Saving Jane Doe

by Carolyn Purcell

  Grace and Uncle Henry found a lighted nativity set in the garage. They had to replace the lights, but it looked lovely on the lawn, and neighbors called to tell Uncle Henry how much they enjoyed seeing it again. Grace helped Uncle Henry pick out a real Christmas tree, which they decorated with Aunt Edna’s antique ornaments. They bought four red stockings with white fur tops and hung them on the mantel.

  Jessie baked sugar cookies, and Grace helped decorate them. She also made pounds of toffee and gave it to the mailman, the paperboy, the garbage men, Grace’s teacher, her hairdresser, Grace’s doctors, and the neighbors. Jessie and Grace glued glitter on the stockings to make our names.

  Gifts were simple that year. Uncle Henry gave Grace a Bible. Jessie got her a doll and dollhouse, and I got extra doll clothes and furniture for the house. Uncle Henry and I bought Jessie a camera. She requested one with a zoom lens. “I want to record as much of Ellen and Jeff’s lives as I can, and they don’t let me get very close,” she said.

  January 1974 began a relatively uneventful year. I missed lots of Friday nights during that year and felt grateful that Uncle Henry was not alone. Grace went for regular checkups but miraculously remained in remission. Jessie worked extra hard in school to make up for the semester she lost during Grace’s illness. Before we knew it, it was holiday time again.

  On December 28, 1974, Jessie, Grace, and I went to Frankfort for the inauguration of Julian Carroll as governor of Kentucky. While the temperature was close to zero, the day dawned bright and sunny. We set off early in the morning to get a place on the front row to see the inaugural parade and take pictures. Ellen’s band was one of many high school bands marching in the parade. Ellen was in middle school, but the band was newly formed and they needed the middle school children to make a respectable number. George and Mary had not planned to attend.

  We found a perfect place to watch, just before the bridge over the Kentucky River on the street leading to the capitol. Dressed in blue and white uniforms the school had bought used, Ellen’s band marched near the front of the parade; she played clarinet. The lines were crooked, and many were out of step. Plenty of squeaks came from the clarinets along with wrong notes from every section. Some of the younger kids stared at the crowd more than the crowd stared at them.

  The bands marched up to the bridge, stopped, and walked across. I remembered from my own marching days that bands don’t march over bridges. The vibration of being in step is supposed to make the bridge fall. I thought Ellen’s band could have marched over the bridge with no problem. They were exactly what you would expect of a new high school band full of middle school kids, but that was not an acceptable excuse for Ellen. When the band was finished and allowed to meet family and friends, she ran into Jessie’s arms in tears.

  “We were terrible,” she wailed. “I don’t know why we have to go places like this until we learn to play better.”

  Jessie tried to console her. “It wasn’t so bad, and now you will always remember that you played in the inaugural parade.”

  “I don’t want to remember this.”

  Jessie held her and let her cry. She had tears in her own eyes as she said, “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.” Ellen couldn’t see her face, but it said she was sorry for a lot more than the poor performance of the band.

  After a time Ellen pulled away. She stood with her head down, scuffing her shoes on the sidewalk. She seemed a bit embarrassed that she had let down her guard toward her mother, but it had not escaped her attention that she had needed her mother and this time her mother was there for her. Neither had it escaped Jessie’s attention that this was the first time Ellen had embraced her since that fateful day when she left home three years before.

  “How much time do you have before your bus leaves for home?” Jessie asked.

  “We have two hours.”

  “Let’s find a place to get warm and eat some lunch,” I said.

  “That sounds great,” Ellen said. “I’m freezing.”

  Grace, who seemed nearly as happy about seeing Ellen as Jessie, said, “I want chili.”

  Jessie put and arm around each of her girls as we walked down the street. “The hotter, the better,” she said.

  Jessie smiled all the way home. I wish I could say that everything was good between Ellen and Jessie after that, but it was not to be. Ellen was thirteen and destined to have a difficult time as a teenager; still, it was a start. On rare occasions she came to visit Jessie at Uncle Henry’s, but she seemed unhappy everywhere. Mary’s new baby girl, Erin, was getting too much of her father’s attention, and she was still cautious, not really trusting her mother.

  Jeff still refused even to talk to Jessie.

  CHAPTER 5

  In May of 1976 Jessie graduated from nursing school. Uncle Henry, Grace, and I attended her graduation and took her out to dinner to celebrate. She got a job working in Labor & Delivery at the University Hospital, but she kept her other job, housekeeping for Uncle Henry. Two months later, I entered my last year of residency. Two of my fellow residents had been in my medical school class and helped care for Jessie when she was in the hospital. I was amused at their response to her. Neither of them remembered that this intelligent, capable, hardworking nurse was the Jane Doe whom we had on our GYN service five years before. I certainly wasn’t going to tell them. Of all the admirable adjectives I could use to describe Jessie, compassionate was the most accurate. She had an uncanny ability to sense someone’s pain, fear, or guilt. I wondered at her sensitivity. It made her a fabulous nurse.

