Colors of Goodbye

by September Vaudrey

  We still have not called our two oldest kids, Matt and Bethany, in California to tell them what has happened to Katie. We keep waiting for things to take a turn for the better—or at least for a lull in the crisis—so we can offer them some hope when we break the news. But lulls are not the order of the day. And nothing is heading up and to the right. Before I can initiate a call, my cell phone rings. Matt’s number pops up on my caller ID.

  “It’s Matt!” I say to Scott. “What should I tell him?”

  “Just tell him what we know. And get them here, quick,” he says.

  I pick up. “Hi, Matt.”

  “Mom. I just got a text about Katie. What’s going on?”

  I tell him about the accident and break the news to him about Katie’s condition, one piece at a time. “She’s in bad shape, son. Her neck is broken, but they tell us it’s not displaced.”

  He is quiet on the other end, trying to soak in what I am telling him.

  “Honey, she’s in a coma.” More silence. He repeats what I’ve told him to his wife, Andrea, who must be standing nearby. I hear her gasp.

  Matt is the sort of person who rises to the occasion in a crisis. Though he’s a tenderhearted man and only twenty-three, he’s the perfect person to get everyone to Chicago as quickly as possible.

  “Matt, I need you and Andrea to find Bethany,” I say. “I don’t want her to hear this through a text. I’m sorry you found out that way. We were just waiting to call you until we knew a little more.”

  “It’s okay, Mama. And yes, we’ll find Bethany. I think she’s at work.” Bethany is a barista at the Starbucks near campus. “Andrea and I will drive over there right now.”

  “Can you let Adam know too?” Bethany’s boyfriend will be a tremendous comfort to her.

  “No problem.”

  “And can I ask you to take care of getting plane tickets? Get everyone on the next flight out. You need to get here right away.” Again, silence.

  Andrea, my son’s bride of ten months, pipes up in the background. “I got it, Mom. I’ll get right on it.” Matt married an amazing woman. I breathe easier knowing she’s there to support Matt and Bethany and help him get the tickets booked. I give Matt our credit card number.

  “I love you, son.”

  “I love you, Mama.”

  As a mother, my focus is divided. I do my best to keep one eye on my critically injured daughter and the other on Sam and Tember, who are agonizing in their own world of trauma. Scott is afraid to leave Katie’s bedside in the trauma room. He stands alongside Dr. Rogers, his eyes on the monitors. Sometimes when Dr. Rogers gives an order, I notice Scott lean over and say something privately to the doctor, and then Dr. Rogers changes the order or alters a dosage. This happens multiple times, until I hear Dr. Rogers instruct his staff to simply follow Scott’s orders.

  I can’t believe this is happening. It seems as if, for all intents and purposes, my husband is now functioning as the attending physician, running the trauma of his own daughter.

  I will never forget these images of Scott, who has been out of ER medicine for almost six years—and whose own heart is being torn apart with grief—keeping a laserlike intellectual focus on Katie’s case, recalling all the correct medical tests, procedures, and even dosages. When we are alone with Katie for a moment, Scott turns to me. “It was for this day God sent me to medical school.” My thoughts exactly. No matter how this turns out, both Scott and I will have the reassurance of knowing everything that could save our girl is being done.

  Twice more that afternoon, Katie codes. Twice, Scott runs the code, giving the orders to nurses and techs who administer CPR and use electrical paddles to shock our daughter’s heart back to a sustainable rhythm. How much more can her little body take?

  Nurse Administrator Nancy approaches me in the crisis room. “Mrs.Vaudrey, there is a police officer here who wants to speak with you.” I follow her into the hallway, where an officer waits.

  “Mrs. Vaudrey, I’m Detective Wilson, the investigating officer of this accident,” he says, “and I wanted to bring you Katherine’s personal effects from her vehicle.” He hands me a clear plastic bag and Katie’s large brown leather purse—the one with lots of buckles and zippers that I just slipped over her shoulder this afternoon. She frequently carries oversized purses like this, which dwarf her small frame.

  “I need to keep hold of her cell phone and wallet to finish my report,” he says. “We are still checking her call records to determine who spoke with her last, that sort of thing.”

