Moving Forward in Reverse (16 page)

~~~

When the phone rang a few days later, I dreaded another check-up
call. My having resigned from UWEC only made those already concerned for my
well-being even more anxious. I was too tired to explain how little it mattered
to another concerned ear.

My mother’s voice on the other end of the line held none of the
exaggeratedly upbeat tones people had begun to adopt around me. She sounded as
deflated as I felt.

‘Mom?’ I asked, all thoughts of my well-being dispelled by
concern for hers. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Don…’ she said, her voice thick and hoarse.

She paused.

I waited, listening to her ragged breathing.

‘Don- Don has cancer. It’s terminal. You need to come home.’

~~~

I found him seated in the living room chair at their house in
Janesville, wearing his usual plaid button-up shirt and suspendered slacks. The
clothes were the only part of him that looked the same. A defeated semblance of
the man I’d known was slumped in that chair. It was as if someone had turned
the lights off and what I was seeing was merely a shadowed outline of the real
man. A red pail sat at his feet, I assumed in case he needed to vomit – a
common side effect for chemo patients.

I pulled a wooden chair from the dining room and sat next to
him. He peered up at me with dejected eyes and murmured, ‘Hi, Scotty. How are
you?’

‘I’m fine, Don. I see that chemo isn’t fun.’

With an even more defeated look he responded, ‘Not fun at all.
Your mother had to clean up my mess right over there when I couldn’t hold my
bowels. She has to help me too much.’ I could sympathize with that feeling, and
had no intention of giving one of the fake optimisms that typically followed.
No rah-rah speech or false bravado. Don deserved better. He deserved honesty.

‘Don,’ I said, ‘I came to tell you how much respect I have for
you. Not many people can handle my mother.’ He chuckled, a phlegmy sound deep
in his lungs.

‘After I woke up from the coma, you came to the hospital and
shaved my face every day,’ I said, drawing out the vowels and enunciating the
consonants in ‘every’ and ‘day’. I wanted – no: I needed for him to know that
what he did for me, both in the hospital and out, was invaluable and
inimitable.

‘Well, you couldn’t do it yourself,’ he interjected. ‘And you
needed to keep your looks up for all the good looking nurses you had.’

I smiled and felt the sting of impending tears. ‘That I did,
Don. That I did…

I respect you, Don, and I love you. You’re a good man.’

I stood from my chair feeling both lighter and weaker at having
said those things. Lighter for knowing that now he knew exactly how I felt;
weaker for the farewell shadowing what I said.

I placed my right hand delicately on his thin shoulder, leaned
down and kissed the top of his head. It was the last time I would see Don
alive.

18

No one sat behind the defense, whereas on my side of the room with
the prosecution, there sat my entire family.

If only trials were popularity contests
, I thought as I watched the
defense’s second chair, a frumpy man in a poorly fitted suit named Robert
Junig, rifle through the jumble of papers stuffed into his faded leather
satchel.

Dr. Peters was sitting at the end of the table, his three
attorneys a buffer between him and the prosecution. It had been nearly four
years since I’d last seen him. Perhaps it was merely fanciful thinking, but the
years didn’t seem to have worn on him well. He looked older and slighter than I
remembered. Of course, he was being taken to court for negligent care, so the
stress may have had a thing or two to do with the lines now creasing his face.

All in all, I was feeling rather confident in my situation when
the call to please rise boomed from the front of the courtroom. Judge Thomas H.
Barland, a slim, white-haired man with bags that fell like ripples in a lake
beneath his eyes, strode into the room. We could all be seated, he said. It was
9:00 AM on Monday, June 16, 1997 and court was now in session.

I resumed my seat in one of the tall-backed, black leather office
chairs at the prosecution’s table, straightened the yellow legal pad Mike
Schumacher had given me, and settled in for the opening statements. As the
prosecution, we were entitled to go first, so in his suave, leisurely way, Mike
stood from our table and approached the jurors. With him he carried thirteen
pieces of five inch by twenty-four inch poster board. He passed one to each
juror and Judge Barland. The jurors looked with wide eyes from Mike to the
poster in their hands, trying not to bump each other as they jostled theirs
into a less awkward position. What they now held was a timeline of my life,
beginning July 13, 1993 when the strep bacteria were first identified through
my second surgery on “the bad foot” just over a year ago.

Compiling the events of the chronologies had been an experience
for both Mike and I. For him, it was a fact-finding mission that I believe
opened his eyes to just how precarious and strenuous my situation had been. It
was appalling how one little bacterium could be discovered on a Tuesday morning
and by Friday of that same week, the muscles of the infected individual could
have deteriorated to such an extent that doctors deemed him unlikely to
survive.

