Where the River Ends (27 page)

And no, she wasn’t dressed.

My heart jumped into my throat. She smiled a sleepy smile, pushed her hair out of her face and stared at me. She really didn’t need to say anything. Being in my bed said enough.

“You left your door unlocked,” she said.

I nodded. “Look…” I was about to say something when there was a strong knock at the door. I knew who it was. The knock told me. I also knew that he never waited. He pushed the door open and strode in. He took four steps, saw me in a towel, and then saw Heather wearing nothing.

I would have said something, but I didn’t figure it would do any good in this lifetime or the next. He stared at me a long moment, a vein popping out on his neck. He shook his head and walked out.

“Who was that?” she asked.

I stared into the mirror hanging on the back of the door. “My father-in-law.”

She chewed on a fingernail. “Senator Coleman?”

“Yeah…” I nodded. “He’s that, too.”

She shook her head, pulled the sheets up and let her hair fall over her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

I dressed, walked back up to Abbie’s room and found him standing there. “Sir, can I talk to you?”

“My only daughter is lying here, fighting for her life. And you’re up there—” He backhanded me hard across the face. The acrid taste of blood spread across my mouth. “Don’t ever speak to me again.”

“Sir, it’s not what you think.”

He turned and swung a fisted blow to my face. It spun me and cut my lip. He pointed a shaking hand at me, the spit gathered in the corner of his mouth. “Get out of my sight.”

“I’m not leaving.”

He looked at Abbie and rubbed her toes. He checked the time, then walked toward the door. He turned. “She’s too weak right now. This…would devastate her. She’d lose her will to fight. But…when she beats this…and she will…I’ll tell her the truth. What you do between now and then is up to you.”

“Sir—”

He walked out and never looked back.

When Abbie woke up, the transplant had thrown her body into a tailspin. She smiled, her eyes glassy beneath the 103-degree fever. “Hey you…”

Two months later, Abbie’s father became the donor for her second bone marrow transplant—a process that some say is more painful for the donor than the recipient.

It didn’t take, either.

40

JUNE 9, MORNING

I
walked into Bob’s kitchen and found him, Petey and Rocket watching the Weather Channel. The screen showed a guy standing in the rain. He was wearing a yellow rain slicker and the wind had peeled his comb-over up and held it in the air like a rooster’s feathers. He was mid-broadcast. “Hurricane Annie stalled over the Gulf, fattening herself on the warm water. Hemmed in by opposing fronts, Annie held there for a week. On June sixth, Annie started a slow crawl across North Florida and South Georgia, where she has dumped more than twenty inches of rain.” The swirling green and red mass now filling the screen told me that the worst of the storm would miss us but it would not miss the Okefenokee. We were on the southeastern side. The side that would get little rain but lots of tornadoes. The reporter continued, “After a head-fake to the northwest, she sidestepped, twirled and tiptoed northeast.” His mimicked the storm’s path with dance moves I’d never seen before. “Climbing out of the Gulf, she slowed yesterday, weakening to a tropical storm. Given that she’s just bumped into a colder front moving down from the north, it could be a while before the rain disappears. With her massive size and bulging waistline, her three-day, four-knot crawl across land is a lot like a walrus bellying across an ice sheet.” He stepped closer to the camera and lowered his voice. “Noisy, not very pretty, threatening and almighty slow. Folks might want to start thinking about trading their cars in on boats, because we are projecting record floods across North Florida and South Georgia.” The weatherman was quite proud of his report and stood there with an ear-to-ear smile while the rain peppered the side of his face.

Bob stared through the window at a cloudless, sunlit deep blue sky and mumbled something to himself. He pulled on his cap and began walking outside. “Think I’ll check on the storm.”

“Isn’t that sort of dangerous?”

“Depends on how close you get.”

Abbie pushed open the kitchen door carrying a syringe. She leaned on the table while Rocket licked her toes and spoke around the Actiq filling her cheek. “Cannnn weeee goooo?”

Petey walked in a circle on the table. “We go? Hell no. We go? Hell no.”

Bob shook his head. “I’ve tried teaching him some new words but…” He shrugged. “He’s very religious. Always talking about heaven and hell. Aren’t you, Petey?”

