The California Coven Project

by Bob Stickgold

  Ann was complaining to Carol: “Boredom’s bad enough with these modem medicines, but the old ones don’t even have a chance unless I get to help.”

  “That’s it!” Maggie said suddenly.

  “That’s what?” Kathy asked.

  Maggie suddenly became aware of where she was. “Oh, something I was flying to remember.” Without further explanation, she ran ahead to her office. “Write it down,” she told herself. At her desk, she typed the snippet of dialogue into the computer terminal. “Boredom’s bad enough with these modem medicines, but the old ones don’t even have a chance unless I get to help.” And then, in capital letters, she wrote “TELL MOM.” Then, she added. “MAKE HER HELP.” She just looked at the paper for a minute, and then wrote “RITUAL” and underlined it twice. She read it all over again, convincing herself that it would make sense even if the dream were forgotten completely. Then, just to be sure, she wrote, “Ancient cures evolved to work as applied, and that wasn’t in, a sterile hospital under rigid hospital procedures” Rereading what she bad just typed, she was finally satisfied. She typed in a routine to be played back to her first thing next morning, then leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. A tremble ran through her body, half exhaustion and half elation. She forced herself to breathe slowly, demanded that her body relax, and tried to blank her mind.

  She would think that she was totally relaxed, and then realize that a corner of her mind was replaying the dream again. She tried again, and found a corner rehearsing what to say to Ann. She tried again, and found herself rearranging her schedule so that she could go out to boy the ingredients for her brew. She tried again, and found herself faced with Ann’s renewed hope, and her own fears of failure.

  Kathy stuck her head into Maggie’s office. “You okay?”

  Maggie smiled and nodded. “Yep. Just great.” Getting up from her desk, she said, “Let’s get going. We’ve got a busy day ahead of us.”

  Chapter Seven

  “MOM?” Maggie looked intently into Ann’s face, waiting for her to awaken. Crossing to the windows, she opened the curtains to let in the morning light. Carol had just left for school, and Maggie was determined to begin right away. Coming back to the chair, she sat at the head of Ann’s bed. Ann seemed sound asleep. “Mom? Mom, it’s morning. Wake up.”

  Ann opened her eyes. She wore the slightly bewildered expression that indicated the pain was bad. “Why are you waking me?”

  Maggie took a breath, and steeled herself for what she needed to do. “I’ve got some new medicine for you, Mom, and I want to start using it right away.” She tried to look encouraging.

  Ann turned and looked at the window. “So what? My sleep is the only nice part of my day. There’s nothing your medicine can do that would be better than a little extra sleep.” She turned back to Maggie. “Why did you wake me up?”

  “Mom, this medicine is different. I think . . .” She paused, just a fraction of a second, understanding the importance of sounding convincing, but also realizing the odds. “. . . that this might really work, might really be able to help you, to cure the cancer.”

  Ann looked confused. “What . . . what do you mean?”

  “It’s a new medicine—one they haven’t used before—and I think it really can work.”

  The confusion remained in Ann’s face. “You mean cure it?”

  Maggie nodded excitedly. “Yes, Mom, I mean cure it. Really make you better.”

  Ann tried to raise herself to a sitting position, finally accepting Maggie’s help. “This damn pain,” she complained, “it makes it so hard to understand you. . . . Tell me again, Maggie,” she said, her eyes becoming just a bit unfocused, “what are you talking about?”

  Again, and yet again, Maggie patiently explained the situation to Ann—a new drug, never used extensively, but with great hope, a hope that Maggie believed in, and that it was important for Ann to believe in, too. Slowly, Maggie could see the realization building in Ann.

  “Stop.” Ann looked pleadingly up to Maggie, “Please, stop.” She turned and looked out the window. “I can’t continue hoping against hope and failing every time.” She paused. “Margaret, I know . . . I know that I’m dying. It’s not an easy thing for me to know and come to any sort of terms with, but I feel that I have. Please don’t start me hoping again, because if you do, then all that sorting out is lost, and I have to start all over again. And it hurts, Maggie. It hurts more than anything else I’ve ever had to do. I’ll be happy to take the medicine. I’ve gotten to the point where I cant tell one from the next. But don’t make me start to hope again. I just can’t take it.”

