by Bob Nelson
The final step was to fill the capsule with liquid nitrogen from the four large dewars. Finally our three patients were sealed and fully supplied with nitrogen. After thanking everyone, I needed to go home and take a much-needed shower and rest.
As I drove out of the cemetery, I checked my watch and realized our task had taken thirteen hours to complete. Hopefully we had guaranteed that our three frozen friends someday would open their eyes and realize they had traveled in the cryonics time machine. Indeed, I felt relieved and optimistic since we had made so much progress.
I returned the next day to see if the welding had been successful. The capsule’s performance seemed promising and holding at a tolerable vacuum level, but we needed weeks of observation before I could relax. If it continued performing well, we could lower the capsule into the vault permanently. Only then would I believe these patients were safe.
For the next few months, I monitored the capsule daily and felt forlorn. These initial capsules for human storage were manufactured by Ed Hope, who was a wigmaker, not an engineer, and produced them only to make money. The design was seriously flawed, and the vessel acted like a leaky faucet; everything depended on those vacuum pumps providing the necessary insulation to hold the liquid nitrogen. Our worst problem was the intense heat at Chatsworth during the summer months. The hundred-degree temperatures played havoc with the performance of the pumps.
I received a telephone call from Claire Halpert, who lived somewhere in the Southeast. Like Pauline Mandell and Nick DeBlasio, she had contracted with Curtis and the CSNY for freezing services and later gone to battle with them. Her mother, Clara Dostal, had stated in her will that the family could not close their mother’s trust until she was frozen and suspended. They had CSNY perform the perfusion and freezing and had her in temporary dry-ice storage.
Clara had set aside money in the trust to pay for everything, including perpetual care. Claire and her brother, Richard, were against having their mother suspended and had other ideas. I didn’t know it at the time, but Curtis had sent them to me, telling them that I offered monthly plans for my patients. Mostly he just wanted to get rid of them. In retrospect, I should have followed his model. When the patients’ families stopped making payments, Curtis notified them that he was pulling the plug and to retrieve their capsule. He also required the patient’s families to purchase their own capsules.
Claire told me over the phone that she did not want to deal with the CSNY and wanted me to transfer her mother to my facility in Chatsworth. God knew I could use one paying customer, but I was disturbed by her tone. She sounded too authoritarian—and also a little wacko. She seemed like she wanted her mother’s suspension off her hands. My innards were screaming at me, “Don’t do it!” I would have to tread carefully this time.
She wanted me to fly to New York City, check her mother’s condition, and arrange to have her flown out to California. I told Claire I needed $2,300 for my travel expenses and shipping arrangements for her mother. I hadn’t made any promises at this point. Taking over her mother’s suspension was contingent on several factors, including her mother’s condition, her willingness to pay for perpetual care, and her attitude. I also wanted Curtis’s opinion about the situation.
Claire gave me her brother’s phone number and advised me to call Richard once I arrived in New York. He would escort me to the CSNY.
Ten days later, I arrived in New York City and called Curtis Henderson to tell him I was in town at Claire Halpert’s request to check out her mother’s condition and to possibly arrange her transfer to my facility.
He acted shocked at first but quickly responded, “I hope you’re taking this nutcake’s mother out of here today!”
“No,” I responded slowly, carefully. “I’m just coming out to meet with the son, to examine the capsule, and to learn what the hell is going on with all this craziness.”
Curtis sucked in his breath. “You mean you haven’t met these people yet?”
“Uh-uh.”
“You’re in for a surprise. Call me when you’re ready to come out, and I’ll meet you myself.”
After hanging up, dread washed over me. I was anxious to get this meeting done and over with.
That evening I called Richard Dostal from my hotel room.
“Good evening,” I started. “This is Bob Nelson from California. Your sister asked me to call you when I got into town to discuss transferring your mom to the CSC’s storage facility in California.”
After a long silence he answered, “Who the hell are you, and what the hell are you talking about?”
I groaned; that was not the reaction I expected.
“Have you spoken to your sister? She hired me to fly to New York and discuss arrangements to ship your mother to California.”
“You know,” he responded, sounding cold and unapproachable, “you’re as nutty as the rest of them sons-of-bitches. I’ll make this as clear as ice water to you, maybe then you’ll get it. My mother is dead. Understand? She ain’t ever coming back. Not now, not ever. And as soon as her estate is settled, she’s going into the ground and be buried, just like she’s supposed to. Like normal people do. Do you hear what I’m saying? You body freezers are nuttier than a fuckin’ fruit cake. And my sister—she’s nuttier than all of you screwballs put together. Do you understand me?”
I gritted my teeth and replied, “Yes, sir, I hear you perfectly.”
“Then do me a favor; don’t ever call me again. I hate the idea of it.”
Click.
I flew all the way to New York City for this? I didn’t blame him—just his cuckoo sister. I was pissed off, but then I started giggling. I couldn’t help myself. I ordered room service and picked the most expensive entree on the menu—filet mignon. I had flown three thousand miles for dinner at a New York hotel, so it should be memorable. Besides, Claire was paying.
