by M. H. Lee
Death Answered My Call
M.H. Lee
Death Answered My Call
I answer the phone and hear Dave say, "Christy, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but Joe had an accident."
No. Oh please no.
I'm not sure whether I actually manage to say the words out loud or whether they just echo in my head. In my heart.
I've always known this could happen —Joe's a skydiver and there's always that chance that something will go wrong. He's certainly lost enough friends over the years. But I never believed it could happen to him.
"Christy?"
"I'm here."
"He's in pretty bad shape. The paramedics are with him now. They've got him stabilized."
I stare at the wall, at the photos of us together throughout the years. Hawaii, England, New Zealand…
"Should I go to the drop zone? Or…"
"No. Meet us at the hospital."
"Okay."
After I hang up the phone, I stare around the living room, unsure what to do.
I need to leave. I need to be there when he arrives—to see him before they wheel him off to surgery.
But there are things I should do first. What are they?
I look at the dog. When did I feed her last? When will I be back? Should I call Suze and ask her to come by?
No, not Suze. She'll be too distraught to help.
I overflow the dog's bowl with food. She'll probably eat it all before I even leave the house, but at least I tried.
My computer is still on. A half-finished report stares at me from the screen. Should I call my boss? Let him know what's happened?
No. I can't talk to him right now. I'll start crying and men hate when women cry. Especially bosses. At least mine always have.
I shoot him a quick e-mail, "Joe in the hospital. Leaving now to meet ambulance. Will check in later."
My hands shake as I type, but I force myself to finish.
I slam the laptop shut, grab my purse, and rummage around for my keys.
Where the hell are they?
I can feel the tears coming as I frantically search all the usual spots—the kitchen table, the breakfast bar, the bowl on the living room table.
WHERE THE HELL ARE MY KEYS?
Then I remember.
Damn Joe. He would finally remember to install that stupid key holder the day before he got in some frickin' skydiving accident.
I grab the keys off the conveniently located key holder and race out the front door, slamming it behind me.
* * *
I pull up to the hospital just as the ambulance is arriving. I know it has to be his. Taupo is a pretty small town. Not likely there would be two accidents needing an ambulance at the same time.
Thankfully, George is one of the EMTs. I'm not used to seeing him in his uniform. Usually he's sprawled on our patio watching the sun set after a long day of jumping.
"George, how is he?" I ask.
"Christy." George gives me a quick hug. "It's bad. We did what we could, but… If he makes it through, it's going to be a tough road."
George's partner rattles off a whole litany of information to the nurses who meet them at the door. I hear words like "arrested" and "fractured pelvis" and "punctured bowel," but they don't mean anything to me.
They start to wheel him away, picking up speed.
"Wait! Let me see him. Please."
I can see that the nurses want to keep going, but George stops them.
"Baby? Baby, can you hear me?" I ask, coming up beside Joe.
He can't.
His eyes are glazed—open but not aware. His nose is bloody and there's a huge gash above one eye.
He's wearing one of those neck braces you always see in TV shows.
I reach for his hand, but it's wrapped in layers of gauze, blood already showing against the pure white fabric.
They've thrown a blanket over the lower part of his body, but the lumps underneath aren't parallel like normal feet and legs should be.
The nurses start to move again, taking Joe away from me.
"No!"
George steps between me and the gurney. "Let them take him, Christy."
"No." I fight my way out of his grasp.
Dave grabs me from behind, wrapping me in a giant bear hug. He must've just arrived. "Christy. Come on, girl. Let 'em go."
He cradles me against his chest as they take Joe away.
I collapse, letting the tears finally catch up to me now that it's just a waiting game.
"Come on. Let's get you inside." Dave leads me through the automatic doors and into the pastel waiting room —all muted peaches and teals. Chairs are artfully arranged in discrete units so people can be together and yet alone in their moments of crisis.
I hate it already.
* * *
Six hours later, I hate it even more.
The waiting room is crowded with Joe's friends. They sit around and tell funny stories about him or talk in furious tones about what went wrong. Was it the magnetic stows? The packing job?
I don't care. I don't want to hear it anymore.
He's been in surgery for six hours. I just want to know that he's okay.
Each time the swinging doors open, I hope it's his doctors coming to tell us the surgery is over and he'll be fine now.
But it never is.
I'm glad this is a small town and I know people. Not like when my dad was ill and I sat there in that giant waiting room, all alone, too scared to read my book, watching hour after hour of mindless television.
The doctor finally comes out. Dave holds my hand as we listen. The words flow past me—words like "transfusion" and "trying to control the bleeding" and "may never walk again."
I squeeze Dave's hand so hard I'm surprised I don't break something. But Dave just sits there, solid as ever.
