Kinflicks (67 page)

All the comfortable domestic routines she had found so tedious toward the end — she had nothing new to take their place, and familiar patterns didn't fade easily on their own. She wanted them back. She ached for the familiar odors — Ira's cigars, Wendy's baby powder, the lemon oil on the antiques. The familiar sensation of Ira's hands moving over her body, Wendy's chubby fist clutching her index finger as they walked. True, she had had her reasons for placing all this in jeopardy by taking on Hawk. What had they been? They had seemed so crucial at the time, and now she couldn't even remember them…

‘I don't know if the birds could adjust to a new mother figure,' Ginny said weakly. ‘I'd rather have them on their own before I leave.'

As they labored down the hall to lunch, they heard angry voices in Mrs. Cabel's room. On the open door hung a sign saying ‘No Visitors.' The voices were now discernibly Mr. Solomon's and Sister Theresa's. Mrs. Babcock stopped.

‘Did I tell you Mrs. Cabel went into a coma yesterday afternoon?' Mrs. Babcock asked, watching her daughter's face closely to learn if this would upset her.

‘No, you didn't,' Ginny said, guarding herself against revealing any emotion. ‘I'm sorry.'

Inside, Mrs. Cabel's room was identical to Mrs. Babcock's but with no ancestral portraits or clock, fewer flowers and cards. The same wall of windows, the same fake Danish modern furniture, the same twin beds. Mrs. Cabel lay flat in one, her eyes closed. Various tubes ran down her nostrils and into her arms, and a bank of machines with a vast expanse of knobs and dials, like the control panel on a space capsule, sat next to the bed.

Mr. Solomon in a navy wool robe and brown leather slippers was standing at the foot of the bed with his arms outstretched, apparently blocking Sister Theresa. Sister Theresa in her hospital-issue gown and robe towered over little Mr Solomon, whose thick glasses flashed like a Morse code transmitter as he gesticulated angrily with his head.

He was growling in a low voice, ‘The
hell
vith your “dignity” and “self-possession” for her spirit, Sister! Can't you grasp the fact that
this is all there
is? Let the voman have her last few days of biological survival. She'll spend eternity in a cold black void!'

‘No,
Mr. Solomon,' Sister Theresa insisted, her face flushed with thwarted conviction. There is within each of us a spirit that survives the dissolution of the flesh. Life on this earth, in and of itself, is not sufficiently sacred to warrant our reverence. It's the
quality
of that life, Mr. Solomon, that counts. We
must
set Mrs. Cabel free from her pointless misery. She's ready now. She's a caged bird. It is interfering with the will of the Lord to hold her back like this, lashed tightly to her rotting flesh with plastic tubing by well-meaning but godless people!' She tugged emphatically at her ‘Not My Will But Thine' medal.

‘The
fact
of human life is sufficient reason for its inviolability,' Mr. Solomon snarled, scooting sideways to block Sister Theresa's renewed efforts to get to Mrs. Cabel. ‘Each individual life is precious beyond all question of interference by another. There is no need to
prove
someone's right to continue living.'

Mr. Solomon, noticing Mrs. Babcock and Ginny, said gruffly, ‘Go get Miss Sturgill, please. Sister Theresa is trying to pull the tubes out of Mrs. Cabel.'

‘Isn't that decision up to her family?' Mrs. Babcock inquired, with an uneasy glance at Ginny.

‘They're relying on the doctors,' Sister Theresa replied. ‘But I
know
Mrs. Cabel, and I know what she'd want.'

‘And I know Mrs. Cabel, and I know vat she'd vant,' Mr. Solomon growled.

Since Mrs. Cabel hadn't been able to speak since she'd been here, could only bob her head and drool, everyone tended to interpret her enigmatic nonreplies as agreement. Mrs. Babcock had seen Mrs. Cabel cornered by both Mr. Solomon and Sister Theresa. Each would expound to her as though she were a new convert, and she would bob her head and drool and point to her fluffy red slippers for approval.

That afternoon during its training flight, one of the birds flapped its wings more enthusiastically than usual and glided for several yards. As Ginny watched, applauding, it crashed with a sickening crunch into the trunk of the pine tree — and fell lifeless to the ground. After staring at it with disbelief for several minutes, Ginny tossed it into the kudzu, close to tears.

Now there was one.

