Alfred Cunningham was last seen at seventy seven years old wearing a hunter green fedora that matched his old favorite--the hunter green tweed suit. The heart attack came on suddenly while he was taking a stroll in the park near his residence. With violently trembling hands he grasped at his chest pulling a yellow stained fitted shirt so forcefully a few buttons popped off their dry rotted threads. The chest area of the shirt became a wad of wrinkles that would never be ironed out. In fact the shirt itself was never ironed again.
Alfred had been a stocky type but in his old age his frame caved a bit and what was once fat and muscle became limp flab and bones. If one looked closely enough they would find they could see his collarbones and beginning of his sternum outlined quite well under the threadbare fabric of his old button downs.
Alfred still shaved with a razor but since his eyesight was poor, patches of stubble were common geological features of his face and neck. The dryness from shaving made for millions of little dandruff flakes all over his clothing and face. His thick gray hair grew bushy and wild from his ears and eyebrows while his body hair had thinned and become spotty. His nose had grown fat from drinking and his fingernails yellow from smoking, though perhaps they were just yellow because they were old. He was an old man, a widower, and it was obvious.
It was obvious he had never learned to truly take care of himself, to cook, to clean, to bath, without the oversight of a very persistent and consistent woman. For some years now his entire flat smelled of bad breath, not because he didn’t brush his teeth, but because the garbage disposal in the kitchen sink had become blocked with coffee and rotting food and he never bothered to fix it. Occasionally people from the church his wife attended would come and check on him, but Alfred’s company was none too pleasing or entertaining and so these callers dwindled after a couple years. Alfred was an atheist, but not an inspirational man of science with all the fresh conversation of the well read; no, Alfred was merely a nay-sayer. It didn’t matter the topic, Alfred’s opinion was probably defeatist if not totally cynical. He had never bothered voting because he didn’t believe it made any difference, but while his judgments of either party were usually grim, he didn’t concern himself with politics enough to make more than casual flippant statements about whatever administration’s currently corrupt (or seemingly so) affairs. The eras of civil rights and anti-war protests passed him by mostly unchanged. If one dug deep enough they would probably find racist and misogynistic ideologies, but like most of his opinions, they also were just as ill formed. One could try and speak to him on a number a topics but they would come away with very little new enthusiasm for anything but that which they are going to do next. He knew his views were unpopular from watching talk shows, so it wasn’t something he fooled with. Alfred was the type that had been working on being a grouchy old man his entire life, and now that he finally embodied this, he was kind of content, often mocking his own cantankerousness with a little smirk instead of the odious leer he was known for among grocery store clerks and service attendants.
To Alfred, women were worlds away, and while he enjoyed their doting nature, he had long ago given up seeking out their affections. Most were were full of false hopes and annoying expectations. He already had a wife, Patricia, and it was no use looking sharp or losing weight when his wife didn’t care and a younger man could easily lap him in style and clever adulations. They married young, as two foolish virgins; Patricia had her own life, which was patently nothing he was interested in. She talked on the phone to old friends, gossiped about their adult children, made casseroles for her Lutheran pot-lucks and knitted a lot. She was a retired florist and hairdresser, he a retired maintenance man for house appliances like washing machines and wall heaters. Her nature was even more fatalistic than his, but one would never know it without attending a bingo game with her. The last ten years or so they had resigned themselves to silence because she was nearly deaf. They saw to their own private endeavors, such as crossword puzzles, games shows, and baseball games on TV. Neither were exceptionally curious, neither knew much beyond the value of what it takes to survive and the rituals thereof. They mostly bickered about meaningless things, but when they did truly quarrel it was almost always followed by days of cold silence until a warm Sunday or a festive holiday jolted them from the reeds of their pride and despondency. Then it was as if nothing had happened, and should the subject matter arise again it would be hushed back into the dusty shadows of their flat, that unheard frequency would fly into the radio and be played back at them on the TV soapoperas as an echo of their untold inner dramas.
The highlight of their life together came ironically when their only son was killed in the Vietnam war and posthumously awarded a purple-heart medal.Their son had left home at an early age and then been called the duty in his mid-twenties, they had not heard from him in years when they received a letter from him describing the wonders of the people of Vietnam and that he wanted to be home more than anything. This seemed particularly odd to Patricia at the time, but as Alfred pointed out to her, nobody wants to be in the middle of a war. Alfred was always hard on the boy, nothing was good enough. He beat him often enough that the boy struggled in school and had few friends until he was able to move out. If one were to sit down and have a touchy feely conversation with his son (which he might be apt to do) he would tell you that the time he caught a foul ball at the baseball park as a boy was only time he remembered being praised by his father.
The medal garnered the couple a surplus of attention by friends and neighbors, so much so they almost forgot their only child’s death until a couple years and a fun trip to the capital later, when the weight of sorrow quietly swept in with the dust from the deconstruction of the old cinema across from their residence. Patricia often took the boy to matinees there and it was a damned shame the Baptists, pockets stuffed full of cash from evangelical ministries, saw fit to have the old art deco styled theater torn down to be a parking lot for all their new customers. The sympathetic voices had faded and so had the floral printed curtains that hung still in their tiny salon. The fish tank (their only pets) thickened with algae and the TV was always too loud. The fish died a month after Patricia, both seemingly suffocated on the fumes of smoke, decay, and bodily delipadation.
