…place. The man who gave you his last week.”
I sat down because my legs wouldn’t hold me. The elderly man introduced himself as George. The service, he explained gently, wasn’t for me. It was for his son, Arthur Bell. Linda’s younger brother.
I’d met Arthur maybe three times. A kind, shy man who repaired clocks.
“Last Sunday, you collapsed in Linda’s garden,” George said. “Your heart stopped. Arthur was there. He did CPR for eleven minutes until the ambulance came.”
I didn’t remember any of it. The last thing I remembered was arriving at Linda’s for lunch. Then waking up in the hospital, where doctors told me I’d had a cardiac arrest and that memory loss around the event was common. I’d been discharged on Thursday with a new pacemaker and strict instructions to rest.
Linda had told me the neighbor did CPR. She didn’t tell me the rest.
Two days after he saved me, Arthur had a heart attack of his own, at home, alone. He’d had a heart condition for years and had never told anyone. The doctors said the strain of those eleven minutes may have played a part.
Linda hadn’t gone to Arizona. She had gone to identify her brother. She lied because she was afraid the news would hurt my recovery, and because she was afraid I would blame myself.
I looked at the program again. I’d read it in a panic. At the top, in large print: “Celebrating the Life of Arthur James Bell.” Below it, smaller: “With gratitude to the life he saved” — and my full name. The photo of me on the table had been placed beside his. Arthur’s family wanted me there, if I felt strong enough.
Linda walked through the front door ten minutes later, holding a box of flowers. When she saw me, she dropped them.
“I asked you to water the plants so you’d be here,” she said, crying. “I wanted you to come. I just couldn’t make myself say why.”
At two o’clock, I sat in the front row with Arthur’s family. When it was my turn, I stood up and told them the only thing I could: that I was alive because of a man I barely knew, and that I would spend every day trying to deserve it.
I visit Arthur’s grave every Sunday now. Linda comes with me. We bring clocks sometimes. He would have liked fixing them.