  One Friday evening in early July, I arrived for dinner with Uncle Henry and Jessie. Grace had gone to her father’s for the weekend. I hadn’t seen Uncle Henry since Jessie’s graduation and was the first to admit that I spent too much time at the hospital, missed too many Friday nights of Scrabble. The sight of him stunned me; he had lost thirty pounds, and he had not been overweight.

  “Uncle Henry, you are so thin. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Cara, I didn’t want to worry you, but I have cancer.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Colon cancer and it’s in my liver now.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Just a couple of weeks.”

  “You should have called me. What are they going to do for it?”

  “Nothing. They say it is too advanced.”

  “We need a second opinion.”

  “I’ve already done that. Everybody’s opinions agree, so we signed me up for hospice. Jessie has agreed to take care of me.”

  I looked at Jessie, still reeling from the news.

  She nodded. “Yes, even if it means I have to take a leave from my job.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Just come when you can.”

  “I’ll help Jessie take care of you,” I said, feeling helpless and afraid.

  “I can still spell,” he said. “Let’s have a game of Scrabble.

  Two weeks later, Uncle Henry developed a bowel obstruction; so, in spite of his plan to do nothing, he underwent a colon resection. While there was no plan that it would be curative, we hoped it would make his passing less painful. It did. It also made it happen more quickly. One night in the hospital after he had recovered from the anesthesia, I asked him if there was anyone he wanted me to call or anything he wanted to do or have me do.

  “No,” he said, “but there is something I want to tell you. I guess really I want to confess.”

  “Confess? Uncle Henry, you are the finest man I know.”

  “That’s it, Cara. I am a man, and we all sin.”

  “You don’t need to confess to me, Uncle Henry. I’m sure you have already confessed to God.”

  “Yes, I have, to God and to Edna.”

  “Aunt Edna? Are you telling me you had an affair?”

  “I would hesitate to call it an affair, but I was unfaithful.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I am telling you because I want you to know about my life’s m
ost important lesson, the lesson that made me the man I am today.”

  “All right, Uncle Henry, I’m listening.”

  “We’d been married about five years when your Aunt Edna’s namesake, an unmarried great-aunt of hers, became ill with, of all things, colon cancer. She had no one to care for her except Edna. I was working night and day on a project at the time, so Edna’s being gone a lot seemed not to be a problem. There was a woman working with me who shared my passion for the work. As it turned out, she also had a passion for me.

  “I was flattered and lonely, so we started spending more time together. I did not feel that I was being unfaithful having late-night dinners, but at length I crossed the line. I broke it off after one time, but she didn’t want it to end. She thought if she told Edna, our marriage would end and we could continue our affair. I was tempted to lie to Edna and deny it. It is hard to tell the truth when you know it will hurt someone you love, but you should think of that before doing the hurtful thing. Anyway, that is not the lesson, though it’s a good one.” Uncle Henry twisted in bed and winced.

  “The fact is I told Edna the truth. I told her I loved her, begged for forgiveness, and promised to be faithful. Now, here is the lesson, Cara. She forgave me. Edna loving me was a wonderful thing, but her forgiving me was so much more. That forgiveness is the glue that held us together. It was the source of the strength it took to remain faithful ever after. It made me love her even more than I did before. Cara, love is a wonderful thing, but when you add forgiveness to it, you come closest to the kind of love God has for us and wants us to have for each other. I’m telling you because I want you to know: there is power in forgiveness.”

  I could see the relief he felt from unburdening himself. “Thank you for sharing that, Uncle Henry. I always thought you were the most forgiving person I have ever known. I guess maybe that accolade should go to Aunt Edna.”

  “It helps a person to be more forgiving when they recognize their own need for forgiveness.”

  Three days later Uncle Henry died. He got up to sit in a bedside chair and collapsed with a blood clot in his lung. The doctor said it was merciful that he didn’t have to suffer from the colon cancer, but at the time that seemed like a hollow blessing. I made it through his visitation and funeral in a state of numbness. Mourners stood for two hours in a line that stretched around the room, out the door, down the hall, and through the outside door of Kerr Brothers Funeral Home. Everyone had a story about Uncle Henry and something he had done for them. Through it all Jessie was there to support me. Some cousins showed up for the funeral, but Uncle Henry’s passing seemed no great loss to them. They hadn’t seen him in years, claiming they lived too far away to visit.

  Grieving Uncle Henry’s death was like grieving for my parents all over again. He had become my guardian when, at age fifteen, my parents were both killed in a car wreck. For fifteen years, half my life, he had been the only parent I knew. I loved him like I loved my real parents, maybe more, because he was all I had left. I realized then some of the disadvantages of being an only child.

  Two things gave me comfort. One was shared grief with Jessie, the way siblings share grief at the loss of a parent. I realized that for five years Uncle Henry had been like a father to her too. Jessie had gone from patient to friend to sister. The second thing was my faith. I believed that Uncle Henry was in heaven with Aunt Edna, and that was a comfort for me.