That was five years ago. Alfred did learn to boil eggs and made almost everything via microwave or from a box. There was no one to complain, so he drank more Colt 45s and smoked more marlboros. The once pristine condominium diachronically outfitted with decor from several eras now was covered in junk mail and grime. After a few months he threw out all his wife’s clothes, the fussy doilies and greeting card souvenirs of bygone people and times, and went on with his life. He did miss his wife when he went on strolls because that was one thing they did do together aside from eat, sleep, and watch tv.
The person first to notice Alfred doing the heart attack dance was walking behind him. To him, it did seem Alfred was dancing, especially since he had on large headphones blaring a high ratio of beat per minute electronica music from his tiny computer designed especially to play music into headphones and speakers of all sorts. He really didn’t notice anything of relevance was happening at all until Alfred was stumbling to the ground with his left arm outstretched to soften his fall. At this point something clicked in his brain, but he kept his pace all the same.
Our onlooker’s name (at least he still an onlooker at this point in the game) is Brandon. He was last seen at the age of 48, although he may be still living somewhere. At this point he is twenty-six, and despite only living a couple blocks from Alfred, he has never seen the old man before, who is now quietly laying more and more still on the ground.
Brandon’s device especially made to play music doubled as a phone, and, well, many other things. He fumbled to switch from music to the phone part of the device that contained a digital dial pad.
A robotic male voice chimed “Hello, what’s your emergency?”
Not given much choice, Brandon began to describe the behaviors of the man gently rocking on the on the sidewalk before him, but he was soon interrupted by a non-robotic female voice asking “Is he breathing? ” “Should I give him CPR or something?” Brandon broke in, almost yelling into the phone.”
“Well, is he breathing?” The operator repeated.
Placidly, Brandon kneeled down and gently touched the hand most available to being scrutinized. Alfred had both hands on his chest now and was very tensed in this position. Yet with a little work Brandon had his hand around the man’s wrist in such a way as to check his pulse. Brandon tried to observe whether Alfred was breathing or not. Simultaneously he realized Alfred was neither breathing nor had a detectable pulse.
“He has no pulse, should I try CPR now?” He asked impatiently over the flat rectangular compaction of tiny circuit boards containing even tinier circuit boards.
“Yes, please proceed with CPR, do you know how to administer CPR?”
“Yes” Brandon said, and laid down the phone in grass just off the sidewalk.
Despite receiving mediocre CPR by Brandon, Alfred started to show signs of life shortly after a few good manual pumps to the chest. The sounds were awful, and Brandon wasn’t sure whether he should continue his ministrations on this poor old man. Brandon really didn’t know what do at this point, so he continued CPR until Alfred managed to sputter “ulgh” in such a way that Brandon paused his frantic chest pumping.
Brandon responded by yelling “What?” with a surprised even almost giddy voice.
“Enough!” Alfred whimpered through a deep rough voice.
“I’ve called 9-1-1 and they should be on their way any second!” Brandon exclaimed excitedly.
Alfred didn’t respond. The images in his mind were sucking at his consciousness. He felt a bit like one feels when they are young child trying very hard not to fall asleep. It was as if he was trying to reject the most comfortable warm feeling the world, and in rejecting it pain shot through his body. Over the course of a few minutes he lay there going in and out of consciousness, each time unconsciousness folded out longer. But the longer he went unconscious the more painful it became and thus he awoke finding no peace in either consciousness or lack of it.
He vaguely knew someone was attending to him, but as soon as that occurred to him, everything changed. Suddenly many hands were violently moving him and voices stirred around him. It had not occurred to him how pleasant laying on the ground felt until he found himself being removed from it.
After this, things didn’t go so well Alfred.
Brandon watched the efficiency with which paramedics scooped the old man up and slid him into the waiting ambulance. Someone asked him if he knew the old man, to which Brandon replied negatively. The conversation was briefer than expected and he soon found himself watching the old man disappear as they shut the back doors and exited with a single whoop of the siren and flashing lights.
For a few seconds Brandon looked around the park he had been walking through. He spotted some people in the distance but they were steadily walking away from him in a dash to exit the park, for whatever reason. It was as if they knew he would try to talk to them about what just happened and weren’t having it.
Formerly, he had been on his way to work, which took five minutes less time by walking through the park. So he resumed walking, rather slowly, towards work; towards those colorful nic-nacs, a bobble-head of Einstein and pac-man stress ball sitting idly beside the computer in his small cubicle. Questions of all kinds swirled about his mind until he found himself nearly to his destination. Glancing at his large white flamboyant digital watch that cost him a fifth of his paycheck, he became panicked at how late he was for work. He increased his walking speed and started to form the right sounding excuse in his head.
Having to administer CPR to an old man on his way to work seemed like an unlikely story. Would they believe him? They would have to, he decided.
Meanwhile Alfred went through many changes, including death. He suffered another heart attack and died towards the end of his first ambulance ride, and his shirt was never ironed again.