As I looked more closely at the pilot, in his helmet, talking into his phone mike, wearing his all-American visage, the entertainment media blew its fairy dust again. TV images flooded my thoughts; Iconic images from the daily sci-fi kids' serials like Capt. Midnight or later, Jan-Michael Vincent on Airwolf, 
or from the movies like Blue Thunder with Roy Schieder.
We landed on the hospital helipad on the 9th floor. Still strapped in the gurney, I was "de-planed," rolled off the helipad, into the building, guided down the hall and right into my ICU room -- a private room, mercifully -- and was rolled onto the bed. The entire journey, from Memorial hospital to my ICU room, seemed like one long Scorsese traveling shot, like the opening scene in GoodFellas, but without the glad-handing, smiles and vino salutes.
Talk about door-to-door service.
The on-duty night neurosurgeon asked some questions, did some preliminary tests to gauge the depth of my "deficits" and told me it didn't look bad at all, particularly since I had waited two days before checking into the hospital.
Everybody has an opinion. Can't get no respect.
I told him I hadn't eaten since breakfast and he said I couldn't eat until at least tomorrow, in the event they have to do brain surgery. He smiled benignly and left the room.
Brain surgery!? Did he say brain surgery? Nobody mentioned that at the other hospital. Brain ‘effen' surgery! My blood pressure soared.
Sleep well, you ask?
ACT 2
The next morning another, different, MRI is ordered to assess progress on my hematoma. Is it shrinking? Is the blood being absorbed or is there more bleeding in?
The Chief of Surgery came in a few hours later, conducting rounds with the interns and residents specializing in neuropathologies like strokes. You've seen this comedy a hundred times, five hundred times, on television medical dramas, even comedies like Scrubs, as they talk about the patient in the bed who is staring wide-eyed, waiting, nervous, eyes querulous as he's being talked about in the third person, like he wasn't there, like he was dead. It's done most painfully on Grey's Anatomy.
Their interns are really insensitive putzes.
How does it feel? Lousy!
I try to make some jokes and small talk to let them know that I'm not a facially, right-side paralyzed drooler and drooper. They nod and look at the charts, observe, query and opine, do brief tests on my speech, vision, balance, test the extent of the damage. I listen but I just hear babble. Brain surgery is all I'm thinking. Signal to noise ratio for me -- 0% signal, 100% noise.
Then I notice a resident smile. He steps forward and asks me where I am, the date, who is president, my name. I answer monotonically but correctly, still not making sense exactly of the trend of their comments because I'm waiting for some brain surgery hammer to drop.
I see another resident smile. Now I tune in. I listen. I hear. I grasp! Green alert, Scotty! They're saying good things, prognostically hopeful things, like I'm probably going to make a full recovery. The Chief doesn't actually say that. His ducklings do. He's a bit more cautious, more circumspect. But he nods. Barely perceptibly.
"Remarkable resiliency" someone says while I lie there, wide-eyed and wait for them someone to disagree. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Optimism begins to well up...
"I will see you later with more detailed results of the MRI," the Chief says to me on the way out.
Panic erupts again. More results? These weren't definitive?
As soon as that door closes, I go into "House, M.D. mode." These guys are nuts! Don't they know that good diagnoses rendered soon after intake are mostly death sentences? Don't they watch House? They'll walk out of my room, leaving me with a nurse -Yup, nurse is still here-- Blood will suddenly start to gush from my mouth. Maybe I will bleed from my pores, my naval, my eyes.
Or I'll "stroke" again and fall into paralyzed unintelligibility. I saw that on House once. I'm sure.
I'll be a veggie in days if not hours; they will be shocked and quickly run back to the diagnostic drawing board like Dr. Gregory House and his endlessly abused squad of medical residents.
Why do I find that show so fascinating? It's the house of pain. Am I a masochist? Dr. Ben Casey was grumpy, but not sadistic like House. You entered Casey's house, his hospital, your chances of walking out improved were a lot better.
Rachel and some close friends come and visit later that afternoon. Everyone thinks I look great; they wouldn't know I had a stroke if they hadn't been told, they cheerfully tell me. I don't share with them my House-fears.
Rachel stays with me in my room that night. The next day more tests. Still no food allowed, "...in case they need to..." Yeah, I know.
The rest of the day is one long test fest. But, after all is said and done, after a CAT scan, echocardiogram, X-rays all looking for something to explain the stroke they come up with the diagnosis of "subtle hemorrhagic stroke," possibly caused by vascular fragility. They find nothing beyond the 3 cm initial bleed.
"Nothing more to be done but wait to see what happens, the doctor says. You're showing excellent, quick recovery. It all looks good ..."
"Yeah, doc," I say to myself. "But not knowing; a little depressing, don't you think? I mean, what can I do to prevent it in the future and..."
The doctor interrupts my silent rant "... Oh, and no brain surgery needed," he says, as he starts to leave. We found no vascular tangles..."
BOOM! My anxiety level falls like a cement-shoed Mafia hit dropped in the East river.
"...We're releasing you tomorrow. You want some Jello? "
ACT 3
Rachel sleeps in my room that night. We decide to stay in St. Louis one more day before returning home to the scene of the crime. Get some real sleep at a hotel and some actual food.
After an exquisite dinner at Lombardo's Trattoria and a still-awkward walk on the waterfront, back at the hotel room Rachel falls asleep from total exhaustion. But adrenalin, fear and anxiety are still surging through my body's canals. Sleep evades me. I think about another stroke, tomorrow, next week, next month, the odds decline as time passes. But time has to pass. Time is my gauntlet.
I don't want to think that, okay. Energize the think blotter.
Read the newspaper. Go and pick it up.
No! Reading still a threat
Turn on the TV. You don't read TV. You watch and listen.
No. It'll wake Rachel. Shit!
I surf, mute button activated. Eureka! HBO's Saturday Night Boxing. No sound necessary. Just watching two guys punch out each others lights and brains out-- Oops! Walk around that concept on little cat feet.
Then sleep comes. All REM.
We return home. I'm already moving better. Not well, just better. I still list to the left.
Sunday morning Rachel brings up my ritual libations and my joy, my week-filler
The New York York Times!
Friend or enemy? At that moment, I don't actually know.