Petey flapped his wings. “Hail Mary. Hail Mary.”

I whispered to Abbie, “Honey, there are only two left.”

She pulled the cap and handed it to me. “Let’s hope it lassssssts a lllllllong timmmmmmme.” She looked again at Bob, the wrinkle hard creased between her eyes. “Cannn weeeeee?”

He tried to make light of it. “You been drinking?”

“I wwwwisshhhh.”

“You can be rather determined, you know.”

I piped in. “She gets it from her dad.”

“It can get bumpy. If you thought the carousel made you woozy…”

I pulled the cap and she nodded as I injected the dexamethasone into her thigh.

“You sure?” Bob asked.

She nodded and lifted the lollipop. “Yyyyyes, on one connndition.”

“Name it.”

“I want to do a lllllloopty…looooop.”

He smiled. “I think I can handle that.”

We stood next to his plane. He said, “You know much about planes?”

“I know it’s bright blue and yellow, has a propeller, four wings and a couple of wheels.”

He ran his hand affectionately along the part behind the engine. “This is a Stearman Kaydet. During World War Two, they served both the Navy and the Air Force and saw aerial combat in several theaters. Manufactured ’til 1945, about ten thousand were made.”

Abbie put her hands on her hips. “Youuu donnn’t saaaayyy.”

Other than the slurring sound of my wife’s voice, the year 1945 bothered me a bit. “Doesn’t that make her rather old?”

“Rebuilt every square inch myself.”

“Didn’t that take a lot of time?”

Bob smiled. “That’s something I’ve had a good bit of. A priest with no collar is…questionable. Up there, I’m a man flying a plane. Folks don’t care as long as their crops grow.” He continued, “It’s a two-seat biplane. Part wood, part fabric, part steel. Landing gear is nonretractable tail-wheel type. After the war, the government surplused thousands of Stearmans. Some were used for aerobatic competitions, some served in the air forces of other nations, while most of the rest were converted to crop sprayers.” He walked toward the rear and ran his hand along a weird-looking pipe with a whole bunch of little nozzles sticking out of it. “When converted with crop-spraying bars and hoppers, the standard issue two-twenty horsepower Lycoming engine didn’t measure up.” He tapped the nose. “Many, like this one”—he stroked her as a middle-aged man touches his Ferrari—“were re-engined with brand-new war-surplus R-985 Wasp junior radials. About four-fifty hp—or twice the original power. We fly about five feet above the ground, so it helps to have good control and response.”

To me, it looked like something out of
Peanuts.
But I kept that part to myself. He continued, talking as much to the plane as to us. “Empty, she weighs a few pounds shy of a ton. About nineteen hundred thirty-six pounds. She’s got a wingspan of thirty-two feet and a length of twenty-four feet. Initially her max speed was a hundred and twenty-four miles per hour, but I can do a good bit better now. She’ll fly to just over eleven thousand feet with a range of five hundred and five miles.”

Abbie smiled. “I’ve heeeard modellllls, descrrribed wwwwith lllessss affffection.”

I raised a hand. “You ever crashed?”

“Not in her.” There was more there but he didn’t offer and we let it go.

Abbie looked at me, the dexamethasone kicking in. “I don’t think I want tttttto know anymmmmmmore.”

“Why?” Bob asked. He was wearing both his priest and pilot hats. “You afraid of dying?”

She shook her head. “I made peace with that long ago.” The dexamethasone had taken effect. “We all die. Some just sooner than we want.” Abbie stared at me. “I’m afraid of leaving him.”

We climbed in and Abbie tapped Bob on the shoulder. “Listen, I don’t handle things like this very well, so unless you want this little cockpit to turn into the vomit comet, you’ll get up there, do the loop and get me on the ground. Got it?”

Bob half nodded. “Not really, but…”

I tapped him on the other shoulder and pointed out across the grassy field he used as a runway. “What are all those dark green mounds?”

He yelled above the grumble of the engine. “Animal bones.”

There must’ve been a hundred mounds covered with dark green grass. “That’s a lot of bones. Where’d you get them?”

