by Sukey Forbes
The island has eighteen full-time employees to maintain the animals and the houses, and a fair amount of infrastructure held in common. There’s a small power plant and an ancient, privately owned telephone system—after all, we bankrolled Alexander Graham Bell—which nobody uses, neighbors preferring to simply drop by for a chat. In case of fire there’s also an old pump truck, but if it came right down to it, the Forbes procedure for dealing with conflagration could be summed up as hot dogs and marshmallows.
Mansion House in 1917, after the addition of the east and west wings.
Family tradition on the island included ways of doing without or supplementing that were either incredibly creative or deliberately perverse, depending on your point of view. We cooked up new rules to deal with ancient card decks, board games, and puzzles that were missing pieces. In grade school I took a page from Scarlett O’Hara and pulled down a panel of curtains to make a dress for a dance.
My mother, not predisposed in any way to vanity, was not a fan of the party dress. At age ten I was put on a monthly allowance of twenty-five dollars, which was to cover all of my clothing and personal expenses. Compared with what my peers received, that number was low even before factoring in the cost of clothing. For a girl like me who was rapidly developing an eye for designer blue jeans and had discovered that clothes could come from places other than the four-inch-thick Sears Roebuck catalog and L.L.Bean, this was a challenge. So I learned to sew.
To this day the ladies’ smoking room is missing one window’s worth of fabric, while the remaining nine sections have been identified as “important” in Early American textiles and may be bound for a museum.
• • •
On the Sunday of Members Meeting weekend 2004, we had a concert in the green room of Mansion House with two of my cousins on violin and cello. While they were playing, a squall blew in, and Charlotte loved storms. After the music was over I found her standing on the porch, eyes raised to the thunderous heavens, arms and chest out, letting sheets of water run off the roof and onto her face. She was in ecstasy.
Another Forbes tradition was that everyone should write in the guest book at the end of each visit. The leather-bound volumes date back to 1842. I wrote a long entry at the end of our stay in July, and I knew we’d be back soon. This was our life now. We’d be back all the time, making new memories to mingle with the old as the years unfolded blissfully into the future.
4
Summer Ends
Our trip home from Naushon that night was the perfect end-of-summer-weekend experience. There was a special freshness in the air after the storm, and it was time to think about a new school year, and new beginnings for all of us.
Just off the ferry at Woods Hole we had a seafood dinner at the adjacent restaurant, then piled into the car, the three kids heading into that beautiful twilight sleepy zone for the drive back up to Weston. As Michael drove, I sang the kids to sleep. “The Circle Game.” “Both Sides Now.” I specialized in the sixties folk songs from Joni Mitchell and Carole King and Judy Collins. I remember thinking very consciously at the time what a perfect family moment this was. Vigilant Dad at the wheel, Mom singing soothing songs by his side, the kids safe and warm and piled up like kittens in the backseat, able to wake up the next morning as if by some miracle in their own beds at home. This seemed like the most precious gift. I remember hoping that the children would imprint these sensations as well, remembering this as the apotheosis of a beautiful, carefree childhood.
The next morning, a Monday, August 16, the kids found a mouse and I helped them build a little house for it in a shoe box. Charlotte was excited about the new pet, but otherwise was a little listless. I felt her forehead and her temperature seemed normal, so I encouraged her to go on to camp, which she did.
Everyone passed through their day as usual, but that afternoon, when the kids went back to the shoe box to check on the mouse, it was dead. A dead “pet” meant that we had to have a funeral and interment, but no one seemed unduly concerned. We sang “Kumbaya” and buried the shoe box. No tears. The next day, though, around midmorning, one of the camp counselors called me at home. “Mrs. Bigham . . .”
Charlotte had dug up the dead mouse, put it in her pocket, and brought it with her to camp. I never got the chance to ask her why she did this. It did cross my mind, though, her great-great-great-great-grandfather’s reopening that crypt, his statement that he “just had to see.”
Later, when I picked her up that afternoon, she was preoccupied with a boy in a wheelchair waiting nearby. I tried to make her stop staring at him, but she was obviously very upset about his disability. On the way home we talked about it, and she said it made her sad to think of any small child not being able to run and play.
At bedtime that evening Charlotte wanted her sippy cup and an extra snuggle. She wanted me to cradle her in my arms as if she were a baby. She wanted extra Mommy time, all of which I gave her, but not without a bit of exasperation. I had two other children to take care of as well, and Charlotte was always the one who wanted a different kind of dinner, an extra bottle, an extra story, or an extra snuggle. She was also the one who would beg me to sign her up for a ballet class and then, after I’d driven for an hour to get her there, wouldn’t get off my lap.
I made it a habit to check the kids in the middle of the night, and it felt like she might have had a slight fever, but she was sleeping soundly, so I let it go. I had become a master of the Motrin and Tylenol mix Annie had recommended to us in North Carolina two years before, but I didn’t want to wake her for medication unless it was absolutely necessary.
