We Thought We Knew You

by M. William Phelps

  The views and countryside were breathtaking.

  Kalalau is essentially a valley leading to the ocean. People are scarce. Think of the backdrop during the opening sequence of Magnum, P.I. as Magnum and pilot T.C. peruse the island from the belly of T.C.’s helicopter. Kalalau Valley was once a destination to Hawaii’s swathes of loi kalo acreage, described by natives as “irrigated wetland taro fields.” An isolated sect of land farmed by early Hawaiians.

  Bill and Mary hiked in. They found a small spot under a mango tree close to the beach, overlooking a waterfall.

  “It was, quite literally, paradise,” Bill said.

  They stayed about a month.

  Both were focused on a “spiritual path.” They were not searching for a purpose, but rather a deeper, more meaningful way to understand one another. They believed that the grace and joy of life were within the journey, not the destination.

  “Our marriage vows said we were committed to each other, but we were also committed to ‘love’ itself—to service. Contribution. We had no idea what form this would take, but we were committed to loving people, ourselves, and each other,” Bill said.

  Bill sunned himself on the beach one afternoon. Beauty and wonder surrounded him. Soft and silky sand, tall waves crashed at the shore in a rhythmic, constant pulse, relaxing and comforting. They could have stayed there the rest of their lives. Time had no meaning. They did not answer to anyone. In a world without much social distraction, life moved at the pace of nature. Perhaps how it was meant to be.

  As he took in the sunshine, another thought “came through,” as Bill put it: Finish your dissertation.

  “I was sure, at the time, that God had the wrong number,” Bill said, laughing at the memory emanating from nostalgia and longing.

  They were living in nirvana, Bill remembered. “Buffalo, New York, well, not so much paradise—once you experience a winter there.”

  Yet, this particular inclination to complete his dissertation was so powerful and profound, it became a thought Bill could not escape or let go.

  When Bill arrived back at camp, he approached Mary.

  “I need to go back and write the dissertation.”

  “Let’s go do it,” Mary said without argument.

  When they made it to Buffalo, and eventually Utica, Mary had a surprise. “I’m pregnant.”

  “I had never thought about having kids. Just never entered my consciousness. But I was delighted at the news and we looked forward to our new adventure—together.”

  As Mary’s belly grew month after month, Bill focused. He rode three different bus lines, transferring twice daily, to the library. He was there when they opened, and walking out when they closed. He was on a first-name basis with all the librarians. He planned to finish his doctorate a month before the baby was due.

  Bill met that goal—and their daughter Liana was soon born.

  15

  LIANA WALKED INTO THE ICU at 2:20 p.m. Like her mother, Liana sported a petite frame, long blond hair, and, during happier moments, a smile that spoke of a woman filled with the joy of life.

  “If there was anyone in the family like Mary,” a source close to the Yoders said, “it was Liana. She and Mary were so much alike in many ways.”

  Bill filled his daughter in as best he could under his emotional turmoil. All of Mary’s children and Bill were now standing by her side. It was a somber time. Unsure what should be said, they stared at the family matriarch. Mary was the one person the Yoder family had looked to for guidance, empowerment, love, empathy, and sincerity.

  Mary always had an affirmation to offer, no matter how negative things might have seemed. Mary didn’t look at life as either a glass half-full or half-empty; she was grateful for just having something in the glass at all. She could find the good in almost any situation. She believed in people. She honored family and love. After the most recent Code Blue, and her reemergence from her brain-dead diagnosis, the family was impressed by her tenacity and will to live.

  “I’ve never seen it,” the doctor said, regarding losing Mary completely and then bringing her back. It wasn’t as though Mary’s eyes opened and she blankly stared into space. She was looking around, gesturing with her eyes. This occurred after the machines had declared the woman dead. “I cannot believe she keeps coming back,” the doctor said after the seventh Code Blue.

  “I know what it was,” Bill recalled, torn up and crying. “Mary was not going to die before Liana arrived.”

