But at the hospital Todd learned the brutal truth—that Patti had suffered severe brain damage and was being kept alive by machines. He also learned that Jeanne and Chester Szuber—as well as numerous family members, friends and neighbors, including his own parents—were on their way to Tennessee.
“There are no words for the horror I felt,” Todd says. “The best friend I had in the whole world was in the next room dying, and I was responsible. I was petrified to think of facing Mr. Szuber.” Throughout the day, as he waited for others to arrive, Todd went in to see Patti. He sat beside her bed crying and holding her hand.
One of the first friends to arrive, after driving all night from Detroit, was Thom Bishop. Patti had been his girlfriend for several years. From the Berkley area, Thom had also known Todd Herbst for years. He saw Todd as a harmless, if aimless, person—someone Patti was extremely close to and was trying to help.
“When I saw Todd standing there,” says Thom, “I had to slow down and get my thoughts together. I loved Patti. I really didn’t know whether I was going to hit him or hug him. I knew some people who would have felt like killing Todd at that moment.”
As Thom approached where Patti lay, he instinctively reached for Todd and embraced him, and the two young men wept.
Later, after Todd took a walk to clear his head, he returned to Patti’s room and came face to face with Jeanne and Chester Szuber. He didn’t know if it would be better to vanish or to stay and weather Chet’s wrath. Nearly paralyzed with fear, Todd stood, speechless, as they turned toward him.
“As soon as they saw me, Jeanne threw her arms around me and said she loved me,” Todd says. Jeanne had always liked Todd and thought Patti was a good influence on him. A moment later Chet embraced him warmly, saying that he knew Todd would never do anything purposely to hurt Patti. All Todd could do was weep with miserable relief.
Then Jeanne and Chester Szuber went into the room to say farewell, forever, to their daughter. The doctors told them Patti’s brain was so badly damaged that there was no hope for her life. Lips trembling, Chet leaned down and kissed Patti’s cool, soft cheek. Tears ran down his face as he held one of her hands in both of his. Jeanne stood on the opposite side of the bed, holding the other hand as she brushed her fingers through her daughter’s hair. Except for some swelling and a bruise over her left eye, Patti looked as if she were asleep.
Jeanne and Chet could see the green monitors alive with squiggly lines showing strong activity in their daughter’s heart. Twitches in her body and movement in one of her legs stirred their hope that at any moment their precious child would suddenly wake up and be fine.
But that was not to happen.
Chester Szuber’s thick hand moved the pen deliberately across the blank spaces on the forms that lay on the coffee table in front of him. His lips quivered as he signed his name, giving permission for his daughter’s organs and tissues to be removed and transplanted into other people whose lives would be renewed. He knew this was Patti’s wish. When she was 18, she had signed an organ donor card and ever since had urged others to do the same.
Standing by during these grim moments were Patti’s mother, her brothers and sister, and the priest who had administered the last rites. She had been declared brain dead at 11:35 that Sunday morning, three days after the accident. Now machines would keep Patti’s body functioning until her organs were removed.
Guiding Jeanne and Chet through this painful process was Susan Fredenberg, a nurse with Tennessee Donor Services. A gentle woman in her early 30s, she works to establish rapport with a donor family and make arrangements for placing the organs.
The evening before Patti was declared dead, Susan had suggested to Chet that legally he could be the recipient of Patti’s heart. He rejected the idea so quickly that Susan was convinced he probably never thought about what she was saying—if he had heard her words at all.
Now, with Patti officially declared dead and the donation forms signed, Susan Fredenberg returned to the subject: “Mr. Szuber, we need to talk about Patti’s heart. It is possible it could go to you—for you to have it transplanted.”
Chet still did not grasp what this woman was saying. He was consumed with the immediate problems of planning a funeral and getting Patti’s body and the rest of the family back to Michigan. He shook his head, thinking, What on earth is she talking about?
Then, as her words took hold, Chet was shocked. The idea had never remotely occurred to him. If he were to accept the offer, he would be reminded of Patti’s death with every beat of her heart. Far better, he thought, to be dead himself.
