Sixteen and Dying

by Lurlene McDaniel

  From far away, she heard the sharp, distinctive crack of a rifle. Anne covered her ears and cried out as if the bullet had hit her.

  Anne stayed in bed all the following day. Her body ached, and she felt a pressure in her chest, as if weights were pressing against her, making it difficult to breathe.

  “I’ve called Dr. Rinaldi in Denver,” her father fumed. “How could you allow yourself to get drenched yesterday? You know your immune system can’t handle this.”

  Anne was too weak, too ill to argue. Her father bundled her up, put her in the backseat of the ranch’s station wagon, and drove much too fast all the way into the city. After Dr. Rinaldi examined her, he wrote several prescriptions. “You’ve got pneumonia. For an HIV-positive person, this is extremely dangerous. You’ll need to be hospitalized immediately.”

  She tried to protest.

  “You can’t put off going onto the AZT any longer I believe that your blood work will show that your T4 cells have fallen drastically. Let me check you in to the hospital, start you on AZT, and get your infection under control.”

  She shook her head. “I want to go home, back to New York City.” She looked to her father. “Can you get us a plane to New York tomorrow?” Anne felt surprisingly calm. “We can pack and be to the airport by morning,” she said.

  “I’ll pack. You rest,” her father said. “Doctor, can she manage the trip?”

  The doctor spoke against it, but finally admitted it was their choice.

  They arrived back at the ranch late, but Anne insisted on saying good-bye to Marti. They’d be leaving before dawn. Anne slipped into the cabin and shook Marti’s shoulder.

  “Is it time to get up already? I feel like I just went to bed.” Marti rubbed her eyes. “Is that you, Anne? What are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

  “My dad and I are going home,” Anne whispered.

  “What?”

  “Right after we pack.”

  “But why?” Marti sat upright.

  “I’m not feeling well, and Dad wants me home, near my own doctors.”

  “I thought you just had a cold.”

  For a moment, Anne was tempted to tell Marti the truth, then her courage failed. She wanted Marti to remember her fondly, not with fear or disgust. “I have to go.”

  “But what about Morgan? Have you told him?”

  “You tell him for me.”

  Marti gripped Anne’s hand. “There’s something really wrong with you, isn’t there?”

  “Yes,” Anne admitted.

  Marti stifled a cry, then threw her arms around Anne. “I knew it. Morgan told me about your cut and how you acted. I decided not to ask you about it, but it’s got something to do with your leaving, doesn’t it? Anne, tell me.”

  “I can’t,” she said miserably.

  “I’ll miss you so much.” Marti was starting to cry.

  “I’ll miss you too.” Anne hugged her friend tightly.

  “If it weren’t for you, I’d never have realized Peter was bad for me.”

  “What did I do?”

  “You told me to date Skip. I never would have if you hadn’t encouraged me. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Don’t tell Peter when you’re back in LA,” Anne kidded. “He may come after me. You were a good friend to me too, Marti, especially when I needed one who didn’t ask questions. I’ll never forget you.”

  “Will you write me?”

  “I’ll write.” Anne knew she’d probably have plenty of time, lying in a hospital bed. She rose, but Marti refused to release her hand. “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Anne, I just had the strangest feeling. I’m afraid I’ll never see you again. I know that doesn’t make any sense, but I’m scared. Promise me you’ll come back next year, and I will too.”

  “If I’m able,” Anne said, trying to sound cheerful.

  “I have to go.” Anne extricated her hand from Marti’s and headed toward the door.

  “I’ll light candles for you in church every Sunday,” Marti said with a quivery voice.

  “Gracias.”

  Marti began to cry. “Vaya con Dios, Anne. Go with God.”

  “I will, te amiga,” Anne whispered, and shut the door softly behind her.

  Fifteen

  BACK IN NEW YORK, Anne was hospitalized immediately. Her recuperation from pneumonia was long and painful, her adjustment to AZT difficult. She had no energy and was nauseous and sick. She suffered with unbearable itching. Everything made her depressed. “I can’t blame it all on the AZT,” she told her father. “How else is a person supposed to feel when she knows she’ll never get well?”

