Miriam's Well

by Lois Ruby

  “Tomorrow,” she said, smiling through her tears.

  But by the next day, the pain was back worse than ever. The court order had said that the doctors could evaluate and recommend action, but they’d have to go back to court for permission to start any specific treatment. And anyway, the court order didn’t say a thing about pain control. So there was nothing they could do when Miriam could barely sit up in that cold vinyl chair in her room.

  I laid out the pieces of the puzzle, and Miriam struggled with it. “That’s the Mick,” I said, aiming for a light tone. “Mickey Mantle, probably the greatest baseball player of all time.” Her face was like ash, twisting with pain every time she shifted in the chair. “His best average was .317.”

  “Is that a fact?” She didn’t care, but I had to fill the room with sound, just like infield chatter was supposed to distract the man at bat.

  Suddenly I was having brilliant baseball insights. “Yeah, really. His all-time homerun record was fifty-four, in 1961, but Roger Maris, who batted right after him on the Yankees, he hit sixty-one homeruns that year. Too bad. I still think Mickey was the greatest. He was a switch hitter.”

  “What’s that?” she whispered.

  “Could hit just as well with his left or right hand.”

  “I guess that would be convenient,” Miriam said, without much enthusiasm.

  I was nervous. The canned heat in the room and the thick strands of pain were closing in on me. I couldn’t stop talking. “No one’s ever been able to do it like the Mick. Lou Gehrig was great, too. Here, here’s Gehrig’s face.” I held up a jagged piece of the puzzle. “Did you know he played in 2,130 consecutive games? The guy never got a cold!”

  “So what happened to the 2,131st game?”

  “He got sick. Couldn’t play anymore.”

  “And then?”

  “He died.” Wrong thing. We weren’t supposed to talk about sickness and dying. “I’m really sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Adam. Listen, I think we’ll finish the puzzle some other time. I’d like to lay down on my left side; that sometimes helps. But keep talking.”

  I did a monologue, my best Jay Leno and Robin Williams material, for a couple of minutes, but then I was worn out from the effort of trying to translate it all into clean language. So I just sat there quietly, rubbing her shoulders, her neck, her cheek, while she hid the pain by keeping her back to me.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Told by Miriam

  Back in the same room of the hospital, with the guard outside my door again, my faith was sorely tested. The days drifted by like storm clouds: slow, dark, and threatening. I prayed when I was awake and slept as much as I could, because I wasn’t aware of any pain when I slept. Even when I wasn’t asleep, I’d pretend I was, whenever anyone, except Adam, came into the room. Then, I’d lay awake in the shrill quiet of the hospital night, longing for company. The Jeremiah passage came to mind in those desolate hours—“Why is my pain perpetual?”—and also the words of Christ at his hour of agony—“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?”

  When I thought I couldn’t endure another minute of despair, I would fall asleep and wake up to discover two or three hours had mercifully passed, and it was nearly dawn, and the pain had lessened.

  Dr. Gregory was often there when I woke up and so was Brother James, who would be kneeling beside my bed as my eyes opened. His soothing voice was my corridor back to dawn. “God has given you the gift of another day, child. Isaiah 58:8: ‘Then shall thy light break forth as morning and thy healing shall spring forth speedily.’”

  “The miracle of a new morning,” said Dr. Gregory, who’d been reading the nurse’s notes on how my night had gone. “The night has healing powers.”

  “Only because she gives herself over into Christ’s hands when she sleeps,” added Brother James. In subtle ways, they fought over me, as if I were the testament to each one’s brand of faith.

  But each morning I believed them both, and my faith was renewed. I would get up to eat breakfast in the little dining room down the hall. Then I’d take a shower and wash my hair, rinse out a few things in the bathroom sink, rearrange things on my bedside table, pull off dead leaves, and pray. By 10:00, I would feel the pain seeping back in like a low fog. By 11:00, the pain would be nearly unbearable again, and I would be grateful that Brother James had gone on about his day and wasn’t there to see my weakness and tears of frustration.

