Why is Mike Holding Me and Where Did
He Get That Hat?
(continued)
I sleepily try to get up, but Mike pulls me back
down, and everyone
kindly tells me to just stay put. The vendor guy very nicely says
the
paramedics are on their way. When I take a few sips of the
lemonade
and shake my head at the syrup, he very nicely takes the cup away and
returns with it refilled with water and the lemon wedge, apologizing
that it's not cold, but he got it from the water fountain around the
corner. I couldn't be happier with it and tell him so.
As far as I was concerned, it was Zoo Atlanta
again. That was a
weekend morning when I hadn't had much to eat for breakfast, and I was
working in the sun at the OK to Touch Corral. I had seen the same
black circles, and then slumped over the huge rail I'd been leaning
against for a moment before a zoo worker was right there, telling me
that she had seen it coming when she saw the look on my face. She
had
led me to a bench in the shade, and brought me crackers and water and
told me to rest for 20 minutes or so, that it was a heat stroke or sun
stroke or whatever, and part of it was from the empty stomach.
After
that, I was fine.
So after a few minutes, I assure the vendor guys I'm
better, and
Mike says, yeah, he can see that I'm more coherent than a few minutes
before. Eventually (seriously), the paramedics show up, looking
like
park rangers, and the head very official looking park ranger woman
(complete with blonde hair pulled back under a Smokey Bear ranger hat)
says I was VERY hard to find. She kneels down and asks me
confidently
if I'd been at the park all day and hadn't eaten anything. I say
we'd
practically just gotten here, and had a meal before we arrived.
Had I
had any water? she asks. Well, not as much as usual, I admit, and
she
had her a-ha! case won. She says confidently that the day's heat
and
humidity is revving up my metabolism, and I'm burning through
everything, and that I need to eat a lot of small meals and drink
water. She taps the lemonade cup and asks confidently if I'd been
drinking these all day, and I tell her yeah, and then no, and that it's
water. (I think my second at this point -- Mike got more for me
between the vendors leaving and the paramedics arriving.) And she
pitches going to first aid some more.
I don't feel the need to go to first aid (really
hating the idea of
leaving a line I'd invested nearly an hour in), what would they do for
me anyway? She pulls some electrolyte pills from her pocket and
gives
them to me, saying they'd give me those, which I'd need to drink with a
glass of water, and that's about it. She asks if I'm going to
ride the
ride anyway, and I say, yeah, I'd like to, but the vendor guy said we
were only about halfway through the line -- the building inside had
rows to wait through, and there was another section (at which point
Mike tried to turn it into an opportunity for us, don't they allow
people who faint in line to take the elevator to the front of the line?
but the vendor guy didn't bite). Maybe not, I say, it's not that
great
a ride (I'd ridden it once before and remembered not being impressed),
and the woman says, "Oh, it's a GREAT ride!" and I ask her to repeat
that, because I'm almost sure she couldn't have been telling me this
when she needed to be telling me things like no ride is that great,
take a break, etc. But she confirms that it's a GREAT ride, so I
figure why not (still annoyed with that investment of time).
Mike, on the other hand, assures me that we could
just go home if
that's what I want to do. I really don't want to throw in the
towel
that much -- if you're going to drive out to Six Flags, if you ride
only one ride, it needs to be Superman, and there is no way I'm going
to leave without giving Mike that thrill. (And, if I'm up to it,
my
precious Cyclone.) So the paramedics begin taking down my waiver
of
first aid information, and I notice that the line behind is now backing
up -- the paramedics confidently took over the entire area and didn't
let people through. At first it wasn't noticeable, since the line
on
the other side of us was hardly moving, but it had cleared out and I
find myself asking the paramedics to let the others through. (I had
enough problems without feeling glares on top of the rubbernecking.)
So the paramedics are gone, Mike and I are back in
line, and it
takes all of one and half minutes before I tell Mike I'm through with
this ride. He seems relieved and quickly escorts me back through
the
back of the line, shortcutting through the handicap gate, and we're in
the Superman gift shop and glorious glorious air conditioning, and I
promptly sit on the floor under a rack of t-shirts. Mike joins
me, and
I finally hear what happened while I was out, although in the various
bits and pieces, I hardly trust myself in the retelling. First
off,
where did he get that hat? The woman behind us in line gave it to
him
to fan me, and she was really great and helpful. I'd been out
something like 20 seconds or so, and I was just waking up when she
said, "Okay, that's 30 seconds - we need to get some help."
(Eventually, she showed up in the giftshop, telling me she's glad to
see I'm all right, and that I missed NOTHING with that ride. We
were
glad to say thanks, and give back her hat. Later, I noted how
long it
took her to get to the ride, and how I never would have made that.)
Mike says he thought I was joking when I said I was
about to black
out, and then he saw me going down and he caught me, and when I was
just a ragdoll, and he knew I was gone. But I was still reaching
for
the rail or something, and that got in the way of him trying to help --
"Did you hear me tell you to put your arm around my neck?" he
asks.
Nope, I say shyly, watching the feet and knees walking by us.
"Yeah, I
knew you were gone then." AND my foot was crooked back behind me
somehow, so he was struggling to lay me down gently because my legs
were all tangled up. And my eyes weren't quite closed, but they
were
rolled back, which was scary. And he didn't know what to do -- he
was
wishing he'd taken that CPR class they offered at the school -- no,
wait, that's next week -- but still, he didn't know. And he
didn't
know if he was supposed to lift the feet or the head, and if I didn't
wake up soon, he was going to be yelling for someone to tell him what
to do. But when I started looking around like "What is going on?"
he
knew I was going to be okay.
I remember that I'd had some peanut butter crackers
at the zoo, and
the park ranger paramedic told me to eat something salty when I was
finished with the ride, so Mike goes in search of crackers and more
water. I just sit on the floor, still not quite grasping the
surreality of it all, and being really annoyed I'm taking such a chunk
out of Mike's day. Mike returns with more water and a bag of
salty
peanuts (no crackers, but that's fine), and we wind up sitting there
for probably an hour, just recovering. Mike assures me that he's
fine
-- he's not at work, he's not in his apartment, and, thank God, he's
not on the roof at his mother's. I smile and tell him I was so
concerned about him getting too much sun, and here we are. He
laughs
and says he guesses he was being conditioned for the heat -- while I, I
point out, spent the week in an air-conditioned basement office.
Finally, I'm thinking I'm good for us to get up and
walk around,
and at that moment, an older Six Flags employee man walks by us and
chipperly tells us, "You've camped out in a great spot!" I think
he's
just talking about the heat, until he follows it with, "That storm
should be here in about 15 minutes."
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