EXCERPT: Sonata For A Damaged Heart: A Young Mother’s Journey of Survival After a Near Fatal Heart Attack

This excerpt is from Wakisha (Kisha) Stewart’s, Sonata For A Damaged Heart: A Young Mother’s Journey of Survival After a Near Fatal Heart Attack. Reprinted with permission from the publisher.

“Doctor?” I ask. He nods. “Push four milligrams of IV morphine sulfate, stat,” he orders the nurse. “Plus five micrograms nitro continuous.”
“Am I having a heart attack?”
The silver-haired doctor looks at me calmly. “I’m not sure yet. We need more tests.”

“Make a fist for me, Kisha,” the nurse says. “There’s one.” She taps on my arm and inserts a needle into a vein, connects it to a tube. “Good.”

Cool liquid snakes up my arm. The room blurs and spins and I’m floating, as if I’m inside and outside my body at the same time. Someone brings Mike into the room. I watch him sit down next to me, watch myself tell him I’m having a heart attack, watch myself cry.

“Make sure the boys grow up as brothers together,” I hear myself say. “Look in my eyes, promise me.”

And that part of me watching and hearing everything—the machines, my body abandoning me, me saying goodbye—begins to feel hyper aware and strangely calm; everything becomes bright and clear and then goes quiet. I must be dying. I am being taken from this world, but I will go out with dignity. I don’t want to die, but I accept it.

“You’re going to be fine,” Mike says.
“Increase nitro, up, up, up,” someone says.
“I love you,” I whisper. Nothing more needs saying.

As if through a long, darkening tunnel, I hear someone tell Mike they’re taking me to another hospital. I don’t want to die alone.

“On my count, one, two, three.” Someone’s lifting my body. Sirens, bright red lights. I must be in an ambulance. I want to close my eyes, go to sleep.

“Don’t close your eyes, don’t close your eyes. Keep breathing, Kisha,” a woman says. She touches my arm. “Stay with me.”

So tired.

“What’s taking so long, Harry?” the woman shouts.
“Had to detour,” a man replies in a muffled voice.
“Where the heck are we? We should already be there!”

Mike, take care of Donovan and Diego. Please, please. You promised.

“Should’ve sent the other guy, not some trainee.”
“I’m on it, I’m on it.”
“ETA?”
“Fifteen minutes, give or take.”

It’s okay to let go, let go.

“Hold on, Kisha. Stay with me.”
The ambulance stops. A clang of metal doors, a rush of warm air.
“Hurry up, hurry up. They’re ready in OR Two.”

A dizzying ripple of ceiling lights, a stampede of pounding feet, a jumble of hands connects me to another battery of machines and a roomful of men surrounds me.

“Kisha, can you hear me?” a man with a surgical mask asks. I nod.
“We’re going to make an incision in your groin for a catheter. Do you understand?”
I nod again, embarrassed. I have to tell him I’m still bleeding. From the surgical birth.

The surgeon looks into my eyes, gently places a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t
worry about anything. You’re in good hands. You’re going to be fine. You can watch the
procedure on the monitor.”

I feel seen.

And so I watch my heart beat on the screen. Lub dub, lub dub. Watch the catheter
snake up my coronary artery, navigating the bloody passage like a skilled diver on a
rescue mission. Lub dub, lub dub. Watch the thin tubing carry a stent, a tiny piece of wire
mesh, toward the damaged site. Lub dub, lub dub. Watch the balloon inside the mesh
inflate, lodging the stent in place, and then deflate and silently retreat down the artery.

The searing pain is gone, the pressure in my chest has been relieved.
I take a deep breath.
Lub dub, lub dub, lub dub…

“How do you feel now, Kisha?”
“Like a tremendous weight’s been lifted off my chest,” I say.
“Good. That’s what I wanted to hear. We’ll move you to a room in the ICU. We need to keep an eye on you for a few days.”
“Thank you,” I say, as if those two words could adequately express the cacophony
of emotions I feel in the aftershock of realizing I’m still alive.

An hour later, I’m dressed in a hospital gown and lying flat on my back in a narrow bed in a small single room in the ICU with an IV in my right arm and a battalion of beeping and whirring monitors measuring my vitals, tracking every beat of my heart. On my right leg is a heavy sandbag, rooting me in place.

“You’ve had a major heart attack,” the night nurse explains when I ask her about this new burden my body is expected to endure. “You must remain perfectly still in order to heal.”
“How long will I have to stay like this?” I ask her.
“At least ten to twelve hours before we can remove the sandbag. We’ll turn you, help you with the bedpan. You have a visitor, now,” she says and leaves.

“Kisha, I’m so relieved you’re okay,” Mike says, bending down to kiss me. “You survived.”

…But did I? I turn my head and see the dress I wore to the party hanging on a chair in the corner like a discarded layer of skin, a mocking reminder of before, and my eyes well with tears as the gravity of what’s happened hits me. I bring my hands to my face and weep for the Kisha that died.
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This excerpt is from Wakisha (Kisha) Stewart’s, Sonata For A Damaged Heart: A Young Mother’s Journey of Survival After a Near Fatal Heart Attack. Reprinted with permission from the publisher.

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