by Abby Maslin
I feel myself in the early stages of this shock as I run through the long, tiled corridors of the vast first floor of Washington Hospital Center. Adrenaline pumps through my organs, making me light-headed and buzzed, like I’ve downed forty cups of coffee. My knees are on the verge of buckling, but instead of sitting, I am, for the first time ever, propelled by the drive of a marathon runner.
As Sean and I approach the entrance of the trauma waiting room, I spy Mladen at the far end of the hallway. His dark eastern European features are plainly familiar, but everything about his presence feels wrong given the reason we’re standing here.
I walk quickly toward him, and suddenly I’m melting in a pool of fresh warm tears. He says nothing, just grabs me firmly by the shoulders and holds me still. His grip is comforting, anchoring my feet to the floor, but his touch reminds me that I am alone. Without a partner of my own to hold me.
I’ve known Mladen for two years now, but we’ve never been especially close. Our conversations have revolved mostly around our boys and coordinating childcare. Now we’re at the hospital, his place of employment, hugging in an empty hallway. It all feels surreal and it occurs to me I don’t even know what kind of doctor he is. I think it’s emergency related, but I have none of the specifics. I suddenly feel like an asshole for never asking.
“Is there something you can give me to help me calm down?” I beg, certain I’m about to faint.
“It’s against the rules to give medication to anyone but patients,” Mladen explains. Advil is all he can offer. He goes to search for some and promises to return with an update on TC.
John is gone, parking the car somewhere, I think, so Sean and I confine ourselves to a private area of the waiting room and close the door behind us. I’m too dizzy to stand, but sitting isn’t an option either. The chairs feel like blades of tall, swaying grass. Too high off the ground. Too unstable. Craving firmness, I slide my back along the white cinder-block wall, finding a seat on the tile floor with my knees pulled once more to my chest.
I have no concept of time anymore, so when TC’s parents arrive, I know only that Sean and I have been waiting sometime between ten minutes and ten hours. We jump up to greet them, and this time, I find it impossible to resist the urge to apologize. Through heavy sobs, I repeat, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
For a sensitive woman, Ruth is calmer than I expect her to be, held together by either willpower or shock. Don is also impressively calm, and I’m grateful for their surprising composure. If they’re calm, I can be calm, I tell myself. Well, maybe not calm. Just not quite so unglued.
“I don’t know what’s going on. I’m just so sorry,” I weep as I hug my mother-in-law. We both acknowledge that there is nothing to be sorry for, but I can think of no other words to offer. I suppose I feel it’s my fault we’re gathered here. If only I’d called the police sooner. If only I’d refused to fall asleep until TC came home. What kind of wife lets her husband go missing?
Ruth assures me it’s OK and asks me when I last ate. This morning, maybe? Truthfully, I can’t remember if it was today or yesterday or a week ago, so she hands me a banana and a plastic water bottle from her purse. She cannot fix TC, but she can keep me fed. Ruth is very good at fixing people with food.
I force the first bite of banana into my mouth and discover my salivary glands have walked off the job. My mouth is chalk, and the food sits at the top of my throat, refusing to be swallowed. So I sit, holding the uneaten banana and peeking my head out the door every few minutes, hoping to see my mother’s face, convinced that her presence will fix some part of this crisis. I am coming undone in front of my in-laws, two people for whom I’ve spent seven years trying to project an image of competence and unflappability. An illusion I clearly cannot maintain, given the circumstances.
The four of us settle in, sitting in mostly unbroken silence, as we think our own thoughts about TC, thoughts too unformed or too frightening to say aloud. A few minutes later, a stocky man in his mid-forties knocks gently on the door. I don’t recognize him, but his face indicates he knows who we are. Noting our confusion, he introduces himself.
“Mrs. Maslin, I’m Detective Miller with the First District Detective Unit. I’d like to ask you a few questions about your husband. I know this is a difficult time. We can do this now or later.”
