Oh my God.
For a few seconds it seemed like I might have to say goodbye to Andy right then and there. Forever. It sounded like the best-case scenario was that Andy would continue to physically live, but that the rest of whatever life he had left would be spent in a permanent, medically induced coma.
Moments later, another doctor came in and apologized. She had overhydrated Andy after thinking his heart was racing from dehydration. The fly-doctor seemed surprised and slightly relieved. The cardiologist prescribed some medications and reduced Andy’s fluid intake. Soon enough, Andy’s lung rebounded. By that afternoon, he was better than he had been since being admitted to Sibley three days prior.
The doctors left the room, seemingly impressed with their solution. But we were scared—and, more than anything else, confused. He was better than he had been three days before, but still incredibly weak and requiring constant oxygen. Did Andy have two weeks left or was all of this a temporary problem that was easily fixed?
“Two weeks, Bean? I’m not ready for this A Walk to Remember shit,” Andy remarked. He sounded more frustrated and exasperated than frightened.
We barraged every nurse and subsequent doctor who entered our room with questions, but no one could provide us with a clear answer.
“I don’t have a good answer,” one young doctor told us, “but I will say that you don’t look like someone with two weeks left.”
It wasn’t a ringing endorsement, but it was something to hang our hope on. Within a day or two, the consensus was that Andy had largely stabilized and that the hospital had done everything they could to remedy the situation, and the decision was made to discharge him the next day.
“Finally,” Andy said, his spirits lifted. He’d be discharged with a perpetual oxygen tank and he was still exceptionally weak, but he was coming home. He hated being in the hospital.
That night, Andy’s mom pulled me aside in the hospital waiting room. “Sarah, dear. Have you thought about moving the wedding up?”
I could tell it was more of a recommendation than a question. I had thought about asking Andy the same thing, but I knew how he would interpret the suggestion. He’d see it as a sign that he didn’t have much time left. The fact that his mother brought it up reinforced that it was probably the right thing to do. And while he had somewhat stabilized, things were still moving much faster than any of the doctors had predicted two and a half weeks earlier, when Andy first asked me to marry him. He might not have had the less than two weeks that the fly-doctor had coldly suggested, but he certainly didn’t seem like he had anywhere close to a year.
The morning of Andy’s discharge, I sat down on his hospital bed to broach the subject.
“Bean, what do you think about maybe moving up the wedding?”
“Are you giving up?” he immediately asked.
“No, no, no. I just think it’s clear that your chemotherapy will likely take more out of you than we thought, so maybe it’s best to do it before you start treatment.”
He smiled in relief. I wasn’t being entirely forthcoming, but what good would the truth do?
“I think that’s a good idea,” he said, putting his hand on my face and leaning in for a kiss.
Once we were finally situated back at our apartment, we invited our friend and colleague, Bishop Gene Robinson, over. In his mid-sixties, the bishop was a comforting figure, with gray hair and small, circular spectacles. Bishop Gene, as we all called him at the Center for American Progress, had been thrust into the spotlight when he became the first openly LGBTQ person to become a bishop in any major Christian denomination. His election in 2003 to serve as head of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire set off a frenzy, causing a worldwide schism within the Anglican Church.
When he was installed as bishop, the threats on his life were so significant and credible that he had to wear a bulletproof vest under his religious robes. Now retired from his day-to-day role in the church, Bishop Gene served as a senior fellow at CAP, working closely with the LGBTQ team, including Andy and me.
Since we first started to plan the wedding, Bishop Gene had been our dream officiate. He had become a good friend to us, and the fact that he was part of the LGBTQ community put us at ease. We recognized that as two transgender people our love seemed unorthodox to some, and we knew he would preside judgment-free.
Bishop Gene didn’t realize just how poorly Andy was doing when he first arrived at our apartment. As he walked into our living room, he looked around and took in his surroundings. He studied the knickknacks and the small toy robots that I had found so adorable when I first visited Andy at the beginning of our relationship. Two years later, those items were now joined by my decorations, framed pictures of the two of us from throughout our relationship, and lots and lots of medical equipment.
Andy was sitting on the couch with his back to the wandering Bishop Gene, looking out our large apartment windows. The sight of a thin, clear tube stretching from Andy’s nose across the floor to a large black oxygen generator made the bishop do a double take.
“Andy and I have decided to get married and we would love for you to preside,” I jumped in, trying to distract from Bishop Gene’s surprise at Andy’s diminished physical condition.
Clearly overcome with emotion at the request and the sight of Andy, Bishop Gene cleared his throat. “Ahem…I would be honored,” he replied. Just looking at Andy, he understood the urgency of the request and that any wedding would have to happen soon.
“We’re thinking about this coming Sunday on the rooftop of our building,” I told him.
“Not only would I be honored to officiate, but I would love to help organize everything,” he said. “I have a small budget for these types of things and I’d like to help pay for it, if you are comfortable.”
We hadn’t really considered buying anything for the wedding. Given that we were now talking about a ceremony in five days’ time, we figured it would be very simple. No flowers. No food. No decorations.
