Love's Awakening (11 page)

David was in what doctors suspected was a vegetative state. He was operating solely because of his automatic body functions. Only a feeding tube kept him alive.

The doctors blathered lots of information and handed over stacks of papers filled with “facts” and statistics. Shirley found her own doctors. They said the same things.

Celia memorized the basics:

— Most persistent vegetative state patients have no perception of external stimuli and cannot respond to such stimuli.

— Any movement or seeming response to external stimuli is purely coincidental. Don’t look for patterns. They’re not there.

— PVS patients have normal sleep-wake cycles. They are capable of moving their limbs, although only as a reflex. They can open their eyes and smile. It may seem like they are tracking objects or people with their eyes. Don’t delude yourself. They’re not looking at shit.

— PVS patients cry, laugh, groan, moan, scream and make a whole host of noises. They ain’t feeling or saying shit.

— Most PVS patients cannot chew or swallow food. They require feeding tubes.

— The feeding tube is usually the only life-sustaining piece of equipment necessary, as PVS patients can breathe on their own and their brainstems are relatively fine.

— It costs about $250,000 a year to care for someone in a PVS. The first few years of care are the most expensive, sometimes running into the millions per year.

— Life expectancy for PVS patients depends in part on why they are in the PVS. If it is because of a traumatic brain injury, the life expectancy is generally higher, although paralysis often accompanies traumatic brain injury. The life expectancy prognosis is bleaker if the cause is lack of oxygen to the brain.

— Survival more than ten years is rare. The cause of the vegetative state itself is often the cause of death. Other big reasons for the short life expectancy are complications such as secondary infections (pneumonia), urinary tract infections, pulmonary tract infections, general system failure, strokes or tumors.

— No treatment or cure exists.

What gave Shirley optimism:

— If PVS patients do wake up, they are more likely to do so during the first month—and without warning.

— There is controversy over consciousness in PVS. Some PVS patients, as many as forty percent, may be misdiagnosed. They are actually minimally conscious and are capable of meaningful activity, such as tracking objects purposefully and slightly moving their hands.

And the grimmest facts of them all:

— If patients do not emerge within the first year, they probably never will. If, somehow, they do emerge after the first year, they are very likely to have severe disabilities.

— The younger and healthier the patient is, the longer he should live.

David was fifty-six years old and had been at least thirty pounds overweight before the crash. Thank goodness Shirley had money. David’s insurance did not cover everything.

David had left a living will. Celia had one, too. Benefits of being married to a fussy lawyer. They’d done their living wills together soon after the wedding, and the wills gave each spouse authorization to make medical decisions on the other’s behalf. One of the first things most living wills dealt with were conditions such as persistent vegetative states, and David’s living will was no different. David stated that in such a case, he would want treatment, meaning life-prolonging measures, such as the feeding tube, for one year. If there was little or no progress after the year, David wanted the tube pulled.

Fairly clear. No mention of what to do in cases of paralysis, though. The paralysis would compromise David’s quality of life greatly if he were to emerge from the PVS. Celia was not sure her husband would have wanted to depend on other people for such basic needs as the toilet.

Shirley was buoyant. Science always made leaps and bounds. Stem cells were marvels. And with therapy, quite a few paralyzed people walked again. Celia sensed Shirley maneuvering behind the scenes, setting up grounds to challenge the living will if David remained in the PVS come April.

Oliver remained a shadowy presence. He showed up for every meeting with the doctors but said little. He usually sat across from Celia, and sometimes Celia would study him, his eyes, brown or green, his pinched lips, his unreadable expression, and wonder what he was thinking. Oliver was handsome and devastating in his own distant, closed-off way. More lovely, more beautiful, more devastating than David. Sometimes Oliver would meet Celia’s gaze, and neither of them would break the eye contact right away. Celia would remember how they had been at Starbucks, just sitting there, her hand beneath Oliver’s, them just sitting, doing nothing, just enjoying the feel and comfort of each other.

*****

Celia got another letter from Oliver through postal mail. This one did not have a salutation. It said:

THERESE ROSE HALL reads my mother’s grave marker. Have you been to where she is buried? Goodacres Memorial Gardens in Arlington. I hate the name. Goodacres? Gardens? Okay. Okaaay. I visit once a year, on the anniversary of her death.