  Her doctors were thorough. They tried her on different combinations of drugs, but her T-cell count continued to plunge. When Anne confronted the doctors, they told her she now had full-blown AIDS. She took the news as courageously as possible—mostly for her father’s sake.

  After her release from the hospital, her father took her home where she was too weak and ill to resume a normal life. Anne was lonely. She hadn’t confided in any of her friends so no one visited or called.

  “Let me talk to the kids you know,” her father urged.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Anne told him, even though, deep down it did matter. She figured none of them would know what to say to her, or how to act around someone who was terminally ill. As summer faded into fall, confined to her bed in their apartment, Anne fought to keep her spirits up by reliving her Colorado summer in her daydreams.

  She gazed longingly out of the window in her bedroom, watching the bare branches of a tree bend in a raw, November wind. “Can I get you anything before I head out to class?” her father asked, entering her room.

  “I’m fine. You go on.” She knew he hated leaving her alone.

  “Mrs. Hankins must have been delayed in traffic,” he added. “I can call and have someone cover my classes for me.”

  “Dad, she’ll be here. Stop worrying.”

  He bent and kissed Anne’s cheek. She held her breath, knowing it was a silly thing to do. She knew AIDS wasn’t contagious by kissing this way, but she was nervous anyway.

  “There’s a PBS special on tonight,” her father said. “I thought we could watch it together.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “It’s a date then. I’m off for now.”

  “Have mercy on your poor students.”

  From the doorway, his smile looked tight. “Mercy. I’ve forgotten about that concept.”

  Anne adjusted the pillows against her back and sighed heavily. If only the days weren’t so long. She knew JWC, her secret benefactor, understood what she was experiencing. She knew the words in the letter by heart. “Through no fault of our own we have endured pain and isolation and have spent many days in a hospital feeling lonely and scared.” Surely, Anne decided, JWC had endured AIDS, for no one who hadn’t could possibly understand. However, “lonely and scared” didn’t begin to define what Anne had feared most in the hospital.

  After weeks of treatment, she’d grabbed her father’s hand one night and sobbed, “Promise me, you won’t let me die in this place.”

  “Honey, you’re not going to die yet,” her father managed to reply.

  “It’s not the dying. It’s the thought of dying here. Take me home. Please. No matter how bad it gets, promise me, you won’t make me come back to the hospital.”

  “I can’t make such a promise. I couldn’t save you at home.”

  “Don’t try. Just let me go. Don’t let them hook me up to machines and keep me alive just to endure more pain.” She felt desperate. “I want to go home. I want to be in my home … my room when it happens, Daddy.”

  He tried to calm her. “Take it easy. Don’t think about this now. Think about getting well. I’ll find out all that I can about caring for someone with AIDS at home.”

  “You wouldn’t mind taking care of me?”

  “Oh, Anne … I won’t leave you in the care of strangers. I love you.”

/>   Anne smiled at her father’s tenderness. She’d met AIDS patients in the hospital who’d been disowned and abandoned by their families after their diagnosis. She couldn’t understand such misery. Her father had cared enough about her to undertake the chore of home care, and devoted all of his time to her.

  “Anne, it’s me, Mrs. Hankins.” The older woman’s voice floated down the hall into Anne’s room.

  “I’m in my room,” Anne called.

  Mrs. Hankins bustled into the room. “Sorry I’m late. Missed my bus.” She set down her things and took off her coat. “All ready for that bath? I thought we could wash your hair today too.”

  Anne was more than ready. Ever since her skin had erupted in painful, itchy shingles, her relief came from the oatmeal bath soaks Mrs. Hankins helped her with three times a week. Her hair was a different matter. Most of it had fallen out because of the drugs. She’d cut it until it was no more than a few inches long all over her head.

  “Joan of Arc was also closely cropped,” her father had kidded. Yet, she’d seen sorrow in his eyes when he’d gathered up the handfuls of her once long, beautiful, brown hair.