He stared at Susan Fredenberg. “Absolutely not!” Chet said almost fiercely. “The answer is no. Never!”
“Mr. Szuber,” Susan Fredenberg said gently, “Patti cannot live. But maybe you can.”
Tears sprang to Chet’s eyes as he said once more, “Absolutely not.”
Susan Fredenberg quickly withdrew. She spent the next hour stabilizing Patti’s body and checking with the organ donation network to locate recipients for Patti’s organs.
Back in the small room the hospital had provided the Szubers, Chet lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. Never had he been assaulted by so many emotions. He willed his mind back to planning Patti’s funeral.
As he lay there alone, a thought came to him: Is it possible that Patti would want me to have her heart? Is it possible I really would not be taking her heart so much as she would be giving it to me? Chet got up from the bed and walked outside the room to a small patio where his wife and one of the children sat talking. He asked Jeanne to come into the room.
“How would you feel if I had Patti’s heart?” he asked almost brusquely.
Jeanne was stunned by the shift in Chet’s position—and frightened at the idea that her husband might not survive the risky procedure. “No, we can’t do that,” she said. “I just lost Patti, and I’m not going to lose you too. And how can we have Patti’s funeral if you’re in the hospital?”
Just the idea brought her to tears. But she felt she should find out what their children had to say. She went back to the patio and sat down just a few feet from his window.
From inside the room Chet could hear the voices of his sons who had come by to say farewell to their parents before they caught a plane back to Michigan. Suddenly it was quiet as Jeanne spoke to them all. “They’ve offered your dad Patti’s heart,” she said softly. “What do you think?”
At first there was silence, and then Chet heard his children’s voices rise together in a tone of affirmation—the words unclear but the message unmistakable. Finally Jeanne said solemnly, “Go see your dad.”
Moments later Chet’s room was filled with his children. One by one, each told him that this was exactly what Patti would want—that nothing would have meant more to her than for her father to have her heart.
Within minutes they had sent for Susan Fredenberg. Gathering his strength and once again taking charge, Chet turned to Susan and his family and spoke with firm dignity: “It would be a joy to have Patti’s heart.”
Dr. Jeffrey Altshuler, on vacation, was leaving his house near Detroit about 4:30 that Sunday afternoon, on his way to a hockey rink where he intended to spend several hours on the ice pursuing his great passion. A phone call stopped him at the door. As a surgeon who had performed 70 heart transplants in his career, Altshuler was accustomed to having his vacations interrupted.
Over the next few minutes, an extraordinary story unfolded. Transplant coordinator Caroline Medcoff told Altshuler that the daughter of their patient, Chester Szuber, lay brain dead in a Knoxville hospital, her heart still beating strongly. Initial tests indicated that the match could work.
The immediate question was whether to do the transplant in Tennessee or Michigan. Tennessee made the most sense logistically, but ultimately it was not feasible to make the needed arrangements on a speedy basi
s. Moreover the Szuber family insisted that the operation take place in Michigan, so at least all but Chet could attend Patti’s funeral.
The paramount question to be resolved was whether Patti’s heart would work for her father. Dr. Altshuler could not decide that until he held Patti’s heart in his own hands and examined it. But what he did know was that never to his knowledge had a child’s heart been transplanted into a parent.
One of the Altshuler team’s first calls was to Max Freeman, a General Motors engineer who is also a co-owner of a corporate flight service. He and Altshuler had become friends over the years, and when asked, Freeman often flew transplant teams to recover organs.
“We’ll take off around one in the morning,” Dr. Altshuler told Freeman. The surgeon instructed his organ recovery team to assemble at the hospital at midnight for a briefing. Timing would be critical, for no more than four hours should pass from the time a heart is stopped and removed from a donor until the moment it begins beating in the recipient’s chest.
At the same time that Altshuler would be traveling 1000 miles to recover Patti’s heart, his surgical partner, Dr. Francis L. Shannon, would wait at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, just outside of Detroit, to make sure Chet was ready for implantation as soon as the heart arrived.