He shrugged and continued our taxi. “Roadkill, mostly.”

“Any human bones out there?”

He throttled the engine, pulled down his goggles and yelled above the roar, “Not yet.”

He left off the brakes, we sped down what seemed like at most a hundred feet and then Bob pulled back on the stick, lifting us skyward. We had just cleared the treetops when he slammed the stick back further, rocketing the nose toward the sky. We climbed and climbed and climbed and just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, he rolled us over, let the stick fall forward and we spiraled toward the earth. To add insult to injury, he started rolling. I thought we’d been shot down. Abbie howled with excitement while I tried not to crap in my pants. We shot earthward, then without notice, we leveled out and rolled six or eight times on our own axis. Abbie braced herself on both sides of the plane, laughed at the top of her lungs and babbled uncontrollably. Evidently, that was just a warm-up, because no roller coaster at Busch Gardens can do what came next. We skidded across the treetops—I think I remember seeing the reflection of the river off to my right—and then we shot heavenward again, but this time we just kept rolling over. When I could see the earth below us and we started falling, Abbie realized that she was at the top of her loop. She began screaming, “Yes! Yes! Do it again! Do it again!”

I lost count after the sixth loop.

In front of us, Bob had taken to singing at the top of his lungs. The words were off-key but washed over us just the same. With one hand on the stick, the other conducting the air around him, he sang, “I’ll fly away old Glory, I’ll fly away…”

Later, when the wheels touched down, Abbie laid her head against me and I checked her carotid pulse—her heart was about to jump out of her chest. Bob cut the engine and rolled to a stop beneath his hangar. I lifted her out and lay her flat on the ground. Knees bent, one hand braced on a post, the other spread flat across the ground, she was half smiling, half moaning and her shorts were wet where she’d peed in her pants. “Oh, please stop the earth from spinning.”

I sat down next to her and used my shirt to dab the mucusy blood trickling out of her nose.

41

W
e traveled to M. D. Anderson in Houston, Sloan-Kettering in New York, Mayo Clinic in Rochester, then back to Jacksonville. Each diagnosis, although worded differently, was the same. “Your cancer has metastasized and we are chasing it.” Although she’d never smoked, it went into the lining of her lungs. Next we found spots on her liver. Though the drugs were effective and the cancer seemed responsive to treatment, it was always a step ahead. In the meantime, Abbie grew weaker. Pretty soon, I knew her ability to fight a sniffle would be compromised. She couldn’t take much more.

I, on the other hand, hadn’t painted in more than three years. Leonardo da Vinci once said that “where the spirit does not work with the mind, there is no art.” He was right. Given the fact that nobody wanted to hire Abbie and that her remaining contracts had been canceled upon failure to deliver what she’d promised, i.e. herself, we were rifling through our savings. I sold my flats boat and had started eating into our home equity line of credit.

We participated in two trial studies that increased our hope, but while CAT and PET scans showed decreases in the size of the tumors, the tumors were still there. I investigated experimental and, according to some, radical treatments in Mexico, but that was a Hail Mary pass I was not willing to throw.

Six more months passed, we finished another trial run and then started the month-long wait before we could have more scans to determine if the drugs had worked. At the end of that month, I didn’t need the scans.

It started in the kitchen. She was trying to say
apple
and turned it into about five syllables. Then she murdered
spaghetti
and completely gave up on
refrigerator.
Slurring her words was a bad sign.

CAT, PET and blood scans confirmed inoperable brain metastasis. If there was any good news in this it was that this was the worst possible news. This was the basement. Dr. Hampton explained, “The tumor’s location rules out radio frequency ablation, which is highly successful…except when it scrambles your brains. We can’t go sticking an eight-hundred-degree probe into your noggin and expect you to wake up.”

“What about more chemo?”

He shook his head. “Chemotherapy is largely ineffective against brain lesions because the lining of the brain is quite effective at protecting itself against any sort of toxin. It’s called the blood-brain barrier and thus far, chemotherapy has not found a way through or around.”

I sat there listening but not listening. Dr. Hampton described her condition—and our final option. Abbie never blinked. She said, “I want the maximum dose that you can give me.” We drove to Jacksonville, checked into Mayo and I just sat there twiddling my thumbs while they shot Chernobyl into my wife.