On Wednesday morning when we woke up it was clear that Charlotte was really not feeling well. She was draggy and droopy and warm to the touch, so I began to administer the over-the-counter medicines. She had a good appetite—she ate four pieces of cinnamon toast for breakfast—so I wasn’t overly concerned. My dominant concern about Charlotte’s health at that moment was still the issue of irregular muscular development, the overdeveloped legs, and the clumsiness that we’d seen developing in California.
She asked me to put her hair up in pigtails, and my own as well, which of course I did. She said it made us look like twins, so we pretended to be twins, big and little. Then she put on Michael’s shirt—a blue jean jacket with flannel lining—and sat down to watch TV. She wanted me to watch with her, but I loathe television, so I tried to make her comfortable and let her watch on her own. She’d be staying home today, all day, so we’d have plenty of time to be together.
Michael had an early morning golf game, so he dropped Cabot and Beatrice off at camp on the way to the course. Charlotte rested and I puttered about, and three hours later Michael called from his office and asked us to come by and bring him a jacket. He was in a new, makeshift space in an office park and he hadn’t figured out yet how to regulate the air-conditioning. This was in nearby Newton, just off the Massachusetts Turnpike and Route 128, the ring road around Boston that bills itself as “America’s Technology Highway.”
Charlotte seemed to be doing okay with just her little touch of fever, so we headed out to the car with her still wearing the huge blue jean jacket and a pair of my flip-flops. It wasn’t until we climbed into the station wagon that I remembered about the squirrel. We’d had the car shipped from California when we moved in June, and the driver traveled with a pet squirrel—an idea that Charlotte loved. But the animal had enjoyed a pretty free run, and after the car arrived we’d found little squirrel pellets in and all around the upholstery. In short, the interior smelled like squirrel shit.
We drove over with the windows open, the car stinking to high heaven, and when we got to Michael’s office I gave Charlotte a piggyback ride in. We delivered the jacket, took a look around, and then it was time to head home.
As we got back to the car I put my hand on Charlotte’s forehead and she still felt warm. We’d had plenty of fevers since the big scare in North Carolin
a, but her temp had always responded to the home remedies. This time, however, it wasn’t coming down. It didn’t feel alarmingly high—it just wasn’t coming down.
A friend had recommended a medical practice in town, Pediatric Associates, and even before we moved we’d had the kids’ records transferred. We’d been assigned a doctor, but as yet we’d never visited. This seemed like the time.
As we pulled out of Michael’s parking lot I dialed the number on my cell phone, and when the assistant answered I described the situation and told her that we’d like to come in.
“Okay,” she said. “Let’s see . . . there’s an opening at three.”
“No. Actually . . . I’d like to come by right now.”
I was surprised by my own adamancy. In the larger health care scheme of things, having to wait a few hours for an appointment for a child with a fever was perfectly acceptable—no big deal. But something was pushing me.
“I’m afraid three is the best we can do,” she said.
“Uh, look . . . ,” I said, but then I took a deep breath. Every time I tried to explain our concerns about nontriggered malignant hyperthermia people looked at me like I was crazy. “My sister-in-law is the head of pediatric anesthesiology at the University of Maryland,” I started in. “We had an incident a couple of years back and . . . well, my sister-in-law thinks—”
At which point the call dropped. I was at a stoplight, and once again my gut took over. I was in no mood to fight this particular battle over a bad mobile connection, so rather than push redial, I simply put down the phone, turned right instead of left, and headed immediately toward Newton-Wellesley Hospital. The day care/summer camp where Beatrice was enrolled was on the way, and her day ended at noon, so I stopped to pick her up, and then we continued on to the emergency room.
The child I presented at the admitting desk had a temperature of 102, which was hardly the stuff of medical drama. The staff looked a little askance, and they listened politely as I asked them to do a neurology workup. They nodded as I expressed my concern about the odd muscular changes Charlotte had been experiencing, as well as the clumsiness. Then I observed them observing me, and I could see that they weren’t quite sure what to do.
I was cool as a cucumber, but every bit as insistent as any screaming hysteric. And yet what I was saying didn’t make any sense. I think that deep down in my unconscious I was scared to death that Charlotte’s fever wasn’t coming down, but in my own mixture of denial, confusion, and frustration I wasn’t willing to go into the whole malignant hyperthermia saga. I didn’t want to be dismissed as that neurotic Internet Mom with too much time on her hands. I’d save malignant hyperthermia for the resident. But what I’d chosen to express concern about—Charlotte’s neuromuscular development—was not an issue for the ER.
For several minutes I went back and forth with the woman at the desk, not getting very far, and then Charlotte simply wilted, slid down my leg, and lay on the floor.
“Charlotte, get up!” I said. I was having an Embarrassed Mommy moment to match my Crazy Mommy anxieties. Then she vomited.
A nurse hurried from behind the desk. She helped me comfort my daughter and begin to clean her up. Then she led us back to a curtained room, where we got Charlotte out of her messy clothes and onto the examining table. The nurse took Charlotte’s temperature, pulse, and so on, gave her some Valium, then said that the doctor would be in to see us in a moment. Beatrice and I were then left to help Charlotte pick out a princess video to watch while we waited.
Whether it was the drug or simply being taken care of in a comfortable bed, Charlotte seemed to relax. Beatrice, barely three, was more or less oblivious.
