The Promise of Stardust

by Priscille Sibley

  “Sure,” I said.

  “How’s the baby doing?”

  “Thirty weeks to go. In sixteen, we have a chance.”

  “That’s what you’re like, isn’t it? You are a numbers man. You want measurable parameters for your life. Did you ever believe in anything that wasn’t a number?”

  “In Elle. My faith was in her.”

  He exhaled loudly. “Well, that’s a start. You believe in love, and God is the purest love.”

  34

  Days 14 to 21

  Even when Elle was a kid playing astronaut, she never counted down. She always counted up. “It’s like saying you’re fixed in the past, and you’re running out of time. Every moment is only the beginning of something new,” she’d say.

  As much as I wanted to embrace her optimism, the steady decline of her body belied my attempt. Yes, the baby was sixteen days older, ten weeks gestation, and all indicators were that he or she was thriving. But how? Elle wasn’t the glowing pregnant woman. She was counting down.

  The reality was seeping into my emotional crevasses. I had to keep busy. Phil told me not to worry about our surgical practice. D’Amato’s group was still covering, but I was taking call most nights and the ER summoned me usually once or twice. ICU was easier. All I had to do was walk out of Elle’s room to check on patients.

  I’d acquired one of the foldout chairs, which converted into something of a bed, permitting me to recline. I rationalized I was sleeping an hour here and there.

  “Why don’t you go home tonight?” Jillian Waters, the ICU nurse manager, asked me. “We’ll phone if there’s a problem.”

  I shook my head.

  “You don’t trust us to take care of her?”

  “It’s not that.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, but I did know. I was sleep deprived and grieving, and if I were in my right mind, I’d have told myself to leave; this paranoia was insane. No one was going to turn off Elle’s life support in my absence. “I’m not seeing patients except on call. I have to give Phil a little backup,” I said, not feeling even a little a bit guilty for my white lie.

  “You’re putting holes in walls, and the night shift says you aren’t sleeping. You’ve spent fourteen out of the past sixteen nights here. You need to go home.”

  But I didn’t go home. Our house wasn’t home without Elle. Maybe I should sell the farmhouse. I couldn’t imagine living there without her, and besides, I needed the money.

  Our medical insurer was balking about coverage. Why should they continue to pay thousands of dollars a day for a woman certified as brain-dead? Depending on how much care she needed, a month in ICU could run close to a million dollars. True, Phil wasn’t going to charge for his surgical services. And the hospital might give me some kind of professional courtesy, but I couldn’t expect Clint and the other intensivists to forgo their fees. In eight months the bill could easily exceed—God, I didn’t even want to think about it, especially if she had more complications. We had some savings, but nothing close to what I’d need. And although I knew Hank would help, I doubted he had that much in the bank.

  The only asset of significant value was the house. A couple of years before, a developer offered to buy the land for over $3 million, but Elle and I refused to consider it. Damn. Elle would hate it that someone would rip down our house and smear our farm with ridiculously ostentatious McMansions.

  Moot. It was all moot. Elle was unaware of anything.

  For the next three nights I spent more time in other patients’ rooms than I did in Elle’s. Three kids came in with head injuries, and an AIDS patient came into the ER with a sinus abscess, and because of its position, the ENT wanted me there while he drained it.

  Then the baby came in, a former preemie born four months early. As a consequence of his prematurity, his brain had suffered severe damage. Before the baby’s hospital discharge, Phil and I put in a shunt to drain the excess fluid off his brain. Now the shunt was malfunctioning, and the baby needed to return to the OR.

  The mother wept when I told her. In her eyes, I could see Elle. I could see the grief of a woman whose loss was immeasurable. As I looked down at the baby, I saw Celina and Dylan and the two other babies who never took a form. And I pictured the baby Elle was carrying.

  “Excuse me,” I said. Under the pretense of preparing a surgical consent, I sat at the nurses’ station.

  If we could keep Elle alive until Christmas, our baby had a chance, as much of a chance as the poor child with the malfunctioning shunt. What the hell was I doing? We had to do better. The baby wasn’t due until March. We needed March.