Detective Miller’s arrival is startling, but only because I haven’t thought all this through yet. Of course they would send a detective, Abby. Someone hurt your husband. But my brain cannot fully commit to this fact. That TC is hurt, I understand. That he has sustained a grave injury, I am beginning to process. But the notion that his injury might be the result of a violent act, not a fall or an accident, is beyond my ability to digest at the moment.
“Let’s do this now,” I answer quickly, eager to distract myself from another intolerable moment of waiting.
“Are you sure?” he counters, seemingly doubtful about my ability to answer his questions.
I nod. “Yes, let’s do this now.”
I’m agreeing, in part, because I’m wondering whether the detective has already gathered any information about TC that I can try to glean from the conversation. After a few minutes, however, it becomes clear he knows even less than I do. His questions are the generic type I answered back at home to the policeman on the bicycle, and they offer nothing new. At some point he asks me if I can think of anyone who might want to hurt my husband, and it’s a question so completely out of a made-for-TV movie that I nearly laugh.
“Like an enemy?” I ask bewilderedly. “No, TC is just a normal guy. He’s an energy analyst at a firm downtown. He walks the dog. He plays with our son. That’s about it. He’s never made an enemy in his life.”
Detective Miller hands me a business card and leaves. I promise to notify him if I learn anything useful, and then I glance back at TC’s family. They’ve been sitting beside me in silence throughout the questioning. Our faces are blank as we mentally replay the conversation that has just ended. Nothing makes sense anymore.
I still can’t accept that this is my reality. There cannot be a world in which the script flips so unexpectedly, so dramatically, from one second to the next. A world in which I can fall asleep with a belly full of Thai food and a sleeping dog at my feet and wake up to this incoherent nightmare. A world in which something potentially horrible, irreversible, or violent can happen to my husband. My most important person. This cannot be happening.
My internal dialogue begins to spin and does not stop until the moment I see my mother’s hand on the doorknob to the waiting room.
“Oh my God, Mom!” Any restraint I’ve been exercising is released as I wrap my arms around her narrow shoulders. She and my father exchange somber hugs with TC’s family.
Like me, my sixty-eight-year-old dad is shaky on his feet. He is both invincible and unimaginably delicate, having barely survived the past four years. First, the diagnosis of liver failure, then the successful transplant. All of it complicated by type 2 diabetes and a recent stroke. The saga of my dad’s health never seems to end in resolution. It has eroded us all in the process.
I watch my father as he lowers himself gingerly into a chair, taking in the toll of all this illness. I think back to the many hospitalizations. The sweet, sticky smell of old blood drying over new incisions, the unwelcoming creak of the vinyl chairs we’d slept in during long nights in the waiting room. At times he’d forgotten our faces, forgotten his own name, forgotten how to unbutton his pants or put on his socks. I don’t even know how it’s possible that he’s come back to life as many times as he has.
My dad’s body now looks as if it hangs on one almost invisibly narrow thread. His limbs are thin and frail, limiting his mobility. His brain retains only what is stored in the most easily accessible places. He excels at casual, rote conversation. Hey, how you doing? Feeling great. Doing really well. How is everything with you? Beyond that, he is absent, no
longer capable of intuiting emotion or conveying any kind of convincing empathy. But still I hold out hope. I cannot accept that his mind has abandoned him, because who are we if not our minds? And for a man as cerebral as my father, a career museum director and a scholar of American history, his mind is where he exists. It is all of him: every bit of him I’ve always loved, and all the parts that make him my dad.
Worse still, I refuse to accept he cannot feel the weight of this moment, the possibility that his beloved son-in-law, the young man at whom he’s looked for seven years in bright-eyed admiration, may very well be dying on the table of a cold surgical room down the hall.
He is my father, and I need him today more than any other day of my life.
“Dad,” I say, looking at him. “Will you please come to the chapel and pray with me?”
