Everything Changes

says, still concentrating on his measured breathing, which he’s been doing ever since he regained consciousness as we were loading him into the golf cart. His belly is scraped up and grass stained from his fall, his skin crusted with grass and muck.
    “What medications are you on?” she asks him.
    “Lipitor and Toprol,” he answers.
    “No nitroglycerin tablets?”
    “I don’t get chest pains.”
    “You’re not having any chest pains now?” she asks skeptically.
    “I’m just a little winded,” Norm says.
    “They said you were running pretty fast,” the nurse says, pointedly eyeing his naked paunch. “You don’t look like someone accustomed to running.”
    “That’s true.”
    “Maybe not such a good idea for someone with your medical history.”
    “You’re making me miss my mother,” Norm says with a weak grin. The nurse isn’t amused.
    “I think I should call you an ambulance.”
    “I’d rather you just called my doctor. His name is Larry Sanderson, and he’s a member here. He’s actually somewhere on the golf course.”
    “He’s here today?”
    “That’s right.”
    The nurse quickly excuses herself, and as soon as she steps out of the room, Norm’s face brightens and he smiles at us. “You see,” he says. “There’s a method to my madness.”
    “I don’t believe it!” Jed says, shaking his head and laughing. “You faked the whole thing?”
    “Always have a backup plan,” Norm says.
    I’m not amused. “That’s not a fake scar on your chest,” I said.
    “No,” he says, looking down at it. “That’s the genuine article.”
    “What happened?”
    “I had a heart attack. Passed out during a business lunch. Ended up having triple bypass surgery.” He pulls himself off the table and pulls on his sweatshirt.
    “You had open-heart surgery and you never thought of calling me,” I say. “Didn’t you think maybe you need your family around at a time like that?”
    Norm looks at me, his expression grave. “I was dying to call you. I was terrified of dying, of never having the chance to make things right with my family again. Believe me, it’s all I thought about.”
    “So why didn’t you call?”
    He looks at the floor, frowning and shaking his head. “I had no right,” he says, his words thick and weighted with untold anguish. “Let me tell you, there’s nothing in the world that compares to waking up in post-op with no one waiting to see that you’ve made it. You feel like you don’t matter, like you don’t even exist. I could have died that day, and no one would have missed me. The doctors were all congratulating me, and I was just wishing I’d died on the table.” He clears his throat, wiping at a possible tear with the back of his mud-stained hand. “The worst day of my life was the day I came through that surgery,” he says. “And that’s coming from someone with more than a few bad days to choose from.”
    “You should have called me,” I say.
    “Shoulda, coulda, woulda.”
    “You’re an asshole, Norm.”
    He looks up at me. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
    Our conversation is interrupted as the door swings open and the nurse returns, leading Dr. Sanderson into the room. His presence here, after the day’s misadventures, is so shockingly surreal, so out of context, that I’m rendered speechless. He looks the same, maybe a little wider in hip and thigh without the benefit of his doctor’s coat. He’s dressed like the other golfers, in a white club sweatshirt and brown chinos, and his expression is singularly perturbed as he takes in our mud-soiled clothing and splattered faces. “I’m sorry,” he addresses Norm curtly. “Do I know you?”
    “You know my son,” Norm says, pointing to me.
    “Hi,” I say stupidly. “I’m Zachary King. I’m a patient of yours.”
    “I remember you,” he says, the creases in his brow deepening as he struggles to assemble the facts in an order that will make sense. “What the hell is going on here?”
    “I was supposed to get my biopsy results today,” I say. “But you weren’t there, and no one else could tell me.”
    His eyes widen as realization sets in. “Wait a minute. You came here to see me?”
    I nod. “I just need to know.”
    The purple vein in Sanderson’s temple throbs, and his jaw muscle flexes mechanically in his cheek as he stares at me. “This is absolutely unheard-of,” he says angrily. “It’s unacceptable.”
    He turns abruptly on his heel, but Jed has