Wired for Kindness

The second Monday in January was the most important day in my fledging career. I was just six months into my first post-college job, working at a public relations firm in New York City. On this second Monday, Cybill Shepherd would be introduced as the spokesperson for the Beef Council. After weeks of mind-numbing grunt work, I was given the heady task of meeting Cybill at her hotel and escorting her to the press conference.

This was it, I felt in my bones, this was when my career pivoted away from just menial chores. I wanted everything to go perfectly. I left for work an hour earlier than normal and wore my flowy emerald green suit.

Even though it appeared that I had managed the transition to adulthood, I’d had an ongoing problem I couldn’t unkink. Eight weeks before that Monday in January, my new pharmacist rejected my prescription for anti-convulsants, meds I’d been taking since elementary school. He said he would only fill prescriptions from a New York doctor. I called the HMO and the soonest appointment was 120 days away. I had just 42 days of pills remaining.

I did not panic at the outset; this was just a math problem. I felt confident that someone at the HMO would empathize with my plight and, like a sherpa, lead me to an easy solution. As the HMO stonewalled me and my med supply dwindled, my solution was to skip my meds on weekends, not thinking through the folly of that plan.

So there I was on the F train, heading to meet my first celebrity, my first press conference. If all went well, I imagined sharing beef-oriented appetizers with Cybill in our test kitchen.

While my childhood seizures arrived with warning signs, this one was a sudden blackout.

I remembered the train pulling into Jay Street in Brooklyn. Six subway stops later, my eyes fluttered open. The shriek of the subway brakes seemed louder than normal. I was horrified when I realized I was lying on the sticky, vomitty-smelling subway floor as the F train pulled into the Village.

Fellow subway passengers averted their gazes. They displayed no alarm at my calamity. Like that it was a daily event, people always slid off their seat, on to the floor, and flopped about. I laid there, confused, my thoughts jumbled, erratic. Cybill Shepherd won’t know where to go without me. Can I be fired for being late? Please, I need help. Someone strong, who knows what to do.

A bony, wizened Latina grandma knelt next to me.

“Come. I help you.”

Somehow she got me up four flights of stairs and into a taxi. We had communication barriers: English was not her first language, and my post-seizure aphasia wasn’t going away.

“Has this happened before to you?”

I nodded. What a good question to ask.

Experiencing aphasia is akin to having your brain filled to the brim with a stadium of 55,000 people, all cheering for you, all shouting out the word you need to say. Epileptic!

On this day, my stadium crowd added letters to their cheers. Gimme an E, Gimme a P! Gimme an I-L-E! Despite their efforts, my mouth opened and there’s nothing but fuzz, like HBO’s staticky audio logo.

“Do you know why this happened?”

I murbled out, “I have a thing. It ends with ICK.”

My good Samaritan perked up on a mission.

“Diabetic?

I shook my head no.

“Anemic?”

Nope.

“Psychotic!” she asked excitedly, as though surely that was the right answer.

Lordy, no.

She poured boneless me out of the taxi, into a wheelchair, into the E.R. She stayed with me, held my hand through bloodwork, the EEG, the EKG. She stayed until the doctor came in.

“You are good now. I leave,” she said. And poof, she slid away before I could thank her. Or even ask her name.

The EEG confirmed I’d had a grand mal seizure. The doctor discharged me with a week of meds to tie me over and a stern admonishment to get to a neurologist a.s.a.p., HMO be damned.

Terrified I had already been fired, I called work. My usually snarky boss sounded genuinely concerned, said he was glad I was okay and insisted I take the rest of the week off.

I called the HMO. Repeatedly. One rep said, “You gotta stop calling us, ma’am.” Another said, “If you wanted an earlier appointment, you shoulda called earlier.” On the last phone call, my knees wobbled, and I slumped to the sidewalk in a seated fetal position, too tired to care about my favorite suit.

I hadn’t told my parents about the med problem because I did not want them to worry from afar. Also, I felt like I had crossed over into AdultLand and wasn’t sure I still qualified for parental roadside assistance.

This day was nothing like I had expected. Slouched between a pay phone and a garbage can, I had a flash of clarity. Perhaps being an adult is being wise enough to know when – and who – to call for help. Phoning the HMO hotline for the nth time would not change my situation. However, calling my mom would definitely brighten my horizon.

I wiped snot on my green silk skirt and thunked my forehead on my knees; I was too depleted to hold up my heavy head. A fresh batch of tears arrived as I realized I had no more quarters left.

Camel-colored Chanel slingback pumps stopped next to me. I braced, expecting the posh lady to tell me to get the hell out of her way so she could use my pay phone.

“You look like you need some help. Here, take this,” she said, as she tossed me a small leather pouch, brimming with coins.

I called my parents, and with the efficiency of a fairy godmother, they fixed my problems with ease. Within an hour, my mom booked a neurology appointment for the following week, found some leftover meds, and bought plane tickets to fly up the next day.

I had breakfast at a nearby diner. When I asked for the bill, the waitress smiled, her eyes crinkled with concern. She patted my forearm with her warm palm. “You’re having a rough day. It’s on the house, hon.”

A block before my apartment, I stopped at the corner bodega, which always smelled of earth, of ripe bananas, of burnt coffee. I just needed half-and-half and some mac ‘n' cheese. The customer in front of me turned and said, “Why don’t you go ahead of me?” The cashier nodded in agreement, and I am ushered past everyone to the front of the line like a celebrity VIP.

When I looked in the mirror as I brushed my teeth before bed, I was shocked to see souvenirs of my day: two EEG leads were still stuck on me, one electrode on the left side of my neck, one dangled above my right ear.

That horrible, unexpectedly traumatic Monday cemented itself as a cornerstone of my worldview. It was my first hard evidence, actual proof that people are wired for kindness and that the universe will provide what you need, when you need it.