* * *
Hospital chapels are odd little centers of worship, the showroom version of a real church. On a few occasions during my dad’s illness, I’d popped my head inside, tempted to light a candle or sit quietly. But having no kind of religious affiliation to claim, I usually felt like an outsider, too self-conscious to linger. My attitude is different today. I don’t care whether I belong. The only thing within my control is prayer. And I don’t have a second to waste.
My dad responds to my request with surprise, wondering perhaps why I’m making this request of him specifically. But the answer is simple. He grew up in the Catholic church, is a graduate of Catholic schools all the way through his PhD, and I’m hoping God will cut me a break if I come accompanied by a former altar boy.
The chapel is located strategically across the hall from the trauma waiting room, and upon first inspection, I notice it’s bigger than some of the others I’ve seen. There are four or five rows of pews leading to the white wooden banisters that surround the altar. My dad takes a seat in one of the middle pews. As he shifts his weight from side to side trying to maneuver his unsteady body to his knees, I watch, trying to remember the last time I’ve seen him in a position other than sitting, standing, or lying in bed. It’s been years since he’s had the flexibility or strength to do much else. His discomfort is a clear indicator that he’s trying hard to support me in this moment, but I don’t want him to injure himself, so I insist gently that sitting is probably just fine.
For reasons beyond my understanding, I need to be as close as possible to God, so I make my way forward and kneel directly in front of the altar. In my blue zip-up hoodie and yoga pants, I look terribly misplaced. This is the outfit I dressed myself in for hot yoga this morning—a presumptuous notion, given the day’s evolution. How audacious it seems now: hot yoga. While TC lay fighting for his life.
As I kneel, I realize I haven’t planned beyond this moment. I have no clue what to do next. Should this be formal? Do I need to read something from the Bible out loud? Without guidance, I improvise instead.
“Dear God, I need you to listen right now. I need you to hear everything I’m saying. Please help TC. I cannot live without him. Please help him stay alive.”
My voice is breathless. The more I speak, the more I begin to unleash loud, electrifying sobs. I look back at my father. His face is lost, paralyzed by the gravity of each syllable on which I choke.
I continue. “God, I don’t know you, and I’m sorry. But I am begging you not to leave me alone. This man is everything. He is my world. He’s the best man I know. Please do not take him from me.”
As I speak, it occurs to me this is the first time I’ve ever admitted aloud that the love and admiration I feel for my husband outweighs my love for my father. I’ve felt it for some time now: that transfer of loyalty signifying the end of my days as a daughter and my transition to devoted wife.
For my whole life I’d subscribed to the narrative of the Great Marty Sullivan.
“What a lucky girl you are,” people commented when I was a child. “Your father is one of the truly good ones.”
And he was. He was a leader beloved by his staff. A boss without an ounce of ego to him. In his most recent position, as director of the National Portrait Gallery in D.C., he’d arrive early to help the maintenance crew Windex the glass. The very same afternoon, he’d be unveiling portraits in the company of a former president and first lady.
It was what my mom loved about him, my dad’s ability to be both great and completely unimpressed by himself. She respected the hell out of his work ethic, shaped mostly by his uncompromising belief in equality and fairness.
But sickness is a game changer, even when you’re caring for someone you hold in the highest regard. It is intimate and exhausting, altering the way you see each other and putting to bed myths of infallibility.
I think of how similar my dad and TC are. Both stunning intellectuals. Both humble and loving. But there is one striking difference that is more apparent to me in this moment than it’s ever been before: TC is driven to live. He’s a fighter, a man who refuses to accept defeat. Giving up just isn’t in his DNA. I do not worry that he will abandon this fight.
When I’m done begging, sobbing, and making every plea I can think of, I stand back up and seat myself on the pew next to my father, that vacant expression still occupying his face. He must sense my vulnerability, but he can’t seem to figure out how to reciprocate. It doesn’t occur to him to hug me or tell me things will be OK. He doesn’t try to soothe me or take control of the situation.
