It was a muggy morning at Cozy Cottage Nursing Home, and the arthritis was bothering me pretty bad. Hurt to move. Hurt to type. Still does, matter of fact. That's why, when they asked me for an account of yesterday's incident for the residents' weekly newsletter, I asked this here lovely nurse Elba to type it up for me. (Thank you, Elba.) Well, so there I was in the morning, and it hurt to do pretty much anything. I was lying in bed, watching my favorite soap opera, when the TV suddenly went static. Can you believe it? There are old folks here who depend on their morning entertainment as the highlight of the day, and the gosh darn TV wouldn't work.

 

I took the remote, and I mashed a button here and a button there (which hurt, don't forget, cause of the pressure I had to use with my fingers), but nothing worked. I'm not saying I did the right thing by losing my temper, but lose it I did. I start hollering and waving my arms at the black screen. Maybe it was the waving that did it. Or maybe it was the static electricity built up in the blankets. (These blankets are the absolute worst for static electricity. That's why my hair sticks out on the sides of my head, makes me look like an egg with a fur coat on.) Anyway, somewhere in the middle of me yelling, I felt a ZAP! The ZAP started inside my chest, moved along my arms, and shot out my fingers. I thought I was having a heart attack, so I grabbed the call button on the bed, but right then, the TV started working. My soap started playing, and I was so glad to see it that I forgot all about the call button. My heart was feeling fine anyway.

 

I didn't think anything about it until lunch time. Elba was helping me that day (Weren't you, darling?). She wheeled me out to the dining hall and set me at the table. I was on my medication by now so my hands weren't hurting as bad as they usually do, and I was ready to feed myself. When they brought the tray I was so hungry I grabbed up my knife and fork, ready to tuck into that dried out chicken like nobody's business. But then I felt another ZAP!! This one shocked me (literally, Elba, hehe), so I dropped the knife and fork. When they hit the table, I could see scorch marks where my hands had been touching them.

 

I didn't tell anyone. I've seen too many other folks go the way of dementia, not knowing where they were or who they were talking to, and I figured that's what was happening to me, causing hallucinations or some such. I kept my mouth shut, and they got me ready for the water aerobics class after lunch.

 

I've got nothing against water aerobics as a principle. I can see how it makes sense to give us octogenarians our exercise in the pool, where we don't weigh ourselves down so heavy. But my old joints just scraped and screamed through the whole thing, so I wasn't the chipperest squirrel in the tree. That would have been Bertha. Bertha was one of the ones with dementia, but for some reason the pool really woke her up like she was her old self. Maybe she was a dolphin in a previous life. Bertha was always bobbing and swinging and chattering up a storm, smiling at everyone, eyeing the instructor, and just generally having a grand old time.

 

I was NOT having a grand old time. I was gritting my teeth and clenching my jaw and doing what I could to flap around like a senile duck. Then, right in the middle of doing the hokey pokey, I felt a ZAP-ZAP-ZAP!! Three of them, in a row. Now, maybe you're thinking what I should have been thinking before I set foot in the pool: we don't want ZAPPING in the water. Zaps and water should be kept solitary, no combinations or marriages between them, no thank you. But I didn't have the foresight to keep myself out of the water, because I didn't really believe I was the source of all the zapping. Now, in the worst way possible, I found I was.

 

Those ZAPS shot through the pool, and seniors were yelping and hollering and scrambling to get out of the water. But the real trouble was, half the seniors in the pool wore pacemakers. Every single one of those pacemakers stopped after being zapped three times, and every single one of those un-pace-made hearts began suffering heart attacks—some more mild, some severe.

 

The nurse called 911, and in about 5 minutes, all the seniors having heart attacks were out of the water, lying on towels, and teams of paramedics were trying to shock their hearts back into rhythm. Ordinarily, this would not have made too much of a stir. Heart attacks were pretty common around Cozy Cottage, sad to say. But even we've never had twelve at once.

 

The first ambulance couldn't handle it by itself, so two more were called in. While they were trying to save lives, I was melting in a puddle of shame and guilt. I sat on a pool chair, and nobody asked if I was all right, because it didn't look like I was having a heart attack right then and there. But I felt like I was having twelve heart attacks at once, that's how sad I was that I'd been the cause of this terrible accident. For a moment my head spun, and it seemed as though the whole world was being sucked into my chest. And as if the day wasn't strange enough, just as one of the paramedics yelled, "Clear!" for the tenth time, I felt a kind of pop right in the ticker, and the lights went out. We'd lost power.

 

The pool area had windows in the roof, so we could still see. But it was shadowy and crowded, and the five teams of paramedics all started yelling that their defibrillators had stopped working. They split into groups, starting CPR on the dozen dying seniors, and I heard one of the paramedics banging the machines and wondering how they could have lost power when they're supposed to have their own battery supply. One of the nurses lost it and started bawling. (I know, it wasn't you, Elba, but you were there, weren't you darling?) I heard one paramedic ask Elba where he could find the generator. And she told him: "In the courtyard, behind the oak tree. I'll show you." 

 

Right then my mind cleared, and I knew what I had to do.

 

It took me longer than it should have. I should have worked harder in water aerobics, I know. But I walked by myself out of the pool room, down the hallway, past the office. My knees were on fire, and my hips were beyond fire, but I was carrying on. I opened the door to the courtyard, and sure enough, there was Elba with the paramedic, trying to start the emergency generator. 

 

I approached and put my hands on the generator. (I appreciate, Elba, how you called out "Mr. Niles," in a voice of touching concern. You knew what that trip cost me.) The paramedic said, "Out of the way, sir," but he didn't push me. I guess he could see my face twisted in pain. At least he hesitated long enough for me to think back to those ZAPPING sensations and try to figure out if I could make one happen. 

 

I sent my mind into the center of my chest, where I'd felt it all start each time. I imagined striking a match, but that didn't work. Then I imagined flipping a switch, but that didn't work, either. Then, finally, I imagined an enormous bolt of lightning shooting down from the sky to ZAP me in the center of my chest, and what do you know? I felt the electricity charge up inside of me and flow out of my arms and through my fingers. 

 

The generator gave a "sizzle," and then a "chug chug," and it started working. All around Cozy Cottage, lights flickered on. Defibrillators got plugged in. Hearts were shocked back into good working order.

 

I heard later on that the paramedics were able to save eleven seniors that day. Old Bertha was the one who didn't make it. They said she died in the pool, even before anybody made it out. But that was where she'd have wanted to be.

 

I've stayed out of the pool from that day on. I do my exercise in the courtyard now. Yes, it's fire for my joints. But I learned there's still some fight in the old dog yet. And I want to make sure I never have to be a hero again—if you can call it being a hero when you were the villain first. What's that you say Elba? Well of course you'd say that. You always were too good to me.