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"May I have a bedpan?" I asked.

"Why?" Richard moved quickly.

"So I can drill it at your head."

I lay bare-chested and hooked up to machines in the emergency room. There were no curtains around me and someone's charming 10-year-old boy wandered by and gawked with uninhibited curiosity. I politely suggested that he excuse himself. He didn't. So I hollered at the little peeper to shove off. Everyone excitedly told me to calm down.

"I don't think it's good for you to get so upset," Richard said. That's when I asked for the bedpan.

I was fairly certain that the pains in my chest and down my arm were muscle spasms. I'd been hauling pea gravel up the hill for our country herb garden.

The guy who delivered the gravel couldn't get his machinery up to the herb garden, so he dumped it at the bottom. Richard told me not to attempt to move a ton of gravel up the hill. I ignored him.

The day before the attack, my massage therapist warned me that she'd given me a deep massage.

"Take it easy for the rest of the day and drink lots of water," she said.

When I got home I carried a few buckets — maybe a couple of wheelbarrows full — up to the garden. I drank some wine because wine has water in it, doesn't it?

By bedtime my back was seriously sore. I couldn't handle any movement next to my sorry skeleton, so I dispatched Richard to the guest room.

Eventually I slept. During the night, I awoke to chest pains so severe it hurt to breathe. My left arm wouldn't move. I couldn't find the breath to call for help.

Finally I crashed a lamp to the floor. That got Richard's attention.

He cradled me in his arms for hours. At 4 a.m., we agreed to go to the hospital. I thought that meant we were going to the hospital.

Richard shaved, showered and dressed in a suit ("I'll go straight on to work," he said). Meanwhile, I cut my nightgown off, gingerly eased my corpse into loose clothes and waited for him.

"Don't worry, Daddy loves you. Everything's okay," Richard cooed to the dog as he smothered him with kisses.

While Richard fed Randolph, walked him and settled him with toys and treats, I eased myself down the stairs, sitting and resting on each step.

At 5 a.m., we left for the hospital. On the way to emergency, Richard swung the car into the local gas station.

"Where are you going?" I yelled.

"Getting The Globe and Mail."

"If you're looking for my obituary, it won't be in till tomorrow," I hollered, knowing the exertion could kill me.

At the hospital he dropped me off at emergency and went to park. I shuffled in. The halls were deserted except for a dreary nurse. She ignored me. I sat on the chair next to her and waited for her to finish her crossword — 11 down, how to die: heart attack.

"Chest pains," I gasped.

She sighed heavily and slowly strapped a blood-pressure gauge onto me.

Richard came shambling down the corridor toward us.

"Wow" the nurse said. "We never see anyone dressed like that here. Especially at 5 a.m. Nice suit."

"Brioni," Richard crowed. "Dianne made me get it last time we were in Rome."

"Your necktie Little dogs. Adorable"

"Hermès. Dianne made me buy it at duty-free. I like to think the little white dog is Randolph, even though he eventually turned black and the black dog is Benson. He was re-homed but died. Randolph is our natural-born dog …"

"Will you shut the hell up about the dogs and bring me back to life?" I said.

Nurse Ratched and Pierre Cardin gazed at me.

"She's okay," the nurse said.

"I knew it," Richard sighed.

Nevertheless, I got stripped bare, hooked up to some machines and examined by a 10-year-old. All agreed that I had strained some muscles.

Richard was late for a breakfast meeting. As he sped to the house I screamed the whole way that he was trying to finish me off in a car accident.

At home, I arranged myself in a state of repose on the living-room floor.

"Now what?" I asked.

"Pop some muscle relaxants and lie on the floor and watch Oprah all day," he said. Why should it be different from any other day?

He placed the drugs, water, dog leash and phone next to me on the floor and took off. Throughout the day he called to make sure I wasn't dead or lugging more gravel up the hill.

"Do you love me as much as you do the dog?" I whined.

"Of course."

Richard left work early that night. At 8 p.m., he called from his car.

"Don't worry about dinner," he said.

I'd been prostrate on the floor all day thinking that no one, except Oprah, loved me.

"I picked up food for myself," Richard said. Long pause. "Is there anything I can get for you?" Frosty silence. "Maybe a bedpan?"

Dianne Lococo lives in Toronto.

Illustration by Mark Lazenby.