If I had imagined having a heart attack, it wouldn’t have happened at 5:30 a.m. on a Monday morning on Angel Island. I wasn’t thinking heart attacks at all, of course. I had been a Park Ranger for the last 5 years. I made it through a physically demanding Academy and kept myself in pretty good condition after that. I wasn’t overweight or much overweight, a few pounds more than the Academy. Sure I had higher than normal cholesterol, but not too high and a few years before my blood pressure had climbed to 145 or so, but it wasn’t too bad. I had regular checkups and my nurse practitioner didn’t seem worried about it. Being a cardiac risk was not part of my self image.
Angel Island is a special place, maybe not so good for a heart attack. Getting on and off the island is no easy task and even harder if you’re trying to make a mainland schedule. The Angel Island Ferry runs on an island schedule and the State boat runs on the island’s time as well. I liked living on the island, an 800 acre State Park, 25 of us, employees and our families, in the middle of the San Francisco Bay within sight of downtown San Francisco. When the visitors leave, it is a ghostly Army post closed for over 65 years. The interior of the island is wonderful California coastal oak and chaparral. During the summer a few thousand visitors come on the weekends, fewer during the week and off season. They come late and leave early. It is a very quiet and isolated place within sight of nearly 7 million people.
What I don’t like about the island is that going anywhere requires a boat trip across Raccoon Strait followed by a four block walk to the parking lot where we park our cars. Ferry schedules are based on visitors’ needs and during the winter severely curtailed. We have two State Park boats, a big 50 foot crew boat and a 5 meter inflatable with a 90 horsepower engine on the back of it. It had taken me a year with island politics and a difficult learning curve to get to drive the crew boat. Convincing Suzette to move to the island with her 15 year old son had required that I commit to a 5:30 a.m. run to the mainland every weekday morning to get Arom to school and Suzette to work.
There I was one more time at 5:30 on a Monday morning on Angel Island getting the Ayala ready to go for a run. I had gone below decks, down a ladder to the engine compartment and switched on the power before firing up the two diesel engines. I climbed back up and went forward to the pilot house to turn on the electronics. In the pilot house suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I bent over trying to get a breath, I rested my right hand against the instrument panel and I tried to will myself to breathe. I was frozen; I couldn’t even make an effort to breathe.
The moments tick slowly when you can’t breathe and each tick is a step further from the ordinary. My lungs wouldn’t work, I couldn’t pull the air in, I stood there waiting for it to be over, hoping it would be over. I wasn’t panicked, I just couldn’t breathe. Somewhere in the back of my mind it occurred to me if I didn’t breathe soon, it would be the end of me. I just needed to take a breath. I knew whatever was going on was serious. I had never been like this before, short of breath yes, but not like this. I just couldn’t breathe.
And then I could. I took air in like a drowning man. I was relieved. Suzette was beside me asking what was wrong. Finally I was able to say, nothing, I’m OK, I just couldn’t breathe for a moment.
In the following weeks I thought about how these moments could have been my last in this world, how inconsequential it had seemed, no warning, something as simple as breathing. I thought about how things had gone on around me; how Suzette, Paloma, the whole world seemed alive. I was frozen for those few moments between them and nothing. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t say anything. I was walled off from everyone and for those few moments time stopped. And then it started again.
hope you have many more breaths
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