The nurse told me the sedatives they’d administer during my transesophageal echocardiogram (TEE) would make me feel “like I’ve had a few pints.”

Which is why when I walked with E on wobbly legs back to the car, I sunk into the seat like a drunk, leaned my head on the base of the open window, and conked out  while he took care of paperwork inside the hospital.

When he got back to the car, he reclined my seat and I drifted in the limbo between being  asleep and awake, the warm September sunshine making everything in the car feel so cozy, my mind drifting like a leaf on a breeze.

Images slide behind my eyes and words float slowly through my brain, finally catching in my consciousness. Did the doctor tell me I have a hole in my heart? I think he did.

If I try I can conjure a blurry memory of his face hanging above mine and his words falling  “An opening in the membrane of the heart.”

My eyes and limbs are heavy. I won’t open them. I don’t want to wake up yet. I want to stay in the sunny safe place where I have not received bad news, where I can still wonder whether I really have a hole in my heart. Truth taps me on the shoulder and shakes me, truth courts my rational mind, which is opening ever so slowly, like a moonflower at dusk.

I'm starting to remember. When he spoke to me at the end of the procedure, my mind had grabbed on to the first part of what he had said: “No clots in the atria…” The words I was waiting for made it easy to let go of the rest: “but a hole in the membrane of your heart.”

We hear what we want to hear. We know what we want to know.

I’ll call my cardiologist when I’m ready to know more, when I’m ready to face what comes next--changes in medication? surgery?