by John Herbert
I gently but purposefully disengaged my arm from Dr. Porter’s grasp and took a step forward. Dr. Porter watched me warily, not knowing what I was about to do and not knowing how to respond. Slowly I bent down and kissed her. Really just a brush of my lips on hers, but enough of a kiss to tell me her lips were no longer soft and warm, but were already cool and hard. Confirmation, as if I needed it, that she was dead.
I looked at her one more time and whispered my good-bye, wishing with all my might that I was alone and that Dr. Porter wasn’t standing behind me.
“I’ll always love you, Peg. And I’ll always remember you. I promise. Good-bye, sweetheart.”
I turned away from the bed and stepped outside the curtain. Without a word, Dr. Porter pulled the curtain closed and led me through the sliding glass doors, down the hallway and back into the waiting room.
“Are you all right, Mr. Herbert?” he asked as he pulled the door to the ICU closed behind him. “Do you need anything?” Again his hand was on my arm.
“No. I’m all right,” I answered. “I just need some time to let all this sink in. I feel like I’m having a nightmare, and I’m going to wake up any minute now.”
“I understand,” Dr. Porter replied.
“Can I wait here for my father?” I asked, suddenly remembering he was still somewhere in the hospital. “He’s getting breakfast for us, and this is where we said we’d meet.”
“Sure. Stay as long as you need to.”
A moment of silence.
“Mr. Herbert…I have to go. Again, I’m sorry. My thoughts will be with you and your family.”
We shook hands awkwardly, and he went back into the ICU.
My family, I thought. What’s left of it, he should’ve said.
I stared at the closed door and wondered whether Peg was still inside or if they had already taken her to wherever they take the dead. I pushed the thought out of my mind and walked back to the sofa to wait for my father.
It was now five minutes to eleven. I had left the ninth floor at five minutes after ten. In less than fifty minutes, the world I knew had ceased to exist.
Thirty-Three
I saw the paper bag first. A large brown paper bag with a grease stain in one corner. And when I raised my head, I saw my father, standing just inside the doorway to the ICU waiting room, holding the paper bag in one hand and closing the door behind him with the other. He took a few steps across the room before he saw my face. When he did, he stopped and looked at me, his expression one huge question.
I looked up at him, not knowing where to start or how to say what had to be said. Then, after what must have seemed like an eternity to him, I answered his unasked question.
“I don’t think we’ll be needing breakfast, Pop,” I began, my voice breaking as I tried to form the words I needed to say. “Peggy’s dead.”
He looked at me incredulously, unable to comprehend what I was telling him.
“She died about half an hour ago. Heart failure, they think. The doctor said there was nothing they could do. She was just too weak. From the chemo. From the infection. From last night. Whatever. I don’t know. Anyway, it’s over.”
His face crumbled first, then his body, as he grasped what I was saying. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came. His lower lip started to tremble, and his eyes filled. He put out a hand and guided himself into one of the armchairs, still holding the paper bag that contained our breakfast. Then he leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs, bowed his head and began to sob.
We sat in the waiting room for almost ten minutes, me crying on the sofa, my father crying in the chair. Each of us struggling with our own pain, neither of us able to comfort the other. Both of us alone even though we were together. Both of us grappling with terrible thoughts, struggling to come to grips with a new reality.
“We should call Mom,” I said finally, “and Peg’s mom, and tell them what’s happened. And then we should go home. There’s nothing else we can do here.”
He nodded in agreement, wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and blew his nose.
“Will you call Mom? I don’t think I can handle that right now.”
Again he nodded.
I tried desperately to focus, to think organized thoughts. “I’ll call Peg’s mom first. Then you call Mom. And while you’re doing that, I’ll go back upstairs to Peg’s room and pick up her stuff. Then we can meet downstairs in the lobby. All right?”
He stood up and looked at the crumpled handkerchief in his hand, but he didn’t answer me.
“You okay, Pop?” I asked.
We were both standing now, about eight feet apart. He raised his head, and his eyes answered my question. He was in no physical danger. I could see that. But his eyes showed me an almost unbearable pain, and they reminded me that his Peggy was gone too, not just mine. His eyes told me his heart was broken.
He looked so sad, so alone, suddenly so old, I instinctively raised my arms and held them out to him. We each took a step forward, wrapped our arms around each other and held each other as tightly as we could.
He pulled away then, and when he did, he looked at me and spoke for the first time since he had come into the waiting room. “We’ll get through this, son,” he said. “Just like we’ve gotten through everything else that’s come our way. Your mother and I are always here for you. No matter what. You know that. And as long as we all have each other, we’ll be okay.”
“I know we will, Pop,” I said for his sake, knowing it wasn’t true. “I know we will.”
He smiled at me, and I did my best to smile back.
“Right now, though,” I added, “I better call Peg’s mom before I lose my nerve.”
I walked over to the phone on the desk, read the dialing instruction card and picked up the receiver. I dialed nine to get an outside line, entered my credit card number, the area code and the first three digits of Maureen Reilly’s number, and immediately put the phone down.
“My God, Pop. What the hell am I going to say to her?” I asked, my hand still on the receiver.
