Yesterday was the wierdest day of my legal career. I've been working on a presentation and a paper with a senior partner and he was in my office, leaning over my desk working with me on the paper. I asked him a question about one of the edits he made and when I looked up at him his face looked, well, wierd. He wasn't himself in kind of a spooky way. But sad spooky, not Dracula spooky. I don't know how to describe it. And just as it was registering to me, "he looks kind of wierd, I wonder what's up" a half a second later he lurched to the side and fell down. He hit his head either on my lamp or on the corner of the desk and got a cut that started to bleed, and he knocked over my wastebasket with his arm and so there were papers and a banana peel and soda cans there on the floor with him. He wasn't passed out, his eyes were open but he wasn't talking either.

I freaked out, put a napkin over the cut on his head and called Helen, my secretary, in. I had no idea what to do. When I was in high school I had a first aid certificate but I don't know how I earned it because I just felt panicky and desperate and had no idea if you elevate or try to give mouth to mouth or what apply pressure or what you do when someone falls down on your desk. Helen was very cool and calm. She called security and started taking his pulse and telling me what to do (unbutton his collar and sleeves, take off his shoes, get some water and a cold paper towel for his forehead). I don't know if those are medical things or not but I did them and was glad to and the knot of anxiety and disbelief never really left my stomach. The office was pretty soon full of people, me and Helen and a couple of the corporate partners and eventually some ambulance guys who asked me a bunch of questions about how he looked and what he said and how he fell and took him away.

When he was gone I closed my door and tried to clean up my office and then just sat at my desk shivering. I have no idea what happened to him. One minute we were talking about the order of the sections in this paper and the next he's on the floor bleeding and kind of cold and yellowish-blue and clammy, breathing and moving his eyes a little bit but not saying anything. He's not that old, maybe early sixties. He smokes like a chimney but never seemed particularly unhealthy to me. One of the partners and Helen and I were talking about it and Helen said she was pretty sure it was a stroke, and one of the medics had said that too. I don't know anything about strokes. I've been reading about them a little on the internet.

The partner's wife called in a little later, from the hospital, and she wanted to ask me the same questions the medical guys had asked about just how he looked the minute before he fell and how he was acting while we were talking. I felt like a disappointment because I hadn't noticed anything odd until I looked up at his face, which maybe did look wierd because the left side was droopier than the right, but maybe I'm just imagining that because of what I've read about strokes. Anyway, I didn't have much to tell her but I asked if I could go to the hospital and she said only family were allowed there. I wished I could give her a hug.

I couldn't work so I left and went for a long run and thought about keeling over one day at work and whether I would feel proud of my life so far. Which I'm still thinking about today, back in my office, trying to catch up on the things I didn't finish yesterday.


- posted by Blogger @ 3:27 PM