  Mrs. Hankins brought out a pale pink flannel nightgown from Anne’s bureau. “This is pretty. I’ll help you into it when we’re finished.”

  As Anne soaked in the soothing tub of water, Mrs. Hankins changed the bed linen and put a bouquet of fresh flowers into a vase. Anne was grateful to this woman who came several times a week to help her. She was from a group of volunteers called Good Samaritan. Their mission was to provide practical support for AIDS patients.

  “Why would you want to help me? You don’t even know me.” Anne had said when the chaplain at the hospital had first introduced Anne to Mrs. Hankins.

  The woman’s blue eyes studied her tenderly. “I lost a son, Todd, to AIDS. His own father wanted nothing to do with him. I nursed Todd, trying to ease his physical and emotional pain.

  “The Good Samaritan group showed us both how to accept what had happened. To accept God’s love and to forgive ourselves, and others, for what we can’t change. I promised that once Todd was gone, I would continue to live out the call to love and service. It seems the very least I can do.”

  In the two months Mrs. Hankins had been coming to her home, Anne had become deeply connected to the caring woman who helped with her most personal needs. Her presence gave Anne’s father a break from the constant strain of caregiving. There were others who helped too—a social worker, a nurse, and her doctors—but Anne appreciated Mrs. Hankins the most.

  “All through?” Mrs. Hankins asked, coming into the bathroom. “Let’s blow dry your hair. Would you like to put on some makeup?”

  “You know none of that will help the way I look,” Anne replied, refusing to so much as glance at her reflection in the mirror.

  “Trust me,” Mrs. Hankins said with a gleam in her eye, “it will help you feel better.”

  When Anne was safely tucked between clean sheets, Mrs. Hankins said, “I’ll go tidy up the kitchen.”

  “You don’t have to do that. Dad will—”

  “Your dad’s a fine man, and I’m sure he’s a fine professor, but his kitchen skills are a bit lacking.”

  Anne smiled. She was familiar with her father’s bad habits. Depression stole over her as she imagined him living alone, without her. Anne struggled against it. She leaned back against the pillows and, while Mrs. Hankins bustled about the apartment, Anne stared up at the solitary patch of grey sky.

  She closed her eyes and pictured the rugged mountains of Colorado etched against the bright blue heavens. The image of Morgan astride his big bay stallion galloped across the canvas of her memory. It was Morgan she missed most of all. She told herself that just as there was no more bay horse, she had no hope of ever seeing Morgan again. Yet, like the bitter wind that surged outside her window, the memories persisted, filling her with both longing and despair for what could never be.

  Sixteen

  “PEOPLE ARE CRUEL.” Over the months, Anne’s words returned to Morgan time and again. What he heard her really say was “You’re cruel.”

  The look of horror in her brown eyes and the revulsion her face expressed when he shot the bay, hounded him. She hadn’t understood, of course. She’d thought him cruel and heartless, when in reality he’d done the most humane thing possible. They had parted in anger, she had left for New York, and he’d never been able to tell her he was sorry.

  When Marti had first told him that Anne had gone without so much as a good-bye to him, Morgan had been furious. He couldn’t believe that she’d deserted him. Marti insisted that something had been wrong with Anne, something to do with her health. Angrily, he had brushed off Marti’s explanation, but as summer turned into fall and he began to over-come the hurt of Anne’s abandonment, he began to remember the wonderful times they’d shared. His anger dulled, while his good memories grew vivid.

  Cold November wind blasted down from the mountains, bringing snow before Thanksgiving. Skip, who’d stayed on as a regular ranch hand, took off two weeks and went to L.A. to visit Marti. Morgan tried to keep himself busy with ranch chores and with the search for a horse he liked as much as the bay.

  Skip called him over Thanksgiving. “You should come out here, Morgan. The sun shines every day.”

  “Don’t get a sunburn.”

  “And Hollywood is something else!”