“You’re going to tell her what’s happened.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that, son. There’s no other way.”
“Jesus,” I muttered, and I started to dial again.
The telephone on the other end of the line rang once, twice, three times. “Maybe they’re at church,” I said out loud, half hoping no one would answer.
A voice cut the fifth ring in half. “Hello?”
“Maureen? This is John.”
“What’s the matter? Is Peggy all right?”
“No, she isn’t.”
“Oh my God…my God…my God…”
The voice trailed off, and I heard the sound of the receiver hitting wood.
Another voice came on the line. “John, this is Erin. What’s happened?”
“Peggy’s dead, Erin.”
“Oh, no, no, no.”
I heard her repeat my words in answer to a question from someone else in the room. “When did this happen?” she asked when she came back on the line.
“A little while ago.”
“Why? What happened?”
“They think she died of heart failure. Erin,” I continued before she could ask any more questions, “I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get off. I just can’t do this now. I’ll call you as soon as my father and I get back to Long Island. Is that all right?”
“Where are you now?” she asked, not answering my question.
“I’m at the hospital. In the intensive care unit. I’ll call you later. All right?”
“Yeah. Sure. Oh, God…”
The line went dead. I wiped my eyes and tried to blow my nose, but I couldn’t. Too much crying.
“I’m going upstairs, Pop. You better call Mom. I’ll see you in the lobby in a few minutes.”
I started to walk towards the door, and as I passed him, he gave me a couple of soft pats on the back. “I’m with you, son,” I heard him say just before I pull
ed the door closed behind me.
Thirty-Four
The elevator doors opened, and I stepped out onto the ninth floor for the second time that morning. The corridor was now bustling with activity as nurses walked in and out of patients’ rooms with medication trays, and aides went from room to room changing bed linens, emptying wastebaskets and retrieving the last of the breakfast trays. At the far end a janitor was mopping the floor. It was eleven-twenty.
As I started to walk to Peg’s room, the nurse who had met us earlier that morning came out of the room next to hers. When she saw me, she stopped and waited for me to reach her. “Mr. Herbert, I’m so sorry,” she said with genuine feeling when I was still a step or two away. “Dr. Porter called a few minutes ago and told us what happened. We were wondering if we’d see you before you left the hospital.”
“I just came back to pick up my wife’s personal things, pictures of the kids, get-well cards, stuff like that. Is everything still there? Can I go in the room?”
“Yes, of course. No one’s been assigned to the room yet, and we held off the cleaning staff until we knew whether you were coming back. Do you need any help?”
“No, that’s all right. I can do it alone. Should only take me a few minutes. Really not that much to collect.”
“Well, let me know if you need anything. And again, I’m sorry.” She smiled hesitantly and turned to a medication cart next to the wall. She checked the list on her clipboard, picked up a tray for a patient across the hall, and left me standing next to the door to Peg’s room.
I pushed the door open and started to walk in, but I stopped almost immediately. Because of its eastern exposure, the room was bathed in bright sunlight, as it had been on the day we’d first arrived, but it now looked like a war zone. All of the litter—the rubber gloves, the bandage wrappers, the bloody gauze pads, the pieces of rolled-up adhesive tape, the crumpled paper towels, the needle covers, the IV packaging, the broken syringe, the cotton swabs—was still on the floor, the night table, the windowsill. The only part of the room that was litter-free was the floor where Peg’s bed had been.
With the bed out of the room, I could now see a pool of dried blood on the floor between where the bed had been and the window. Bloody footprints traced the path of someone who had stepped in the blood and then walked to the foot of the bed.
I stood frozen, looking at what had been Peg’s home for the last two and a half weeks. I shuddered, and trying to ignore the fear that was enveloping me, went over to the night table, opened the bottom drawer and took out a plastic laundry bag. I went first to the closet and took the three nightgowns hanging in it off their hangers and put them in the laundry bag. I went into the bathroom and took Peg’s makeup bag, toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush and shampoo from the shelf and put them in the laundry bag.
I took her magazines, two books and her address book from the top drawer of the night table and put them into the laundry bag. I went to the bulletin board and took down the scores of get-well cards and letters, promising myself I would read each one when I had more time. I took down the pictures of the kids my folks had taken for Peg. Jennie in the pool. John in the pool. John asleep in his high chair at the kitchen table. Jennie asleep in the guest room bed. Jennie hugging Jackson, my parents’ golden retriever. John sitting in the corner of his crib, head back as he drained the last drop of milk from his bottle. Each one a small slice of everyday life, preserved on Polaroid film. Each one a small window into young lives outside the walls of the hospital.
I put everything into the plastic laundry bag except for the brightly colored thumbtacks in the bulletin board. I decided to leave them for the next person. I picked up the framed pictures of Jennie and John last—the ones that had been sitting on the windowsill next to Peg’s bed, right where she could see them—and tucked them under my arm. Then I was done. Everything that had belonged to Peg was now either in the laundry bag or under my arm.
I looked around once more to make certain I hadn’t missed anything. My eyes were drawn again to the pool of blood on the floor and the bloody footprints, and I wondered why the blood was there and what had happened.