The next day Ginny found her mother lying supine with her eyes closed. Something about her face looked odd, other than its now familiar roundness and yellowness.

As she studied the sleeping face, its eyes opened. Her mother nodded. ‘I'm afraid I can't talk very clearly,' she mumbled. ‘My gums are packed.'

‘Why?' Ginny asked with alarm.

‘They're bleeding.'

The two women looked at each other helplessly. Ginny pushed back her mother's lower lip to reveal cotton rolls, like those a dentist would use.

‘When did this happen?' Ginny asked, sitting down abruptly.

‘Yesterday.' Mrs. Babcock's various membranes were rupturing one by one. It was logical to assume that one day soon her brain tissue would hemorrhage and her cranial cavity would turn to mush. Should Ginny be told this? No, it was better that she not know, better that they continue to pretend that all would be well. Anticipation was usually far worse than actuality.

Ginny sat thinking of cerebral hemorrhage. For the hundredth time she asked herself if her mother should be told, so that she could be preparing?

‘It's good of you to keep me company. I know you must be eager to get home to Wendy and Ira,' Mrs. Babcock said casually.

Ginny looked away quickly, unable to withstand her mother's gaze.

‘How is Ira managing?' Mrs. Babcock went on relentlessly. She was worried. She didn't want to pry, but she had a right to know if the well-being of her granddaughter was being attended to.

Ginny shrugged. ‘Ira's sister keeps Wendy during the day and Ira has her at night. Fortunately, I don't regard myself as indispensable to my household, the way you always did.'

Mrs. Babcock raised her eyebrows at this unwarranted attack. Yes, she was clearly treading on touchy ground.

‘I think it's
good
for Wendy to have close relationships with other adults,' Ginny continued belligerently. ‘It will give her something besides me to reject when she's an adolescent.'

Mrs. Babcock laughed. ‘I wouldn't count on it. I always forbade you children to chew gum on the same principle. I thought maybe then you'd rot your teeth to defy your father and me, rather than smoke and drink and take drugs and — so on. But it didn't work, did it?'

Ginny smiled. ‘No, I guess not.'

‘I must say I was always so
surprised
at the degree of defiance I could provoke in you children. I always thought of myself as being too amorphous to butt heads with. It must have been like locking horns with a marshmallow.'

‘Well, it's true that you didn't seem to understand what was expected of you. I remember one time screaming, “I hate you!'' And you replied calmly, “Well, that's what parents are
for,
dear.”'

‘Oh dear, did I really? I do apologize. It must have been very frustrating.'

‘Well, the Major made up for it.'

They smiled at each other like soldiers who have been through a war together.

Dr. Vogel appeared in the doorway, a huge Good Humor man in his white lab coat. He marched across the room demanding, ‘How are we this morning, Mrs. Babcock?' He looked at her chart and frowned. He studied the filter paper from that morning's bleeding time test. He removed the stained cotton rolls from under her lips and poked at her gums. He asked her to open her mouth wide and inspected the insides of her cheeks.

‘Well!' he said, trying to sound cheerful in the face of massive evidence to the contrary. ‘We've been consulting some specialists at Duke Hospital about you, Mrs. Babcock. We've concluded that our next step is to remove your spleen.'

Mrs. Babcock and Ginny stared at him numbly.

‘There is evidence to suggest, Mrs. Babcock, that your platelets are being kept out of circulation in your spleen.'

‘What makes you think so?' Mrs. Babcock asked. She had heard so many definitive diagnoses.

‘Hrnmm, yes. Well, your platelet count is reduced. That fact is the only positive evidence one has to go on with ITP. Any further diagnosis is based on negative evidence, a process of elimination, so to speak. We've eliminated factor deficiencies, such as cause hemophilia. The smear study of your bone marrow indicates normal numbers of platelet precursors. But something is happening to those platelets upon leaving your bone marrow, Mrs. Babcock. We suspect that some serum factor is rendering them abnormal, hence subject to sequestration and destruction by your spleen.'

‘Is this operation standard for ITP?' Mrs. Babcock inquired.

‘Yes, certainly. If steroids fail.'

‘And what is its success rate?'

‘Fifty to eighty percent of ITP patients who are operated on are cured by splenectomy. In your case, Mrs. Babcock, I think we have every reason to expect favorable results. We've held off to discover if the steroids wouldn't do the trick. We'd rather not operate on someone with a severe bleeding problem. But we feel that the time has now arrived.'