  It hits me: Katie could have been finishing her conversation with me when she crashed. Horror washes through me.

  “Do you think Katie was talking on her cell—and that’s what caused the crash?”

  “No,” he says. “We found her phone inside her purse. We don’t know what caused her to swerve. But whenever there is an accident like this, we need to complete an investigation. You can pick up the rest of Katherine’s things at the police station later this week.” He turns to leave, then stops. “I hope your daughter will be okay.”

  As he walks away, I open Katie’s purse. Her powdered blush and eye shadow compacts are shattered and loose inside. Her wallet, of course, is missing—as is her cell phone. I push aside a hairbrush and a few loose odds and ends—that’s it.

  I open the plastic bag the officer handed me. It’s the sort of drawstring bag a hospital gives you for storing your clothes. Katie’s clothes, however, are not in this bag. They were probably cut from her body upon arrival. I look down the hall at the trash can just outside the trauma room. Perhaps Katie’s cute Bandito Barney’s outfit is stuffed inside. I can’t look.

  This bag holds only a few of Katie’s belongings—her earrings, rings, and a brass-and-silver bangle bracelet. I pull the bracelet out of the bag and slip it on my wrist.

  One more thing lies in the bottom of the bag—her blue plaid men’s necktie. I pull it out. The knot is still tied, but the neck loop has been cut—a clean slice. They had to cut the tie off Katie’s broken neck. I shudder and shove the tie back into the bottom of her purse, cram the plastic drawstring bag on top, pull the purse straps over my shoulder, and return to the crisis room.

  8

  7:00 P.M., SATURDAY, MAY 31

  Dr. Yun and his team successfully insert the intracranial pressure monitor into Katie’s skull. Once the burr hole procedure is over, the nurse invites us back into the trauma room, where the neurosurgeon waits. Katie’s head is now swathed in a thick turban of cotton. A faint brownish-yellow tinge of iodine taints her forehead where they sterilized her skin before surgery. She looks so small beneath the bulky bandages—more critically injured, more vulnerable.

  “Katherine’s pressure is dangerously high, five times what it should be,” Dr. Yun says. “And in addition to the pressure caused by the blood, the brain tissue itself is now swelling.”

  A swollen brain cannot be drained of fluid any more than a swollen ankle can. And the skull gives the swollen tissue nowhere to go. But it doesn’t occur to me that we are losing this race.

  Dr. Rogers approaches. “I’d like to order an angiogram to make sure there has not been a significant injury to the large blood vessels in Katherine’s chest,” he says. “Maybe that’s what is causing her arrhythmias.” In this type of angiogram, dye is injected into a patient’s aorta, and then a CT reveals where the dye goes, showing the blood flow.

  “But those vessels are not the root issue,” Scott counters. “Her heart is likely reacting to the pressure in her brain. That’s fine if you want to squirt her aorta, but while she’s catheterized, let’s do a cerebral angiogram as well—so we may get a sense of the source of her bleed.”

  “Oh. Uh, yes, that would make sense,” Dr. Rogers says, adjusting the orders on his clipboard as he walks away.

  Scott clenches his jaw.

  We leave the trauma room so the procedures can begin.

  Dozens of friends, young and old, have heard about Katie and come to the hospital. Th
ey now overflow the crisis room and spill into the hallway. I spot Katie’s high school friends from church and her best friend Kati Harkin (yes, Katie’s best friend is also named Kati—sans the e). Friends of Sam and Tember are there, and friends of Scott and mine too.

  Two people are noticeably absent: Katie’s close friend Whitney, who is away at college, and Katie’s sweet boyfriend, Dan, who is on a remote fishing trip with buddies—out of state and out of cell phone range. He doesn’t yet know about the accident. He will get back to civilization on Wednesday, but we have no way to contact him before then.

  The crowd clogs the hallway, making it tricky for the hospital staff to get by. A nurse moves us to the hospital chapel upstairs, where people can spread out, sit, pray, and talk. A cafeteria worker brings a cart piled high with boxed meals. So thoughtful. I’m too nauseated to eat, but I am grateful the staff thought of this, and I feel like a bad hostess because it’s past dinnertime and I never thought to order food.

