“Not always,” she said.
“Every time I’ve seen you try, you have.”
“That’s nice of you to say.” She was still staring at the ceiling, lost in insecurity.
“I’m not saying it’s always a good thing.”
“What do you mean?” she asked defensively.
“You get what you want.”
“Are you saying I’m a battle-axe?”
“Well, I’m not saying you’re not, that’s for sure,” he said, completely serious.
She let go of his hand and whacked him hard across the chest.
The next day, Anne asked to be mentored by the current supervisor of flow cytometry. The work involved a laser that helps count and sort cells, detecting biomarkers by suspending those cells in fluid and passing them through a machine that can read their characteristics at a thousand parts per second. Initially focused on blood cancers, Anne quickly grasped and then fell in love with this new, innovative work. And when that supervisor left the job many months later, Anne took her place.
Not every hospital has a flow section, and the military had only a few. Suddenly, Anne was the supervisor of the Department of Defense’s high-tech, cutting-edge flow cytometry lab, and she soared all the way up to a GS12, far higher than she had ever dared dream. She didn’t show her pride often, but when it came to this new position, it was hard for her to hide it. The woman who had been told she would never go to college or get a real job was now running one of the most esteemed labs in one of the U.S. military’s most prized hospitals.
I clearly remember her first big concern in this new job, likely because it frightened me too. She began working with blood from AIDS patients, doing their T cell counts on her machines, figuring out how rapidly these supposedly straight HIV-positive young men were losing their immune cells, trying with the doctors to find any treatment that might help slow their decline, and failing each and every time. She never mentioned what she must have known: that many of these boys were closeted gay men in a military that didn’t allow gay people to serve openly. But she never outright judged them in front of me. She was wholly focused on keeping these boys alive for their mothers and their families for as long as she could. That gave me some hope.
Then one crisp afternoon in 1995, when I was back for a spring break visit, she came home with a serious expression on her face and a Band-Aid on her finger. She had put her hand into her lab coat pocket, forgetting she had a specimen in there, and jabbed her finger with an HIV-positive patient’s syringe. Over dinner, she told us she felt certain she would be okay, that this wasn’t uncommon, and that such a small amount of exposure was nothing to get too terribly concerned about. But I was now a frequent visitor to the gay ghettos in L.A. and occasionally in San Francisco, and on the streets of West Hollywood and in the Castro I’d seen the gaunt faces of those suffering with AIDS. I thought about my mentors in the theater world who had simply vanished, and of one popular young friend in our pack in L.A. who had never been diagnosed, but suddenly died of pneumonia in the parking lot of Cedars-Sinai Hospital. He had undiagnosed HIV that had progressed to AIDS and, untreated, took him without warning.
It would be nearly a year before I felt I could trust the tests saying my mom was still HIV-negative. She didn’t know how turned the tables were over those months—the still half-closeted gay son of a straitlaced Southern military woman worrying that his precious mom might die of AIDS in the early ’90s.
But like always, the greater the challenges, the greater my mom’s sense of purpose. Jeff would walk into her lab at the end of the workday, and she’d be sitting at her machine showing doctors results, pointing out cells so they could determine exactly what kind of cancer their patient had. Sometimes crowds of doctors hovered over her, listening to her every word, and Jeff would just sit back and smile. “It was like she was conducting a symphony orchestra,” he told me. “She had everyone’s ears. All these doctors with all of their years of school and degrees, all listening to her.”
Anne’s flow section eventually garnered international interest. An entire NATO delegation flew in from Africa to learn about her work. The lead health officer for one country sat in Anne’s lab listening with rapt attention as she talked. He was taken with her passion, impressed with her easy grasp of this new technology, and dazzled by her human touch. Later in the day, that same lead health officer quietly offered Anne a job. A big job. To come live in his country and help build and run its own flow cytometry lab. It would have meant a big raise, perhaps even a taste of wealth, and certainly some medical acclaim.
Anne was beyond flattered, but she couldn’t imagine living that far from her family, and what really gave her a sense of pride wasn’t a paycheck or even having studies printed in magazines. What the health officer had failed to witness was what occurred each morning and late afternoon when Anne walked in and out of this army medical hospital’s front doors. What happened then is what made this home impossible to leave.
II
Anne surely qualified to park in one of the handicapped spots up front at her work, but she never applied for a placard. She didn’t consider herself disabled. So even in the winter, Jeff parked in the closest regular space, grabbed her crutches from the back of the truck, and walked them around to her door just as I used to before he arrived. Anne took the crutches and carefully swung her feet forward in case any ice was hidden under the snow, slowly making her way toward the hospital’s doors. Jeff worried, but she summarily dismissed any offers to help, and he knew better than to press. It took her an extra minute or two to make it to the entrance, but make it she did—with a little grin and a tip of the chin that said, “I told you so.”
The hospital’s automatic doors swished open, sending a blast of warm air to greet them as they stepped inside. Jeff gave my mom a kiss. “I’ll see you in the break room for lunch.”
“See you there!” she replied.
And off he went to the transfusion services area where he worked.
