Full of Grace

by Dorothea Benton Frank

  We got a spot across the street from Station Twenty-two Restaurant and parked. Parking spots on Sullivans Island were highly coveted and, like the locals say, about as scarce as hen’s teeth. Michael took my hand as we walked through the sandy lot, which was filled with potholes, and after a few stumbles, I finally took his arm to avoid certain neck fracture. It was dark and starry, music and laughter spilled out from Poe’s Tavern, and we debated eating there or at Station Twenty-two.

  “I’m feeling like Aunt Mattie’s crab cakes,” he said, indicating a preference for Station Twenty-two.

  “I could go for fried flounder,” I said, agreeing with his choice.

  “You have that every single solitary time we come here! Why don’t you live a little and get the fried oysters?”

  “Nope. Fried flounder. That’s it. Fried flounder and hush puppies. And fries.” Michael stopped in the middle of Middle Street and stared at me. “Well, at least I know what I want,” I said, and squeezed his arm.

  We waited at the crowded bar, enjoying a glass of Matanzas Creek Sauvignon Blanc. I was busy people-watching and chatting away with some tourists on the various merits of a home on the developed end of Isle of Palms versus the natural splendor of Sullivans Island. I heard the rustle of barstools and someone said, “Hey! Watch it!” In my peripheral vision I saw Michael falling. Before I knew what was happening, Michael was on the floor, writhing in a seizure. Someone turned him on his back and called out for Marshall Stith, the owner. Anthony, Marshall’s brother and the chief of the fire department who was experienced in first aid, came rushing through the crowd and knelt down by Michael, who was twitching and jerking. I thought my heart was going to leap from my throat and that I was going to drown in a faint so deep I would never wake up. Neither of those things happened. What did happen was that I glimpsed the possibility of what I dreaded most—losing Michael.

  “Please stand back,” Anthony said.

  In a matter of minutes it was over and he turned Michael over on his side. I knelt down beside him and smoothed his hair back from his face.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Are you his wife?” Anthony said.

  “No, but we are very close,” I said, unsure how to describe our relationship.

  “Do you know if this was his first seizure, or has he had them before?”

  “I can speak,” Michael said, and struggled to a sitting position. “I am a doctor. I’m fine.”

  “Well,” Anthony said, “you may think you’re fine. But you’re not fine. I called EMS and they’re gonna take you over to the ER in Mount Pleasant just to get you checked out.”

  “I think you can cancel—”

  Before Michael could finish the sentence I spoke up. “We’re going to the emergency room, Michael. Something’s not right and we both know it.”

  They wouldn’t let me ride with him in the ambulance, so I followed behind in my car. The ride to the hospital took minutes, but in those few minutes everything in the world ran through my mind. I was consumed by a nauseating fear I had never known. Then, a moment later, I was terrified beyond my wildest imaginings, and then, unable to comprehend and accept that this might be act one of an unfolding tragedy, I told myself that everything would be fine. It had to be. I didn’t know how else to console myself.

  What if something awful happened? Whom would I call to say that something terrible had happened? Michael was an only child and his mother was all but useless. Were there aunts? Uncles? Cousins? Yes! There was an aunt, his father’s sister, who lived in San Diego, and she had children, didn’t she? A son in Denver and a daughter in Houston? Was that right? Yes, or close anyway. I would ask him for their names and phone numbers. I would insist that he give them to me. Why hadn’t I thought about this before? Because we were too young to consider fatal illness or the need for an organ donor or anything that dramatic.

  I ran into the waiting room and then I realized that there was nothing to do but wait. There were other people there, reading magazines, watching television, talking to one another. They all seemed to have someone to comfort them over whatever illness or accident had brought them there in the first place. But I was alone. I was better dressed than all of them, had better jewelry than all of them and probably drove a better car than all of them—but I was alone and they were not. Who could I call? My mother? Bomze?

  I was his live-in, not his wife. I had no right to be in the examining room with him. So I got to watch Larry King on CNN, and then, flipping through the stations—because someone left the remote control on a table—I was distracted and then surprised by how many shopping channels there were. None of them had a single thing I wanted. And how many news channels there were. At the moment I didn’t give two hoots about what was going on in the world. All I could think was how insignificant it all was in light of what was going on in another room somewhere between Michael and some intern or resident who was unfortunate enough to be on call.

  It was getting close to midnight and I was becoming more concerned than anxious. I drank three cups of decaffeinated coffee and read a Time magazine from cover to cover. I watched the crowd come and go—obese women with children awake hours beyond their bedtimes; men, still in their work clothes, pacing and going outside every so often to have a cigarette or use their cell phone. A steady stream of humanity came and went and I didn’t particularly notice anyone until a well-heeled woman of about my age appeared and sat opposite me. She had a Chanel handbag, sapphire earrings suspended by a wire and I suspected her suit was either Armani or someone in that universe. She opened her purse and pulled out a worn rosary and began to pray silently. It bothered me. I couldn’t have told you why, but the fact that she was praying in public bothered me. I got up and walked outside for a breath of air. When I returned, the rosary had been put away. The woman looked at me and spoke. I could tell she had been crying.

