Treasury of Joy & Inspiration (12 page)

At home it was hard for him to get out of bed, and it exhausted him to move across a room. His sons and friends had to help him into the woods to sit in a deer blind during the hunting season.

By nature an energetic, take-charge man, Chet now lived in a quagmire of pain and lethargy. At 58, his life was all but over. The only thing the family could do was pray. Further bypass surgery was too risky. For the previous four years, Chet had been on a waiting list for a heart transplant. With each passing week he descended a little further into a misery made worse by his awful realization that a healthy person had to die in order for him to live.

One night, during these dark days, Todd Herbst paid one of his frequent visits, making his way past a glowering Chet to see Patti. As the boy and girl played cards and watched television late into the night, a show came on in which some people were killed in an automobile accident.

“If I ever got killed,” Patti declared, “I'd really want my father to have my heart.” This was something she had expressed many times to Todd.

But on this occasion, Todd said to Patti: “But I bet if I got killed and they offered your dad my heart, he wouldn't take it!”

“He probably wouldn't,” Patti said, chuckling over the continuing saga of her father and her friend.

Within hours
of the early-morning telephone call from the hospital, the Szuber family—plus a dozen close friends and relatives—were heading to Knoxville to be at Patti's bedside. Over and over, Jeanne and Chet told people how they had spoken to Patti just a few hours before the accident. Over and over, they replayed the events that had culminated in this living nightmare.

As a last fling before she returned to the academic grind of nursing school, she and Todd Herbst had set out for a camping trip in the Great Smoky Mountains. The August weather in the mountains was magnificent. The mist hanging in the hollows, drifting upward, enchanted Patti and Todd.

The two friends made camp in Kentucky the first night and reached Tennessee on the second day. In Gatlinburg, Patti and Todd paid $20 for a helicopter ride up into the mountains. Looking down, they could see the hollows and peaks softened by the summer haze that gives the Smokies their name. The helicopter ride—Patti's first—was so thrilling that, back on the ground, she telephoned her parents to tell them how much fun she was having.

After setting up camp, she and Todd had supper and, later that evening, found a roadside tavern called What's Up?—a place filled with music and local people their age. They then joined new-found friends at a party nearby. “We had such a great time dancing and drinking beer,” Todd says today. “But we talked about how one of us had to drive, so I stopped drinking an hour and a half before we left. We were always careful about that . . .”

Their good intentions were undone by alcohol and speed. The crash occurred at 2:20 a.m. on a sharp curve in the mountains near Pigeon Forge. Traveling 20 miles an hour over the speed limit, Todd lost control and hit a rock outcropping. According to police, the car skidded 832 feet. The vehicle flipped and rolled, then rolled again and again. Neither Patti nor Todd was wearing a seat belt.

When the car came to rest, Patti had been thrown out and lay on her back unconscious, blood pouring from the back of her head. A swatch of her hair was found on the pavement 60 feet away. Todd had numerous cuts and bruises but no serious injuries.

Paramedics, alerted by motorists, soon arrived. Shortly after that, a rescue helicopter clattered down to take Patti to the University of Tennessee Medical Center in Knoxville, 15 minutes away.

Todd's blood-alcohol level was .14, notably higher than Tennessee's .10 mark for legal intoxication. He was led away by the police to be treated for his cuts and later was charged with several violations, including drunken driving. Jailed overnight, Todd was released the next morning. He got a policeman to drive him to Knoxville, 45 miles away, so he could check on Patti. He was sure she would be fine.

But at the hospital Todd learned the brutal truth—that Patti had suffered severe brain damage and was being kept alive by machines. He also learned that Jeanne and Chester Szuber—as well as numerous family members, friends and neighbors, including his own parents—were on their way to Tennessee.

“There are no words for the horror I felt,” Todd says. “The best friend I had in the whole world was in the next room dying, and I was responsible. I was petrified to think of facing Mr. Szuber.” Throughout the day, as he waited for others to arrive, Todd went in to see Patti. He sat beside her bed crying and holding her hand.

One of the first friends to arrive, after driving all night from Detroit, was Thom Bishop. Patti had been his girlfriend for several years. From the Berkley area, Thom had also known Todd Herbst for years. He saw Todd as a harmless, if aimless, person—someone Patti was extremely close to and was trying to help.

“When I saw Todd standing there,” says Thom, “I had to slow down and get my thoughts together. I loved Patti. I really didn't know whether I was going to hit him or hug him. I knew some people who would have felt like killing Todd at that moment.”

As Thom approached where Patti lay, he instinctively reached for Todd and embraced him, and the two young men wept.

Later, after Todd took a walk to clear his head, he returned to Patti's room and came face to face with Jeanne and Chester Szuber. He didn't know if it would be better to vanish or to stay and weather Chet's wrath. Nearly paralyzed with fear, Todd stood, speechless, as they turned toward him.

“As soon as they saw me, Jeanne threw her arms around me and said she loved me,” Todd says. Jeanne had always liked Todd and thought Patti was a good influence on him. A moment later Chet embraced him warmly, saying that he knew Todd would never do anything purposely to hurt Patti. All Todd could do was weep with miserable relief.

Then Jeanne and Chester Szuber went into the room to say farewell, forever, to their daughter. The doctors told them Patti's brain was so badly damaged that there was no hope for her life. Lips trembling, Chet leaned down and kissed Patti's cool, soft cheek. Tears ran down his face as he held one of her hands in both of his. Jeanne stood on the opposite side of the bed, holding the other hand as she brushed her fingers through her daughter's hair. Except for some swelling and a bruise over her left eye, Patti looked as if she were asleep.

