Читать книгу Diagnosis: Heart Attack - Karla Weller - Страница 5

Back from China

On the second-to-last weekend in October, the time had come and Gerd finally returned from China. His plane landed on Friday and he had arranged to spend the weekend at a vineyard with old school friends starting on Saturday, which meant that he would put his suitcase down at home one day, just to leave for Freiburg the next morning. The fact that he still wasn’t feeling well couldn’t stop him from going.

On Sunday afternoon, he came back from his trip and went straight to the soccer field to say hi to his friends and fellow players from the athletics club.

On Monday, he appeared on time for work at the machine manufacturing plant where he had worked for 21 years, only to learn he would have to travel to another customer the very next day.

Since there was an event taking place at my company at the same time, I called him on Tuesday at five in the afternoon to tell him I would be going out with the other conference attendees that evening. He was just on his way from the office to the company parking lot and I heard the rattling of his laptop trolley’s wheels, which he dragged behind him as he told me, fouriously, how angry he was that he was being sent to this customer far up in East Germany because, supposedly, no one else could do the job. He completely refused to understand this decision. After all, he had just spent seven weeks in China and someone had to have been handling the customer in Thuringia while he was gone! The choice to send him there now remained a complete mystery to him. The colleague assigned to accompany him also demanded that he take him to Ikea on the way up there so he could buy a desk there for his son who was studying in Karlsruhe. That meant the long drive to Thuringia would be even longer due to the stop at the home-center and the detour to Karlsruhe. Gerd just couldn’t calm down.

After about ten minutes, we ended the conversation and I set off to the meeting with my foreign colleagues. In order to save time, I decided to take a narrow country lane right through the woods. But after a short distance, I had to stop and turn the car around, because a huge tree, obviously struck by a lightning, blocked my way. Seeing the mighty tree beaten by raw forces of nature, left me feeling rather uneasy, so I turned around and drove on the regular street now.

Since my colleagues wanted to freshen up in their hotel rooms first, I was still alone in the restaurant when my phone rang. It was Justin, saying. “Mom, dad is lying down on the floor here, gasping for air!”