With Charlotte resting and Beatrice on my lap, I then made the first round of phone calls to Michael, to my mother, and to my brother. I left the same message for each of them. “Charlotte’s not well. We’re at Newton-Wellesley. Just wanted you to know.”
At which point I think I relaxed, too. I could feel my shoulders loosening up a bit and my blood pressure coming down. This was a Harvard teaching hospital—the best medical care in the country. We’d be here a few hours and before we left we’d be on our way to getting some solid answers.
About ten minutes later a doctor came in, introduced himself, and asked what seemed to be the trouble. Here was my chance to fully explain what was on my mind.
He looked at the chart, then said, “I see vomiting . . . a bit of a fever . . .” Then he looked at Charlotte. “How’re you feeling?” he asked.
“Fine,” she whispered. Then he looked into her eyes, listened to her lungs, palpated her abdomen.
As he gave Charlotte the once-over, I told him about North Carolina and the rush to the emergency room. I told him about Anne—her immediate intervention, and her suspicions about malignant hyperthermia.
“That’s usually a surgical complication,” he said.
“I know. We think she has the nontriggered kind.”
He washed his hands and sat down and made a few notes on his clipboard. Then he asked me to take him through the North Carolina experience again. He nodded as I repeated the story, and he made more notes. I couldn’t tell if I was really getting through, but at least he wasn’t rolling his eyes.
Finally he said, “Why don’t you give me a number where I can reach your sister-in-law. I’ll also check with the pediatric anesthesia people here.”
I gave him the number from my book; then he smiled and stepped out.
This was good. At last we were going to put all the pieces of the puzzle on the same table and figure out what was wrong with my daughter.
I phoned Michael and again left a message. “We’re still here,” I said. “Call me when you can.”
Then I glanced over at Charlotte. She looked flushed and very uncomfortable. I also noticed that her masseter muscle had begun to twitch, the same jaw muscle that had signaled the crisis in North Carolina.
I pushed the call button and a nurse came back in. She took one look at Charlotte’s red cheeks and gave her a quick temperature reading. Her fever had spiked.
Then all hell broke loose. She pushed a button and I heard “Code Blue” over the intercom.
A second nurse came in and suggested that Beatrice go with her to get some ice cream down the hall. My throat tightened as Charlotte’s eyes locked onto mine and I saw the fear. She seemed to be telling me that she’d been in this place before and she knew what was about to happen. Then her eyes took on that vacant stare I’d seen at the beach house on the Outer Banks. Her feet began to curl just the way they’d done two years before. Her jaw clenched even more and her head began to turn to the side.
Doctors came running. Nurses came in and packed her in ice, irrigating her colon with cold water. My heart was pounding, yet I remained outwardly calm, dry eyed. I seemed to have stepped outside my body, leaving only the rational part there in the room, functioning at a minimal level. I was engaged and responsive, dealing with the situation, but I couldn’t feel anything.
They decided to move Charlotte to a room just down the hall, one with more equipment.
Chiefs of services began crowding in: Pediatrics. Neurology. Anesthesiology. I kept glancing at the clock. Her fever had been at 107 or 108 for eleven minutes now. I asked the head of pediatrics how long this could go on before permanent damage. Her vague and evasive response confirmed my worst fears.
With fingers trembling I made a second round of calls and reached my brother. “It’s not looking good,” I said. “I need you to call Mum.”
I reached Michael’s mother, Betty, told her what was happening. I asked her to call Anne and Harry to get the updates and to stay in touch. I tried Michael again but his cell must have been switched off. I asked the nurse to help me and somehow the hospital got in touch with the police, who went to look for my husband.
There were so many people hovering around Charlotte’s bed now that, ev
en though I was holding her hand, she couldn’t see me. I stayed very close to her ear and kept talking and singing to her as the doctors worked. I was trying to comfort her and assure her that I was by her side. They had an IV line inserted into her arm, and a resident came in to administer dantrolene, the antidote Annie had told us about. This was reassuring, but also terrifying. This was North Carolina all over again. And as Annie had warned us, dantrolene didn’t always work. There was no magic bullet.
I heard Charlotte shriek, “I want my mummy!” It was the last thing she ever said.
They put a plastic mask over her face with a bag beneath it and a doctor squeezed the bag to force air into her lungs. Then they made a small opening in her throat and inserted a tube with oxygen. Then I realized they were doing CPR. For the next forty-five minutes the doctors took turns pushing on her chest. I continued to hold her hand, singing the song about walking in the rain by your side. I found myself muttering each time I finished a verse, “Please don’t go. I love you so much, please don’t go.” Then I would start to sing again, my lips almost touching her ear.
I thought about the rain on Naushon three days earlier and how much she’d loved that storm. I thought about the dead mouse she’d taken to camp and her concern for the boy in the wheelchair. I thought about all the things Charlotte was and I thought this can’t be happening. She can’t be dying because she has so much living she has to do. With us. With her family. In this world. We have so many things we need to tell her, so many experiences we have yet to share with her. We’re not done yet. Not by a long shot. This was my “difficult child,” feisty and headstrong. We were just beginning to understand each other.