Dad has impeccable timing

Monday afternoon an email arrived from our new project manager. Normally I won't bother reading emails from HR, Office Managers, or Project Managers unless someone says, "Hey, did you see what so-and-so's email said", but for some odd reason I went ahead and read it. The new guy is British, so I thought maybe there'd be something funny in there like the word cheerio or govna.

Much to my dismay there was no clever usage of breakfast cereals or references to political office. It was a meeting notice, and worse yet a meeting notice that was recurring every single day from 2:30-3. It was to be one of those, "What did you do today?" meetings which my people tend to hate.

I got up to march over to Sean's office and ask, "What the hell?" when my computer sounded a tone to inform me that I had received an instant message. It was from Sean and read:
"What the hell?"
I jumped up and made the 5 foot trek to his office.
"I know!"
"Did you notice that you have to list 5 things, including what your best moment was today, and what your worst moment was today?"
"I'm pretty sure my worst moment was when that email arrived. Do you think that's acceptable?"
"You should say, 'Rachel hugged me last night'"
"She did hug me last night, and it was awesome... are you spying on me? I don't think I can say that in the meeting anyhow. I don't want Laing to cry because he's jealous that I touched a real female."

After a good 45 minutes of bitching about how we didn't have 15 minutes to waste every day on some silly meeting we finally gave up and went back to myspacingwork.

That day just happened to be my parent's wedding anniversary. I'm sure someone told me how many years, but I've since forgotten. I'm going to venture a guess at 36 years though. My assumption is that my dad hadn't planned anything great and was, last minute, scrambling for an idea.

About an hour before the meeting I was looking for a way to get out of it when I got a call from my mom.

"Well... your father's had a heart attack."
"Where are you?"
"T-Bird"
"I'll be right there"

I was gone before anyone even noticed and going slightly above the recommended speed on my way up I-17. I eventually found my family in the waiting room of the ICU. By that time he was completely stable and still insisting that it was just "that spicy chicken sandwich" that he'd had for lunch, and not a heart attack.

Two separate doctors went over the situation with us. Everyone in the family nodded in agreement as though they had any idea as to what was going on. I for one was lost, but really didn't know what questions to ask so I just listened. One thing I understood was, "Quadruple Bypass, tomorrow". By this time we got to see my dad, who was laying on some sort of x-ray type table.

He was in good spirits and joking around about how he had done it just to get out of the anniversary. The doctor casually asked if he had any questions. I'd assume he expected the normal, "Is it going to hurt?" or something small like that. What the doctor didn't count on is my dad's endless quest for knowledge that even a heart attack can't slow.

I've joked with him by calling him Cliff Claven due to his savant like memorization of every show that has every played on either the history channel or discovery channel. Soon they were bringing heart models and discussing the exact names of which arteries were to be bypassed. After a lengthy amount of research/discussion, my dad finally agreed to the surgery.

Later in the evening he asked me how my day was. I told him about the meeting and he told me I should have gone.
"Nah, I was looking for an excuse to get out of it anyhow"

Today he was moved from the ICU to a normal bed and appears to be recovering well. The doctor described the operation as "text book".