So of course I went last week. I usually go in the evenings when it is cooler so I can stay a while. Dad used to go in the mornings and leave a rose. So, imagine my shock when I went last week and there was a rose. You left it, didn’t you? (Or maybe Grandma or Granddad did.) Did Dad take you to his first wife’s grave? I’m not sure if that’s romantic or creepy. It’s both, I guess.

So, there is a space next to Mom’s plot. For Dad. He never told me much about Mom. Oh, he told me the basics—what I call questionnaire information. Not the important stuff—what made Mom laugh? What made her sad? Dad talked about that stuff only a few times. I don’t have a single memory of my mother.

When I called her parents to let them know about Dad’s wreck, they offered to fly over from England. I told them no. Told them I was fine. Told them they could come for the funeral. We’ve never been close. Guess we don’t have to be. My mom was one of seven kids, and my grandparents have a gajillion grandkids with them out in England. I did have a good time with them though, when I was trekking through Europe.

I almost asked my mother’s mother what made my mom laugh and what made her sad. I’m not sure why I never went through with it.

Maybe this sounds awful, but this vegetative state thing? Dad is in there, laughing his cowardly white coma ass off at us, pointing fingers at us. He’ll come out when he’s damn well ready and wants to. When he’s made us suffer enough. All he did was lie and hide. I’m done with his bullshit. That’s what I think some days.

The real situation, though, is that Dad would not want this. He’s gone. He’s dead. Grandma is deluding herself. Do you buy that stuff she says? About science, how in a year or five years, we never know what medicines there will be, medicines better than Zolpdiem. The study that says forty-seven of sixty-five patients with locked-in syndrome indicated they were happy? I read that study. It had lots of holes.

Whenever I touch Dad, he is so dry and brittle that I half-expect his face to crumble. His eyes are doll eyes. Mannequin eyes.

By year’s end, Grandma will have Dad on Zolpidem and other medications and deep brain stimulation and God knows what else, and she’ll try to coax more time out of you. Maybe you’ll grant it. I kind of hope you do. I don’t want my father to die. Even though he is already dead.

Hope all is well with you. Have you been back to Dr. Frowny Face? I hope you’re enjoying Caleb now. I’ll come by to visit him sometime soon. Promise. Well, hey, I guess I’ll see him at the birthday party this Sunday. Gotta love Grandma, huh? See you soon.

- Oliver

*****

David turned fifty-seven years old three months after the wreck. Oliver entered the hospital, his stomach like a rock. Shirley was throwing a birthday party. “Just a little something with cake,” Shirley had said on the phone, but Oliver wondered. He wanted to turn around and drive away.
Cough
cough.
Coming
down
with
something
nasty.

A birthday party, really? Oliver pictured an awkward, overboard shebang with balloons and streamers, apparent gaiety with his father’s lifeless form in the midst. Shirley had the tendency to overshoot.

Don’t
be
such
a
Dour
Donald.
Might
do
you
good
to
celebrate.

Oliver got on the elevator. He was one to talk about balloons. He had brought two. Yep, two balloons. To this fake-a-roo birthday party. Granted, they were little helium birthday balloons on sticks in a vase.

Still, they were balloons.

He did not feel right showing up empty handed. Shirley and Richard were bringing cake. Celia was bringing drinks.

Oliver: nothing.

So he’d stopped at Safeway for a quick card. Only it hadn’t been so quick. One hundred percent of the cards seemed in bad taste, considering his father’s situation.

Balloons it was, then. One was blue, David’s favorite color, and read HAPPY. The other was green and read BIRTHDAY!

Oliver’s grandparents, Celia and Caleb were in the room when Oliver walked in, and Shirley squealed. “Perfect! Richard, see. Oliver brought balloons. I was telling your grandfather we needed to dress this party up.”

Shirley kissed Oliver and set the vase holding the balloons next to the cake. “Chocolate cake,” Shirley explained with a beam. “Your father’s favorite.”

Oliver ventured a smile at Celia, and Celia smiled back. A few seconds longer than necessary. Maybe more than a few seconds longer.