  Mr. Bergen usually came around 11:30, when lunches were delivered, so they’d let me eat in the room with him instead of the dining room, where sick people made me nauseous. Mr. Bergen would pull out thick sandwiches of dark bread with deep green lettuce spilling over the edges like the dust ruffles on my bed at home, and two or three pieces of fruit, and a wide-mouthed thermos of soup or chili. It all looked delicious. I pictured Mrs. Bergen lovingly preparing it in the mornings. But I was never hungry. I picked at the food on my tray. The best I could do was a few spoonfuls of tapioca.

  As December began, Mr. Bergen grew more and more restless. He paced my little shoebox of a room, jiggling the coins in his pocket and tapping the wall with his pen. He drank my milk in two or three greedy gulps, slamming the empty carton back on my tray. At least the nurses would think I drank the milk and not nag me so much about eating.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Mr. Bergen began on one of those tense days.

  Sometimes these are the most dangerous words in the language, because they usually signal cracks in one’s steadfastness. I found myself trembling.

  “And I’ve been talking to Adam. For just a minute, I’m taking off my lawyer hat and putting on my good friend hat.” He doffed an imaginary derby toward me as I had seen Charlie Chaplin do in movie clips on TV.

  He said, “What do you want?”

  The question startled me. Of course I wanted to be well, and I wanted God to answer my prayers, and I wanted not to disappoint Brother James or Mama, or disgrace myself with cowardice and infidelity. But I could not tell him any of this.

  He continued, “Because I know what the church wants, what Brother James wants, what the hospital wants, what Adam wants, what I want. But my God, Miriam, what do you want?”

  It was a question I had never expected to hear, and at the same time had been dreading all along. And I thought about Mama, when she talked about my father: “No one ever asked me what I wanted.”

  “I want the pain to be over with.”

  “What’s it worth to you?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “How far are you willing to go to be pain-free?”

  It was unfair of him to ask; he wasn’t a believer. “Well, I’m not willing to denounce God.”

  “But are you willing to take legal measures open to you? You could petition the Court to let you give informed consent for your own treatment. If you knew what you wanted.”

  “I could never do that.”

  “Wait, wait, consider it at least. Admittedly, it’s stacked against you, because you’re only seventeen, and you have one accessible parent who has already denied treatment. But I ran across a 1970 Kansas case where a seventeen-year-old-girl gave consent for a skin graft from her arm to patch the end of a finger that got cut off in a car door. That wasn’t even a life-threatening case, and they accepted her consent. We could use this as a precedent, if you wanted to.”

  I shook my head.

  “Don’t reject it yet. Think about it.”

  “I don’t think it’s right, Mr. Bergen, for you to suggest such an idea when you’re representing not just me, but Mama and the church, too.”

  “You’re too smart.” He slumped back in the chair, looking troubled. I felt a pang of guilt. My being sick was causing everyone I liked so much anguish.

  “Here’s the thing,” Mr. Bergen said. “I’ve got Adam biting at my heels on this case, and he’s not as whipped up over the Constitution or freedom of religion as I am. All he wants is to have you up and well. The truth is, I want that too, Miriam. Believe
me, it’s no fun to come here at lunchtime and see you cringing with pain and turning away this beautiful gray hospital grub.” To punctuate his point, he got up and lifted the aluminum hood that hid something stewlike on my plate. He was right: the meat, the potatoes, and the green beans were all gray. He quickly covered the dismal mess up again. “If you want to pursue this informed consent thing, you’re right, I can’t ethically represent you on that, but I can ask some of your court-appointed people to check it out and advise you on it. Just say the word.”

  Again, I shook my head. “The subject is closed tight.”

  He cleared his throat and sat down again, fumbled for a plastic bag of apple slices in his lunch, and offered me a slice. I turned it down with the same determination, as if accepting it meant accepting his blasphemous idea. I knew I could never go against Mama and Brother James and the church. I just would not allow myself to think of this in terms of my comfort alone. I had to think about what God had in mind for me. Never for an instant did I doubt that God would heal me with remedies far stronger and long-lasting than those of the doctors. Where I waivered was in wondering when. How soon? Would my strength hold out until He saw fit to relieve my pain? I wasn’t afraid of dying. I was terrified of pain and what it told about the weakness of my soul.