I looked out the window and saw a tug slowly pushing a barge up the East River. On the far side of the river, I saw that traffic was moving on the Triborough Bridge. Slowly, but moving. I saw blue sky without a cloud in sight and realized that outside Peg’s window Sunday morning was beautiful.
I looked around the room one last time and shook my head sadly, and then I turned and left.
Thirty-Five
The elevator came to a soft stop, and the doors slid silently open. I stepped out and was momentarily taken aback at how the lobby had changed since my father and I had arrived just a few hours earlier.
Even though it was only eleven-forty and visiting hours did not officially start until one o’clock, every available seat was taken. Those not fortunate enough to sit stood either alone or in groups. A line of people had formed in front of the two guards who now sat behind the information desk, and the coffee shop was full. The noise produced by a multitude of different conversations, some far louder than they needed to be, was considerable and reverberated off the granite floor and stone walls. But in spite of the confusion, I spotted my father standing next to the revolving glass doors that opened into the courtyard where we had left the car.
“Got everything?” he asked as I walked up to him.
“Yeah, I’ve got everything,” I said without realizing the irony of my response. I held up the bulging laundry bag. “It’s all in here. Did you get to Mom?”
My father nodded slowly.
“How did she take the news?” I asked.
“Surprisingly well. But…I think she kind of expected something like this after Dr. Werner’s call.” He paused. “She’s very concerned about you, though.”
I searched unsuccessfully for a suitable response.
“Want me to drive?” he asked.
“No,” I replied flatly.
He shrugged, and with nothing left to say, we went into the courtyard. As we stepped outside, we hit a wall of heat and humidity made worse by exhaust fumes hanging in the motionless air. August in Manhattan. We stood next to the doors for a minute or two before one of the parking attendants came to take my claim ticket. Five minutes later he parked the car on the far side of several cars that were discharging passengers. He held the door open for me, accepted a dollar tip with a quiet “thank you,” and wished us a nice day. I waited until my father buckled his seat belt, and then I drove out of the shadows and confusion of the cobblestone courtyard. Down the hospital’s drive, past the staff parking area, and away from New York Hospital. Forever.
We turned left onto Second Avenue heading downtown and left again on the first eastbound cross street to York Avenue. A left on York heading uptown to 96th Street, a right on 96th to the northbound FDR Drive, and a left lane exit to the Triborough Bridge toll plaza. We paid our toll and began to drive across the bridge to Long Island and home. The time was exactly noon.
The bridge was eight lanes wide—four lanes in each direction—and as we settled into the flow of the traffic, I looked at the people in the cars to the right and left of us and in the cars that we passed and that passed us. And as I looked at the people, I felt a combination of anger and envy. Anger because they were doing whatever they were doing without even a second’s thought for Peg or me or our family or what lay ahead for us. And envy because they could. I looked through the windshield and the side windows at all the activity around us, and I realized nothing had changed for anyone else. The world was exactly the same at twelve noon as it had been at eight o’clock this morning. No changes. No big deal. The world was unaffected by Peg’s death. It didn’t know, and it didn’t care. Somehow that didn’t seem right. But that was how it was. Like it or not, Peg was dead, and even though my world, my kids’ world, my parents’ world, would never be the same, the rest of the world would keep on going. Same as always. It didn’t know. And it didn’t
care.
Thirty-Six
I turned into my parents’ driveway at twenty after one Sunday afternoon—exhausted and terrified. Exhausted from the incredible tension of the past six hours, and terrified of what was to become of my children and me.
I pulled up to the garage, turned off the ignition, and sat motionless behind the steering wheel, trying to summon the courage to face my mother and Jennie. My father must have shared the feeling because he, too, sat perfectly still, staring straight ahead through the windshield.
We sat like that for perhaps half a minute before Father Bob, the priest from my church, came around the corner of the house from the pool deck and headed towards my side of the car. Seeing him, I opened the door and slowly started to get out.
“Hello, Father,” I said, concentrating on greeting him instead of on the terrifying thoughts that had been torturing me for the last two and a half hours.
“John, I am so sorry.”
“Thank you, Father. I didn’t expect to see you here so soon. How did you find out?”
“Your mom called the church office, and one of the ladies called me.”
“Well, I’m sure glad you’re here,” I admitted, and I started to cry.
I closed the car door behind me, and he put his arm around my neck, steering me towards the pool deck. As he did, he pulled my head down so my ear was close to his mouth. “John,” he whispered, “I know at this moment it’s hard to accept, but sometimes God takes the most beautiful flowers for his own garden.”
I recoiled. I knew he meant well, but his words brought me anything but comfort, the thought that Peg had been chosen to leave us just as painful as thinking her death had simply been a random event, devoid of meaning or purpose.
Fortunately, I had little time to reflect on what he had said, because as we rounded the corner of the house, I saw my mother just a few steps ahead of us, sitting with Jennie on one of the lounge chairs. When she saw us, she patted Jennie’s head and got up. She met me halfway across the pool deck and gave me a long, tight hug. No hysterics. No tears. Just a long, tight hug.