But Bishop Gene and, as it turned out, our friends had other plans. His generous offer stunned us. I looked at Andy and saw tears streaming down his face once again. For once they were happy tears.
“That is so thoughtful of you,” Andy responded, wiping his eyes. “Thank you. Thank you.”
My brother Sean, who had watched too many people, including young people, pass away from cancer, had told me that I should take stock in the beautiful acts of kindness that I’d begin to see. “Amazing grace,” Sean called it. “You will bear witness to acts of amazing grace.”
Bishop Gene’s offer was just one example of the grace that was filling our lives in what increasingly appeared to be Andy’s waning days. With nothing more than a color preference, Bishop Gene and an army of family and friends began organizing our wedding.
But as the wedding preparations continued, so, too, did the decline in Andy’s health. He was sleeping more and more. He was relegated, almost exclusively, to a recliner that his stepdad had purchased for him while he was in the hospital. Going to the bathroom required the help of three friends.
“One, two, three…” we’d count, as we’d lift Andy from the recliner to the wheelchair, in which he’d then be rolled to our bathroom just twenty feet away.
He stopped being able to swallow his dozens of pills, so I’d crush them up and put them in his ice cream, about the only thing he could eat. But it soon became nearly impossible to eat even that, taking four hours to eat six spoonfuls. Almost immediately it would be time for the next meal-medicine mix.
A home nurse stopped by for fifteen minutes every few days to check his vitals and his strength, but that was it. Andy’s friends, parents, and I were left to handle his care. And I became the taskmaster, a role Andy grew increasingly frustrated with as our conversations began consisting almost entirely of me nagging him to eat food.
He was scheduled to start treatment the Tuesda
y after our wedding, and he knew that he had to have some degree of strength to undergo the chemo. Otherwise, the doctors informed us, the treatment would do more harm than good: It would kill him.
“If you aren’t healthy enough to be home, you won’t be strong enough to undergo chemo,” Andy’s oncologist told us over the phone one day.
Andy was determined to make it to treatment, but if he didn’t eat, none of that would happen.
Sitting with a bowl of soft food in front of him, hours would go by with Andy taking only a few bites.
“Andy, I need you to eat,” I’d remind him.
He’d take another scoop and then sit staring at his food for another twenty minutes.
“If you don’t eat, I’m going to have to take you to the hospital,” I’d plead with him.
“Please don’t do that,” he’d cry.
“I don’t know what else do to, Bean, you need to eat! You need to take your medicine!”
We’d repeat this routine over and over again, each meal taking so long that it would bleed into the next. A mostly full bowl was perpetually in front of him.
When Andy wasn’t attempting to put his all into eating ice cream, he’d obsessively check his vitals with a fingertip clip that he asked us to buy for him. The small device that attached to his pointer finger measured his pulse and oxygenation level.
For people with cancer in their lungs, the oxygenation level is a key measurement. It indicates the amount of oxygen making it into the bloodstream. Measured on a scale of one to one hundred, healthy levels are in the high nineties. Fatal levels are in the sixties or seventies, but anything under ninety-five was problematic. We were told a person would likely lose consciousness somewhere in the eighties.
Each day, he watched as his oxygenation levels fluctuated between ninety-five and the low nineties. Sometimes it’d drop into the eighties and we’d have to turn up the amount of oxygen coming from the generator. Each increase would give him a little more energy, but as we approached the maximum output for the home machine, each increase also brought him closer to needing to go back to the hospital.
Our only respite from the now-constant struggle to keep him oxygenated, hydrated, and nourished was the wedding. Even with our friends handling most of the logistics, there were still small decisions for us to make. One was the song that would play after we exchanged our vows.
“Give me a thumbs-up when we get to one you want,” I told him, knowing that talking was becoming too tiresome.
One by one, I played different songs as Andy drifted in and out of sleep. No thumbs-up. But then I got to the song he had played for me in the car on our first date, the one that I had listened to every day on my way to work at the White House, the one that had played when Sean and I spoke at the Human Rights Campaign’s National Dinner just before Andy’s first surgery.
When “Safe and Sound” started playing, Andy’s eyes opened a little. He looked at me, managed a small smirk, and lifted up his thumb.
And then there were the vows. The next night, as a few of Andy’s friends hosted a “bachelor party” in our living room for him, I hid in our bedroom and reviewed the draft Bishop Gene had sent us of the Episcopal church’s wedding ceremony.
Andy’s friends were determined to give him the full wedding experience. Completely relegated to his chair, they brought some small bachelor-party decorations and played music videos on our TV. I heard a burst of laughter come from the living room as Andy’s fingertip oxygenation and pulse reader recorded an increase in his heart rate as a Beyoncé music video played on our TV.
“Someone’s excited,” a friend yelled, with Andy almost completely motionless in his recliner.
As Andy’s friends “partied” in the living room, I edited the ceremony. Line by line, I went through it with a pen. The wedding would be hard enough emotionally. So I removed any mention of “death” and replaced it with “forever and ever.” I wanted Andy to know that we’d be married long after he died.