I was too embarrassed to call Curtis Henderson, and I felt he didn’t want me sniffing around his facility anyway. I didn’t bother contacting Claire Halpert either. I didn’t need to borrow her troubles.
When I returned to California, there were messages waiting for me at the office from Claire. I ignored her and her demand for her money back. She had wasted my time and subjected me to an unwarranted berating by her brother.
She continued trying to reach me, and I continued ignoring her until I heard she had begun legal action. By that time the money was gone and I had no way of raising it. I contacted her and offered to pay back all but eight hundred dollars in fifty-dollar monthly installments. It was the best I could do. She didn’t accept my offer, nor did she decline it. She simply hung up.
Chapter 13
Even with Cryonics, There Is No Escaping Hell
Life intervened with horrific timing. My brother called and said my mother was in critical condition in Boston City Hospital. My mom’s leg was black with gangrene and would kill her within forty-eight hours if the hospital didn’t amputate. My brother John refused to give permission without me. I made arrangements with Joe Mendoza, the groundskeeper at Chatsworth, to look after the capsule and flew to Boston to sign the hospital’s papers. Mom’s recovery from the operation was remarkable, considering all her problems. She’d had crippling asthma and serious heart problems since childhood. She was also a lifelong smoker and a breast cancer survivor. She had no business being alive at all, but her will was stronger than the hurricane-force winds she’d battled for decades.
At the Boston airport, a fat man came up to me, an inquisitive look shadowing his face. “Isn’t your name Buccelli?” That was Big John’s name, which I had abandoned years earlier after my stepfather’s murder.
I said, “Yes, it . . . is.”
He stuck out his hand. “Mine’s Sheehy.”
His name clicked; this man was the brother of a cherished childhood friend. “Richard!” I yelled. “My God, where is John?” We had lived in the sa
me neighborhood, but I had lost track of him a decade earlier. My long-lost friend now lived in Maine and spent most of his time on his lobster boat. John’s life goal had been a lobster-fishing business, and I felt elated to hear he had achieved his dream.
“Richard,” I said as the line inched forward to board the plane, “please tell me how to reach him.”
“I’m a cop,” he answered, “so I can’t do that without his permission. Give me your address, and he’ll be in touch with you, I promise.”
I was thrilled for this chance encounter. What a good trip!
Three days later I received a letter from John. Dear Bob, am I surprised? Not really; a friendship such as ours was destined to come full circle. Please visit me whenever you can. A pot of lobsters will be waiting for you.
It was two months before I could get to Maine and hug my old friend. Like he promised, the lobsters were waiting. The evening I arrived, John sat me down and covered my plate with three of them.
When I began to protest, he informed me the Maine record was held by a lumberjack who had devoured twenty-six lobsters at a single sitting. “So shut up and eat!” he ordered.
Thirty minutes later I could not eat another bite. I had eaten six lobsters and was officially declared the West Coast Lobster-Eating Sissy.
After dinner I received a call from Joe Mendoza, the Chatsworth groundskeeper who was watching the capsule for me along with his usual maintenance work.
The pump on the capsule had failed, he said, but had been fixed and all was okay again. Actually the pump had been replaced by our nitrogen supplier. Still, I was worried. I knew this trip was dangerous, since that capsule was functioning on borrowed time.
I flew home to California five days later. During the long flight, I looked out the window at blackness everywhere below, feeling lucky for the rare chance to reflect on our progress. I was soaring from visiting my friend, but the trip reminded me of how much I had sacrificed for the capsule: no vacations, no time that I wasn’t free from obligations. The whole world was on my shoulders. I had accomplished so much with the cryonics program, but we had no money to improve the capsules and keep them safe.
I was too sentimental and made bad decisions; I could never say no to my friends because “no” meant I would be killing their future, their hope, and their possibility of a tomorrow. I still believed in hope and possibility, but those lofty concepts didn’t matter, since I had created a nightmare of responsibility. I knew CSC would be flourishing if I had not frozen and maintained people who did not make proper financial arrangements. How could I have let this happen? There was no one else to blame.
I smiled at a little girl across the aisle. She reminded me of Genevieve; she had the same brown pixie haircut and bounced a Mickey Mouse doll on her tray table, sending my mind back to the wonderful day I had spent with my young friend at Disneyland. What could I do now for Genevieve? It seemed everything I did was never enough. The problems weren’t lack of time, devotion, or courage; the problem was money. I remembered my dad’s mob friends tossing money around recklessly—a thousand bucks for dinner, another grand for a suit. But for me, money was life and breath and liquid nitrogen.
My primary worry now was that the vacuum leak in the capsule would get worse. Somehow I had to find the money to purchase a better capsule; somehow I had to make it happen. . . .
I drove directly home and fell into bed, exhausted. I spent a few hours the next morning with my family, after not seeing them for two weeks. I made breakfast, giving Elaine a break, and ran lines with Lori for her school play. I was nervous about the capsule. Surely, I thought, since I hadn’t heard from Joe again, everything was fine. But the butterflies in my stomach brought a pervasive worry.