  Maggie sat quietly for a moment, wondering whether her experiment was fair to Ann. Did she actually believe in the potion she was going to give Ann? Why should she lave faith in it? Suddenly, she was unsure.

  “Maggie?”

  “It’s okay, Mom, I was just thinking.” She had no time to decide. “You see, it’s important for you to believe in it. No one knows why, but it’s true. Somehow believing in it helps the process, helps the medicine to work.”

  Ann looked at Maggie quizzically, but then seemed to accept her statement. “Hmmph! So they won’t let me be a helpless little old lady anymore?” She paused. “Looks a lot like that disgusting onion soup.” She paused again. “Okay,” Ann said, “let’s do it, Margaret, you and me together.” She reached for the spoon.

  * * *

  Maggie stayed home that Friday morning, and she and Ann talked about many things, only occasionally returning to the subject of the treatment. She had taken the medicine, but if it had any effect, it was not noticeable, and the pain remained.

  Saturday, the treatment continued, and Maggie spent most of the day with Ann, encouraging her as best she could. But the pain was worse than usual, and Ann refused any painkillers. The result was hard on Maggie. Never before had she realized the strength of the woman whom she had taken for granted all her life. Sunday was the same, and doubts crowded Maggie’s thoughts.

  On Monday Ann’s condition was better, and on Tuesday, a little better still. But not that much, and not any better than it had been from time to time in the past. Ann and Maggie had trouble talking about the treatment because, strangely, now that they were starting to believe it, they began to fear its failure.

  But on Wednesday the pain had definitely lessened, more, Ann insisted, than any time that she could remember since she left the hospital, Thursday, the improvement continued, and Ann wanted to get up and walk around. That evening, Maggie relented, and walked Ann to the bathroom, a luxury the old woman had not enjoyed in months. But she was still weak, and the short walk left her exhausted. Yet she insisted that it had not been accompanied by pain. They talked late that night, almost in a whisper, lest they break their luck.

  Friday morning made one week. “ ’Morning, Mom.” Maggie stuck her head into Ann’s room. “How you feeling?”

  Ann smiled up at Maggie. “Frustrated, I’m pleased to say.” She looked disapprovingly at the shape of her body underneath the coven. “I’m so weak from never doing anything, that I’m absolutely helpless, even though I feel fine.” She raised her hands and looked at them. “At least I’m getting some strength back in these. This weekend you’ll have to get me yarn so I can at least do some knitting.”

  “Promise,” Margaret agreed. She sat down and held Ann’s thin hands. “Recovery’s going to be slow, you know. You’ve lost a lot of weight, and it’s going to take time to get you back into good shape.”

  Ann turned her hands over to look at the backs. “I’m not so young anymore. I know. But if the cancer’s gone, I’m not too old to recover. . . . Maggie?”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you think it is gone?”

  Maggie paused. “I guess I don’t know.”

  “Why haven’t the doctors wanted to see me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Ann looked irritated. “I mean, if they’re trying this new drug out on me, and if it seems to be working, I’d
think they’d have me back in the hospital for tests, and Lord knows what else. But you haven’t even mentioned them. So what’s going on?”

  Maggie didn’t know what to say. “Why, I don’t know, Mom. Maybe they’re testing it on a lot of people, and can’t see them all right away. . . .”

  Ann slapped the palms of her hands hard on the bed beside her, interrupting Maggie. “Margaret, I’m your mother, not your daughter! You’ve been lying ineffectively for forty years now, and I find it rather irritating. So would you please be so kind as to tell your sick, old mother what in the name of God is going on?” She sank back into her pillows, exhausted by her outrage. But her eyes remained fixed tightly on Maggie’s.

  Maggie hesitated, unsure how to respond. Lying was useless, but she was terrified that if she lost Ann’s faith, she might lose the cure. Finally, she raised her eyes back to Ann’s. In a calm, soft voice, she said, “The reason the doctors aren’t showing any interest in you is because they don’t know anything about it. I didn’t get the medicine from them.” She felt no guilt, no embarrassment, at her admission.