Still, I look to him, hopeful for guidance, desperate for the reassurance only a father can provide. My expectations for my dad simply cannot seem to catch up to the reality of him.
He gazes past me and says simply, “I know.”
CHAPTER 5
What do you care about?” TC had asked me on our first date, sitting with two glasses of local Southern Maryland wine and a hummus appetizer. It was a week after our first meeting at the Tiki Bar, and I’d been counting down the nanoseconds until I would see him again.
He’d posed the question so earnestly, so expectant of a worthy answer, that I’d nearly frozen entirely. What do I care about? I’d repeated to myself. Besides losing the extra pounds that had been clinging to my waistline since returning home from a five-month stint living in Australia with Claire, I was hard-pressed to think of anything else. As it had been for years, my mind was consumed with one thing: meeting my own precious needs.
I could have answered that question in a hundred different ways, even borrowing some of TC’s own answers: the environment, reading, social justice, classic movies. He had a hundred different interests, and I could barely come up with one.
I dodged the question the best I could that day, but the answer now blasts through my brain with screaming clarity. You, it contends desperately. You are the thing I most care about.
One by one, I squeeze the knuckle of each of my fingers, staring at the blank walls of the waiting room as I try to reintegrate the various parts of my body—a body that feels as if it’s being deconstructed from the inside out.
It is early afternoon, nearly four hours since that first phone call to 911, when a tall man wearing blue scrubs enters the waiting room. His serious expression matches the slow and orderly gait with which he carries himself. It’s somehow clear that this man is the surgeon.
Oh God. This is it. Oxygen abandons me once more, and I feel as if I’ve been sucker punched in the chest. Without breath to connect my body and my brain, they remain separate entities, my racing thoughts and my useless bones, ready to melt into a puddle on the floor.
He offers a reserved, gentle introduction. “I’m Dr. Kalhorn. I’m the doctor who performed surgery on your husband.”
Dr. Kalhorn does not attempt to deliver his spiel standing before an audience. Instead, he takes a seat in one of the waiting room chairs and invites us to sit down beside him. This gesture alone adds gravity to the situation. By sitting, Dr. Kalhorn has implied that whatever news he has to share, it won’t be brief, and it won’t be
easy.
I look around the room as we gather in a circle: me, Sean, TC’s parents, and mine. It dawns on me that among this crew, I am now first in command. This is an unsettling thought, as no part of me feels prepared to be sitting in this seat. Don’t you know I’m too young? my brain screams as I shrink lower in my chair, feeling more like a little girl playing dress-up than I do a grown woman.
Why is it so hard to see ourselves as we are? I wonder. For God’s sake, I am thirty years old, the mother of an almost two-year-old, the deed holder of a mortgage, and the first name on my husband’s emergency contact list. Why is it that most days I still feel like that bumbling twenty-two-year-old inside, waiting for my life to take form in whatever way it will? Waiting for Mom or Dad or TC to come save me.
I look over at Ruth, and her eyes catch mine for a brief instant, long enough for me to sense the shift that is taking place. I can see my husband in her eyes, his life punctuated in each blink. TC was hers, and now he’s mine. How many scraped knees has my mother-in-law patched in her life? How many soccer sprains and bloody noses have been hers to resolve? Ruth’s identity is wrapped up in all the roles that preceded me: The bearer of comfort. The default soother. The fixer of all things.
Now we sit here together, the two women who love TC most, facing an injury graver than either of us can comprehend. And I alone am in charge. The torch of responsibility has been passed.
Dr. Kalhorn’s mouth is moving now, and I’m struggling to keep up with the pace. I catch every few words, grasping at straws to understand the medical terminology, but the truth is, all I really want to know is how badly TC is hurt. Please just tell me, I’m begging. Is he dead? Is he alive? Will anything ever be the way it was before this morning?