I entered the cemetery grounds just after ten o’clock. It was a beautiful morning. The pristine, lush park and the smell of fresh-cut grass transformed my trepidations into optimism as I drove to the capsule at the back of the cemetery. The sunshine altered my mood. But when I approached the yard, I noticed an eerie silence when I turned off the car engine. At first I couldn’t identify what was different. Hideous realization washed over me; the vacuum pump was not running!
I stood there for a few minutes in stunned disbelief before sprinting up to the capsule. I studied the vent pipe, knowing it should have a slight fog from the evaporating liquid nitrogen. I saw nothing.
I paced around the capsule for several minutes, trying to muster the courage to touch the vent. If it was cold then things were okay. But if it wasn’t . . . I could not bear even to think about it! My mind tumbled over the consequences if it felt warm, imagining scenes of distraught families screaming and crying that I had failed them. If the vent was warm, my entire life would come crashing down on me.
Five minutes passed before I finally touched the vent. The vent was not just warm. It was hot! That heat penetrated straight to my heart and singed my soul. How long had it been this way? Then Genevieve’s face appeared in my mind. The thought of her decaying deep inside this fifteen-hundred-pound pressure cooker drove me to my knees, and I cried. I cried harder and longer than ever before, until my face was wet from the flow of tears and snot, and my chest pained from relentless heaving. The meticulously manicured cemetery grass beneath me was a green blur, and in that blur I saw the faces of those lost after so much passion and effort expended to save them.
After what seemed like a very long time, I stood back up on wobbly legs. My emotions rapidly passed from devastation and despair to anger, and then to rage. What the fuck happened? I had to find Joe. I would tear him apart! I would . . . no. I could do nothing to him. He was not an engineer; he was a groundskeeper. I chose him to look after things. This catastrophe was my fault, not his.
As I careened around the winding roads like I was escaping hell, people attending funerals all turned toward me. I sped through the park looking for Joe, and I finally found him fixing a sprinkler on the north end of the grounds. I pulled up and I could see his face turn beet-red as I approached. He knew I was pissed.
I screamed, “Joe, what in the hell happened!”
“Well,” he said in a thick accent, “several days ago after I call you I see the pump, she’s a-stop again, so I call the number you give me. I tell them three times; they say what? what? I’m tell them, come, come. They never come. I don’t know what to do.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” I fumed.
“I don-a know. I call them. They don-a come back.”
Still livid, I shoved him toward the sprinkler and got him wet, but then I calmed down. Yelling at him accomplished nothing. I turned around, disgusted, and walked away. I barged into the cemetery office, parked myself at Joe’s desk, and jerked the rotary dial on the telephone as I spun each number to call Gilmore Liquid Air. “I made full arrangements for your company to come to Chatsworth and deal with emergencies. We called with an emergency and nobody came.” I was yelling but didn’t care. “Do you know the consequences—the ramifications—of this?”
“Please hold.” The singsong reply of the operator made me more upset. A minute later I was talking to the owner of the company, Mrs. Gilmore herself.
Trying not to cry, I again explained what happened.
The owner’s response was measured but sympathetic. “We received a call from someone who couldn’t speak English very well. He kept saying something about fixing a pump. I finally spoke to him and told him we didn’t fix pumps. Then he just kept repeating himself over and over; he finally hung up. I had no idea he was talking about cryonics or had any connection with your company.”
Well there it was—the dumbest explanation ever given for condemning three human beings. I had made all the arrangements, hired all the actors, and directed the entire scenario. Yet I failed to consider that the man I had charged with looking after the heart of the operation barely spoke English. I was solely responsible for the death of these three lost friends. We had tried so
hard, but I had failed them even though I had spent so much time, energy, and money.
All for nothing.
Dropping into Joe’s office chair, I had to figure out a plan. I called Gilmore back and asked them to deliver liquid nitrogen to the capsule site. I knew it was useless to keep feeding nitrogen into the capsule. The damage was done. They were dead—not just clinically dead but irrevocably gone—killed by my mistakes and the California sun. I needed time to think about the events that had created this tragedy.
I returned to the vault, hoping for some altered reality. I placed a tentative finger on the vent pipe; it was hot of course. I sank to the earth and sat on the ground. The entire day, my body was splayed against the sweltering-hot stainless steel of the outer capsule. I couldn’t move from the scorching metal. I considered it penance—my punishment for failing my three patients. I wanted to share their fate; the waning sun spared me, but not them.
After several hours I allowed myself the undeserved luxury of standing up and stretching. I wished I hadn’t, for I saw the dark shadow of the surrounding fence creeping slowly across the capsule, inexorably shrouding its inhabitants in darkness. The shadow of death that I had always feared came that day. For years I had stood ready to do battle with the Grim Reaper, poised with dry ice and liquid nitrogen instead of a cold steel sword. My failure was irrevocable and absolute.
In the late afternoon, a delivery truck from Gilmore arrived with more nitrogen. I poured the liquid nitrogen into the capsule; the backsplash felt like hundreds of tiny needles on my arm. Finally I was relieved to see the capsule’s shroud of fog; I trudged to my car to head home.
My daughters tackled me with hugs when I arrived. Elaine saw my beaten face, noticed me wince, and sent the girls off to watch television. This amazing woman who knew me so well knew instantly that my world had somehow crumbled.