Anne now had a lobby and a long linoleum hallway to navigate to get to her laboratory, but first she sized up the other early risers filling the lobby’s chairs. Walter Reed was a center for rehabilitation, known for its orthopedic work with the toughest cases: double, triple, and quadruple amputees. So the lobby, which was set up more like a coffee shop than an entryway, was already filled with impossibly young soldiers, many in wheelchairs, most missing limbs or with severe burns on their faces, arms, and bodies. These were the brave young men and women who had been injured in battle or training in the course of protecting our country.
As was often the case, one of the young men quickly wheeled past my mother, working his chair with the one arm he had left, headed for the front doors she’d just come through. Anne threw him a familiar, if not judgmental, look, and he grimaced.
“You know you shouldn’t be doing that,” Anne said.
“It’s the last one, ma’am.” He was headed outside to smoke.
“You promise this time?”
“Cross my heart, ma’am,” he shouted back, not meaning it.
“If you won’t do it for your own mom, do it for me.”
That actually got a laugh out of the young man.
Anne started swinging her way through the lobby. More than a few of the young men smiled or shouted a “Mornin’, ma’am!” Again, as was often the case, a young man with no legs sitting in a wheelchair offered to help her with her bag, a little flirtation hidden in his cordiality.
“I’ve already got a husband, sir.”
“Bet I outrank him, ma’am.”
Anne stopped and flashed a cold smile. “I don’t need your help with my bag, sir. But when you’re ready to get up out of that chair, feel free to come to my lab, and I’ll show you how to work a pair of crutches the way a woman likes to see them worked.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said with a lit
tle more color in his cheeks than before.
As she disappeared down the hall on her own crutches, I’m convinced those brave soldiers felt a bit more hope that some sort of joy and accomplishment might live beyond the tragedies that had robbed their bodies of mobility or reshaped their skin. And as Anne made her way to her laboratory doors, I know that privately she was beaming.
Anne had written letters to young soldiers in Vietnam from her own hospital beds as a little girl. She had ventured out on crutches to vote in every election as a young woman. Were it not for her physical state, she likely would have signed up for military service herself to protect the nation she loved. Her job at Walter Reed was how she served her country now, and by showing up and being tough, proud, and visible with her own crutches and braces, she’d become the queen of the lobby. She knew it. She loved it.
As esteemed as Walter Reed Army Medical Center was to the outside world, those in the know were well aware that it wasn’t in the best condition. The story would land in the news in the years to come and hit the army’s reputation hard, a mark of shame for how the U.S. government was treating its heroes. For now, though, the disrepair simply meant that the ceiling in Anne’s lab leaked, and that sometimes the water came raining down so hard that the staff had to cover her instruments in plastic to keep them dry and safe.
One morning, as Anne made her way into her lab, she had no way of knowing that the night before, so much water had leaked down that the overhead lights were no longer working. That became clear as soon as she tried the switch just inside the door. Fortunately, she knew the space well enough that she didn’t need the overheads to get to her desk and its lamp. But what she also had no way of knowing was that the floor had turned into a lake overnight. A few steps in and her crutch tip hit the water. Her crutch slipped forward and across her body, sending her legs in two different directions. With no muscles to correct their fall, they split apart in gruesome, unnatural fashion, sending her body crashing down. Her face hit the cold, wet floor incredibly hard.
The pain was immediate, excruciating, and unbearable—and for my mom that really meant something. Hot ribbons of hell shot all the way up and down her left leg and spine. Her chin, which already bore the scars of so many such falls, was now throbbing. It took all her will not to cry out for help, but she didn’t. Somehow, she managed to get herself up off of the floor under her own strength.
But here’s the miraculous part. Anne worked the entire day, her face and leg slowly turning red, then blue, purple, and black. She even had to walk over to the auditorium to attend a lunchtime lecture. She sat fidgeting through the useless talk, her leg throbbing, never telling anyone, never complaining, and never calling Jeff for help.
When Jeff came down to her lab at the end of the day, he saw her sitting on a chair, perfectly still—too still. He asked her what was wrong.
“I hurt my leg,” she told him in a whisper. “I’m in a lot of pain.”
“Okay, we’re going to go to the emergency room,” he said.
“Not here. I don’t want to go here.”
He pushed her to, but she refused. She only wanted his help getting back to her feet. He knew he was bound to lose this fight, so he gave in and helped her up. The pain shot down her leg and spine all over again. She pushed it back as best she could to keep him from insisting on the emergency room again. “Let’s go.”
As she walked down the long hallway and into the lobby on her crutches and her own two legs, she put on her bravest cheerful face and waved goodbye to all her boys. “See you tomorrow, Annie!” one shouted.
“See you tomorrow, sir!” she shouted back as if nothing in the world were wrong.
“You take good care of her, sir,” one shouted at Jeff.
Jeff wasn’t as good at playing along. He was damn worried about her. But he knew he’d be in trouble if he gave up her truth, so he smiled and nodded back.