Assembling the sizable documents had led me down a slightly
different path. I knew the facts of my case – or as much as I cared to know. I
had survived; the degree to which my body had suffered in the meantime was of
little consequence now. The only affliction I cared to acquaint myself with was
that of the people who now sat behind me in a show of unwavering support, the
people who had stationed themselves outside my hospital room for hours and days
on end.

From my niece Marie to my big brother, Jeff, the vivid collection
of their individual experiences had mosaicked in my mind to create something
far more intricate than a simple chronology of events. As the groundwork for
the prosecution and defense’s cases were laid, I kept replaying the stories I
was told.

~~~

Marie

(Niece)

I was 12 at the time. Most of what I remember is sitting in the
waiting room, just about every day. I knew the hospital hallways like the back
of my hand. When the waiting room was full of new people, my mom, Aunt Lisa and
I would sit in the hallway on the floor. I remember someone giving us strange
looks because we'd be laughing. Aunt Lisa always tried to keep us laughing.

So we'd be camped out on the floor down the hall from your room if
we couldn't be in there. And we'd all just hope that laughter really was the
best medicine. And somehow you'd hear us laughing, pulling for you, hoping for
you, and you'd know that you had to keep fighting.

It was the anniversary of the Star Wars movies. So that was the
only thing on TV that whole summer. That was the first time I had seen all three
and as silly as it seems, I know that's why I'm so obsessed with the movies now
because something about it was comforting. Watching it with my uncles and
brothers . . . the only thing to keep our mind off what none of us wanted to
think about. And I guess I associate it with the fact that you made it. I'd
probably hate Star Wars if something else had happened.

~~~

Both sides played off the same key point: blood tests. From Mike
the jury was told that blood tests conducted on my first visit to the ER, Saturday,
July 10
^th
, could have diagnosed the bacteria and enabled physicians
to begin treatment early enough to possibly save my hands and feet. He referred
to me as Scott and made sure each and every juror knew who I was and what I had
undergone.

Attorney Brad Wentworth of the defense was a lanky man with long
fingers and a smooth style that reminded me of Mick Fleetwood of Fleetwood Mac,
only I pegged Wentworth for a guitarist rather than a drummer. He sauntered to
the front of the courtroom in a crisp suit styled just casually enough to be
approachable without also being disrespectful. According to him, I was ‘this
unfortunate man’ for whom the consequences would have been the same regardless
of whether blood tests had been performed by Dr. Peters on Saturday.

In a detached way, it was fascinating to see how the two attorneys
slanted the story, choosing the right phrases, the ideal terms to sway the
emotions of the jury.

In reality, sitting in that courtroom, it was irritating to be
just an ‘unfortunate man.’ After listening to the way Wentworth cast a verbal
shadow over me, I wanted to stand up and parade myself and each of my family
members before the court.
See me?
I wanted to command.
See my family?
Let them tell you how things really were. Then you can determine how
unfortunate I am and what should or should not have been done.

~~~

Brian

(Nephew)

On my first trip to the hospital, my brother, Chris and I were
waiting in the car for our parents and he said, “You know what’s going to
happen to Uncle Scott, right?” And I just said, “You don’t know that.” I don’t
really remember much about the whole thing before that, but I do know
everyone’s mood was pretty low.

When finally in the hospital, it was my turn to go see you and my
mom tried to prepare me for what I would see . . . Lots of tubes that breathed
for you. Being my usual self I was trying to crack jokes on the walk to your
room and that was when I knew it was bad because it just made my mom say
“Brian!” and she started to cry. Then we got to your room and it was much worse
than I thought; it looked like you were being raised by a magician . . . up and
down; up and down with the breathing machine. Your eyes were taped shut but I
could still see them and they were all yellow. Your fingers were starting to
turn purple. My mom told me to say something to let you know I was there and be
loud so you could hear me but I couldn’t really say anything and when I did it
was just a whisper of “Hi, Uncle Scott. ”

~~~

When the defense decided to cross examine my mom, I grinned and
scribbled
Mistake!
on my notepad. I tilted it toward Mike seated beside
me and circled the word. He glanced at what I had written and I watched his
eyebrows furrow..
He’ll understand soon enough
, I thought.

It was the third chair for the defense, Mark Winchell, who was
granted the seemingly benign task of interrogating my seventy-year-old mother.
I watched the youngest attorney in the courtroom approach the stand and leaned
back in my seat to enjoy the show.