  “Dive in, you guys,” I say. “It’s way past dinner. You must be hungry.” But no one moves.

  Matt calls with an update.

  “We went to Starbucks and found Bethany,” he says. “We took her outside and broke the news to her. Mom, it was awful. She burst into tears and began pacing the sidewalk. We told her boss what was going on and then drove Bethany to her apartment so she can pack. We called Adam, and he’s on his way over to be with her. We’re home packing. Andrea is online looking for flights. Should we buy Adam a ticket too?”

  “Can he get off work? Is he willing to come?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then yes. Buy him a ticket. It will help Bethany to have him here.”

  “Will do. Next available flight is a red-eye.”

  “Nothing else? Did you try other airports?”

  “Andrea’s tried everywhere. Ontario, Long Beach, John Wayne, Burbank—everything is sold out. Should we book the red-eye, or would you rather we take the first flight out in the morning?”

  “No. Take the red-eye. I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

  “Got it.”

  “Thank you so much for handling this, Matt. Tell Andrea thank you. I love you—”

  “How’s my sister?”

  “No change.” Silence. I hear him swallow.

  “How’s Dad?”

  “He’s now running Katie’s trauma. It’s a mess, Matt. But you would be so proud of Dad.”

  “Our dad’s a stud.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I love you, Mama.”

  “I love you.”

  The crowd in the chapel is huddled in clusters, weeping, praying, talking. Our senior pastor, Bill, has asked Chris Hurta, one of our church’s most compassionate, skilled pastors, to come to the hospital and see this thing through with us. Chris’s gentle, solid presence is just what we need. After praying for Katie in the trauma room, he stations himself in the hospital chapel, comforting friends so that Scott and I can remain focused on our own kids.

  A little after seven, Chris gathers everyone together in the chapel to pray. Scott is with Katie, so I join our friends and sit down in one of the chapel chairs. I feel a tug at my arm. Tember, my almost-high-school daughter, climbs into my lap and nestles her head against my neck. I wrap my arms around her. I scan the room for Sam and spot him sitting against the wall with Davy, praying. For the next two hours, we lift our requests for Katie, one at a time, aloud to God.

  Since the first phone call, it’s been a nonstop adrenaline rush. I now pause and try to collect my thoughts. Is this happening? Is this real? Surely she will be okay.

  A horrid thought lodges in my mind: Is this my fault? Is this some sort of karmic payback for the wrongs I’ve done in life? I have never believed in karma—it is contrary to my understanding of God’s goodness—but in my desperation, I grasp for answers. I meet eyes with my friend Pat, who is sitting across from me. She knows all the worst things about me, my biggest failures.

  “Is this me?” I mouth.

  “No,” she says, grit in her voice. “You didn’t cause this. Don’t even go there.” Her firm, aggressive response, so contrary to her normally gentle nature, slaps me back. I shove aside this futile line of thinking and close my eyes again.

  As others pray, my mind slows and begins to focus on my daughter’s situation: Katie has a broken neck at C1, the worst possible vertebra you can break—the “Christopher Reeve fracture.” Displaced or not, I’m guessing this will mean some degree of paralysis. Recalling Christopher Reeve’s quality of life after his horse-riding accident—wheelchair bound with a ventilator breathing for him—I try to imagine Katie’s exuberant spirit confined to a paralyzed, helpless body, a metal wheelchair, and a vent.

  But these are just physical issues. We can overcome them. What about her mental capacity—her mind? Can she pull out of this coma? Will there be lasting intellectual damage?

  I understand more than most the life of someone with a cognitive impairment. My only brother, Greg, who is two years younger than me, has cerebral palsy and an intellectual disability. He lives in a nursing home where he receives twenty-four-hour care. Greg experienced a brain injury at birth, likely from a lack of oxygen. He has never known what it’s like to have a nonimpaired mental capacity. But Katie . . . Katie would know. She’d know the difference.