For fourteen weeks, Abbie endured the near crippling effects of two six-week doses of radiation. She slept much of the time, which from a certain point of view, was good. It gave her less time to think or feel the effects of either the cancer or the radiation. I didn’t fault her. I missed her madly but sleep was the only hole she could crawl into. The only escape she had left. Every other avenue had been taken away.

When she was awake, we were limited in that the slightest noise, light or movement contributed to further nausea. This forced us to sit in dark, still silence. Just being together. It was about all we had left. Fortunately, they gave Abbie whatever she wanted for the pain, proving that lunacy can be a luxury.

Following her last treatment, they ran one final series of scans. Given her condition and the fact that she’d “earned” the right to go to the front of the line, they fast-tracked her results and that afternoon found us waiting. I needed a walk—something I’d been doing a lot of lately. I felt like a traitor leaving Abbie, but she was always asleep and I needed to clear my head prior to Ruddy walking in with the news. I whispered, “Honey, I’m going to go hunt a muffin or something.” I left and walked down the hall. When I returned, one of the nurses had slipped her file—and results—into the plastic box on the door. I stared at it and I thought of my wife, sitting in there dreading more bad news.

Watching my wife die was killing me. I was sick and tired of being absolutely and completely useless. I was engaged in a battle, a life-and-death struggle, that I could not win. In my estimation, the only thing worse would be watching your child fight disease. I know this because I had lied and said I was hunting a muffin when in fact I was searching for a parent’s face, which when I saw it would tell me they were suffering as much if not more than I. When I had found one and felt the sick consolation of knowing someone else on this planet was hurting as much as me, I returned.

I know that’s wrong. I know that is absolutely twisted. And I’m sorry for it.

I flipped open the chart and found the letter sitting on top of the stack. It was from the radiation oncologist who’d read the scans:

Dear Dr. Ruddy Hampton,

I have reviewed Abbie Eliot Michael’s most recent CAT scan. I understand that she has completed her second course of six weeks of palliative radiation. Having just returned from the radiology deparment, I personally reviewed her films along with Dr. Steve Surrat, Chief Radiation Oncologist. He is convinced that the metastatic lesion in her brain is no smaller. In fact, it has grown measurably. I concur. At this point, my field has nothing further to offer. It is my professional opinion with cases such as this, Hospice is the only remaining option. Thank you for allowing me to share in the care of this nice young woman.

Sincerely,
Dr. Paul McIntyre
Radiation Oncologist

cc: Dr. Roy Smith

Dr. Katherine Meyer

Dr. Raul Dismakh

Dr. Gary Fencik

I read it once and more slowly a second time. Whispering aloud to myself, I read it a final time—hoping that I could hear it differently than I saw it. But each time I pronounced the words in my head, I heard glass breaking.

Only remaining option…

I closed the folder and leaned against the door. At thirty-five years old, she had physically exhausted her body, emotionally spent her soul and spiritually lost her hope. We had hit bottom—the fight was over.

I walked in and found the room was empty save the bed, dirty linens and the empty electrolytes bag hanging above her head. The clear feed line snaked down Georgie’s one-inch, stainless-steel chest. I looked around the room and wondered how many white-coated, Harvard-trained optimists had rained poison into her veins through the ever-present needle that stuck to her skin like a leech.

I stared at the Christmas cards taped to the wall and realized we’d been added to the list of most every oncologist at Mayo. I knew as much, probably even more, about the cancer in her as the interns who stood stone-faced at the foot of her bed, nodding, scribbling notes and thanking God it wasn’t them.

Heels clicked on the hard floor outside the door. The long gait and hard-soled wingtips told me it was Ruddy. His question echoed in my mind:
Do you like to dance?

Ruddy walked in, set the folder on the bed and sat opposite me at Abbie’s feet. He gently patted her toes and put a hand on my shoulder. “The CAT scan…” He shook his head. “It’s replicating, too…”

Abbie opened her eyes. “How long do I have?”