  I picked up the telephone and called Phil to come in. I wasn’t in any shape to operate. Not emotionally. Not physically. I was too sleep deprived and too stressed.

  Just as I was falling asleep, Pediatrics called me down for Mark Nguyen. He was having a grand mal seizure that wasn’t responding to the usual anticonvulsant medications. By the time his seizure ended, we’d loaded him with so many pharmaceuticals we had to readmit him to the ICU. The MRI didn’t give us a definitive reason for the episode. Yet he awoke a couple of hours later, lucid.

  Another long night. I rationalized it was better than moping around.

  But during the day I did mope. Phil came by a couple of times a day, often armed with care packages from his wife, Melanie.

  Mike. Christopher. Hank. Just about every hospital bigwig made daily stopovers. Stopover lunch. Stopover rounds. I didn’t really want to talk to anyone, least of all the powers that be. I wanted to drown in Elle’s letters.

  I replayed her last voice mail a dozen times a day, skipping over the messages from friends and family who each called at least once a day. I only wanted to hear Elle’s voice. “Hey, it’s me … Let’s spend a little quiet time together this evening …”

  I took her hand in mine. “Enough quiet time, Elle. Let’s talk. Wake up and tell me this is all just the worst goddamned nightmare I’ve ever imagined. I need you.”

  I’d begun to avoid newspapers and the news channels on television. There were often blurbs about Elle’s status. Everyone seemed to feel they had the right to an opinion. Should Elle be forced to stay alive for the sake of a pregnancy? Was she a saint or a martyr? What chance did the baby have under the circumstances? Was she being forced to be the vessel for my spawn? Who had the right to self-determination? Anyone but a pregnant woman? Feminists weighed in. Mothers weighed in. Feminist mothers. None of them knew Elle.

  When Keisha came in or when Hank stopped by, I went for walks, oftentimes after dark. Other times I went into the on-call room to sleep. They were the only ones I trusted, the only ones who thought we should keep Elle on life support, but I was beginning to have more doubts, and more since the former preemie came into the ER.

  During the moments in between all the other invasions, I read. The early letters were, as Elle once told me, a teenager ranting about her lack of freedom, mostly her outrage that her parents didn’t allow her to go on her own foreign-exchange-student adventure, about school, about how, with me away in Britain, she felt more of a misfit than ever.

  And then, her mother’s cancer disclosure with all its emotional backlash seethed up from the pages. I started skimming the entries, remembering I was looking for something that would say definitively what she would want in these circumstances.

  Later, during Alice’s months in hospice care, Elle’s letters grew dark. She talked about the dullness in her mother’s skin, the sour smell of her mouth, the bedsores that appeared no matter how often the nurses turned her.

  But what gets me the most is how Mommy’s fingers curl, like she’s in pain. I can’t stand that she’s suffering, that we’re allowing it, or that we aren’t helping her. She’s in a coma, and that supposedly means she’s out of it. She isn’t completely. This is merciless. She’s in agony, she can’t speak for herself, and we aren’t helping.

  The afternoon sun was peeking in through the window and on
to Elle’s almost translucent skin. I adjusted the shades so the sunlight didn’t strike her eyes. I couldn’t help it. I had to even though I knew she was blind and deaf. I pulled my chair closer and rested my head on the pillow beside her. “You aren’t in pain. Please tell me you aren’t in pain. Tell me I’m doing what you’d want.”

  Standing at the door, wearing her scrubs, my mother cleared her throat. “Elle wouldn’t want this, even if she’s not in pain. But we can’t know for certain what she’s feeling.”

  “Ah, Jesus …” I stood, burying my hands in my pockets.

  Mom stepped up to the bed, then bent down and kissed Elle’s cheek. “Hi, sweetheart. Your face looks better. The swelling’s gone down.”

  “I don’t want to open the debate again,” I said.

