not have noticed but he has a soft spot for you and I'm sure he would be glad to help. The more practice you get the happier I'll be and it will give you an escape from the situations your crackpot family and friends draw you into."