“Fuck me,” Matt barked. “All right. Let’s get this shit over with. Go ahead and bust out the paddles.”
“This has happened to you before?” asked the paramedic—his name, coincidentally, was Matt, which at least made it easy for Matt the musician to remember.
“Yeah,” Matt said. “Back in Houston. New Year’s Day of 1992, right after a show. The medic said I was almost dead. He fuckin’ lit me up right there in the backstage. Hurt like a motherfucker, but it worked.”
“He didn’t even sedate you first?” Matt the paramedic asked.
“He said I was too critical to wait for that. Is that sedation shit an option here?”
“Let’s see what your blood pressure is, my friend,” Matt the paramedic told him. “It could be we won’t even have to cardiovert you at all.”
“No shit?” Matt the musician asked.
“No shit,” said Matt the paramedic.
One of the firefighters took his blood pressure and then called out the reading. “One oh-two over forty-eight.”
“That’s good, right?” Matt asked.
“A little on the low side,” said Matt the paramedic, “particularly for someone who just used cocaine, but it’s in the range we consider stable when we’re talking about SVT. You said you’re having a little chest pain?”
“Just a little,” Matt said.
“And you’re a bit diaphoretic as well.”
“Dia-pho-what?”
“A fancy way of saying you’re sweating for no good reason,” Matt the paramedic said. “We paramedics don’t really like it when people do that shit. You’re bordering on unstable, but still technically stable, so ... as long as you don’t deteriorate, I’m not going to shock you.”
“How do we fix this shit then?” Matt wanted to know.
“There’s a medicine they can give you at the hospital,” Matt the paramedic explained. “It’s called Adenosine and it’s the chemical equivalent of cardioversion. It almost always works to convert SVT back to a stable rhythm.”
“If it’s so fuckin’ cool, why don’t you have it?” asked Matt.
“They haven’t approved it for field use yet,” Matt the paramedic said with a shrug.
“You’re saying that they’ll let you fry me with electricity but they won’t give you a medicine that does the same fucking thing without making you feel like you’re Ted Bundy taking his last ride?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Matt the paramedic said. “Life is like a Dilbert comic, isn’t it? Now, let’s get an IV started on you and then bust our asses out of here.”
Matt the paramedic started his IV in Matt the musician’s left arm and then they loaded him up on the gurney. He was driven with lights and sirens to the Methodist Hospital of Indianapolis, which was not terribly far from the hotel, and wheeled immediately into a bed in a crowded, chaotic emergency room. Matt the paramedic gave a brief report to a doctor and two nurses, who quickly hooked Matt the musician up to a cardiac monitor, did a twelve-lead EKG on him, and then got him ready for the chemical cardioversion.
“So ... this shit is going to like ... stop my heart?” Matt asked the doctor, an Asian looking woman with the last name of Lee.
“Just for a few seconds,” Dr. Lee said. “And then it should restart in a normal rhythm.”
“And this is not going to hurt?”
“There might be a momentary sense of discomfort,” Dr. Lee said. “It will pass.”
A momentary sense of discomfort turned out to be an understatement. While not painful like the cardioversion had been, about five seconds after one of the nurses injected the Adenosine into his IV line, it felt like a fat chick had just sat down on his chest. He suddenly couldn’t breathe. It felt as if his chest would simply not respond to his brain’s command to inhale. He felt like he was suffocating. An odd sense of impending doom filled his head. He opened his mouth to say something to the assembled medical crew—all of whom were looking intently at the monitor screen above his head and not at him—but his mouth couldn’t form the words. Just as it felt like he was going to actually pass out—and probably never wake up, his mind gleefully informed him—everything suddenly went away. The weight came off his chest. He was able to a take a deep breath of wonderful oxygen. The sense of doom evaporated away like shot of Everclear on a hot sidewalk. The sweat on his skin started to dry.
“And there we go,” Dr. Lee said with a smile of what could only be interpreted as relief. “Back to a normal rhythm.”
“Damn,” Matt said, continuing to take deep breaths. “That was not as much fun as getting some Icelandic gash.”
Dr. Lee looked at him, raising her eyebrows just a bit. “Icelandic gash, huh? You’ve been to Iceland?”
“No, I scored it in France,” Matt told her. “That’s what’s so fuckin’ cool about it. It ain’t much of an accomplishment to score Icelandic gash in Iceland. I mean, what other kind of gash are you going to get there?”
Her eyebrows went up a bit more. “I suppose that’s a valid point,” she said at last. “Now then, the paramedic told me you ingested cocaine right before this onset of SVT?”
“Yeah, a couple lines of some premo Bolivian shit.” He shrugged. “Normal after-show stuff.”
“Uh huh,” Dr. Lee said. “And you also smoked some marijuana?”
“A couple bong hits after the show,” Matt said. “It is four-twenty, after all.”
“Yes, it certainly is,” Dr. Lee said. “And I can smell alcohol on you. How much did you have to drink tonight?”
Another shrug. “Seven or eight beers. The usual amount.”
“Well, it seems obvious that your heart did not appreciate all of that tonight,” Dr. Lee said. “I’m guessing that the cocaine was likely the trigger of the episode. You use cocaine regularly, it sounds like?”
“Pretty much every day,” Matt confirmed. “Especially out on the road. The last time this happened it was the meth that got it started.”
“The meth?”
“Right,” Matt said. “I was dragging ass that day and some of the roadies fixed me up with some of their tweak. Raunchy shit that meth, and then I ended up with that paramedic frying me like a fuckin’ chicken. Man, that shit sucked. I’m here to tell you, I learned my lesson that night.”
“What lesson was that?” Dr. Lee wanted to know.
“Not to do meth, obviously,” Matt told her simply. “And I haven’t done so much as a sniff of that shit since. That’s what’s so fuckin’ weird about this. If I didn’t do any meth, why did this shit happen again?”
“Uh ... as I said, the cocaine was likely the trigger.”
Matt shook his head emphatically. “No way, doc,” he told her. “I snort coke all the fuckin’ time and it don’t ever make me go into that SVT shit. And I always get good coke, you know, the pure shit with no cut in it. It has to be something else that triggered it tonight.”
“Mr. Tisdale...” Dr. Lee said patiently.
“Matt,” Matt said. “You can call me Matt, doc.”
“Matt,” she corrected. “You do realize that cocaine is a powerful stimulant, right?”
“Hell yeah,” he said. “That’s why I use it on the road. Touring is some tiring shit. The coke helps keep me awake for all the goddamn record store signings and for the after-show partying. I never do it before a show though. Every time I step on that stage to play, I’m stone cold sober.”