My first panic attack

This is a depiction of my first-ever panic attack. In the book I'm writing, this comes before this and this.

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It started for me on Interstate 95, the Connecticut Turnpike. It was the spring of 1987, a time of AIDS and Iran-Contra, of Mookie Wilson and Bill Buckner and leaving work early on summer Fridays to drink oversized cans of Foster’s Lager at the South Street Seaport, and I was driving my beat-up old Ford Grenada back from Green Key Weekend, the big spring-semester party weekend at Dartmouth College, my alma mater. I was living with a fraternity buddy in Manhattan at the time, in a tiny one-bedroom apartment on the 19th floor of a doorman building on the Upper East Side, but I was headed to my family’s home on Long Island, where I was going to join my sisters in taking our parents out to dinner to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary before taking the Long Island Railroad back into the city.

It was a gray day, the air heavy with humidity, but I didn’t care. I was thinking about the friends I’d seen, the jokes we’d told. I was thinking about how beautiful Hanover looked now that the snow had melted, about the new grass sprouting on the Green and the way the soaring brick clock tower of Baker Library stood out against the backdrop of cobalt-blue sky and cotton-ball clouds. Mostly, though, I was thinking about B., my college sweetheart. She’d broken up with me two years ago, during our senior year. But her current relationship was on the rocks, her friends had told me, and we’d spent all Saturday afternoon dancing to the funk band playing on the lawn outside Alpha Delta, the smile never leaving B.’s face, flirting with the possibility of a kiss with every dip and spin. A plan took shape in my head as I drove. Tomorrow, back in New York, I would call B., ask her out, make explicit the love I still felt for her, and in her turn she would leave her boyfriend and come back to me, her soul mate…

I found WNEW, a rock station out of New York, and the sounds of the Who classic “Baba O’Riley” filled the car. I imagined Pete Townshend hitting epic power chords on his guitar, right arm windmilling madly, while Roger Daltrey preened and strutted at the front of the stage, shirt open to the waist, blond mane cascading from his head. The song’s synthesizer break built to a crescendo, and when the moment arrived, I howled at the top of my lungs along with Daltrey’s famous howl: “YEEEAAAAH!”

And then it happened. What is this feeling? I wondered briefly. In the next instant, my focus zeroed in on my chest, where, suddenly and without warning, my heart had started flapping and fluttering like a bird with clipped wings trying to escape its cage.

Shit.

Today I know that my heart was palpitating, probably a result of the partying I’d been doing all weekend, my lack of sleep, the adrenaline pumping through my system, the then-undiagnosed prolapsing mitral valve in my heart, or some combination of these factors, but at the time I had no idea what was happening inside my body.
Disaster. I was experiencing disaster.

I’m having a heart attack.

I swung the car to the right, toward the shoulder. Horns rang out around me, and, through the haze that panic was beginning to erect between me and the rest of the world, I realized I’d just cut off the guy behind me, and was likely to cause an accident if I weren’t more careful. Gulping breaths of air, I forced myself to flip the right-turn signal and look over my shoulder as I changed lanes.

Just ahead, I saw, there was an exit. In the right lane now, I decided not to pull to the shoulder, but rather to make the short sprint to safety.

Once I was off the highway, though, I realized that this was no solution. I pulled into an old service station across the access road from the interstate. What's happening to me? What should I do? I got out of the car, fumbled to find some change in the pocket of my jeans, and purchased a Sprite from a vending machine. I popped the can open and took a pull of the soda, dribbling it on my shirt. The disaster underway in my chest — the earthquake, the avalanche — was unceasing.

A pickup truck pulled up; the driver walked to the office to pay, glancing at me, then walked back to the pumps and filled his gas tank. Can’t he tell? Can’t he tell that there’s a disaster underway? I felt outside of time, outside of reality. Here I was, in a frenzy, my heart pinballing around in my chest, unable to keep my thoughts still, yet around me, life was going on as though nothing was out of the ordinary.

I’m too young to have a heart attack!

I found some more change in the ashtray in my car, then went to the payphone at the edge of the service station pavement and dialed my parents’ number. They’d know what to do. My mom, a nurse — she’d be able to assure me that I wasn’t having a heart attack; she’d know what was happening to me.

Busy.

Three times I dialed my parents’ number. Still busy. In my chest, my heart continued to jump.

I was just barely holding it together now. What I would do, I decided, was get back in the car, back on the interstate. I’d drive to the next exit; by that point, whichever of my sisters was on the phone would have finished her conversation and hung up.

The next exit was just a couple of miles down the road. Not a real exit, actually; a rest stop. A huge highway-side McDonald’s. I pulled off the highway, parked, and went inside. Around me, crowds of travelers entered and exited the restaurant, oblivious to my crisis.

Finally, I spotted the payphone. Again I dialed, and again my parents’ number was busy. And again. And again. Inside me, my heart continued to leap and surge.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

At the end of my rope now, I called the operator. A woman’s voice spoke, and then I responded. I heard my voice as if it belonged to another person. I was speaking in an even tone, as though that would allow me to retain my grasp on sanity.

“It’s an emergency,” I said.