November 4, 2023

Lange woke up on a Saturday morning and immediately glanced at his Apple Watch. He saw that he had Saturday detention scheduled for that morning, but he felt off. And his watch’s heart rate monitor confirmed it.
Less than a month since his ICD had shocked him for the first time ever, Lange was struggling to leave behind an unshakeable sense of dread and paranoia physically and metaphorically instilled in his heart.
“I had never really given my heartbeat a second thought until I was shocked in September,” Lange said. “It was on my mind literally every 30 seconds. I would think, ‘Is my heart out of order?’ I would go about my daily business hyper aware of my condition.”
After that first incident on Sept. 10, Lange couldn’t so much as sleep without the fear of getting shocked again. He was living a real-life nightmare.
So he called Head of Middle School Dean Clayman and asked if he could take the morning off.
“I was literally elbow deep in sourdough when Mr. Lange called me,” Clayman said. “I was in my kitchen preparing for the faculty baking club, but I knew (Lange) had been facing challenges, so I brought my sourdough to Saturday detention and finished baking (at school).”
With his morning cleared and now able to focus on monitoring his heart, Lange walked the short distance to his close friend and neighbor, Director of Communications Ray Westbrook’s, house with ungraded sixth grade DBQ essays in hand. And a hospital to-go pack. Just in case.
At 3 p.m., he started to feel lightheaded. Suddenly, the world faded away.
“I heard this faint, ‘Ray…,’” Westbrook said. “I went into the dining area and saw him reared back and eyes closed. It happened so quickly. I thought he died.”
Almost as quickly as he had gone, Lange was back, his ICD responsible for saving his life. Only this time, instead of once, it had shocked him twelve times.
“His head reared forward and his eyes opened,” Westbrook said. “He turned and saw me and said, ‘what are you doing here?’ He didn’t even remember calling me. That’s when I said, ‘we’re going to the hospital.’”
Once they arrived at Baylor Scott & White, the hospital Lange had previously checked into in September, all it took were a few words to send the staff into a calculated frenzy.
I’m having a cardiac emergency. I need to be admitted to the emergency room.
“A lot of people go to the emergency room and have to wait hours,” Lange said. “I did not wait more than 30 seconds. They do not mess around when it comes to cardiac.”
After Lange was stabilized, Westbrook began talking with the emergency room physician, soon realizing that he was an alum, William Morris ’12, which Westbrook believes was a testament to the outreach of the St. Mark’s community.
But as Lange’s heart continued to deteriorate, that moment of school connection was also a great bit of foreshadowing.