Tuesday Poem - Life Support Machine by Amy Brown

6 Life Support Machine

   (Dr Matthew Nicholas examines Jason Sidney

   for signs of miraculous intervention by Jeff

   Mangum—2003)

Jason Sidney became my patient when he fell

in front of my car at the traffic lights outside

the Bikram yoga studio where he had been treating

his anxiety for the last few months. I pronounced him

dead at the scene, after attempting resuscitation,

slamming the heels of my palms on his wet chest

(blond hair and clothing still drenched in sweat)

breaking his breastbone as best I could to get at his heart.

I lost him in front of a crowd of yoga-goers and latenight

shoppers, on the yellow-lit pavement outside an expensive

supermarket. The sombre mood was ruined by a phonecall;

the answerer apologised for interrupting (as if

she were in a theatre) yet her ringtone became a form of life

support—provoked what we are now calling a miracle.

Jason Sidney came back to life. His myocardium regained

strength. The octopus trap of his bulging left ventricular apex

(I only knew this after the ECG taken later at the hospital)

shrank as the song seemed to abate the rush of

catecholamine in his system. His eyes opened

and he said Jeff Mangum. I mean Neutral Milk Hotel.

These names were new to me but I was used to patients'

cryptic speech. No, I don't understand the aetiology of

his illness or recovery. My guess is that a microvascular

vasospasm caused by the physical stress of his recent

exercise combined with emotional trauma to quite literally break

Jason Sidney's heart. The then twenty-seven-year-old journalist

had suffered from depression and anxiety since his younger

brother's suicide the previous year. He dealt with the family

tragedy alone, preferring to work than grieve. Stoicism was

not sustainable, he told me, so he took up yoga. Two

hours in 105 degrees Fahrenheit, feet burning at the heat

vent, head light, yellow bile rising, he found himself

distracted. While his body was trained, the gun in his mind,

the mouth in his mind, the brother in his mind, the gun

in the mouth of the brother in his mind, was blown away

with deep breathing. It worked, he told me. He was free

to sleep for eight hours without nightmares before

the effect began to wear off. Twice or three times

a week in the studio that smelt like a sauna would not do.

He had to return daily—inquired about becoming a teacher.

Whenever his body was not stewing and stretching

anxiety would reappear. We agreed he must have overdone it.

The gripping pain kicked in as he walked down the stairs, held

the glass door for a pretty girl, then collapsed on the sidewalk.

Weary from a twelve-hour shift in General Med, but recalling

the oath I'd taken, I parked my Astra and pushed through

the crowd of yoga enthusiasts, the endorphin bliss rudely

shocked. I am a doctor (something I don't much like to say).

This brings us back to the music. If the phone hadn't been deep

in the girl's handbag, its volume increasing with each ring, if

she'd answered instantly, Jason Sidney would have died.

Neutral Milk Hotel was his brother's favourite band.

The ringtone song had seeped through the Sidney house

for weeks before the suicide. The music affected his adrenaline.

Takotsubo, the octopus trap, receded. Jason breathed. There was

    a beat

below the breastbone I'd broken. He survived. He is still alive.

This is the central poem (for me) in Amy Brown's disturbing and

enlivening book – The Odour Of Sanctity. Because I had never

heard of Jeff Mangum and Neutral Milk Hotel I wondered if

perhaps she was 'making it all up.' I wondered if she was using

the lives of saints and the making of saints and the work of saints

(puzzling and intriguing manifestations of the human imagination)

to showcase a modern equivalent that could make sense of it all,

for me, at least. Just one of her readers. Not raised in the faith, but

cognisant of the phenomenon. But no, I googled, and there it all is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Mangum

I was interested to read that Jeff Mangum played a gig at the Kings

Arms Hotel in Auckland, New Zealand, and, as Amy is from New

Zealand, I wondered if perhaps she had gone along. I wondered if

that was the night the idea for this book manifested. It is a very trippy

book, it makes one wonder all sorts of things.

http://vup.victoria.ac.nz/the-odour-of-sanctity/