  “My father’s in there,” she said. “We were just coming home from dinner in the city and he collapsed. He’s only seventy.”

  “He’ll be all right,” I said. I wanted to say, What the hell are you worried about? My boyfriend—no, the only man I have ever loved besides my father is in there and he might be dying, too! And he’s only thirty-five! But I said nothing.

  I went to the desk and inquired about Michael for the fourth time. The staff had just undergone a shift change, so I had a new person to question. She was very nice, but she told me nothing I couldn’t surmise on my own except for one small fact.

  “If he hasn’t come out by now, that usually means they are very backed up in there.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, that makes sense. Can I get you some coffee?”

  “No, thanks. I’m drinking water. Weight Watchers. You could float away with all the water they want you to drink.”

  “Right? I do Atkins and it’s the same thing. What’s normal for wait time on a night like this?”

  “Honey, there ain’t nothing normal in an emergency room. But the usual wait on a weekend night could be anywhere from two to five hours, depending on what the problem is. Anyway, you said his name was what?”

  “Michael Higgins.”

  “I’ll make a call.” I stood there while she called the nurses’ station inside. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay, thanks.” She hung up and looked at me. “Here’s the deal. There was no neurologist here tonight, so they had to call in someone. He should be out soon. You say he had a seizure, right?”

  “Yeah. Pretty scary. What if they want to admit him?”

  “Not likely. If he’s ambulatory, that is. They’ll want him to see his primary or they’ll refer him.”

  After another thirty minutes of me feeling like a caged animal looking for something to gnaw, Michael finally appeared.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  “What did the doctor say?”

  “The doctor is an idiot.”

  “Oh. Okay. Fine. But what did he say?” I unlocked the car and opened
the passenger door. “This side, gorgeous. I’m driving us home.”

  “What? Afraid I’ll have a seizure while I’m driving?”

  “Look, don’t get pissy with me. I just sat in there for a billion years waiting for you, you know. No, I never even thought about that, but now that you mention it, you probably should get to the bottom of what’s going on here before you drive.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Look, this moron doctor who got out of some medical school in East Jabib about two minutes ago has no idea what’s up with me.”

  “Oh. Okay. Then maybe you might want to go back to the guy who gave you antihistamines and the antibiotic and ask him! But you have to find out what’s happening to you! This is not a joke, Michael. This might be something really serious or it might not be. But you can’t go around having seizures and scaring the crap out of me and you and everybody else!”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Grace. I didn’t mean to be impolite by having a seizure.”

  “Not funny, Michael.”

  I backed out of the parking space and turned onto Highway 17 South, headed back to Charleston. I turned the radio off and didn’t speak to him. Finally, when we were almost over the bridge, he spoke.

  “Fine, if it makes you happy, I’ll go to the doctor.”

  I reached over and squeezed his knee. In a glance, I could see him smile with his mouth, but his eyes were worried. I was worried, too.

  I opened the windows a little to let the air in. It did very little to relieve the way we felt. But we remained quiet, preferring not to speak because what could we say to each other? Michael was obviously deeply concerned.

  I was beyond concerned. I had already imagined all the possibilities of what could be wrong with him. I’d been through his surgeries, his death, his funeral, my mourning, me getting old alone, my family thinking I was stupid to throw away my life like I would do—the whole theater.

  Well, I decided as I lay awake that night from the decaffeinated coffee that wasn’t quite decaffeinated, I wasn’t giving up without a fight. In the same way I was determined to be a rock for my mother, I would be a mountain range for Michael Higgins. I would will him into perfect health.

  CHAPTER TEN

  REST ASSURED

  All I could think about was how uncertain the world had become. My grandmother was going to a rehabilitation center and I knew she was crazy with anger over it. It was more than surprising that she had actually agreed to go, but when I had talked to Dad he had the usual Big Al explanation for how he had finessed the situation.

  “I just said, Look, Nonna, I’m taking the entire week off next week. I am going to personally be there with you every single day, making sure they know just who you are and that they treat you right, okay? If there is some reason—and at this moment I can see no reason at all—but if there is some kind of reason I can’t be with you all day, Connie will be here. And if Connie can’t come—and the only reason for that would be that she’s home cooking for you—then Nicky or Marianne will be here. And I’m talking about right by your side. Okay? You have my word on it.”

  “Wow, Dad. And she calmed down?”

  “Hey! In the right hands? Your grandmother is a doll baby. So how’s my little girl?”

  “Well, I’m taking a group to Napa next Monday, so that has me pretty busy, and Michael’s not feeling well.”

  I hadn’t meant to tell him about Michael, but the words just slipped out of my mouth.

  “Whaddaya mean? What’s wrong?”

  There was no lying to my father. “He had a seizure last Friday and we spent the evening in the emergency room at a hospital in Mount Pleasant.”

  “What? A seizure? That’s not good, honey, you know that. Don’t you? Does this bum have…whaddaya call it…epilepsy?”

  “No! And please don’t call him a bum, Daddy.”

  Silence.