Ruddy was hurting. “I don’t know if you have a week, a month or…” He was quiet a minute. “Hard to say.” He smiled. “You’re the toughest fighter I’ve ever met, so…I give you longer than the textbooks do.”

I asked, “What do the books say?”

“They say she shouldn’t be here now.”

Ruddy continued, “I’ve recommended you for a spot in a trial study out of M. D. Anderson. You don’t quite fit the parameters but I…” He shrugged. “I’ve asked anyway. And we have yet to see the results of your other two scans, but they’ll be a few days.

“I recommend you go home. We’ll give you whatever you want to keep you comfortable, and in the meantime, let’s see what happens with Anderson and these other scans.”

“When will we know something?” I asked.

Ruddy stood. “Couple of days.”

I shook my head. After all that we’d been through, we were down to waiting on two phone calls.

I turned to Ruddy. “And if the phone calls don’t offer us anything?”

Ruddy palmed his face. “We make you as comfortable as possible.”

I stared up at the ceiling, then looked down at Abbie’s arm, the thin blue vein slightly visible. I thought of that scene in
The English Patient
where the nurse finally shoots Ralph Fiennes full of about eight vials of morphine.

Abbie climbed out of bed, and kissed Ruddy on the forehead. She pulled at the tape, slid the needle from under her thin, translucent skin, retaped it quietly around Georgie’s single leg and whispered, “Georgie, meet Lilith. Been nice knowing you.” Her voice was scratchy and dry. She turned her ear toward Georgie. “Nope…won’t hear of it. I really think it’s time we start seeing other people.” She held out a stop-sign hand. “I know…I get it all the time, but our careers are taking us different places, and you need someone who can stand by you, support you in your work and offer you more than just a few hours a week. Really…” She grabbed Georgie about his “waist” and pushed him, rolling him against the far wall.

I extended my hand, Ruddy hugged me, kissed Abbie and walked out. He had fought hard, too. They all had.

Given the movement, the familiar nausea returned. Abbie rested her head on her hand and closed her eyes. With her other hand, she rubbed her legs, begging for blood flow. She sat in the chair and I pushed her across the room. She whispered over her shoulder to Georgie, “You deserve someone better than me. Someone who can appreciate your commitment to your work.”

The afternoon sun breaking through the window was harsh and direct. Squinting, I rolled her to the closet where she stood and stared inside. Her gown, untied in the back, flapped under the flow of the oscillating fan on the floor. I offered to tie it but she waved me off. “I don’t care. Not much left to see anyway.” She let it slide to the floor and stood there in her birthday suit—which was baggy and two sizes too big. She pointed and I pulled down a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She leaned on me as I helped her slide into a pair of panties. They too sagged, hanging loosely off her hips. She looked over her shoulder and realized her butt was pointed toward the hall where two male nursing assistants stood staring in. She whispered, “Free advertising.” She leaned against me while I helped her guide one foot into her jeans. “I used to work so hard to sell that space. Now I can’t give it away.” I buttoned her jeans and pulled the T-shirt over her arms. She didn’t need a bra. She slid on a baseball cap, and I slid her flip-flops onto her toes. One last time, I pushed her up against the windowsill where she let her eye follow the marsh from the Intracoastal Waterway to the ocean, shimmering in the distance. Shrimp boats dotted the horizon along with one gray aircraft carrier headed north to Mayport where Navy wives waited for their Davys with handheld flags and babies dressed in blue.

Getting dressed had taxed her equilibrium. The nausea climbed up her legs, shook her knees, gained strength in her stomach, launched into her throat and exited out her mouth like a rocket blast. I held her over the sink and wiped her mouth as the sound of footsteps grew closer. A young man stood in the hall. We’d met him several times—he was the acne-faced teenaged grandson of a patient next door. He stood some four inches shorter than me. Abbie opened her eyes. “Yes?” she managed.

He looked away, tried to say something, but couldn’t quite get it out, so he pointed next door and walked away without looking back—something few men would have done two years ago. But we’d grown accustomed to that, too.

We rode the elevator down—Abbie vomiting again between the sixth and fourth floors. We crossed the parking lot, I laid her in the front seat and then started the car. Four hours later, we were home.

We’d come full circle.