Five minutes in, a shine had developed along his forehead and his
once fluffy brown hair was beginning to mat itself to his face. As he
continually found himself unable to wrangle this tough-as-nails mother of six,
dark sweat stains sprouted on the underarm areas of his navy blue suit coat.
Mike jotted something on his own notepad and angled it towards me. I glanced
down.
You’re right!
was etched on the edge of the yellow paper. He
circled it and smiled when I met his eyes with a cocky gleam to my expression.

‘Your son told the doctor that he was suffering from heat
exhaustion,’ Winchell informed my mother, trying yet again to corner her. His
voice was a few decibels shy of assertive and no match for the volume or
ferocity of Mom’s reproach.

‘Scott’s not a doctor!’ she snipped back. Her whole body seemed to
be vibrating with indignant fury. There was no way this mother lion was going
to allow them to pin anything on her son.
Scott is the victim here
, she
proclaimed behind her words.
Don’t you forget that.

I rocked slightly in my desk chair, basking in the abundance of
pride I felt for my mom. Thirty-nine years as her son and she could still
astound me.

As I watched Winchell squirm at her feet, though, my thoughts
began to drift. She was on fire – that much was clear – and prepared to fight
tooth and nail to defend me. But beneath the flames that sparked menacingly in
her eyes, was a pain so deep and hardened that not even the light of her fury
could mask it fully. In those moments, looking at the strongest woman I knew, I
saw the most everlasting suffering.

~~~

Mom

When you finally got up on that Sunday morning, as you entered the
kitchen, you got about to the island and threw up about a gallon of plain
liquid. It hit mostly at the sink. That was when I said you have to go back to
the hospital.

Shortly after Dr. Ramsey saw you he said you have to be in the
Intensive Care section because you had a bad case of sepsis and must be watched
very carefully.

That is where we met Lindy. She was there and was a wonderful,
caring nurse. She finally persuaded me to go home after midnight, promising me
that she would call me if there were any changes. She did call early the next
morning, telling me I should call the family, which I did, and everyone came as
soon as they could get there. I called my church and had the Pastor come for
prayers. We were all sitting on the floor in the hall because we were such a
big bunch.

It was a few days and then your hands started to turn black. I
used to stand by your bed and rub your hands, hoping that would get some life
back into them.

One doctor suggested that I should let you go. Of course I refused
to do that.

~~~

On the second day of the trial, Judge Barland reported that Juror
7 had fallen ill and could not continue with the trial.

‘I hope her temperature is taken and blood tests run,’ the judge
commented, tongue in cheek. I bit back a startled laugh as Brad Wentworth leapt
from his chair.

‘I object!’ he proclaimed in full courtroom-drama style. ‘Will the
court reporter please note my objection and I would like it documented that
Judge Barland’s last statement may be used if a mistrial is sought.’

Like a classroom where a student has just dared to challenge the
teacher, the cavernous room became absorbed in silence; everyone waiting in awe
for what would come next. The judge sighed and shrugged his shoulders as if to
say,
Well,
you
can’t take a joke.
Peering out at the court before
him, he acquiesced.

‘The jury will disregard my previous statement.’

With the matter legally resolved but nowhere near forgotten, the
trial was resumed. Mike and I glanced at each other with wide eyes. I lowered
my head as a grin split across my face. As far as signs went, that one seemed a
pretty good indication of how my case was proceeding.

When Dr. Peters took the stand I subconsciously sat a little
straighter in the high-backed chair. Above all else, this was the man I had
been waiting to hear from. Even knowing his answers would be mere echoes of
what the defense had been parroting all day, I couldn’t subdue the anticipation
I felt as I watched him approach the witness box.

Over the lunch break, my mom had poked her head into the courtroom
to find it occupied by Dr. Peters and his defense team. When Mom returned to
where the rest of us were waiting out the lunch hour in an adjacent chamber,
she snidely reported that he was ‘sitting up there practicing his answers like
a peacock. ’

Rehearsing won’t do this little pheasant much good once Mike gets
to him
, I
thought and waited for the Defense to finish their script so the real fun could
begin.

The ‘fun,’ as it turned out, lasted a full hour and thirty
minutes.  Mike grilled the young doctor relentlessly. The specific
questions asked and answers given escape me now, but I do recall the abhorrence
I felt as I gazed upon Dr. Peters in the witness box.

Through the research done by the team at Herrick and Hart, I
learned that the day I met Dr. Peters in the ER, he had been a mere two days
off the graduation stage. Two days out of medical school and they let him run
an ER. But youth was no excuse for what his negligence had done to me and my
family; he was a certified medical doctor and should have known better. If
anything, his juvenility and seemingly inordinate amount of responsibility
suggested the whole of the medical profession should have been sitting on that
stand beside him.