Harry — Episode 2: The Ambulance

— Episode 2 in a five-part series about what happened to Harry —

I called 112, but my phone refused to cooperate. I heard an intermittent electronic beep. I tried again. The same beep.

This is taking too long.

I started screaming across the parking lot, in Italian:

“Help! Help! My husband is having a seizure! Call an ambulance! I don’t speak Italian very well!”

Behind a windshield, I saw a man sitting in his car, watching the whole scene unfold.

But he did nothing.

(That man behind the windshield had actually caught my attention earlier already. At the time, I was busy with Harry.) So I kept shouting until a young woman walked toward me while talking on the phone. She was already speaking with emergency services.

While we waited for the ambulance, she stayed with me. Harry had probably suffered an epileptic seizure. In the five years before that—though I had never witnessed them myself—he had experienced two similar seizures and had since been prescribed medication for them.

The young woman pointed out a thin stream of blood running from one of Harry’s eyes.
Just before the ambulance arrived, we saw Harry wet himself. 

 While the paramedics were tending to Harry, they rapidly fired questions at me:

“Has he had seizures before? Is he taking medication? What exactly happened?”

“Yes, and he takes pills for it. He suddenly started speaking strangely—words and sentences that sounded like Dutch, but weren’t actually Dutch.” 

They lifted Harry onto a stretcher and into the ambulance. I wanted to get in with him, but they wouldn’t allow it. The ambulance didn’t leave right away. It remained parked there for another fifteen minutes with the doors closed. After that, one of the paramedics came back outside. He wanted Harry’s health insurance card and ID. 

Then he asked:

“Do you know anyone here? Friends or family?”

“Yes. A friend in a nearby town.”

“Then you need to call that friend and ask him to come with you to the hospital in Palermo tomorrow. Don’t come to the hospital tonight. They won’t let you in anyway. We need to do extensive testing first.”

I said:

“At least take his glasses and phone with him. He doesn’t speak Italian, and without his glasses he can barely see.”

“He won’t need them”, the paramedic said. The doors closed, and the ambulance drove away. 

 I called Rosario, the friend from the nearby town.

“Something very bad has happened. Can I call you back in a little while and explain properly? I’m going home first.”

The next morning, it took far too long for Rosario to arrive. He was supposed to pick me up so we could go to the hospital together.

I was worried.
I thought:
Harry must be completely disoriented. He has no idea what happened. 

At the hospital, only one person was allowed in to see Harry. Rosario couldn’t come with me to help translate, so I had to manage with my broken Italian. 

I had genuinely expected to find Harry conscious. Instead, I was told:

“You should prepare yourself mentally, ma’am. He’s not doing well.”

He was lying in a coma on a ventilator, with three brain hemorrhages. Rosario pointed out that I needed to inform Harry’s family and his health insurance company.
Normally I would have thought of something like that myself, but at that moment it simply didn’t occur to me. I found it strange that I had actually slept well that night. 

Rosario had left his contact information at the hospital. As a native Italian speaker, he didn’t have the language barrier that I did. 

Three days later, Rosario called me. The brain hemorrhages had stopped. Harry had been moved to another ward, and the doctor wanted to speak with us. We were told Harry had a ninety percent chance of dying. And if he did survive, living independently would most likely no longer be possible—whether because of physical disability, mental impairment, or a combination of both. 

 Everyone—Rosario, me, the family, and probably even the insurance company—was mentally preparing for the worst. 

Episode 2 in a five-part series about what happened to Harry.

-->.  Episode 3

<--   Episode 1

Photo: Omid Pasha