Matters of the Heart

Chapter 19

Abbey screeched into her parking spot right next to Jesse's black GMC Sierra truck in the parking garage of their apartment building in Lincoln Park. She hastily grabbed her bag and slammed her car door behind her. She rushed over to the elevator located in the parking garage and was relieved when it opened right away. She stepped in and quickly hit 11 on the elevator selection pad. She impatiently shifted her weight from foot to foot on the way up to their penthouse apartment. The minute the doors were opening, she raced out of the elevator and down the hall to their door. She jammed her key in the keyhole of the door and pushed the door open with full force. She took her keys out of the door and threw them on their table by the front door. She ran through their large open concept apartment and raced through the kitchen.

Abbey saw Jesse still sitting on the floor, his back up against the dishwasher, legs sprawled straight out in front of him.

"Hey" he greeted her.

She rushed over to his side, placing a hand on his cheek.

"Hey oh my God are you ok?!"

"Yeah I think so. I'm feeling a little better. Look I'm sorry you came home but i knew you'd be upset if I didnt tell you"

"What?! No. I wanted you to tell me. What happened?"

"I was here in the kitchen putting dishes up and I just started to get that wierd uncomfortable twinge right here" Jesse explained placing his hand on his chest on his breastbone " And it just got worse really quick. And then my heart started pounding and I started having those palpitations and then I couldn't catch my breath and I couldn't walk. I started to go down so I just ended up here. I think I'm ok now but I knew you wouldn't want me to move"

She nodded her head, picking up his wrist and checking his pulse. She noticed he was still breathing pretty hard.

"Okay well your heartrate is still pretty elevated and I'm feeling PVCs and your breathing still seems a bit too shallow"

"Yeah but it's a lot better than it was. I should have just waited for the second nitro to take effect. I'm sorry I guess I was the one who overreacted this time."

"You did not overreact. You did exactly what I wanted you too"

"I know but I've been having these episodes for weeks and I could handle them fine on my own, this one was just I dont know this was the worst"

"And the last episode you had you blacked out and Patrick found you unconscious and you ended up in the Emergency Department getting scheduled for open heart surgery. And you're not going through any of these episodes on your own again. We're married now. We go through this together"

Jesse nodded at her.

"You've got aortic regurgitation and if we had let this go much further you'd be going into heart failure. So you didn't overreact. "

"Can I at least get up now?"

"We can move you to the bedroom and I can check you over but I want to check a few things first to see if i need to get you back to the hospital"

"No Abbey I dont need to go back. It's starting to pass"

"Jesse, we've talked about this."

He nodded again. "Yeah ok"

"Alright let's get this shirt off you"

She helped him pull up his long sleeve Henley shirt, and take it off. She opened up her bag and pulled out a small case.

She pulled out a package of leads and stuck them to his chest. As she did so, she was watching his chest rise and fall. It wasn't doing so normally. His breathing was still quite shallow. Jesse had leaned his head back against the stainless steel of the dishwasher and closed his eyes as Abbey hooked up the wires to a small handheld device.