  Ann’s eyes narrowed. “A quack cure? You’re telling me that you gave me something like that Laetrile that created a scandal twenty years ago? You bought me some quack cure and it worked?” Her eyes were wide now. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  Maggie smiled. “No, Mom, I didn’t buy it for you. I made it myself!” She almost bounced with delight. Quietly she poured out the whole story from her first ideas, to her realization that the patient was important to the process. As she finished, she could read the delight in her mother’s expression.

  Ann nodded her head slowly. “Well, I’ll be.” She looked at her daughter in amazement. “I can hardly believe it. Margaret. Margaret named after that Margaret so long ago. You’ve earned that name.”

  Chapter Eight

  THAT afternoon, Maggie drove to Palo Alto, to see Bill Krueger, Ann’s physician at Stanford Hospital. Before Ann became his patient, Bill and Maggie had known each other slightly in a professional context, and had come to respect one another’s abilities.

  “Hi, Maggie, good to see you again.” He walked from behind his desk to shake her hand warmly, and sat down with her in a pair of Breuer chairs set alongside his desk. In his late forties. Bill’s slight tendency to heaviness was emphasized by his height of five foot six. His face radiated gentleness, part of a carefully cultivated bedside manner.

  Maggie sat comfortably in her chair, trying to reflect Krueger’s relaxed mood. “It’s nice to see you, too, Bill. How go things?”

  He smiled. “Oh, about average, which means I have twice as much to do as I’d like.” His face turned more serious, “How’s Ann?”

  Maggie paused, still unsure about how much to say. “Better.” She nodded her head in agreement with her comment, and then continued. “In fact, remarkably so. Her pain is pretty much gone—she’s stopped taking any analgesics—and she’s put on a bit of weight in the last week, just a couple of pounds. I walk her to the bathroom sometimes, but she’s still so weak . . .” She stopped, suddenly realizing how strange it must sound.

  Krueger sat silently in his chair, but the casual appearance was gone; curiosity and confusion were evident in his face. But he said nothing.

  Finally. Maggie looked down at her lap, confused. She could bear Krueger breathe as he waited for her to continue. Finally, looking up, almost shyly, she said, “I think she’s recovering.” She forced herself to keep her eyes on Krueger. “And I’d like to bring her up here early next week for you to examine her.”

  Krueger nodded quietly. “How will you get her here?”

  “I could use a clinic ambulance. We have backup units and extra gas coupons, so it wouldn’t really create a problem. I’ll leave some of the gear at the clinic.” Her voice was stronger, more self-assured.

  Krueger nodded again, obviously still thinking about something else. “Wouldn’t it be easier on her to have someone down there look at her? It’s a two-hour drive and another two back.”

  “An hour and a half,” Maggie interrupted. “And they’re not equipped to run a scan down there.”

  “You want me to run an X-ray scan?” He was openly surprised now.

  Maggie nodded. “I think the tumors are gone.”

  “You know that’s not very likely. Even if the pain is gone, even if she’s gained a little weight, almost certainly that’s just a lull in the progression of the disease.” He stopped for a moment, confused. “I’m sorry, Maggie, I’ve been acting like you were just another medical person, not the daughter of a patient. I said that rather harshly.”

  “No, that’s fine. I know how the disease normally progresses, and I know how unlikely what I’m saying sounds. That’s another reason why I want to bring her here. Most any other doctor would wave me off as a hysterical relative. I guess I’m asking you both personally, as a favor, and medically, as a colleague, to trust my judgment enough to run the X-ray scans. If you’re right, it certainly won’t make any serious difference in Mom’s case.”

  Krueger nodded again. “That all sounds reasonable. But why do you think she’s better?”

  “Because . . . because of a reason that I’d prefer not to discuss now.”

  Krueger sighed, and leaned back in his chair. “Curenin?”

  Maggie shook her head hard. “No, not Curenin, not Laetrile, no magic proven remedies from doctors or ads in the newspaper. No one has sold me any cancer cure.”

  Krueger shrugged. “Okay. I don’t know why you want it, but if Ann agrees, I’ll give her a limited scan to see if the major tumors have changed.” He paused, then asked, “Have you discussed this with her?”