Meanwhile, Jeanne and Chet had flown from Knoxville and arrived at the hospital just after midnight. They were alone in Chet’s room as they awaited Dr. Altshuler. “We just have to keep remembering one thing,” Chet said to Jeanne. “This is what Patti would want.”
“There’s something else,” Jeanne said, thinking about their 37 years of marriage and the fact that this might be their last moment together on earth. “I know we’ve always loved each other, but I’m sorry we haven’t said it more often.” Chet put his arms around her.
Dr. Altshuler, a friendly, easy-going man in his 40s with a shock of black hair, strode into the room. This would be the last chance he and Chet would have to talk before surgery, and Altshuler wanted to be sure his patient understood the risks and was at peace with the unusual emotional stress facing him.
He explained the whole procedure: he would fly to Knoxville, remove Patti’s heart and bring it back to this hospital. Dr. Altshuler was ultimately convinced that Chet could handle the special trauma—a conclusion he based on his nearly four years of working with him as a patient. “I knew that Mr. Szuber thinks things through, and I felt comfortable that once he reached his decision in this case, it was the right one.”
As Altshuler was leaving, Chet called to him. He was thinking of Patti, and with his voice breaking, he made one final request.
“Please,” he said. “Be gentle.”
“Lifeguard flight,” Max Freeman announced to the tower as the sleek white Cessna Citation sped toward the runway at 1:20 that Monday morning. To air-traffic controllers the “Lifeguard” designation is the same as flashing lights and a siren are to highway traffic—giving that flight top priority for takeoff and landing over almost everything else. It also qualifies for the best routes to Knoxville.
Instantly cleared, the little jet rose sharply into the night air, streaking over Detroit and heading on a southerly course for eastern Tennessee. Soon it was cruising at 400 miles per hour at an altitude of 37,000 feet.
In the cabin Dr. Altshuler and three members of his team sat quietly. Lynn Flores, the team perfusionist, had been on other transplant trips with Dr. Altshuler, but never one like this. “It’s always both sad and thrilling, but this was different. I found myself thinking about myself and my own children.”
Flores’s job was to administer the chemicals that bring the beating heart to a complete stop. Only then can it be removed and packed in ice. From the instant she stops the heart, the clock begins ticking until the organ is restarted in the recipient’s chest. Four hours is the optimum limit for a heart to be at rest. On the floor behind Flores lay her bag of chemicals and instruments—as well as a small red and white Igloo ice chest.
The plane touched down in Knoxville at 2:50 a.m. and taxied to a small corporate hangar. The team got into an ambulance, leaving Max Freeman and his co-pilot ready and waiting at the plane.
At the hospital Patti’s chest was already open when the team arrived, the beating heart displayed. Even though brain dead, the donor patient is treated at every step as if she were actually alive. Indeed on some levels it appears that she is—with the ventilator and heart monitor flashing and beeping as they track functioning organs.
Dr. Altshuler spent a few minutes examining Patti’s heart, checking to see if it had any bruises from the accident that might cause complications. When he was convinced the heart was sound, Lynn Flores released the chemicals into the aorta, flooding the heart with potassium cardioplegia.
Patti’s heart beat for the last time at 3:56 a.m. The lines on the monitors became straight; the small beeps ceased. A calm settled over the room.
“We keep our emotions to ourselves,” says Lynn Flores. “But at that moment I always say a prayer, and that night I said one for Patti.”
At that point Dr. Altshuler removed Patti’s heart. After a final inspection he packed it in the cooler. He then went to a telephone and called his partner in Michigan to get Chester Szuber ready. His daughter’s heart was on the way.
At the Knoxville airfield in the dead of night, pilot Max Freeman was deep in thought as he awaited the return of the Altshuler team. He saw another small jet, a Lifeguard flight, quickly ease into place at the corporate hangar and let off another transplant team. Sometimes Freeman has seen as many as four jets converge and then rush skyward into the night in different directions, bearing a person’s most precious gifts.