Richard cut the cake. It had white frosting and read HAPPY BIRTHDAY in blue letters. The cake was good. Moist, not too sweet, and Celia whispered to Oliver that he would have a letter arriving in the mail probably Monday. Weird relationship he and Celia had, but given the situation and who they were to each other, it worked.

The party progressed better than Oliver thought it would. No singing “happy birthday.” No forced joviality. Just cake, drinks and chatting. Reminiscing. But David sat in a wheelchair on the outskirts of their chatter. With these eyes. These awful dead glassy eyes absorbing nothing.

Oliver’s stomach stayed a rock.

Shirley, sometimes in a choked-up voice, talked about David’s past birthdays. Some were stories Oliver had heard a million times, but a few were new.

“Last year,” Richard said. “This time last year, David came up for the weekend. You remember, Celia? You went to a movie with Shirley. David and I went boating, just the two of us. The wind flew through his hair as he steered, and he…he’d never looked happier.” Richard glanced toward the man in the wheelchair. “Do you remember, son?”

Caleb cooed.

An exquisite sorrow creased Richard’s face. “Have you cried?” he asked Oliver.

“W-what? Cried? No.”

Richard frowned. “Me either.”

“I have,” Celia said. “Two or three times but not like I should. If that makes sense. My first night home after having Caleb, I kept waiting for the hospital to call with the news David had died. When that call comes…” Celia let her voice trail off. “It’s the limbo. It blankets everything. It’s contagious.”

“David’s coming back,” Shirley said firmly. “You just wait and see.”

“You’re delusional,” Oliver muttered under his breath.

Shirley gave him a pointed gaze. “What, sweetie?”

Oliver forced a smile. “Nothing, Grandma.”

*****

When Oliver got home, he called Sherelle. “I was hoping I could do something with the kids soon,” he said. “They’d like that, I think.”

“Okay,” Sherelle replied slowly. “Do you mean just you and the children?”

“Whatever you are comfortable with. You’re their mother.”

“Right, right,” Sherelle said. “Well, let me talk to Malcolm and the kids. I’ll get back to you.”

“All right,” Oliver whispered. “Thanks.” He ended the call and popped open a beer. Sherelle would not call back. Would not talk with Malcolm and the kids.

Part of Oliver was relieved. At least he had tried.

*****

Celia had gone through several drafts of her reply to Oliver’s latest letter. Oliver’s mother, Therese, and David had married in Honolulu, Hawaii, when they were both twenty-six. They were slender and dark. They looked like different sides of the same coin. In the wedding picture, Therese wore a lacy, soft white dress and a purple lei: femininity personified. David wore a white linen shirt and casual khakis.

Five years after the wedding, Therese was dead from leukemia. She’d battled it since her childhood and was in remission when she met David. She thought that bleak part of her life was done.

Nope.

Therese was dead from leukemia, leaving behind David and their four-year-old son. She was healthy, vital, alive in the wedding album. In subsequent pictures, she was increasingly pale and sickly. Celia wrote:

Dear Oliver,

Your father loved your mother. To be honest, it’s one reason I thought your dad and I would have a great marriage. He talked about her like he really, truly loved her. Like she was his soulmate. Your father wouldn’t take marrying again lightly, or so I thought.

I’m sorry your father did not tell you much about your mother, but he told me some things. I’ll write down what I remember. Here’s a little something to get you started in case you don’t know this already.

Your parents met in class. Her handwriting was what drew him to her. They sat together, exchanged hellos, nothing special. Then class began, and your mother took notes. Her writing was elegant, like calligraphy. Like art. Your father was mesmerized. That night, they went to a bar for karaoke, and your mother’s singing voice captivated your father. (I can’t sing worth a damn.)

Now, about your father and his future, I am not challenging the living will. Your father wanted a year, and I’m giving that year. No more, no less. The paralysis issue troubles me, but I won’t presume to read your father’s mind. Your grandmother does have a point, however far-fetched. Oliver, your father could recover. Maybe not completely, but meaningfully. He—she—could have good years left. He has two beautiful children whom I know, I absolutely know, he would want to see grow and flourish. Sometimes, I think about how your father struggled for years. All that agony and torture. Now it’s apparently over. Just so sudden. If he gets a second chance, I think he will make the most of it.