Given his condition, I reduced the amount of lines we had to speak to three sentences:
“I do.”
“That is my solemn vow.”
And “Please accept this ring as a symbol of my abiding love.”
I also knew it would be challenging for him to remember those lines, so I wrote them out, with their cues, on a half-sheet of paper.
The next morning, as I walked out of our bedroom, the early light filled our southern-facing living room. The space was strangely peaceful. By now, Andy was sleeping straight through much of the day.
“Beanie…Beanie…” I whispered to wake him up. “Can I read you our vows?”
He nodded a few times as he attempted to sit up a little. I tried reading the entire service to him for his approval, but he fell asleep pretty quickly. So when he re-awoke, I read just what was on the cheat sheet, including the line right before he was to say “I do.” His cue was when Bishop Gene said, “Will you honor and love her forever and ever?”
After he said it was okay and began drifting off to sleep, I started walking back to our bedroom but stopped when I heard him mumbling. Thinking he needed something, I turned around, walked over to his chair, and leaned in. I couldn’t quite hear, so I leaned farther in.
“Forever and ever,” he whispered, now completely asleep. “Forever and ever, forever and ever…”
Sweet dreams, my bean, I thought. Sweet dreams.
* * *
I woke up the morning of Sunday, August 24, to a crisp, cloudless blue sky: Today was our wedding day. Andy’s energy and spirits had marginally improved. His oxygen thirst had stopped increasing, stabilizing at a high but manageable level. He was even eating a little bit.
As I helped him eat some breakfast ice cream, our friends started arriving with decorations. Bouquets and tablecloths sat next to his medical equipment, filling all the remaining space. By four o’clock, I was in our neighbor’s apartment getting ready. A few days earlier, I had gone out with two of my closest friends to a bridal shop just across the river in the colonial town of Alexandria, Virginia. After we explained the situation to the store owner, they agreed to fast-track alterations to any dress I picked and to have it to us in time for the Sunday wedding.
The first dress I tried on was absolutely perfect. The white lace floor-length dress with a V-shaped neckline that spread to off-the-shoulder sleeves needed very few alterations. Its low back led to a short train that spread out behind me. Now, standing in the calm of my neighbor’s apartment, taking in the dress hanging on the closet door, the moment finally sank in: I’m getting married.
The thought was interrupted by three loud knocks.
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
I opened the door to see one of Andy’s best friends, Wes, out of breath and clearly shaken.
“Andy just had an episode. He started to collapse and go unconscious when he was moving from the recliner to his wheelchair. He is awake and his vitals are okay right now, but we called the police and the EMTs are on the way.”
With my hair still up, I stormed into the apartment to find Andy in his recliner with Sean and our friends encircling him. I broke through and asked if he was okay.
He looked up at me, clearly feeling guilty that he had collapsed just before the wedding. “I’m sorry, are you mad at me?”
I felt guilty that Andy would even worry about that.
“Of course not, Beanie. Of course I’m not mad at you.”
As the faint sirens approached, Sean leaned in and asked Andy a few questions to ensure he hadn’t had a stroke.
“What’s your name?”
“Andrew Cray.”
“Who is the president?”
“Barack Obama.”
“What day is it?”
His answer was a few days off, but he correctly identified it as “my wedding day.”
The EMTs eventually c
ame into our apartment and made their way through the wedding decorations and medical equipment to Andy’s chair. They performed an EKG as they consulted with my brother, who had introduced himself as a doctor and informed them of Andy’s health situation. As they talked, Andy interrupted them.
“I’m not going to the hospital,” he declared, knowing what that would mean for our wedding and his chances at treatment.
The EMTs talked it over among themselves and with Sean, and with Andy’s vitals normal, they agreed to his request. As they left, I asked Andy if he wanted to move the wedding to the apartment or cancel it altogether. He shook his head firmly.
“No. This is happening.”
Sure enough, he rallied. With the help of three people, Andy was able to get into his blue button-up shirt and gray dress pants. Andy’s friends were concerned that his bow tie might be too tight around his neck, so they scrapped tying it, instead draping it around his collar like James Bond’s at the end of a long night. And with his oxygen tank in tow, he was wheeled up onto the roof of our building.
As Andy’s wheelchair approached the crowd of fifty friends and relatives—most of whom had no idea that, just an hour before, EMTs had been ready to take him to the hospital—the guests started to applaud. A smirk crossed Andy’s face, much of it covered by large, dark Ray-Bans. He lifted his fist in triumph. It was clear to everyone, including Andy, that it was a miracle that he’d made it up to that roof.
The wedding was filled with our families and the friends who had helped Andy through his first and now second round of cancer. At the front were our parents and siblings, and Andy’s aunts and uncles. Two of our best friends—Kelsey, who had come out and transitioned alongside Andy in college, and Helen, my friend since middle school who had first helped me along my own journey to coming out—were prepared to read from scripture and a poem.
“Are you ready?” I asked my dad.
Tomorrow Will Be Different Page 22