Scared to Death

My uncle was almost scared to death once. He almost crashed a plane into the ground and pulled it up at the last possible second. He landed and seemed fine, but after three hours his lips started to turn blue. He was rushed to the hospital and after determining that he wasn't unhealthy for any tangible reason, the doctors determined that his system was shutting down because he had been almost scared to death.

Yesterday we had an earthquake in Southern California. Not my first, but enough to pitch our house sharply up and sharply down again while we were still in bed. I woke up in an instant panic and yelled "Landslide!!" snapping SPF out of his normally undisturbable sleep. We heard glass break, felt the condo lurch backwards once more and stop. I leapt out of bed and threw on the nearest jeans that I could find and ran into my closet to find a shirt to wear and wasted thirty seconds at least debating between my pink Franz Ferdinand shirt and my gray U2 Vertigo shirt, the whole time yelling at myself that I was going to be buried under forty tons of ocean-view, lagoon hillside because of a shirt.

I grabbed the U2 and ran upstairs. SPF had already dressed, grabbed the cat carriers and successfully shoved Isis into the first. I saw her and started screaming "Where is Osiris?!?! WHERE IS HE???" SPF told me to calm down, that everything would be fine and we would find the cat. I tore back downstairs, saw a streak of black fuzz and chased after it. I managed to grab a thoroughly terrified cat from under the bed, race back upstairs and shove him into the second carrier, all the while his claws trenched staunchly into my arms. I didn't care I just shoved, screaming at the cat the whole time to get in the f&*$%ng carrier.

This was all done within two minutes and we were out the door.

After a minute of looking we realized that the cracks were not any larger, The Pit was not any deeper, and the people across the way were out on the street trying to determine the same thing we were trying to determine. What the hell just happened? Our neighbors told us it was an earthquake in Borrego Springs, about 50 miles away. A 5.6 on the Richter scale. Our house was fine. The landslide wasn't worsened. And our elderly neighbor had not died of a heart attack. None of this seemed to ease my panic. For three months I have been dreading one event only, and before I knew better, there it was. My mind had told my body that we were about to die.

I could feel every twitch of my heart. Every expansion, every pump. It was racing and I thought it was going to explode. Undoubtedly the adrenaline of my worst fear was enough to shock my system beyond normal repair. Osiris, presumably feeling equal panic, clawed his way out of his cat carrier. Isis was turning circles in hers. SPF and I began to search the house for damage. After all, we had heard glass breaking when the earthquake hit. Nothing. No glass. No missing decorations or vases or mirrors or pictures. No broken windows or porch lights. We have no idea if we psychosomatically and simultaneously imagined breaking glass, or if one of the cats threw a jingling cat toy into the wall out of fright and it sounded like glass. Those are our only two scenarios at the moment.

I did not recover all day. My heart finally slowed down after about an hour, and a few rum and cokes soothed the twitching, but I was worn out, toast, for the rest of the day. And into today, it turns out. I am still acutely aware of my heart and where it is located in my chest cavity.

Needless to say I slept fully dressed last night.

I am still waiting for my lips to turn blue.