(2008) Down Where My Love Lives (3 page)

Within a few minutes the anesthesiologist came in and asked Maggie, "You about ready for some drugs?"

Without batting an eye, I said, "Yes, sir."

Maggie sat up and leaned as far forward as her stomach would let her. The doctor walked around behind her and inserted the epidural in the middle of her spine just as another contraction hit. Maggie moaned but didn't move an inch.

God, please take care of my wife.

Breathing heavily, Maggie lay back down and propped her knees up. After one more contraction, the epidural kicked in. Her shoulders relaxed, and she lost the feeling in her legs. At that moment, if I had had a million dollars, I would have given every penny to that man. I almost kissed him on the mouth.

The next two hours were better than the last two days together. We watched the monitor, the rise and fall of every contraction-"Oh, that was a good one," listened to the heartbeat, laughed, talked about names, and tried not to think about what was next. It was surreal to think our son would be there, in our arms, in a matter of moments. We held hands, I sang to her tummy, and we sat there in quiet most of the time.

About one-thirty, the lady next door had trouble with her delivery, and they had to wheel her off for an emergency Csection. I've never heard anybody scream like that in all my life. I didn't know what to think. I do know that it got to Maggie. She tried not to show it, but it did.

At two o'clock, the doctor checked her for the last time. "Ten centimeters, and 100 percent effaced. Okay, Maggie, you can start pushing. We'll have a birthday today."

Maggie was a champ. I was real proud of her. She pushed and I coached, "One-two-three . . . " I'd count and she'd crunch her chin to her stomach, eyes closed and with a death grip on my hand, and push.

That was two days and ten lifetimes ago.

THE SMALL, PRIVATE ROOM THEY PUT US IN WAS dark, overlooked the parking lot, and sat at one end of a long, quiet hallway. The only lights in the room shone from the machines connected to Maggie, and the only noise was her heart-rate monitor and occasionally the janitor shuffling down the hall, rolling a bucket that smelled of Pine Sol over urine. Somebody had shoved Maggie's bed against the far wall, so I rolled her over next to the window, where she could feel the moonlight. By rolling the bed, I unplugged all the monitors, setting off several alarms at the nurses' station.

A pale-faced nurse slid through the doorway and into the room. She stopped short when she saw me sitting next to the bed, quietly holding Maggs's hand. She almost said something but changed her mind and went to work instead, repairing what I'd torn apart. Before she left, she grabbed a blanket from the closet, put it over my shoulders, and asked, "You want some coffee, honey?" I shook my head and she patted me on the shoulder.

Maggie has lain there "sleeping," unconscious, ever since the delivery. I wiped her arms and cheeks with a warm, damp rag and then felt her toes. They were cold, so I looked through our bag, found a pair of socks that I gently slid over her heels, and put another blanket over her feet. After pulling the sheets up around her shoulders, I sat down next to the bed and tucked her hair behind her ears, where I still felt some dried blood. For the third time, I ran a towel under some warm water and wiped her face, arms, and neck.

I don't remember my arms being sore afterwards, but I do remember it took the nurse three tries before she found my vein. Maggie needed a lot of blood pretty quick, so I gave one more pint than they normally would allow. The nurse knew Maggie needed it, so when I grabbed the needle and told her to keep going, she looked at me over the top of her glasses, opened another Coca-Cola for me, and kept drawing. I walked back to the delivery room with both pits of my elbows taped up, sat next to the bed, and watched my blood drip into my wife.

While I was sitting in the quiet beneath the moon, a wrinkle appeared on Maggie's forehead between her eyebrows-her trademark expression. A sure sign that she was determined to figure something out. I placed my palm on her forehead and held it there for a few seconds while the wrinkle melted away and her breathing slowed.

"Maggs?"

I slid my hand under hers and thought how her callused fingers seemed so out of place on someone so beautiful. Under the rhythm and short blips of the heart-rate monitor, I watched her heart beat, listened to her short, quick breaths, and waited for her big brown eyes to open and look at me.

They did not.

I stared out the window over the parking lot, but there wasn't much to look at. South Carolina is one of the more beautiful places on God's earth-especially where the wisteria crawls out of the weeds that can't choke it-but the parking lot of Digger Community Hospital is not. I turned back to Maggie and remembered the river, the way the light followed Maggie's eyes, her smile, her back, and how the water had dripped off her skin and puddled on her stomach. "Maggs," I said, "let's go swimming."

THE DAYS TURNED INTO NIGHTS AND BACK INTO days, and I became afraid to blink, thinking I'd miss the opening of her eyes. During that time, I'm pretty sure other people came in and out of the room, but I never saw them. I think I remember Amos putting his hand on my shoulder and telling me, "Don't worry, I'll take care of the farm." And somewhere during one of the nights, I think I remember smelling the lingering aroma of Bryce's beer breath, but for seven days my entire world consisted of Maggie and me. Anything outside that picture never came into focus. The periphery of my life had blurred.

On the afternoon of the seventh day, the doctor took me out into the hall and gave me his prognosis. Consternation was painted across his face, and it was clear this wasn't easy for him, no matter how much practice he must have had at delivering bad news. "Dylan, I'll give it to you straight," he said.

The seconds melted into days.

"Maggie's out of what we call the hopeful window. The longer she stays in this vegetative state, the more involuntary muscle responses she'll begin to have. Unfortunately, these muscle responses are from spinal activity, not brain activity. Within the next few weeks, she's got a 50 percent chance of waking up. The following month, it drops in half. Following that ... " He shook his head. "Of course, this is all just statistics; miracles can happen. But they don't happen often."