  Those cousins who couldn’t visit had no trouble traveling the distance to be present for the reading of Uncle Henry’s will. They did have trouble swallowing the results. Uncle Henry left each one of them two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. He left everything in the house to me with the stipulation that anything I didn’t want should be offered to Jessie before it was offered for sale. He left his car and the house and lot to Jessie. He also left Jessie five hundred thousand dollars to be used to endow maintenance of the house. Beyond that, the money was to be used as Jessie saw fit, perhaps to help educate her children. The rest of his sizable estate, including stocks, bonds, and commercial property, he left to me.

  Uncle Henry’s attorney explained that if anyone contested the will, they risked losing even that which they had been given. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was enough that, furious as they were, none of them wanted to risk losing it to contest the will. Uncle Henry and the lawyer had known the amount required to satisfy their greed. Jessie was surprised when she was asked to be present for the reading of the will, even more so after hearing it.

  “Cara, I’m shocked. What was Mr. Henry thinking? What do you think?”

  “He was thinking that you and Grace were a wonderful gift to his final years, and he wanted to help you after he was gone. I think he was a wise and generous man.”

  “Did you know?”

  “Yes, I knew. He decided not long after he had his stroke.”

  Jessie was silent for a moment. “I have to do something to honor him.”

  “He knew you would, and I’m sure you will.”

  Going through someone’s personal effects after he dies is a difficult thing. I don’t think I could have done it without Jessie. We cried and we laughed at the things he had saved. I knew I wanted a few pieces of furniture that I had loved since I was a child; one table in particular was octagon shaped with swirled legs. I had no idea if it was a valuable antique; I just liked it. I didn’t know what to do with most of the furniture. Some of it I knew I would want in my home later, but it would not fit in my apartment now. Some I wanted to leave for Jessie to use, but she was hesitant to take the obviously valuable antiques. I called and offered the cousins the opportunity to look through some of Uncle Henry’s personal effects to see if they wanted a keepsake.

  When the last one refused even to look, Jessie said, “That was a mistake.”

  “Yes,” I said. “They will be sorry they didn’t look.” His personal effects included diamond cuff links, rings, some of Aunt Edna’s jewelry, sterling silver mint julep cups worth two hundred dollars each at that time, and many other valuable things. “I guess they didn’t think I would offer them anything of real value.”

  “That’s because they wouldn’t have offered you anything of real value.”

  “Uncle Henry left me more money than I will ever need. I would rather have him.”

  “Me too.” Jessie looked up from the box she was going through. “Cara, I’ve been thinking. This house is so big, and I will rattle around in it. You want more of this furniture than will fit in your apartment. Would you want to move in here and be my roommate?”

  “I hadn’t thought of moving.”

  “I know you don’t need to save the money, but you might like some company sometimes. The house is mine, but the furniture is yours. I would feel better about using your furniture if you used my house.”

  Her words made me smile. “It would solve my problem about what to do with the furniture I know I want to keep for later, and I spend most of my time at the hospital or with you as it is. I’ll think about it.”

  This actually seemed like a great idea, the more I thought about it. I wouldn’t feel so awkward about leaving things in Jessie’s house if I lived there. It seemed that neither of us wanted to change much about the house. It was as though leaving Uncle Henry’s things would somehow keep part of him with us. It would be a good situation while I finished residency and decided where I would practice.

  I decided to move in at the end of October. We painted, changed the carpet and drapes, and bought new linens for Uncle Henry’s room, which became mine. Jessie insisted that she was very comfortable in the housekeeper’s suite. She still did not seem used to the idea that the place was hers. My commute to work was a little longer, but I enjoyed the company and shared meals. While I loved Jessie’s cooking, I wasn’t thrilled about the five pounds I gained.

  I was grateful that the OB/GYN residency at the University of Kentucky did not require the residents to do abortions. After 1973 some residencies did. So I was not prepared for a patient
who came to the hospital that November.

  One evening, Jessie noticed that I was not myself. “Are you thinking about Mr. Henry, Cara? You seem so sad.”

  “No, I was thinking about a patient I saw this week.”

  “Can you talk about it without names?”

  “I suppose. She reminded me of you.”

  “She had amnesia?”

  “No, she was Rh-sensitized and wanted to have an abortion and be sterilized.”

  “Oh.”

  “She came in scheduled to have a hysterectomy, and I was the resident who was next up to do the procedure. I had never seen the woman before. I talked with her and then with the attending physician who scheduled her. He told me that the procedure would be much like a Caesarean-hysterectomy, which at some time in my career might be a life-saving procedure. What we did not talk about and what I did not really think about was the fact that this was a life-taking procedure. Everyone treated this as though the baby was already a stillborn, and I did too.”

  “So you did the procedure?”

  “Yes. It was more difficult than a normal hysterectomy. The tissues were soft, swollen, and friable. I never saw the baby, but today the report came back from the lab. I read where they weighed it and measured it. It was a boy. They did everything but check his blood type. What if he was Rh-negative?”

  Jessie took a long time to respond. “I live with that question every day, Cara. I’m sorry that you will have to as well.”

  “Jessie, I don’t think I can do this again. Some people argue that it’s an OB’s responsibility to do abortions for their patients if they want it, but I can’t.”

  “Cara, you will refer patients for other reasons. I guess you will have to refer these as well.” I had no idea how soon this issue would arise again.