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I patted him on the shoulder and said, “I know. I know, Seamus. I love you, too.” I was trying to block out the kids around me, who were all scared and not sure what to do or how to react.
Then Seamus grabbed my shirt and pulled me back to him. “Brian broke my heart. I don’t know that I can take it anymore.”
It was right then that I knew we couldn’t wait for fire and rescue or an ambulance. Seamus didn’t have that kind of time left.
Chapter 31
I only had one choice, so I picked up my grandfather and followed Mary Catherine as she opened doors and sent kids ahead to call for the elevator. I trusted that one of the older kids would know to stay at the apartment with the younger ones and found myself racing to my car with Mary Catherine, Jane, and Trent. That was a good team to have on my side.
Mary Catherine said, “Are you sure we shouldn’t wait for help?”
“Not at this time of the evening.”
We got to my police car, and I laid Seamus in the backseat, where Mary Catherine could hold him. I got behind the wheel and hit the gas. We spun through the parking garage and out to the street in a matter of seconds. Even I was shocked at how fast I was driving. But this was Seamus. I couldn’t let anything happen to him.
I took 96th to Broadway with the lights flashing and siren blaring. I resisted the urge to keep looking in the backseat and focused on the traffic in front of me. Once I was on Broadway, I knew it was twenty or so blocks up to Mount Sinai St. Luke’s hospital, right near the Columbia campus. I’d be fighting more traffic, but it was a direct route.
I grabbed my NYPD radio and said I was transporting an apparent cardiac victim in need of immediate assistance. Out of nowhere, a marked cruiser pulled out in front of me with his full array of lights flashing and gave me an escort. God bless the NYPD.
We pulled into the emergency room, and Mary Catherine ran inside to get help. I carefully lifted Seamus from the backseat.
He managed to say, “There’s no way you’re carrying me in there like a baby. At least find a
wheelchair.”
Before Seamus had finished the sentence, Trent came running up with a simple, old-style wheelchair, and I placed Seamus into the seat. Just as we got through the door there were orderlies and a nurse waiting for us. We followed them up to a small room where a young internist met us.
He talked in a soothing tone to Seamus, trying to get some answers and assess his overall situation. Nurses hooked sensors to his chest, and instantly I started to see the EKG representation of his heartbeats on a monitor.
Mary Catherine, Jane, and Trent were wedged in tight against me in the corner. No one had really noticed us.
Then it happened. It was a jolt to my system, and I don’t know how badly it scared Mary Catherine and the kids.
A loud tone erupted from the EKG. The doctor shouted some instructions using acronyms I wasn’t familiar with. But it was clear to me that Seamus had flatlined, and now they had to take drastic measures to save him.
Chapter 32
I stood in silence in the corner of the cardiac treatment room, clutching Mary Catherine, Jane, and Trent to my side. The doctor shouted “Clear” as he placed paddles on my grandfather’s bare chest. It was like something out of a movie.
A jolt of electricity shot through my grandfather, but the horrible tone coming from the EKG machine only faltered for a moment, then continued. One of the nurses checked Seamus’s mouth and airway and repositioned his head.
The doctor yelled, “Clear!” Once again Seamus’s body spasmed as electricity shot from the paddles and coursed throughout his body.
Jane turned and buried her face in my chest as she started to weep.
Trent squeezed my hand so tightly that my fingers turned purple.
And Mary Catherine just stared at the horrific scene in front of us. I realized that she had a special bond with my grandfather. At first I thought it was just their shared Irish birth, but over time I realized it was much more than that. She had rescued the family he loved so much during their darkest hour. She had been loyal and kind, and she treated Seamus like he was her own grandfather.
And Seamus loved her like she was part of the family. No matter how hard it might be for me to imagine life without my grandfather, Mary Catherine would have a harder time adjusting.
But I wasn’t willing to give up yet. I bowed my head and prayed with all my heart. Like any good Catholic, I often said prayers from memory. Simple prayers to ask God to look over my family or help solve some of the world’s major problems. It wasn’t that I didn’t mean those prayers—it was just that, at the moment, nothing seemed more urgent or necessary than God’s intervention on behalf of my grandfather.
Silently I said, “God, please help us right now. I need that old man. You need that old man here. He definitely makes things easier for all of us. You must know you have no more loyal servant. That is why I ask you to please help us now and let Seamus Bennett live with us on earth a while longer.”
As I finished the prayer, the room was suddenly quiet again. The tone from the EKG stopped. The doctor appeared less frantic. A nurse inserted something into Seamus’s mouth that ran down his throat. She wouldn’t do that if he were dead.
God had heard our prayers for our favorite priest.