I look around. Most of Joe's crew are here, which surprises me. Skydivers are a tough lot. I've been at a boogie where someone died at ten and the next load was up in the air before the ambulance had even arrived.
But this is Joe. He's family.
I feel claustrophobic with everyone huddled around me. All those sad expressions and sympathetic glances crawl along my skin like ants.
I move to a far corner of the room to call my mom and get away from everyone.
I don't want to call her. She's never liked that I'm with Joe. It doesn't matter how many times he's jumped out of a plane without injury (he stopped counting somewhere around 15,000 jumps), she thinks he must be suicidal or stupid or both to do what he does for a living.
Never mind that my sister's husband was almost killed just driving to work. My sister didn't choose to be with a “shiftless fool”. I did.
I thank a non-existent god when I get her voicemail. "Mom. It's Christy. Joe had an accident at work. He's in the hospital. I'll let you know more when I do."
As I hang up, an old woman stumbles through the swinging doors. I saw her earlier, sitting in this corner, her hands cradling a red leather pouch. She spent an hour begging every nurse and doctor she could to let her see her husband before one finally relented and took her back.
The old woman collapses onto the chair next to me and I reach out to comfort her, driven by some instinct as old as life. She leans into my embrace and cries, shaking with sobs, mumbling about how she could have saved him if they'd just let her see him sooner.
Finally, the tears stop and she pulls away.
"Thank you," she says in an Irish brogue.
"You're welcome," I reply, once more reserved and awkward with this stranger. "So, your husband…"
I can't finish the question, but she nods. "Passed away. Kidney failure."
"I'm sorry."
I hope no one has
to say the same to me. At least not for many years.
"It's alright, girlie. I've been fighting his death for close to ten years now. Something was bound to get through eventually. Last month it was heart failure. The month before, his liver tried to quit on him."
I must give her a funny look because she chuckles and pats my hand. "I know what you're thinking, girlie. Batty old woman thinks she has some control over death when it's all just fate and chance." She pulls out the red leather bag. "But it ain't. Death listens if you talk to her just the right way. I begged her and cajoled her these past ten years. And each time Edmund was sick, each time they had him down for the count, I brought him back."
"I wish I could do that." I stare at the swinging doors, picturing Joe somewhere back there with nurses and surgeons clustered around his body, trying desperately to save him.
The old woman doesn't respond. She stares off into space, running her fingers over the bag in a practiced gesture.
It matches her—all cracks and crevices.
"Give me yer hand, girlie," she finally says after a long silence.
I place my hand in hers, noting the contrast between my smooth white skin, still untouched by the ravages of age, and hers, almost overcome by time. She puts the red leather bag into my palm and then curls my fingers around it, encompassing my hand in her two.
"I want you to repeat after me," she says, in a tone of voice and with a look that brook no argument, "I beseech you. I call to you in my hour of need. Please. I ask that you save this man I love. I ask that you sustain his life. I ask that you bring him back to me.”
I repeat the words, fumbling through over and over again until I finally get them right.
The old woman nods, satisfied, and lets go of my hand. "It doesn't have to be exact like, but you need to ask for help at least three times and say please and what you need at least three times. You ken?"
I nod, looking down at the red leather bag cradled in my hand. I don't want to offend her. She just lost her husband. But what am I going to do with the thing? "I…I'm sorry, but…"
Her bony fingers clutch my closed fist, her fingernails digging into my skin. "You make them let you see that man of yours. And then you hold this satchel in your hand and you take his hand in yours and you say the words I told you to say. You do that and he'll live. Death will pass him by for another day."
I want to laugh. If only life were so simple.
"Thank you," I say instead, swallowing all my questions and doubts.
* * *
I beg and plead to see Joe, but when they finally do I almost wish they hadn't.
He's surrounded by machines, long tubes snaking into his body and down his throat.
They say that there's hope, that he almost died, but they managed to pull him through. Six hours of surgery just to get him to the point where he might have a chance of living.
They straightened his legs out some, but it still doesn't look right. Trembling, I raise the blanket to see the misshapen, contorted mess that used to be his right foot.
I squeeze his hand, but he doesn't squeeze back. They've given him drugs to keep him away from the pain and the realization of what’s happened.
I know he needs it, but I wish he were here. I need him to tell me it'll be okay.
He’s the only reason I survived losing my father. How can I survive this without him?
The machine that’s breathing for him makes a steady, wooshing sound with each breath. The machines monitoring his pulse and heart rate beep and whir. Otherwise, it’s silent. We’re alone.
My fingers stroke the red leather pouch. I feel the dry, cracked leather and remember the old woman's certainty as her clawed fingers clutched my hand.
She was so certain. And I’m so lost.
I grasp the little bag with one hand, and Joe’s arm with the other. I say the words, "I beseech you. I call to you in my hour of need. Please. I ask that you save this man I love. I ask that you sustain his life. I ask that you bring him back to me.”