The operation went well. Mrs. Babcock was transfused with fresh platelets to minimize postoperative bleeding. Her platelet count was high, and her bleeding time was low. The hemorrhaging of her various membranes ceased. For five days.

On the fifth day, gastric bleeding resumed. Her platelet count dropped like the altimeter of an aircraft in a nosedive.

When Ginny sought out Dr. Vogel in his lab, he looked gaunt and haggard, in spite of his fifty excess pounds. Averting his eyes, he said defensively, ‘The histological analysis of her spleen showed all the nonspecific changes characteristic of ITP — hypertrophy of the lymphoid follicles, dilated sinusoids, varying numbers of megakaryocytes, eosinophils, and neutrophils…'

‘Dr. Vogel, I don't know what you're talking about,' Ginny interrupted.

‘All I'm saying is that the splenectomy is a therapeutic failure, but not a result of misdiagnosis.'

‘Who's accusing you of misdiagnosis?'

‘Well, you're accusing me of
something,
Miss Babcock, the way you keep coming down here and glaring at me all the time.'

‘You're paranoid, Dr. Vogel.' But as she thought about it, she realized that she
was
accusing him of something — of failing to live up to the myth that modern medicine was invincible. He couldn't help it if his advance men had been overzealous in their claims.

‘Perhaps I am,' he said thoughtfully.

‘Now
what?'

‘I don't know.'

‘As far as I can see,' Ginny explained to Maxine and Clem as she sat in their cluttered kitchen that afternoon, ‘the doctors have tried everything they can think of. What she needs now is a miracle.' She immediately regretted her choice of words. Since her evening in the springhouse, she had resolutely avoided the topic of religion with Clem and Maxine. The few times they'd met, they had studied her face eagerly, waiting for her to tell them that she was prepared to join them in the springhouse again. Each time she had deftly sidestepped the issue of her spiritual malaise. She wasn't in any condition to decide anything and was struggling not to succumb, for once in her life, to the nearest sympathetic shoulder.

Clem's eyes gleamed with fanaticism as he pleaded, ‘Give the Lord a chance, Ginny. He healed my leg. He can heal your mother's blood.'

‘What would it involve?' Clem's regenerated leg was difficult to dispute. After all, didn't the Lord traditionally work in mysterious ways?

‘Could you bring her to the Temple?'

Ginny pondered the topic. ‘I don't see any way I could get her out undetected. Besides, it would be very difficult for her to climb that hill.'

‘Never mind. I'll come to
her.
After a service. When I feel the power upon me.'

‘That would be great, Clem,' Ginny said, trying to decide how to present this to her mother. What harm could there be in giving Clem a chance? Wasn't it worth a try? It wasn't as though they had to convert on the spot.

Back at the cabin, she took her one remaining bird outside for his flying lesson. She perched it on her finger. They stared at each other, her blue eyes studying its tiny beady black ones. The bird flung open its beak and craned its gaping pink throat upward and screeched:
Feed
me, Mother! Irritably, Ginny turned her hand around and tilted it, hoping to jar the bird into unexpected flight. It flapped its wings desperately to maintain its balance. It wasn't remotely interested in flying. It was interested in being fed. All day long if possible.

Ginny tossed it mercilessly into the air. It
would
fly, damn it! For a couple of seconds, the bird held its wings tight against its sides and lost altitude like a kamikaze plane. Finally, hurtling toward the ground, it spread them and flapped halfheartedly, soared for several yards and landed gracefully. One day before long, the bird would finally catch on and would swoop away, higher and higher into the sky. Two things worried her, though: If it landed, it probably wouldn't know how to take off again. The other problem was that the bird couldn't eat or drink on its own. She had tried putting a dish of breadcrumbs and another of water in its basket. She had held its head in her fingers and had pecked its beak in the crumbs and had helped it scoop water. Then she had stopped feeding it, to see if it would figure things out. It hadn't. It had merely screeched louder and longer, until she'd finally had to feed it to maintain her borderline sanity. What would happen to this pathetic specimen of birdlife if it did simply take off one day? Would it watch the other swifts and learn how to sweep down over the pond and scoop up a beakful of water? Or be ostracized for smelling like humans? Would it starve? Or return in defeat, requiring her to feed it for the rest of its life as her penalty for getting involved in the first place?