Page 26 of The Broken Hearts Club

“So, I’ve lived with this for twenty-seven years,” he said, “and today, out of the blue, it made me pass out?”

“They’re not positive that’s why you passed out, but it’s a definite possibility. Have you ever felt like you were having an irregular heartbeat?”

“My heart feels like it’s racing sometimes. I figured I was hitting the caffeine too hard.”

“Did it feel like that before you passed out?” He nodded. “Then that probably confirms it. Also, you mentioned feeling tired a lot. That might be from poor blood circulation.”

“I knew there had to be some kind of explanation.”

“I really need to apologize for overstepping,” I said. “None of this is any of my business, but because I’d told them I was your husband, the doctor shared this information with me.”

“No, it’s totally fine. I would have told you anyway,” he said. “Now I guess the big question is, can the doctors fix what’s wrong with my heart?”

“Yes, with surgery.”

“Are there other ways they can treat it?”

“I don’t think so, but the doctor will have more information for you when you see her.”

He thought about it for a while before asking, “If I hadn’t passed out today and they hadn’t found the defect, would it have killed me?”

“I don’t know. But your heart is working much harder than it should, and it can’t keep doing that forever.”

“Okay.”

I was horrified when he started to climb out of bed. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving.”

“Why?”

“Because I can’t afford surgery right now. I don’t even know how I’m going to pay for this one night in a hospital, let alone whatever tests they did while I was knocked out.”

“You can’t go, Collie.”

“Watch me.”

“But this is really serious!”

“It’s probably not going to kill me today, though. Probably not tomorrow either, if I’ve been living with it for twenty-seven years.”

“But it could be getting worse! You passed out.”

“They don’t really know if that’s why, do they? People pass out for all kinds of reasons.”

“But you haven’t even talked to a doctor yet.”

“They’ll just try to insist that I stay in the hospital, get a bunch more tests, and have surgery, all while running up a bill that’s going to be thousands and thousands of dollars.”

“Yeah, they might, if that’s what it takes to save your life.”

“They can’t say for certain that this thing will kill me in the next six months, can they? Not if it’s already been twenty-seven years. But I know for a fact that I’ll drown in debt if I stay here. I can come back and have the surgery after I find a job with health insurance.”

I exclaimed, “You can’t take a gamble like that, Collie!”

“I have to. My other choice is to end up so deep in debt that I’ll never dig myself out from under it. Literally never.”

“There have to be options. What about Medicaid?”