The long days on the boat turned into bonding moments between my uncle and me. He soon became a father figure and a best friend. I’ve wanted to be just like him ever since I started working with him when I was ten years old. I thought he was the greatest thing to walk the face of the Earth and nothing could take him down.

One day this summer he didn’t call at the usual time, which was very unusual because we work everyday in the summer. I waited by the phone until it rang. I answered to a panicking voice telling me to bring my grandmothers inhalers next door because my uncle couldn’t breathe. I didn’t even bother to dress my feet, I just grabbed the inhaler and ran next door. I found him lying on the floor and gave him the inhalers. He had been diagnosed with COPD so we just thought that his breathing was bad. My aunt and I soon found that they weren’t working when his color kept turing grey and his arm was going numb. I lost my grandfather to a heart attack so I knew what it was. My aunt and I called for an ambulance just in time because as soon as they got him in he began to have a massive heart attack.

When we arrived at the Machias Hospital we rushed in into the emergency room. The smells of illness and death hit me in the face. Hospitals always smell the worst. They are the most uncomfortable place in the world. We went to the room where my uncle was in. By the time we got into the room they had already had him stabilized so my aunt walked outside to calm down. I stayed. Soon everything turned to a blurr, I didn’t know what was going on. The line turned flat and the doctors and nurses were zapping my uncle off the hospital bed with paddles. A man took m out of the room and closed the door. I had no idea what was happening. I just knew it wasn’t good.

Moments passed and the man came back out to tell me that he had had another heart attack and they had to life flight him to Bangor Hospital to have a stint put in his heart.

That is when I came to a realization that I came so close to losing the most important person to me. The person who became my hero and my best friend.

He made it through his surgery fine and is now back to work, but it gave me a flash of insight that anything can happen.

Our relationship is stronger now, because the heart attack has limited his abilities to do a lot of things that he was able to do before. I have had to step up to the plate to do those things and he appreciates that.