What did the doctor say about Ray's heart?

It is done, and he is all right.

They took him down at 9:50. Ellen and I sat in a waiting room on the second floor with a fish tank and a television nobody was watching. I had brought a book and held it. Ellen did not pretend; she sat with her forearms on her knees.

At 11:25 Dr. Valdivia came out in her blue cap. She sat down beside us before she said anything, and I have learned in two days that the sitting down is not a bad sign; she does it for everyone. There was one blockage, in the artery that runs down the front of the heart. Ninety percent closed. She has opened it and put in a stent, a little tube of mesh. The other arteries have some wear, "like anyone's at sixty-six," and need nothing. The muscle itself is pumping normally. She said that twice, for my benefit.

Ellen asked which artery, by its initials, and nodded, and I saw her face do something and come back. In the elevator she told me what the nurses call that artery, and that I was not to look it up.

We saw him at half past twelve, flat on his back with a tight band on his right wrist where they went in, pale and extremely awake. Dr. Valdivia showed him the two pictures on a screen: before, a river pinched down to a thread; after, a river. He studied them for some time. Then he asked her, "What's the design life on that?"

She said, "Longer than the warranty on the rest of you, if you take the pills."

He laughed, and it hurt his wrist, and I have never been so glad of anything.

I telephoned everyone, oldest first. Then I went down to the chapel on the first floor and sat in it for a quarter of an hour. I did not pray in sentences.

Tamsin is on tonight. I told her what he said about the design life, and she wrote it on the whiteboard in his room, under "Goals for today."

He comes home tomorrow if the night is quiet. There are four new pills, a card to carry in his wallet with the stent's particulars, twelve weeks of supervised exercise beginning in October, and a list of what he may not lift, drive or shovel.

Two weeks. Dr. Valdivia saw him this afternoon in the clinic and is satisfied: the wrist has healed, the pressure is good, and the tracing is "boring," her word, and a compliment. He may lift again as of tomorrow and may go up north, with the pills, the card and me.

I asked her the question I have been carrying around, which is whether the ten minutes on the step did any harm. She did not tell me not to think about it. She said that most men wait longer, that some wait until the next morning, and that the heart muscle came through whole, so the answer in his case is no. Then she looked at R. and said, "Next time you don't wait ten seconds. You tell her." He said, "Yes, ma'am," and meant it.

In the car he said, "I didn't want to scare you." I said that he had, and that the sitting there was the part that did it. We drove the rest of the way home without talking.

R. had his treadmill test this morning and passed, nine minutes with the wires on and nothing to see. We were pleased with ourselves at lunch.

Lorraine telephoned at four. She said it in her reference-desk voice: it is ovarian cancer, it is not early, and they will operate on November 2 and give her chemotherapy after.

I asked what I could do. She said, "Come Thursday, and bring a book that isn't about anything."

She has felt full and tired since June and thought it was age. So did her doctor, for a while.

Five years and six weeks since the stent, and yesterday Dr. Valdivia had him back on a treadmill, with the dye and the camera. Normal. The blood goes everywhere it should, and the pump is as strong as it was. She does not want to do it again until 2029. R. asked her whether the stent was still within its design life. She said that he was, too.

I had not known I was still carrying it until it was set down. For five years I have looked at the back step every time I passed the kitchen window.