The Key (continued)

Josh put the gold card in his wallet figuring that someone he knew would eventually ask him about it and reveal themselves as the purveyor of the joke. 

A couple weeks went by and he forgot about the card until the first unsettling event occurred.

On his way home from work one evening, he witnessed the car in front of him hit a dog that had run into the street chasing a ball.  The driver of the car, a woman, stopped and got out of her car as a girl of about 10 ran screaming to the dog.  

Josh stopped, got out and approached the dog, a young golden retriever that had obviously been killed by the collision with the car.  Josh picked the dog up to remove it from the road and as he was carrying it, the dog took a breath and whined.   When he lay the dog down, it hopped to its feet, shook itself, licked Josh’s hand and, looking perfectly normal, ran to the girl who cried with delight and ran off into her yard with the dog in pursuit.

The woman, who was so relieved in not having killed the dog that she totally missed the seemingly miraculous recovery that had just occurred, got into her car and drove away.  

Josh, though not a veterinarian, had seen enough animals that had been hit by cars to recognize a dead dog when he saw one and was astounded at the animals seeming recovery from death, but he didn’t connect it to the card until a couple of weeks later.

Wednesday morning of the next week, Josh was at work in his cubicle when he heard a shout, “someone bring the defibrillator, Mr Thornton is having a heart attack”, yelled Sarah, one of the secretaries.  Mr Thornton was the supervisor of Josh’s division in the insurance company for which Josh was an actuary, he was overweight, had a stressed personality and had a slight case of edema, fluid puffing the skin of his ankles and lower legs.

By the time that Josh got to the scene, Sarah was doing CPR on Mr Thornton as Billows from accounting was getting the defibrillator ready to shock Mr Thornton’s heart.  A call had been made and the EMT’s were on their way.  They tried the defibrillator 3 times over the next 6 minutes and Sarah continued to do CPR in between, to no avail.

When the EMT’s arrived, 12 minutes later, they could find no pulse and noted that Mr Thornton’s pupils were dilated and fixed, yet they placed him on their stretcher and made to take him to the hospital.  Josh, who was standing next to the stretcher, placed Mr Thornton’s right arm, which had fallen limply down beside the body, back across his chest, when Mr Thornton gave a great shudder, took a deep breath and opened his eyes.

“What’s going on” he asked, to the astonishment of everyone around him, especially the EMT’s, who were sure that they had come upon a DOA when they’d arrived.

Mr Thornton was taken to the hospital per EMT protocol and the office returned to quasi normal for the rest of the day.

The real surprise came the next week, when Mr Thornton was back at work and thanking Sarah, Billows and everyone else for coming to his rescue.  The great “news” that he shared was “ After all the tests I have been given, my Cardiologist was dumfounded.  He said that he had previously found that I had the early stages of Congestive Heart Failure, yet now, all my tests show a heart in perfect shape with no anomalies.  I’m fit as a fiddle!” he laughed.

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