  Morgan grinned, hearing the excitement in Skip’s voice. “Don’t go getting ‘discovered’—we need you back here. How’s Marti?”

  “Great. She’s already asked Maggie for a job next summer. I guess I’m irresistible.”

  “I won’t tell her you said that. Has Marti heard anything from Anne?” he asked, more casually than he felt.

  “The last letter she got, Anne wrote that she’d been in the hospital, but that she was home now.”

  “The hospital?” Morgan felt his heart constrict. “What was wrong with her?”

  “Anne never says, but Marti believes it’s something really serious. Why don’t you write Anne?”

  “I’ll think about it.” Morgan hung up and thought about little else. Why was life treating him so unfairly? First his father, now Anne, and eventually, maybe even himself and Aunt Maggie. Morgan hated the injustice of it all.

  A week before Christmas, he went to talk to his aunt. “I’ve been thinking of taking some time off,” he said.

  Maggie put down her pen and closed the ledger book she was working with. “You’re not a hired hand, Morgan. You’re family. You work hard, and if you want to get away for a while, go on.”

  “You don’t think Uncle Don will mind?”

  “If you’d gone to college, you wouldn’t be here at all. He won’t mind. Where will you go?”

  “East.” His plan had been forming for weeks, and now it had taken on an urgency.

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I wish I could help you be happier, Morgan. Maybe some time away from here will do you good.”

  “It’s not just that,” Morgan said haltingly. “There are a lot of things I need to figure out. I need some time to sort through them.”

  “You know I understand.”

  He knew that his aunt did. She might be facing the same horrifying future as he. “I’ll let you know when I get where I’m going,” Morgan promised.

  “This is your home, so take a break, then come back.” She hugged him tight.

  “Thanks, Aunt Maggie.” Morgan felt a knot lodge in his throat. It was difficult to think about leaving, but he knew he must. He had to find some answers, not only about Anne Wingate, but about Morgan Lancaster too.

  Anne propped herself up in bed and tried to read. The type on the page of the book kept blurring. This new problem frightened her very much. She couldn’t stand the thought of losing her eyesight and not being able to read. Her father had brought her a tape recorder and stacks of books on tape, but going blind was horrifying.

  Exasperated, she t
ossed the book aside. Out the window, the sky promised snow. Maybe they’d have a white Christmas. She smelled the scent of gingerbread coming from the kitchen. Mrs. Hankins’s work, Anne knew. Her father was out doing errands. Anne had asked him not to bother with presents for her this year, but he’d been so appalled that she’d not mentioned it a second time. Still, she knew that her time was running out and hadn’t wanted him to waste time and money for a Christmas she might not live to see.

  Every day, she was weaker, sicker. Her latest blood work had shown a very low platelet and white blood count. Right before Thanksgiving, she’d had to return to the hospital because of a persistent cough and high fever. Thankfully, she hadn’t developed pneumonia again. She heard the door buzzer; Mrs. Hankins answered it.

  Minutes later, Mrs. Hankins came to Anne’s room. “There’s someone to see you,” she said.

  “To see me? Who is it?”

  “A very handsome young man. He wouldn’t give his name.”

  “He must have the wrong Anne Wingate.” She couldn’t imagine that anyone from school would just drop by. “I really don’t feel like having visitors anyway.”

  “He said I had to persuade you. I told him I’d try, but it’s up to you, Anne.”

  Anne was mystified. “What does he look like?”

  “A cowboy.”

  Anne’s stomach lurched, and her heart wedged in her throat. It couldn’t be.… “Please don’t let him in.”

  “I’m in.” Morgan stood at the doorway.

  Anne covered her face and attempted to hunch down under the covers. “Don’t look at me,” she cried.

  “You’d better wait by the entry door,” Mrs. Hankins said.

  Morgan stepped around Mrs. Hankins and moved close to Anne’s bed. “Look at me,” he said. She kept her hands over her face, but he noticed lesions along her neck and on one of her hands.

  “Go away! Please! Don’t look at me! Why are you here?”