Later that afternoon, the hospital executive responsible for accounts receivable stopped in for a visit. "Mr. Styles, I'm Mr. Thentwhistle.Jason Thentwhistle." He stepped into the room and extended his hand.

I immediately didn't like him.

"Yes, well, I think we should talk about your financial arrangements."

I turned my head slightly and narrowed my eyes.

"Coma patients often require long-term hospital care...."

That was all I needed to hear. I hit him as hard as I couldmaybe as hard as I've ever hit anybody. When I looked down, he was crumpled on the floor, his glasses were broken in three pieces, his nose was twisted sideways and smashed into his face, and blood was pouring out of his nostrils. I picked up his heels and dragged him out into the hallway because I didn't want him bleeding on Maggie's floor.

"D.S., YOU BEEN HERE SINCE YOU LEFT THE HOSPITAL?"

I opened my eyes, remembered Thentwhistle, and looked around. The head hovering over me was familiar.

"Dylan?" A big, meaty black hand gently slapped me twice in the face.

That was definitely familiar. "Amos?"

Slapping my cheek again, he said, "Hey, pal? You in there?"

I must have moaned, because Amos grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.

"Yeah, yeah," I said, swatting at his hands, "I'm in here." My head was killing me, and the world was spinning way too fast. Amos's hands stopped the spinning but not the pain.

"D.S.?" Amos brought his face closer to mine. "Have you been here since you left the hospital?" He was still out of focus.

"I don't know. When did I leave the hospital?"

"Tuesday," he said, shading my face with his hat.

I swatted at it because it looked like a buzzard. "What day is today?" I asked, still swatting.

"Thursday." Amos crinkled his nose and waved his hand. "And it's a good thing it rained too." Waving the air with his hat, Amos said, "D.S., you stink bad. Whatchoo been doing out here?"

I reached for the tractor, pulled at the tire rod, which my grandfather had bent twenty-one years ago pulling stumps, and tried to pull myself up. I could not. I thought for a minute, but I couldn't remember. "Thursday?"

I pulled my knees up and scratched my neck and the four itchy bumps on my ankles under my jeans.

Amos looked doubtful.

I guessed again, "Tuesday?" The rush of blood to my head caused my head to bob, rock, and crash into the cornstalk that was growing up out of an anthill.

Amos caught my head. "Here, you better sit still. I think you been sitting in the sun a little too long. How long you been out here?"

Ordinarily Amos's English is pretty good. He only drops into the South Carolina farm-boy dialect when talking with me. After twenty-five years of friendship, we had developed our own language. People say marriage works the same way.

"I need to get to the hospital," I muttered.

"Hold on a minute, Mr. Cornfield. She's not going anywhere." Amos tapped the plastic cover on the tractor's fuel gauge. "And neither is this old tractor. We got to get you cleaned up. If it weren't for Blue, I'd still be driving around looking for you."

Blue is a blue heeler and the most intelligent dog I've ever known. He's seven years old and is better known as the "outdoor dog" that sleeps at the foot of our bed.

I rubbed my eyes and tried to focus. No improvement. Amos was about to brush my shirt off with his hand, but he took a second look and thought better of it.

"My truck's low on gas. Where's your car?" I said. "Can you take me there?"

Seeing me return to life, Blue hopped off the tractor, licked my face, and then sat between my legs and rested his head on my thigh.

"Yes, I can," Amos said, articulating every letter. "But no, I will not. I'm taking you to work."

Amos wasn't making a lot of sense.

"Work?" I looked around. "Amos, I was working until ... well, until you showed up." I shoved Blue out of the way. When he gets excited, he drools a good bit. "Go on, Blue. Quit it."

Blue ignored me. Instead he rolled over like a dead bug, turned his head to one side, hung out his tongue, and propped his paws in the air.

"D.S."Amos ran his fingers around inside his deputy's belt. "Don't start with me. I ain't in the mood." He put his hat back on, hefted his holster a bit. Then he raised his voice. "I've been looking for you all morning in every corner of every pasture. All thirty-five hundred acres." Amos waved his hands as if he were on stage or telling a fish story. He could get animated when he wanted to. "Then a few minutes ago, I'm driving past this field, and I see this rusty old thing your grandfather called a tractor sitting driverless and parked out here at the intersection of Nowhere and No Place Else. Except one thing sticks out and grabs my attention."

Amos reached over and began scratching Blue between the ears. "Ol' Blue here is sitting at attention on top of your tractor like he's trying to be seen. So I turn the car around and think to myself, That'd be just like that old fool to go through one week of hell and then walk out of the hospital, only to end up out here and act like he's farming.

He reached over, picked up a handful of sand, and slung it into the corn. "Dylan Styles"-he looked down a long row of corn that was planted in more of an arc than a straight line-"you're an idiot. Even with all your education. You can just about strap an alphabet behind your name, but I'm your friend and I'll tell it to you straight: You're a sorry farmer and a clanged idiot."

Amos is smart. Don't let the deputy's badge fool you. He took this job because he wanted it, not because he couldn't find anything else. Amos takes nothing from nobody-except me. He's big, articulate, black as black comes, and my oldest friend. He's a year older than I am and was a year ahead in school. In my junior year of high school, we were the two starting running backs. They called us Ebony and Ivory, for obvious reasons.