  Maggie nodded. “Yes, and she agrees that a scan would be the best thing.”

  Krueger turned to a small computer terminal on his desk. “Let me check when we can have it done.” Looking up at Maggie, he asked, “Tuesday at one?”

  Maggie nodded agreement, and Krueger struck a key on the terminal. “Well, it’s set. Tuesday at one.”

  Smiling, Maggie got up to leave. Krueger stood too, and walked her to the door. “Maggie, please don’t be too optimistic until we see some positive results.”

  Maggie nodded. “I won’t.” She left the office. Outside, she found a telephone booth, and called the clinic to see if there was any reason to hurry back to Santa Cruz. Lisa answered the phone.

  “No,” she said, “everything’s under control here, so there’s no rush, but I think that Beckie was looking for you earlier. Did she get in touch with you?”

  “No,” Maggie answered, “she didn’t— Oh, damn! I know what it is. Is she there?”

  “Just a see, I’ll check.” There was a silence while Maggie waited. A minute later Beckie answered the phone.

  “Hi Maggie, how are you?”

  “I was doing great, until I realized that the Midwives Association meeting was tonight.”

  “Does that mean you can’t make it?”

  “No—oh, hell, I don’t know. I only just now realized it when Lisa said you were looking for me. I’ll call home and get back to you.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Up in Palo Alto.”

  “Well, then you wouldn’t be going home before the meeting, would you?”

  Maggie thought a second. “No, that would be silly. If I’m going to go, I’ll probably go up to San Francisco now, and spend the rest of the afternoon there.”

  “Well, look,” Beckie said, “I was calling about a ride, and obviously that’s not going to work, but I was counting on your being there for the big fight tonight. You’re my right-hand woman, you know.”

  Maggie laughed. “Well, I’ll try my best, okay?”

  “Good enough. I’ll look for you there.”

  Maggie hung up and called home. With Ann doing so much better, she felt no qualms about leaving her with Carol. She wondered whether Carol was aware of the change in Ann’s condition.

  But in their conversation, Carol agreed to
stay at home that evening and watch Ann, and no mention was made of her condition.

  * * *

  The night’s meeting of the entire Midwives Association of the San Francisco Bay Area was held in a large lecture hall at the University of California’s Medical Center in San Francisco. Maggie arrived early, and chatted idly with several of the women about the fetal-monitor resolution, and the rumors of a big fight in the works. But no one seemed to have any facts.

  Finally, Maggie got some details from Amy. “It appears that Susan Glanvil has been working overtime to try to correct her errors of two weeks ago. She and a small group of her cronies have been on the phone every evening, as far as I can tell, and have been in touch with most of the members of the Association who aren’t solidly in our camp. I found this out only last night, when I got a call from Emily Watson, saying that she had just spent half an hour on the phone with Glanvil. After that, I called some people I knew, and it seems Glanvil’s crowd is going to enter a substitute motion, stating that fetal monitors must be used during all deliveries, unless some kind of overriding medical reason indicates that it would be unusually dangerous. The impression I got was that at first it was just a parliamentary trick to tie up the discussion and get our motion sent back to committee, and possibly even a different committee. But now, apparently, Glanvil thinks she might actually have enough votes to get her motion through. She’s been pushing the issue of reprisals from the A.M.A. pretty hard, and she seems to have a lot of people scared. My impression is that we’ve got a really big fight ahead of us.”

  Maggie was shocked. “But would Glanvil actually want to require the monitors? I’ve never heard anyone take that position. Why would she want to do that?”

  “Well, actually, in the late ’70s and early ’80s, a lot of hospitals did make it a general policy, allegedly to stave off malpractice suits, and lots of doctors used them routinely. Besides, Glanvil would be delighted to make them mandatory, just to irritate us. She’s into politics heavily, you know, and she sees us as a real threat to her power. I think nothing would please her more than to have a rule passed that we couldn’t accept, so that we would either leave or get kicked out of the Association.” She waved at someone across the room. “That’s Beckie, I want to find out what she’s heard.”