  The urgency I now feel is for my daughter’s mind. Though she is most recognized for her ability with a paintbrush, Katie’s intellect is equally remarkable. I think of her academic success, her love of learning and growing, her meaningful, truthful, challenging conversations.

  Images come to mind—television clips I have seen of devoted parents making daily treks to a nursing home where their paralyzed, comatose daughter lies atrophied in a hospital bed. She is unresponsive as they tenderly wash her, feed her, talk to her. I often wondered where such parents find that kind of selfless devotion.

  But now I get it. It is not the withered, vacant frame on that hospital bed they are tending to. It is the daughter they remember—the girl who, before the accident or illness, filled their home with laughter, wrapped her loving arms around their necks, and danced pirouettes as she headed for work, the girl whose grin lifted their spirits, whose potential was limitless, who gave her love to them freely and with great abandon. This is the girl they now bathe and dress and read aloud to, whose hair they comb, whose contractured hand they stroke.

  Sign me up! I pray silently. If this is Katie’s only shot at life, then let me be that parent! Give me the privilege of loving one of my children with that kind of devotion, Lord. Just spare Katie’s life!

  But how could I wish such an existence upon my daughter? The image of a withered, comatose Katie sickens me. She who embraces life with such gusto, who finds spiritual expression in capturing beauty in all its imperfect forms through her art, who loves Jesus deeply and is secure about her eternity with Him—spending the rest of her life curled up and unresponsive in bed? Never to paint, never to laugh, never to give a hug, or write, or sing? How can I pray for God to ensnare her in such an earthly existence? Why not release her to eternity?

  Yet the mother heart in me is too selfish to pray for her release. I cannot let her go.

  Instead I pray, plead, beg God, “Spare her life!”

  As tears and snot run down my face and I rock my youngest daughter in my arms, I pray aloud: “Father, spare Katie’s life, but please, please, please, above all else”—with clarity and urgency, I beg—“please, Father, make her mind whole.”

  9

  MARCH 1994

  “Mommy, how do I become a Christian?” Katie, five, asked out of the blue one morning as I was driving her to preschool. Katie had shown an interest in God from a tender age. As a toddler and preschooler, she loved church, loved singing songs about Jesus, and loved “reading” her Beginner’s Bible with its colorful cartoon illustrations depicting the stories of Noah, Moses, David, and—her favorites—the stories of Jesus.

  How do I explain complex theological con
cepts in words a five-year-old can grasp? Even trickier, how do I do so in a way that won’t manipulate this five-year-old’s baseline desire to please her mom? But the spark in Katie’s eye and intensity of her gaze told me this was more than a casual question to her. She wanted answers.

  I pulled into the church parking lot, turned off the minivan, and took a deep breath. Turning to look in her eyes, I said, “Becoming a Christian means asking Jesus to forgive you for any wrong things you have done.”

  She furrowed her brow, thinking.

  “Have you ever done anything wrong?” I asked, not heavily but hopefully, with an undergirding of safety.

  Katie looked at me with serious brown eyes and a slight tilt of the head, as if preparing me to be shocked.

  “Oh, yes, Mama,” she said gravely, nodding her head and looking down. “Sometimes I disobey. And sometimes . . . I am mean to Bethany and Matt.”

  I reached for her hand.

  “I’ve done wrong things, too, Katie,” I told her. “We all have. None of us is perfect. We have all done wrong things that deserve consequences. But Jesus is perfect. He’s never done anything wrong, so when He died on the cross, He paid the price to remove the consequences for you and me—for our wrongdoings. And He gladly forgives us for those wrong things when we ask. Becoming a Christian means saying yes to Jesus—not only as your Forgiver but also as the Leader of your life.”

  “But how do I do that?” she asked—hoping, I suppose, for step-by-step instructions.

  “Well, you can pray to Him and tell Him whatever it is you want to say, honey,” I said. “If you want Him to forgive you for disobeying and for being mean sometimes—and for any wrong thing you’ve done—just ask Him to forgive you. And if you want to follow Him as your leader and live your life as He taught us to live, just tell Him so. Ask for His forgiveness. Ask Him to lead you. And He will.”