  At 2:23 p.m., the monitors sounded for an eighth time. Mary was in full cardiac arrest. The team flooded in, while Bill and the kids waited beyond the curtain.

  “They were in there just forever,” Bill said.

  After about a half hour, the doctor stepped out.

  “We’re trying and trying, but we cannot revive her.”

  Looking on, Liana understood the situation. The others were in shock.

  “Can we call time of death?” the doctor asked, looking more at Liana than her family.

  “Yes,” Liana said. “It really is the right thing to do.”

  “It was so hard to say, ‘Let her die,’” Bill remembered.

  At 2:54 p.m., July 22, 2015, Mary Yoder was pronounced dead.

  Bill asked for a moment alone with his wife. He stepped beyond the curtain, tears streaming down both sides of his face. He turned his head slightly to one side; his body shook. What in the hell had happened? They were planning retirement and vacation days ago. Mary was at work. She’d walked into the house with a stomach bug.

  Now she was dead?

  Bill held his wife’s hand and “said good-bye,” spending fifteen minutes alone with Mary.

  Stumbling out of the hospital sometime later “into the sunlight,” Bill next remembered that he sat “alone” on his bed, “in the dark, sobbing and hurting so badly.” He had “no memory of the six or so hours” he’d spent at the hospital as Mary fought for her life. It was there, inside him, he just could not access it.

  What would Bill do now? His entire life, which he’d known with Mary for forty years, was gone. She was walking around the house, gardening, laughing, exercising, making plans, talking to family, and doing pottery two days ago. Here she was now, sixty years old and seemingly healthy, dead.

  And nobody could tell the family what had happened.

  PART II

  BLOOD CHOKE

  16

  AN OTHERWISE HEALTHY, VIVACIOUS woman, Mary Yoder was at work—having treated forty patients—and in great spirits on the day she became ill. Within twenty-four hours, she was uncontrollably vomiting. After a brief recovery, she had been admitted to the ICU, where doctors told the family she was fighting for her life. A day later, Mary Yoder was dead.

  To family members, such a sudden turn of events was beyond surreal. The Yoders had been blindsided by tragedy, outside what any one of them could have imagined possible the moment before Mary became sick. Mary’s doctors wanted to know why. Not how, necessarily, but what had made her so ill to begin with? What had caused Mary to go from bouncing back from a stomach flu, or gallbladder issue, to eight cardiac arrests, before finally succumbing to whatever sickened her?

  “This is an extremely tough time,” the doctor said before Bill left the ICU. “I understand completely. But I was wondering if you would release your wife’s body for autopsy?”

  “Yes, of course,” Bill said without hesitating. “Absolutely.”

  Though that day was a blur later when he thought back on it, Bill made it clear to Mary’s doctors that he wanted to know what happened. The entire family did.

  After agreeing to have Mary’s body brought to the medical examiner’s office in Onondaga County, Bill walked out of the hospital. He’d been inside the hospital so long, in an area without windows, the sunlight blinded him as he stood outside the doors. He took a moment. One hand against the building, the other draped across his eyes.

  Mary.

  17

  IN EARLY JUNE, ONE month before Mary died, Kati
e sent Adam a pithy text. All numbers: “$22,839.99.”

  Such an exact amount, Adam thought.

  With no immediate response, she texted again: “ASAP.”

  “?” Adam texted back. “Are you telling me to come up with 23K this month?”

  Still recovering from what doctors had claimed was a stomach bug that past April, Adam was feeling ill into early June. As he thought back on it, he became sick only after taking the Alpha BRAIN supplement Katie had given him. Coincidence? Adam wondered. It was hard to believe Katie might have put something in the pills to make him ill. But at this point in their contentious relationship, Adam wasn’t ruling anything out.

  Katie said no in response to Adam’s text. She was only reminding him of the “current balance.”

  Adam was confused. “That figure . . . is comically high. I wonder how many things were added in there that you had said you didn’t want to be paid back for. You’re amazing.”

  “Compound interest,” Katie texted.