In Patti’s case her organs left Knoxville that night and took with them the hope of vision to two people, kidneys to two others, a liver to a 15-year-old girl—and her heart to her father.
“It’s during that wait that you have time to think,” Freeman says. “All the technology at work in a mission like this is humbling: the surgeons, the skilled technicians, the equipment to keep the donor’s organs going. It really is the ultimate coming together of human skills. And then you have an airplane whose speed makes the difference in whether or not it all works.”
By 4:25 a.m. Dr. Altshuler and his team were back on board. Freeman accelerated down the runway, and the Cessna soared into the hot Tennessee night—speeding toward Detroit where surgeons were already opening Chester Szuber’s chest. The team was tense because of the close timing. The Igloo ice chest was on the floor beside Lynn Flores. Fighting strong head winds all the way, Freeman knew every minute counted.
Morning had broken when the jet touched down at 6:10 at Detroit Metro Airport. Waiting beside the corporate hangar was a green and white Bell LongRanger helicopter, ready to relay the team and the heart to Beaumont Hospital. The team quickly boarded, and 15 minutes later the LongRanger settled onto Beaumont’s helipad.
By the time Dr. Altshuler walked into the operating room, Chet’s chest had been cut open, and a heart-lung machine was standing by to keep him alive. Ignoring his fatigue, Dr. Altshuler immediately removed the old heart and began to stitch Patti’s heart into her father’s chest.
Finally, his work done, Dr. Altshuler released the clamps and sent Chet’s blood from the heart-lung machine into the new heart. It is only at that moment that anyone knows whether or not the new heart will work. And to add to the team’s concern, Patti’s heart had been at rest almost two hours over the four-hour mark.
Instantly at 9:47 a.m. Patti’s heart sprang to life, pumping blood through her father’s body with a power he had not felt for a quarter of a century. Unlike a repaired heart, which can take months to reach full potential, a healthy transplanted heart almost always reaches its potential immediately.
When Chet eased toward consciousness a little past noon that day, one of his first impressions was the clarity of his min
d. After his earlier surgeries, grogginess and confusion and pain tormented him as he tried to gain control, to assess his condition.
But this time his sensations were completely different: “I knew my memory had deteriorated, but I didn’t realize what a fog I had been in until I started to wake up that day. My mind was working like a kid’s. I knew exactly what was going on and that things had gone well.” Even the lingering pain from his horrendous surgery was light.
When Jeanne went in to see her husband that afternoon, her emotions were as raw as an open wound. All she could think of was that Patti’s body was in Tennessee, but her daughter’s heart was beating right here in Chet’s chest.
What Jeanne beheld was beyond anything she ever dreamed possible. “Chet’s face was pink instead of the usual gray,” Jeanne says, still barely holding her emotions. “His lips weren’t white anymore but pink. And his eyes were clear and bright—like Patti’s.”
Within a few hours, Chet was sitting on the side of his bed. The next day he was on his feet, able to take a few steps. As the doctors predicted, Chet’s emotions were on a roller-coaster ride—ranging from exhilaration to grief as he thought of his daughter.
A few days later the family gathered in Berkley at Our Lady of LaSalette Church for Patti’s funeral. Chet rested in his hospital room, along with a few close friends. One of them was Paul Pelto, the Santa Claus to whom four-year-old Patti had offered her favorite doll. As Paul looked at the newly transformed Chet, he remembered Patti’s instinct for giving—an instinct that, as it turned out, ran as deep as life itself.
For more than two years now, Patti’s heart has given her father a fresh life he could never have imagined. He has an energy that allows him to do things his illness had once made impossible, including hunting caribou in the freezing weather of the subarctic. Chet’s tree farm is thriving as never before.
The principal person at the Szubers’ farm is their son Bob. For him the defining moment of his sister’s gift to their father came at the end of a long summer day in which he saw Chet doing more work than he had in years. “When I saw Dad driving home on a tractor, smiling, with a grandkid on each knee, that’s when it all came together for me. Patti would be so thrilled.”
Treasury of Joy & Inspiration Page 12