  Mr. Bergen said, “I’ll bet you think if you did this consent thing, you’d be betraying your mother and Brother James, right?”

  “Yes,” I admitted. “That’s part of it. The other part is I’m not honestly sure I know what I want anymore. I am praying for a clear sign from God. I know it will come soon. Be patient.”

  “Well, there’s another alternative, Miriam.” He blew up his empty sack and popped it, just as Adam would have done. “Gerri Kensler, your social worker, could track down your father and appeal to him to give consent for treatment. The Court would go with his consent, and you could be returned to your mother’s custody, and both you and Mom would be off the hook. How about it?”

  “That’s impossible. He can’t be found.”

  “He’s in Portland, Maine. Sandstone Street. Everyone is findable,” Mr. Bergen said.

  “Not this one, not now. I think you’d better switch to your lawyer hat.”

  He put his hand up, signaling “halt.” “Okay, okay. We never had this conversation.”

  Something bizarre happened. I think I was hallucinating. It wasn’t frightening; no devilish monsters appeared to taunt me, but I wasn’t tracking at all. The nurse came in to take my blood pressure, and she talked to me from the deep, wide end of a tunnel, of a funnel. Sound poured like liquid through the cone. I became aware of the ticking of the clock, which seemed as loud as a drumbeat. I itched, but my efforts to scratch my arm were clumsy, as though I had to reach through whipped cream.

  MEER-EE-AHM, TAKE UP THY TIMBREL …

  I didn’t exactly hear the words, nor did I see them. They seemed to be formed in the beige sand of my mind, etched by eddies of swirling waters, and when the waters parted, the words were clear as sound. MEER-EE-AHM, TAKE UP THY TIMBREL …

  “Whazza timbrel?” I asked the nurse.

  “A what?” She had my right arm propped on the shelf of her slung hip, and she pumped air into the blood pressure cuff.

  “Tim-b-rel.”

  “Never heard of it.” She let the pump go, and it hissed like air from a tire. “You’ve got company.” She signaled for Adam to come in.

  “Hi.” He flopped on the end of my bed. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Fuzzy.” My tongue was thick and stuck to my teeth. I know I talked far too loud. My voice bounded back to me off the walls, but I didn’t hear it inside my head at all. “Whazza timbrel?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” I sensed Adam pulling away. I struggled to keep him in focus. Then he was on his feet, backing toward the door, blocks away, maybe a mile, and then he was gone, way off down the beach. He must have alerted the nurse to my crazy condition, because she hurried in and put a cold washcloth on my forehead, hung an IV bag, and waited by my phone for the duty resident to call back. As soon as she had the doctor’s approval, she called for a lab tech to draw blood. “Analyze it stat,” she said.

  I drifted in and out of sleep, surprised to see her still standing there. “What timezit?” I bellowed.

  “It’s 4:15.”

  “What timezit?”

  “It’s 4:18.”

  “What timezit?” And on it went until the lab results came back, and she stuck me with the IV.

  The next morning my breakfast tray came without milk or butter. I wouldn’t have used either one, but hospitals have a way of snatching away your major privileges, leaving you to indignantly demand the silliest ones back. I commanded Dr. Gregory to my bedside, and he explained everything.

  “Your calcium climbed right off the charts, Miriam. It made you incoherent and muddled. Did you feel slightly out of control?”

  “Yes, it was awful. I probably did something terribly embarrassing. Was I cackling like the three witches in Macbeth?”

  He snickered. “I’ve seen worse.”

  “But why did my calcium leap so high?”

  He wrinkled up his brow before answering. “Well, that’s a symptom of tumor activity in the bones. I’m ordering another bone scan.”

  “Not again!”

  “It alarms me, kid, I’ll admit it. We know what you’ve got, and we know how to treat it aggressively, but we’re not treating it.”