  “He doesn’t have epilepsy, at least they don’t think so. They don’t know what it is yet. He’s been nauseated and dizzy off and on for a while. At first, they thought it was allergies or a sinus infection.”

  “Might be inner-ear trouble or something like that along those lines.”

  “Yeah, maybe. They’ll figure it out. Anyway, when I get back from Napa, I’ll come down to see you and give you and Mom a day off with Nonna. How long is she gonna be in this place?”

  “Six weeks—wait till you see this joint. It’s a freaking palace like the Taj Mahal or something…”

  It wasn’t up to me to point out to my father that the freaking Taj Mahal was actually a freaking tomb. I would leave that task to greater minds with more nimble diplomatic skills.

  Needless to say, I was working as hard as I could not to worry about Michael. I was sitting in my office surfing the Net, looking for causes of dizziness and seizures and nausea. None of them were good. All of them made me worry. No, obsess. I had to stop or I would be caught weeping at my desk.

  I switched back to Google the restaurants in Napa, going over the menus and wine lists at Auberge du Soleil, Martini House and, of course, the famous French Laundry.

  The clients on this trip were of various levels of renown and experience, and even though they were hard-core foodies, not all of them were chefs—some of them owned the restaurants and others ran them. We had four actual chefs and their wives, the owners of the Peninsula Grill and their wives, the sommelier from Cypress with her meaningful other and the publishers of Charleston magazine. I had two surprises for our clients—one, Thomas Keller of the French Laundry was going to give them a private demo in the kitchen and let them cook with him for the afternoon; and second, Ann Colgin had arranged for us to visit an olive grower who would discuss the various challenges and the business of olives—whether it was olives, olive oil, soap, body creams or any of the other products made with olive oil—which was exploding all over Northern California. And we would taste olive oil from six different growers who all belonged to the Olive Press, a growers’ cooperative. In their rooms they would find a basket of olive products, signed cookbooks from all the restaurants, maps of the area and, last but not least, a special signed bottle of wine from Ann Colgin herself. I was satisfied that it was going to be a fantastic trip.

  Over coffee in the morning Michael told me he had an appointment that afternoon with the doctor who had given him the first medications.

  “What time are you seeing him?”

  “Around four.”

  “Do you want me to come?”

  “Nah. It’s no big deal. I’ll see you at home.”

  I was anxious to get home that night and decided to make meat loaf and mashed potatoes, the ultimate comfort meal. If Michael could look at a plate of something that reminded him of a happier day, he might relax a little and divulge more details than if I grilled a steak, nuked a potato and served up a salad from a bag. Ah, that delicious aftertaste of cellophane—that, I could live without. Yes, I was using food as a weapon.

  As soon as I could justify leaving the office, I did. Harris Teeter was crowded with people tossing pot roast and chickens, string beans and carrots into their shopping carts. There was always someone with fifty items on the express line for customers with ten items or less. There was always someone writing a check on the cash-only line who couldn’t find their driver’s license. And unless you made it to the bakery department before six, you might not find the kind of baguette you wanted and you’d be forced to take home a mushy cricket bat that was labeled bread but would get you laughed out of New York and New Jersey. That was the frenzied aura of rush-hour grocery shopping and somehow I loved it. It was like a double espresso.

  Michael came through the door just as the smells of onions and meat filled the air and I was adding a clump of butter to the whipped potatoes warming in the top of my double boiler.

  “Hey!” I said. “Come kiss the cook!”

  His face masked something that appeared to be a major piece of bad news.

  “My pleasure,” he said, and gave me a kiss on the cheek.


  He stood back and we looked at each other.

  “What?” he said.

  “Don’t ever give up your day job for a career in poker.”

  He didn’t say anything; he just clenched his jaw. Then he opened the refrigerator and said, “Want a glass of wine?”

  “There’s an open bottle of Ruffino on the table if you’d like red,” I said.

  Probably a minute passed before he spoke again, but every second ticked by with all the weight of a tortured lifetime. In that horrible space of dark time, I braced myself for the worst news.

  He handed me a goblet and we clinked glasses.

  “Here’s to modern medicine,” he said.

  “I’ll drink to that, but tell me why we are drinking to the wonders of medicine.”

  “My ENT friend wants me to see a neurologist and has already set me up for an MRI.”

  “What does he think? I mean, why an MRI?”

  “Because they can get more information from an MRI than any other kind of test—that is, without surgery or blood work.”

  “Doesn’t that seem like a big place to start? I mean, isn’t an MRI a big deal?”

  “Well, yes and no. The good thing about it is that it gives the radiologist a three-dimensional picture of your insides. They shoot this differential dye into an IV and it reacts in certain ways to benign bodies and in other ways to things that are more troublesome.”

  “I won’t ask you to explain that, but tell me what you think.”

  “For the moment I wish my ENT friend could have assured me that this was just seasonal allergies.” Michael smiled at me and it was the smile of someone trying to digest shock.

  So far I had not flinched. “But he didn’t. I mean, he seems sure it’s not allergies or a sinus infection or an inner-ear infection. Or something…”

  “Right. The MRI is to establish a baseline record of my head. It’s not intended to scare, as you put it, the crap out of us. So what smells so good?”