  Adam pushed back, mentioning how bad an arrangement the loan had been. Katie had offered this favor long ago, and it now felt like a shakedown. She’d lent him money to buy a Jeep Wrangler, along with cash for credit card debts Adam had accumulated and student loans.

  “One of the things I hate myself for was taking this money,” Adam said later. “I didn’t need it. I wasn’t in a great position financially, but I did not need it. Sure, did it really suck making minimum payments on credit cards and student loans? Yes. But I didn’t go to her and ask for anything. She offered.”

  Now Katie was demanding the money by the end of June.

  “She was desperate for a way to get back into my life. She had been nearly totally cut out.”

  Adam suggested a meeting at their favorite restaurant, Bennu, adding, “It will be the last time you ever see and talk with me in person. . . So take it or leave it.”

  Katie said she was busy.

  Adam asked for “five minutes,” even if they could meet on the side of the road or at a commuter lot somewhere in town.

  “If you want to be paid back anything at all, you will make it work today. Otherwise, feel free to attempt to sue me, Katie . . . I have nothing to lose anymore.”

  Katie was concerned Adam was “trying to renegotiate” a deal they had made.

  “Nope. I’m trying to meet and have a brief discussion,” Adam responded. “After that, I will be trying to get you paid so I can get you out of my life forever.”

  Katie said she did not see the need for a meeting—at least now. If all Adam wanted was to be rid of her for good, she wasn’t interested in being berated by him in person.

  “Have a meeting. Get paid. That simple.”

  Katie did not respond.

  “Oh, all the sweet, sweet lies about how much you want to still see me regularly and me [be] in your life. Yet five minutes is just too difficult to get from you.”

  Katie sent back a simple reply, quoting one of Adam’s texts: “ ‘After that, I will be trying to get you paid so I can get you out of my life forever.’ ”

  “Because you’re despicable,” Adam said.

  Katie sensed Adam’s anger and said she’d “feel more comfortable meeting” when he felt “more relaxed.”

  They squabbled a bit more. Adam said he was about as relaxed as life allowed. Clearly bitter, he seethed about how Katie was forever trying to manipulate a situation into her favor and evade blame. He wasn’t buying it any longer.

  “Good-bye,” Adam texted.

  Katie said, “You can’t expect me to be available for five minutes in half an hour or you refuse to [repay] your debts.”

  “You have your chance to pick a time. I’m not interested in discussing anything further with you. You’re a liar, Katie. Through and through. And I can’t make any progress with a purely dishonest person.”

  After arguing for a few more minutes, by the end of the afternoon, Katie agreed to meet another day.

  Adam said one more day—“[at] the latest”—or forget it.

  Katie didn’t respond.

  Two days later, Adam texted, “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  The following morning, Katie texted and said she was at work, but would text “tomorrow, promise.”

  Over the next two weeks, they intermittently texted each other. It was not as combative as the previous go-round, but there was hostility in Adam’s texts, and remorselessness and sarcasm in Katie’s responses. She wasn’t interested in any sort of discussion about the loan amount. She claimed the loan was $20,000, the rest compounded interest. By July 1, 2015, Adam was having an issue with a wisdom tooth and it sidelined him. The pain had steered him away from lashing out at Katie.

  By the Fourth of July weekend, they were communicating civilly. Katie was always too busy to meet, but had no problem texting, and Adam pointed that out. After approaching him with a text on July 6, Adam explained he “really didn’t have [his] thoughts organized now” and didn’t want to text. Then, after a second thought, he replied, “I was just going through a box of old memories, and it was very difficult. I still don’t know what happened. There was a time when things were happy. Or so it seemed from old letters.”

  “I can imagine. I cleaned through my room last week. It was happy, Adam.”

  They reminisced for a few minutes. Adam picked up on something Katie said about tossing out gifts and love letters and other items he’d given her, adding, “It doesn’t really matter. I was still right about the big picture . . .”

  “We make things what we want,” Katie responded.

  “That’s a poor excuse. Katie, we spent a final miserable year together. You pushed hard to be with me, from around December to August [2013 into 2014], if I remember correctly.”