Jeanne and Chet could see the green monitors alive with squiggly lines showing strong activity in their daughter's heart. Twitches in her body and movement in one of her legs stirred their hope that at any moment their precious child would suddenly wake up and be fine.

But that was not to happen.

Chester Szuber's
thick hand moved the pen deliberately across the blank spaces on the forms that lay on the coffee table in front of him. His lips quivered as he signed his name, giving permission for his daughter's organs and tissues to be removed and transplanted into other people whose lives would be renewed. He knew this was Patti's wish. When she was 18, she had signed an organ donor card and ever since had urged others to do the same.

Standing by during these grim moments were Patti's mother, her brothers and sister, and the priest who had administered the last rites. She had been declared brain dead at 11:35 that Sunday morning, three days after the accident. Now machines would keep Patti's body functioning until her organs were removed.

Guiding Jeanne and Chet through this painful process was Susan Fredenberg, a nurse with Tennessee Donor Services. A gentle woman in her early 30s, she works to establish rapport with a donor family and make arrangements for placing the organs.

The evening before Patti was declared dead, Susan had suggested to Chet that legally he could be the recipient of Patti's heart. He rejected the idea so quickly that Susan was convinced he probably never thought about what she was saying—if he had heard her words at all.

Now, with Patti officially declared dead and the donation forms signed, Susan Fredenberg returned to the subject: “Mr. Szuber, we need to talk about Patti's heart. It is possible it could go to you—for you to have it transplanted.”

Chet still did not grasp what this woman was saying. He was consumed with the immediate problems of planning a funeral and getting Patti's body and the rest of the family back to Michigan. He shook his head, thinking,
What on earth is she talking about?

Then, as her words took hold, Chet was shocked. The idea had never remotely occurred to him. If he were to accept the offer, he would be reminded of Patti's death with every beat of her heart. Far better, he thought, to be dead himself.

He stared at Susan Fredenberg. “Absolutely not!” Chet said almost fiercely. “The answer is no. Never!”

“Mr. Szuber,” Susan Fredenberg said gently, “Patti cannot live. But maybe you can.”

Tears sprang to Chet's eyes as he said once more, “Absolutely not.”

Susan Fredenberg quickly withdrew. She spent the next hour stabilizing Patti's body and checking with the organ donation network to locate recipients for Patti's organs.

Back in the small room the hospital had provided the Szubers, Chet lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. Never had he been assaulted by so many emotions. He willed his mind back to planning Patti's funeral.

As he lay there alone, a thought came to him:
Is it possible that Patti would want me to have her heart? Is it possible I really would not be taking her heart so much as she would be giving it to me?
Chet got up from the bed and walked outside the room to a small patio where his wife and one of the children sat talking. He asked Jeanne to come into the room.

“How would you feel if I had Patti's heart?” he asked almost brusquely.

Jeanne was stunned by the shift in Chet's position—and frightened at the idea that her husband might not survive the risky procedure. “No, we can't do that,” she said. “I just lost Patti, and I'm not going to lose you too. And how can we have Patti's funeral if you're in the hospital?”

Just the idea brought her to tears. But she felt she should find out what their children had to say. She went back to the patio and sat down just a few feet from his window.

From inside the room Chet could hear the voices of his sons who had come by to say farewell to their parents before they caught a plane back to Michigan. Suddenly it was quiet as Jeanne spoke to them all. “They've offered your dad Patti's heart,” she said softly. “What do you think?”

At first there was silence, and then Chet heard his children's voices rise together in a tone of affirmation—the words unclear but the message unmistakable. Finally Jeanne said solemnly, “Go see your dad.”

Moments later Chet's room was filled with his children. One by one, each told him that this was exactly what Patti would want—that nothing would have meant more to her than for her father to have her heart.

Within minutes they had sent for Susan Fredenberg. Gathering his strength and once again taking charge, Chet turned to Susan and his family and spoke with firm dignity: “It would be a joy to have Patti's heart.”

Dr. Jeffrey
Altshuler, on vacation, was leaving his house near Detroit about 4:30 that Sunday afternoon, on his way to a hockey rink where he intended to spend several hours on the ice pursuing his great passion. A phone call stopped him at the door. As a surgeon who had performed 70 heart transplants in his career, Altshuler was accustomed to having his vacations interrupted.

Over the next few minutes, an extraordinary story unfolded. Transplant coordinator Caroline Medcoff told Altshuler that the daughter of their patient, Chester Szuber, lay brain dead in a Knoxville hospital, her heart still beating strongly. Initial tests indicated that the match could work.

The immediate question was whether to do the transplant in Tennessee or Michigan. Tennessee made the most sense logistically, but ultimately it was not feasible to make the needed arrangements on a speedy basis. Moreover the Szuber family insisted that the operation take place in Michigan, so at least all but Chet could attend Patti's funeral.

The paramount question to be resolved was whether Patti's heart would work for her father. Dr. Altshuler could not decide that until he held Patti's heart in his own hands and examined it. But what he did know was that never to his knowledge had a child's heart been transplanted into a parent.

One of the Altshuler team's first calls was to Max Freeman, a General Motors engineer who is also a co-owner of a corporate flight service. He and Altshuler had become friends over the years, and when asked, Freeman often flew transplant teams to recover organs.

“We'll take off around one in the morning,” Dr. Altshuler told Freeman. The surgeon instructed his organ recovery team to assemble at the hospital at midnight for a briefing. Timing would be critical, for no more than four hours should pass from the time a heart is stopped and removed from a donor until the moment it begins beating in the recipient's chest.

At the same time that Altshuler would be traveling 1000 miles to recover Patti's heart, his surgical partner, Dr. Francis L. Shannon, would wait at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, just outside of Detroit, to make sure Chet was ready for implantation as soon as the heart arrived.