  “I know. Please, just give me a minute to sit here with her.” Mom slid onto the chair in the corner, staring at Elle. “I haven’t seen you to talk since the incident at the park. Your help meant a lot to me.”

  I grunted. I hadn’t wanted to help her. My own mother, and I had offered my help with reluctance, and I sure as hell didn’t want to bond over the moment now. And Adam. She had allied herself with Adam. “You’ve seen Elle. It’s time for you to leave. Go back to work.”

  “I’m worried about you, spending all this time here. You can’t be getting any sleep.”

  “Look, I’m a grown man, a married man. It’s no longer your place to worry about me.”

  “Mothers always worry. There’s no off switch.”

  I drew a breath. “Maybe not. And I’m the father of the baby growing inside Elle and, strangely, I can’t find an off switch either. You see, his grandmother wants to turn off the life support keeping him alive.”

  “It’s not like that—”

  “You even dragged Adam into this.”

  “I didn’t. He called me.”

  “You should have told him to stay home. You shouldn’t have been involved with this at all.”

  “Elle’s like my daughter.”

  “Don’t try to feed me that crap. Elle isn’t your daughter. She never was, no matter how much you always coveted a girl. She’s my wife, and this tragedy doesn’t have anything to do with you. Your interference is out of control, you, Adam, those right-to-lifers, that reporter. This is insane. Everyone thinks they’re protecting Elle. From who? Me?

  “I didn’t come to the conclusion to keep her on life support easily. And yes, the consequences of it are eating me alive. But Elle never backed down from having a child—even though she knew she could die. When she hemorrhaged, I almost lost her. Elle knew the risks, and she still wanted to try.”

  “You should have protected her. You shouldn’t have gotten her pregnant again.”

  There it was, the accusation. This was my fault. As if I didn’t realize it. “I thought she was using her diaphragm.” I couldn’t believe I was talking to my mother about Elle’s and my contraceptive choices.

  “Are you saying she misled you?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying. Go back to work.”

  Mom shook her head. “My nurse manager is giving me the rest of the day off, even suggested I might want to consider taking early retirement.” She tried on a nonconvincing laugh.

  I studied my mother, who had never once considered retiring early, who had probably never considered retiring at all.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Another patient refused to let me take care of her. Actually the husband sent me away this time.”

  “Funny how husbands want to protect their wives and unborn children from you.” I knew my words were cruel, and I didn’t care.

  “Matthew!”

  “Go away.”

  Tears formed in her eyes as she turned away from me and made an abrupt exit.

  I slithered down into the chair. Shit. We would never repair the relationships that were coming undone.

  35

  Day 21

  September

  I hadn’t braced for the McClure version of civil war; nevertheless, the first shots of anger rang out, bullets of accusations in the courthouse. Maybe the altercation wouldn’t have stunned me if I’d ever seen Hank behave as if he thought Christopher was capable of a misstep. But no one ever put Christopher in his place. Yet right there, Hank dug his heels into the marble checkerboard floor. “She was my daughter before she was your sister.”

  I didn’t hear Christopher’s response. Or maybe I thought he’d have none worth noting and instead I focused on the descending reporters.

  I grabbed my father-in-law’s elbow and pulled him toward the men’s room, not a private venue but more private than the corridor. “This way, Chris,” I said, hoping he’d follow.

  A reporter came out of the stall and regarded us with either wariness or piqued curiosity.

  “Get out,” I snapped.

  “Jesus,” the wannabe CNN anchor muttered.

  Suddenly Jake’s cautions that I ought to play the nice guy galloped out of my memory. Damn it. Time for a mea culpa. All I needed was to see myself all over CNN again. “I didn’t mean to bark. Please. Give us a minute alone.”

  The reporter’s angry expression didn’t lift as he turned on the faucet and washed his hands in the low porcelain sink. He shook his hands dry and turned toward the paper-towel holder. “You know, I’m just covering a story and dealing with the call of nature. I don’t need my head bitten off.”

  Hank was pacing behind me, his breaths coming in short spits. Christopher leaned up against the subway tile with his arms crossed.