  “You think it’ll get a lot worse?”

  “No question, the longer we delay.”

  “Well, I won’t allow it to get worse.”

  He patted my hand. “You do your best to stop it. Everything helps.”

  With the calcium regulated, I was back to my old self in a day, but I still had the IV in when Adam came to visit me after school. “Did I look totally stupid yesterday?” I asked.

  “Let’s put it this way. On a scale of one to ten, with one being stone cold dead and face down in the river, and ten being Joan Rivers doing a two-minute monologue, you’d be a twelve. If I didn’t know about Brother James and the church and all, I’d have thought you were stoned.”

  “Thanks for getting the nurse in right away. I feel more like a regular person now.”

  “Can we go for a walk? I hear the scenery’s beautiful down by the elevator.”

  I yanked at the tether of the IV. “Too complicated. We’d have to roll the IV stand down the hall, too, as a chaperone.”

  “Aw, forget it,” he said, pouncing on the foot of my bed.

  “Anyway, I wanted to talk to you about this odd conversation I had with your father. He’s really confused about my case. Do you think he’ll resign?”

  “Not him. He’s always preaching about long-term commitments and sticking it out and hanging in there. I guarantee, he’s in it till the end.”

  The end? But I was relieved. I was also afraid for Mr. Bergen, because it was wrong for him to be talking about bypassing Mama and the men, or hunting down the man who was just barely, by scientific definition, my father. I thought about telling Brother James that our lawyer was practically defecting, but I liked Adam’s father so much. I really wanted him on my side. What I wasn’t sure about was exactly which side Adam was on.

  “Adam, I know you’re a friend I can trust and I know you wouldn’t intentionally do anything to hurt me, so please tell me something.”

  “Anything. My locker combination?”

  “It’s 30-18-9. I already know it. I knew it before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before before. I mean, before things got hysterical and I started fainting in class.”

  “You spied on my locker combination?” He pretended to be horrendously shocked. “Don’t you realize you could get suspended from school for that?”

  “Too late. I’m already out. Actually, I knew everything about you. I knew your birthday, I knew your home address. I passed your house every chance I got. How humiliating to admit this.” I covered my face w
ith my hands, but peeked at Adam through my fingers. How would he react to such a corny disclosure?

  “Wait a minute, hold it. Now I’ve got this figured out. This whole incurable disease thing was just a trick to trap me?”

  “Yes! Has it worked?”

  “And you got Mrs. Loomis, you got the Great Wall of China, to assign us as poetry mates as part of your diabolical plot?”

  “Worse. I got Emily Dickinson to write the poem about the thing with feathers, so you could look idiotic trying to interpret it, and I could save you from idiocy.”

  “I didn’t look idiotic.”

  “Yes, you did. Bickering over words and telling me that Emily’s frail little bird was a vulture. That’s got to be the least poetic of all birds.”

  “What about a falcon? Or a bald eagle?”

  “Bald eagle!” Suddenly the mood shifted. “Adam, I’m having another bone scan, and if that—thing—is bigger, the doctor will ask the judge for me to have chemotherapy, drugs. Dr. Gregory says I could lose—”

  “Your lunch?” Adam went into a violent wretching act.

  “My hair.”

  That sobered him, but old Adam, I really had to hand it to him, made a fast recovery. “Okay, from now on your nickname is Indian Squaw Bald Eagle.” He leaned across the hump of my knees, ruffled my hair, and shook it all over my head. I saw his sad eyes through straggles of hair. He drew a strand of hair to his face. “I like the way it smells,” he said. “Head and Shoulders?”

  “No, Simon and Garfunkel.” It felt so good to laugh with him. You can’t hurt and laugh at the same time. And I forgot about the question I was going to ask him, until he was gone, and I was alone again.

  After the bone scan, Dr. Gregory asked the Court to order treatment without delay: the tumor was growing and spreading. What I had was called Blanding’s sarcoma. I wondered who Blanding was and how his children felt about having a cancer named after them. Dr. Gregory’s big concern with the Blanding thing was that it would leap to my lungs.