  “That’s not an excuse.”

  Adam reassured Katie “during that time I always assumed you had sex with [my friend]. I never bought the lie [that you never slept with him]. You had countless opportunities to come out with the truth.” If only, Adam continued, she would have gone to him with “the truth,” there might have been a “chance things [turned out] different—but instead I had to find out on my own.”

  The bottom line, Adam reiterated, the relationship was finished. But he still wanted an apology from Katie for all he believed she’d done to him.

  Katie said she wanted one, too.

  “I didn’t fuck [your friend],” Adam shot back. “But if in the future I do, I will call you right away and apologize.”

  Katie kept pushing to meet. “Is the tea for company or for business?”

  “Business.” A pause. Then: “With a side of company.”

  “The only way she can keep me is to leverage this money as a way to get me to meet with her,” Adam recalled. “Otherwise, there is no reason for us to ever communicate.”

  It was, Adam surmised, the sole reason why she’d offered the loan in the first place. She wanted to forge a direct connection between them she could always fall back on in the event he cut her out of his life.

  They made plans to meet for tea at some point that week. Teatime had been one of those cozy, cute things that people in relationships did together.

  “You wound me,” Adam texted.

  No response.

  So it was: Wednesday, July 8, tea for two at their old hangout was in the books.

  18

  LOOKING INTO HER EYES, placing her palm on Sharon Groah’s hand, Dr. Yoder said, “Hi, I’m Mary.” It was the first time Mary and Sharon met. It was such a gentle, comforting gesture from a woman who could espouse grace and ease to a patient simply by introducing herself. That’s who Mary was, many of her former patients agreed: kind, calm, reassuring, friendly, warm. Mary had an aura about her of serenity and peace.

  “It was almost like everything was good in the world because of Mary,” Sharon commented later. Because of issues with her knees, Sharon had been dragged into Mary and Bill’s practice. She did not want to go to a chiropractor because she never thought treatmen
t would help. She sucked it up, however, and made the trip into Utica to appease her friends’ strident insistence.

  “Mary became part of your family,” Sharon added. “She accepted you as part of her family.”

  There came a time when Sharon’s insurance no longer wanted to pay for three sessions per week. Sharon decided that until the insurance company could figure out how much they were going to pay, she’d stop going.

  Mary found out.

  “We don’t worry about money,” Mary explained to Sharon, exemplifying her overall character. “We worry about the patient.” She told Sharon to keep coming and they’d sort out the insurance issue later.

  Mary was one of six girls. Growing up with so many sisters gave her a strong incentive to take care of people, but not in a codependent way. It derived more out of love and service.

  Echoing this point, Liana mentioned her mother’s joy in life was the utter enjoyment she took from “playing with her four small grandkids.” Mary was a ball of energy, a woman who took care of herself physically, mentally, and spiritually.

  “She was probably the happiest she’d been in years [during those days leading up to her sudden death]. She loved life, everything about life,” Liana concluded.

  * * *

  WITH HIS PHD IN Philosophy, Bill Yoder attended a job fair convention with over two thousand people. There were fewer than two hundred jobs available. Not a great ratio. But Bill was someone who did not sweat hurdles. Nor did he worry about where his path in life took him. Rather, Bill stayed grounded in a sense that opportunity would present itself when he was ready for it. He and Mary believed that everything would work out the way the universe had intended it to be.

  “This convention,” Bill explained, “was a cattle drive—a hopeless one at that. So Mary and I are sitting around thinking, ‘Okay, we’ll figure something out.’ I think our entire marriage we were that couple, clichéd as it sounds, who believed as long as we had each other, life will be good and everything else will work out.”

  They lived at Mary’s parents’ house. Mary had an undeniable talent and passion for arts and crafts. Friends, family, and customers said later that her pottery was the most unique and soulful they had ever seen. Mary put her entire being into each piece. Bill helped Mary where he could. They attended craft fairs and festivals, selling her pieces to make ends meet.