  “I know,” I said to the reporter. “I’m sorry. Emotions are running high. And low. My wife …” My voice broke and that was something I couldn’t permit in front of this man who would report whatever I said and however I said it.

  Jake barged into the restroom. “There you are. Court’s reconvening.”

  The reporter lowered his eyes and squeezed past Jake, exiting.

  “What’s going on?” Jake asked.

  “That’s what I’d like to know. What the hell did you mean, Christopher?” Hank asked.

  Christopher glared at his father. “You don’t want to listen. You never did.”

  “What’s this about?” I asked.

  “He thinks Elle will just wake up and be normal. Just like he thought my mom would suddenly wake up and be cured of cancer. That didn’t happen, and this won’t either. He thinks I was too young to remember, but I do. He’s the one who doesn’t remember what it was like. You were drunk all the time, Dad. All the time. Elle took care of me. Not you. So she’s my sister, but she’s also like my mom, and I refuse to let you do this to her. Elle didn’t want to die this way. We used to talk about it.” Christopher spun toward me. “And you, haven’t you caused her enough pain?”

  Jake stepped between Chris and me. Maybe Jake didn’t trust me. Maybe he was trying to defuse the tension. God knows, I was incapable of reason at that moment.

  “I’d never hurt Elle,” I said.

  “You got her pregnant again—after she almost died last winter. And you knew she was scared of dying the way my mom did, and here you are, fighting Elle’s living will.” Chris shoved Jake out of the way and got right up in my face.

  “Believe me; I struggled over whether or not to keep her on life support. I’m still struggling with it, but she wanted a baby.”

  “Yeah, well, that didn’t bother you when my mom was dying, did it? You didn’t care that Elle wanted to keep that baby. Nope. You just made her get an abortion.”

  His words were like a match lighting tinder under my panic zone. My heart rate shot up in flame. I looked at my father-in-law, who, to the best of my knowledge, didn’t know about Elle’s teen pregnancy. Hell, I didn’t realize Chris knew about Celina either. Whatever information he thought he knew was muddled. “She never had an abortion,” I said.

  “What are you talking about?” Hank asked. “What abortion?”

  “Matt got Elle pregnant when Mom was dying,” Chris said, like a simpering little tattl
etale. “Then he talked her into having an abortion. And now he’s all holier-than-thou with his I-only-want-to-do-what-Elle-would-want bull. Well, I swear she wouldn’t want to be lying in a hospital bed on life support.”

  “That is not what happened. There was no abortion. Not then. Not any other time,” I said.

  “That’s why she was so desperate to have a baby now. She’s always felt so guilty,” Chris said.

  “No,” I said. “And it’s not that simple, Chris. Besides, if she’d had an abortion and felt guilty about it, it would make my case all the more clear. I didn’t make Elle get an abortion. I never would have done that.”

  “You got my daughter pregnant while Alice was dying?” Hank pounded into my chest with the heel of his hand. “Damn you. Elle was only a child when Alice died.”

  “She wasn’t a child. She couldn’t be a child because of you. You were the child. A lousy goddamned drunk. Yeah, she was young. We both were. And we messed up. But you weren’t exactly taking care of your family back then. You abandoned them. You didn’t even notice her big belly. That’s how bad it was. But yes, Elle got pregnant. I got her pregnant—”

  Before I had a chance to explain what happened, Hank stormed out of the bathroom.

  I turned toward Christopher. “You don’t get it. She didn’t have an abortion. She miscarried. She was five months pregnant that first time. And it broke her heart. She felt guilty. Yes. But not because she aborted the baby. She felt guilty because she couldn’t save our daughter. Every day of her life. Every child we’ve lost since. I’m telling you she would want to save this one.”

  I slid onto the bar stool next to Hank. In front of him sat a line of empty tumblers. In his grip, one half full. And one full to the rim waited off to the side. “How’d you find me?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “This is the fourteenth bar I’ve been to in”—I looked at my watch—“three hours. Persistence, I guess.”