Pet Sematary

Here it is, Pascow all over again, Louis thought and then shoved the thought out of his mind so fast that it might have been on wheels.
He felt for her pulse and got something that was weak, thready, and rapid-not really a beat but only simple spasms. Extreme arrhythmia, well on the way to full cardiac arrest. You and Elvis Presley, Norma, he thought.
He opened her dress, exposing a creamy yellow silk slip. Moving with his own rhythm now, he turned her head to one side and began administering CPR.
“Jud, listen to me,” he said. Heel of the left hand one third of the way up the breastbone-four centimeters above the xyphoid process. Right hand gripping the left wrist, bracing, lending pressure. Keep it firm, but let’s take it easy on the old ribs-no need to panic yet. And for Christ’s sake, don’t collapse the old lungs.
“I’m here,” Jud said.
“Take Ellie,” he said. “Go across the street. Carefully-don’t get hit by a car.
Tell Rachel what’s happened. Tell her I want my bag. Not the one in the study, but the one on the high shelf in the upstairs bathroom. She’ll know the one.
Tell her to call Bangor MedCu and to send an ambulance.”
“Bucksport’s closer,” Jud said.
“Bangor’s faster. Go. Don’t you call; let Rachel do that. I need that bag.” And once she knows the situation here, Louis thought, I don’t think she’ll bring it over.
Jud went. Louis heard the screen door bang. He was alone with Norma Crandall and the smell of apples. From the living room came the steady tick of the seven-day clock.
Norma suddenly uttered a long, snoring breath. Her eyelids fluttered. And Louis was suddenly doused with a cold, horrid certainty.
She’s going to open her eyes… oh Christ she’s going to open her eyes and start talking about the Pet Sematary.
But she only looked at Louis with a muddled sort of recognition, and then her eyes closed again. Louis was ashamed of himself and this stupid fear that was so unlike him. At the same time he felt hope and relief. There had been some pain in her eyes but not agony. His first guess was that this had not been a grave seizure.
Louis was breathing hard now and sweating. No one but TV paramedics could make CPR look easy. A good steady closedchest massage popped a lot of calories, and the webbing between his arms and shoulders would ache tomorrow.
“Can I do anything?”
He looked around. A woman dressed in slacks and a brown sweater stood hesitantly in the doorway, one hand clutched into a fist between her breasts. The mother of the ghosts, Louis thought.
“No,” he said, and then: “Yes. Wet a cloth, please. Wring it out. Put it on her forehead.”
She moved to do it. Louis looked down, Norma’s eyes were open again.
“Louis, I fell down,” she whispered. “Think I fainted.”
“You’ve had some sort of coronary event,” Louis said. “Doesn’t look too serious.
Now relax and don’t talk, Norma.”
He rested for a moment and then took her pulse again. The beat was too fast. She was Morse-coding: her heart would beat regularly, then run briefly in a series of beats that was almost but not quite fibrillation, and then begin to beat regularly again. Beat-beat-beat, WHACK-WHACK-WHACK, beat-beat-beat-beat-beat. It was not good, but it was marginally better than cardiac arrhythmia.
The woman came over with the cloth and put it on Norma’s forehead. She stepped away uncertainly. Jud came back in with Louis’s bag.
“Louis?”
“She’s going to be fine,” Louis said, looking at Jud but actually speaking to Norma. “MedCu coming?”
“Your wife is calling them,” Jud said. “I didn’t stay around.”
“No… hospital,” Norma whispered.
“Yes, hospital,” Louis said. “Five days’ observation, medication, then home with your feet up, Norma my girl. And if you say anything else, I’ll make you eat all these apples. Cores and all.”
She smiled wanly, then closed her eyes again.
Louis opened his bag, rummaged, found the Isodil, and shook one of the pills, so tiny it easily would have fit on the moon of one fingernail, into the palm of his hand. He recapped the bottle and pinched the pill between his fingers.
“Norma, can you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Want you to open your mouth. You did your trick, now you get your treat. I’m going to put a pill under your tongue. Just a small one. I want you to hold it there until it dissolves. It’s going to taste a little bitter but never mind that. All right?”
She opened her mouth. Stale denture breath wafted out, and Louis felt a moment of aching sorrow for her, lying here on her kitchen floor in a litter of apples and Halloween candy. It occurred to him that once she had been seventeen, her breasts eyed with great interest by the young men of the neighborhood,