Anne made her way to the front doors, clenching her teeth to bear the pain. She knew she was those boys’ hope, and she knew how valuable and necessary that hope was, so she wasn’t about to be taken through the lobby in a cast or a wheelchair and jeopardize any of it. Instead, she put on the best act of her life and walked out brave and strong. The minute she got into Jeff’s truck, she broke down in tears.
Over an hour later, at an emergency room in Virginia, Jeff had to pick Anne up and put her on the X-ray table as she cried out in pain. It turns out that in addition to all of the bruising, she had broken her femur, and it wasn’t just any old break: she had broken it in half, the bone turned and twisted. The X-ray was horrifying. The femur is one of the hardest, most painful bones to break, and not only had she snapped it, she had walked on it all day.
Today, Jeff still believes that Anne could have filed a lawsuit against the hospital and won big. “It was a problem the hospital knew about, there were no signs for that wet floor, and this had been going on for months, if not years. But she wouldn’t file that lawsuit.”
Anne told Jeff she didn’t want to sue because she didn’t want to get the people at the hospital she was so proud of in trouble. She didn’t want to bring shame to her U.S. Army. And beneath all of that, she didn’t want to seem weak or get any special treatment. “Someone with two working feet wouldn’t have slipped like I did, Jeff.” And she left it at that.
That night in the emergency room, Anne refused to let the doctors put a cast on her leg. A cast would keep her away from work for too many months. What she (and we) knew was that a cast would have put her in a wheelchair, and she was determined never to be “down there” in one of those. She tried mightily to convince the doctors that the full leg brace she already wore each day would be enough to keep her leg set.
The doctors pressed Anne harder, suggesting that she might not understand how bad the break was. But those poor doctors didn’t know who they were up against. Anne stared daggers through them, and let them know in no uncertain terms: “I know my body better than you ever could. I don’t want your cast, I don’t need your cast, and you can stop looking at me like I’m some kind of child or idiot right this very minute, thank you very much.” Silence. “Is that understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the doctors said.
She never got a cast.
Instead, my tough mom would cry through the night with pain for many weeks, and get back on her feet far sooner than she should have to walk through the doors at Walter Reed again, to do her job and deliver her own brand of hope and courage to those soldiers in the lobby who she knew needed it. That’s how she’d earned the title of “Queen” from the bravest GIs—those seemingly expendable young soldiers our nation’s freedom depended on. And she’d be damned if she’d ever lose her title.
These soldiers, her military, and her country are what gave my mother purpose. I admired her deeply for her dedication. But come Christmas 1995, I was all too aware that her military’s stance regarding my slowly slipping secret would put her in an impossible new us-versus-them position.
CHAPTER 15
Xmas Down
Marcus, Todd, and I were as invested as our mom was in the success of each Christmas. No matter how much hard living had hollowed out Marcus’s cheeks, how typically teenage-rebellious Todd was becoming, or how long my rather expressive bangs were growing, we all made our way home, made fruit salad, and unabashedly indulged in every possible sentiment: the music, TV specials, handmade presents, cookies, and joyful tears. Christmas Day was our family.
And when night fell and our special day came to a close, Marcus, Todd, and I would always gather around our mom in her bed, her thin legs safely tucked out of sight under her electric blanket, and without fail, we would say these words: “This was the best Christmas ever.” And we meant it, because every year, by stacking MasterCards on top of Visas, my mom somehow ensured that it was always true.
I was midway through my senior year
at UCLA as Christmas 1995 threatened. With so many miles between us, I could hear my mom’s growing excitement. Soon we’d be face-to-face, and she could hear all the stories of my latest adventures while looking me in the eyes. But my tales were mostly rainbow striped these days. I would have to keep them under wraps for fear of ruining our most special day. So I decided to minimize the risks by going home for the shortest time possible. Between touchdown and takeoff, I would only be with my family from Christmas Eve to the morning after Christmas. My mom was heartsick about it. But given her skills of observation, even two days would likely prove a challenging game of hide-and-seek. My secret couldn’t survive more.
For my mom, this abbreviated Christmas schedule confirmed what she already suspected: that something was wrong. Since I had come out to Ryan, my twice-daily phone calls home had dwindled to every other day, then twice a week.
So on the cross-country flight from Los Angeles to northern Virginia, I tried my best to figure out what stories I could tell her in order to satisfy her curiosity. Outright lies would never work. Southern moms can sniff those out like hounds on a hunt. So how could I bend the truth just enough that she wouldn’t see the twists? How could I lie by omission? Or was the best strategy just to vanish, like I’d done with such mastery in school and church?
Jeff picked me up at the airport, and we talked about additions to our old model train set and his new job as a phlebotomist as he drove me to the house. Jeff got my bag out of the back of his truck, and as I started walking toward the front door, it opened.
There was my mom, beaming, leaning forward on her crutches so her arms could freely stretch out toward me. Her hands grabbed at the air between us, gesturing for me to get wrapped up in her arms as quickly as I could. She was crying before I got to her. I can still feel her embrace, how she held me so tight, tighter than ever. I was the last son home that Christmas and I’d be the first to go, and she wasn’t going to waste a single moment. But in that embrace, I wondered one thing above all else: Would she hold me this tight if she knew?
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