I cry as I say the words.
I love him so much.
I can't lose him.
* * *
And I don't. Through some miracle—whether it was the red leather bag or modern medicine or sheer stubborn will—Joe pulls through.
They move him to a larger hospital and I live in a small trailer nearby, my life reduced to a never-ending cycle of bedside vigils and exhausted sleep.
Joe becomes my entire existence. Everything else fades away.
He's so broken I wonder how they'll ever put him back together.
They show me a picture of his spine. It's a Picasso version of the original—everything warped and distorted.
Eight hours they spend trying to fix it.
It's just one surgery of many.
Thankfully, he's sedated through most of the first few weeks, so he doesn’t know what’s happening.
Each time he comes out of surgery, I hold his hand and whisper how much I love him, trying to hide my tears. Each time, I grasp the little red bag and ask Death to spare him.
He survives.
And I'm so relieved. I can face anything with him by my side, but I don't know if I'm strong enough to carry on without him.
* * *
When he finally awakes for good, when they finally take away the breathing tube and pull back the veil that's been shielding him from the truth, he cries.
This man I've known and loved, who didn't even cry when his brother died, weeps.
Each tortured gasp pulls on the incision along his abdomen and moves the metal frames that hold his legs together, but he can't stop.
I want to hold him, but it's impossible with all the tubes and machines. All I can do is stroke the back of his hand and tell him we'll get through this.
It has to get better from here.
It has to.
* * *
But it doesn't.
They take his feet—saw through the bones and tissue and leave him with two stumps of flesh just below the knees.
He tries to bury the hurt and pain under stupid jokes, thinking I won't see how scared he is. But I know him too well.
"It's okay, Christy." He squeezes my hand. "This is a good thing. The first step in our new future."
Even he doesn't laugh.
I catch him staring at the empty end of the bed and I know he's wondering whether he'll ever be able to return to the man he was before—a man who did whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted.
A man who was free.
* * *
We're sitting in his room one night, both pretending to watch the television, when he screams in pain.
"What is it?" I ask, pushing the button for the nurse.
"My foot. It feels like my right foot is on fire."
The nurse arrives, but she's useless. How do you treat pain in a limb that no longer exists?
I hold his hand as he struggles to breathe, but he wrenches it away. "You should've let me die," he says, glaring at me.
"It'll get better. You'll see," I try to take his hand back, but he won’t let me.
I settle for grabbing his blanket. "Remember how much my dad hated his first round of treatments and wanted to quit? But look what happened with him. He pushed through and had five great years before the cancer came back."
"Well, now I know why he killed himself when it did," he says before turning away from me.
How could he? How could he bring that up now?
He knows how much that hurt me. He knows.
It must be the pain talking. We just have to get through this bad bit and it'll all be better.
And it will be better. This isn't cancer that sits inside you and spreads its deadly tentacles throughout your body until you finally die. It’s just an injury. He’ll heal.
Eventually.
He still has his whole life ahead of him.
We still have our whole life ahead of us.
* * *
I watch Joe try to master the pain, but it's to
o much for him.
He hits the button for morphine over and over again like some sort of nervous tic, wanting to get the next dose as soon as it's available.
He tells his stupid jokes about being a bionic man and I pretend to laugh at them, but he can't hide the agony that dances in the corner of his eyes and I can’t get rid of the tightness in my chest telling me it isn’t going to be okay.
Each day, after he's dozed off, I pull out the red bag, hold his hand, and say my little mantra.
And each day he lives.
In pain. Mangled. Forever changed.
But he lives.
And as long as he lives, we have a chance. We have hope.
One more day and maybe the pain will start to lessen. One more day and maybe he’ll start to adjust to his new reality. One more day…
It has to get better. It has to.
He's bitter and unhappy and hates me and everyone else for saving him, but I never consider leaving.
He can't see the way out, but I know it's there. I have to stay with him, to be the light to guide him through to the other side.
* * *
One day, as he's thrashing in his sleep, his eyes squeezed tight in pain, I try to change the litany.
I rest my hand on his and I say, "I beseech you. I call to you in my hour of need. Please. I ask that you take away the pain from this man I love. I ask that you end his suffering. I ask that you restore him to who he once was."
His body arches and he screams. The line on the monitor, the one that shows his heartbeat, goes flat.
As the nurses rush into the room, shoving me out of the way, I grab his leg and desperately repeat the correct words. "I beseech you. I call to you in my hour of need. Please. I ask that you save this man I love. I ask that you sustain his life. I ask that you bring him back to me."
They manage to bring him back.
But the pain is still there.
* * *
Eventually, he comes home.
They've done all they can—stabilized what can be stabilized, removed what can be removed. Stitched him up and doped him up. But they can't put him back together again, can they?