When she sensed it was Muley who was consoling her as he wrapped her in blankets she began berating him: ‘You made me cut my legs, You did it. You punched me.’ In a loud voice that seemed to come not from her frail body but from some evil, lurking spirit, she kept screaming at him and trying to break away as he led her to Zorn’s car. This assault was fundamental, springing from a profound disarrangement of her human psyche.
At dusk that night it would become vastly worse. Muley Duggan, although aware that everyone in Gateways knew about his wife’s extraordinary behavior, was determined to maintain his established routine in dealing with her problems, refusing to be unduly concerned about other people’s reactions. He certainly felt no shame, and contrary to general expectations, he had no intention of keeping her hidden in her room.
So to everyone’s amazement, at five o’clock he reported as usual to her room on the second floor, helped the nurse dress her in a pretty skirt and blouse, gently took her arm and took her to the elevator, where the nurse cried: ‘Oh, Mr. Duggan! You’re not taking her down to dinner? Not tonight?’
‘Especially tonight,’ he said as he walked with Marjorie into the elevator.
The Duggans entered the dining room through the eastern door, and Muley had to escort his wife past the other tables; as he did so he marched erect, a tough Brooklyn alley fighter walking as tall as he could and defying the assembly as if to proclaim: This is the woman I vowed to protect in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, until death do us part. And the manner in which he helped her into her seat at the table was so tender that people throughout the Assisted Living dining room caught a new definition of married love.
And then the storm broke. When Marjorie was properly seated, with Muley beginning to feed her, one spoonful at a time, her confused mind once more identified Muley as the cause of whatever wrong that had been inflicted on her. In a loud, raspish voice so at odds with her angelic appearance, she cried as she pushed him away, spilling her food across the table: ‘You stole my money! You took it away from me and spent it on that girl. You brought me here to get rid of me. I’m on to your evil ways, you swine.’
Her accusations could be clearly heard throughout the small dining area, and the more gently he tried to calm her, the more violent her accusations against him became, until everyone in the room knew that Marjorie was acting up again. A black college student who waited on their table heard the commotion and walked quietly forward until he stood beside her. Gently he told her: ‘It’s all right, Mrs. Duggan,’ and it was as if her mind cleared momentarily, for she patted his hand and said in her sweetest voice: ‘Thank you, Ernest. You’re the one man in this place I can trust.’
At the other occupied tables men coughed and women wiped their eyes or looked away, and when the waiter helped her from her chair and started walking with her toward the elevator, Muley thanked him and tried to take over, but when Marjorie saw him approach she screamed: ‘No! You’re the one who put me here.’ and Muley had to trail behind as the waiter took her from the dining room.
That night, even those residents who had blinkered themselves against Alzheimer’s awoke to the reality of what Alzheimer’s was and how it tore down men like Muley Duggan to the point of utter despair. There was not much talking in the room as Marjorie Duggan and her two attendants departed.
Later in the evening, Andy and Krenek went quietly to the suite in Gateways that Muley Duggan now occupied by himself. After commiserating with him over the terrible experiences of the day, Krenek said: ‘Mr. Duggan, the staff feels, unanimously, that it would be better if you and Mrs. Duggan took your evening meals in her quarters in Assisted Living, rather than the dining area. Dr. Zorn and I feel sure you’ll understand our concerns.’
It had been a terrible day for Muley. First the disappearance of his wife without his being told. Then the two-hour search with Dr. Zorn. Then the awfulness of finding her in the center of town with a mob gathered around her. And finally the disaster in the dining room.
‘You think they were offended?’ he asked pleadingly.
‘Terribly. I was there,’ Krenek said. ‘It was awful, Muley. You could see the reactions of the diners.’ He had been going to say ‘the revulsion of the diners,’ but had caught himself in time. ‘It can’t go on, Muley. The other residents have their own problems to get through.’
‘But that’s why we came here,’ Muley argued. ‘Now you want to change the rules because some nervous women …’
‘Muley,’ Krenek said patiently, ‘the men reacted worse than the women. I believe they were wondering what they would do if their wives …’
He surrendered: ‘All right, if you’re banishing us from the dining room … I did not bring her here to hide her away. If your precious people cannot stand to see how lives sometimes end up, more pity to them. I’ll keep her away.’
He kept his word. Occasionally he would allow her to be fed alone in her room while he dined alone in Gateways or with old friends, and sometimes when a man who had lost his wife saw Muley dining alone, the man would find tears rushing to his eyes, for he knew that he never showed his wife one half the love that Muley continued to give his. But more often a lone man or woman, coming into the dining room and seeing Muley sitting alone, would ask politely: ‘May I join you, Mr. Duggan?’ and invariably during the course of the meal the visitor would ask: ‘And how is Mrs. Duggan?’ and he would reply, almost convincingly: ‘Just fine. She seems to do better every day.’
One morning toward the end of August, when summer was waning, Nurse Varney entered Dr. Zorn’s office without knocking, fell into a chair and started sobbing. Hastening to her side, he took her hands in his and asked: ‘Is it Jaqmeel?’ and when she nodded, unable to speak, he put his arm around her ample shoulders. ‘Is the news really bad?’
‘Mrs. Angelotti called. Said it looked like the end.’
Not satisfied with a secondhand report, Zorn called the hospice and was told: ‘We see a lot of these cases, Dr. Zorn, and the two nurses agree that this is it. I looked in and doubt he’ll last till nightfall.’
‘Have you been wrong before?’
‘Many times. With AIDS it sometimes looks like death from day one. Remember, he was a star basketball player. He could have reserve power.’
But when Zorn called Dr. Leitonen, that expert said simply: ‘Let’s meet there in twenty minutes. I may need your help.’
The last words frightened Zorn, for he could not risk, as director of the Palms, becoming any more deeply involved medically with a case of AIDS than he already was, but when Nora implored him tearfully to go, he felt he had to give her what comfort he could. ‘Get in the car and we’ll see what we can do.’ To his surprise and dismay she refused to leave her chair: ‘No! I can’t watch him die. He was the hope of our family …’ and she began sobbing convulsively.
Grabbing her roughly by her two hands, Andy pulled her to her feet: ‘Nora! You’re the one who means most to him. You’ve got to come! You’re his family—his last tie to this world.’
With great difficulty she pulled herself together and they made their way to her car. When they reached the hospice, Mrs. Angelotti said to Andy: ‘They’re waiting for you upstairs,’ and Andy wondered why he was needed. Climbing the stairs almost reluctantly, he was surprised to find Dr. Leitonen standing by the bed and holding a Bible with a bookmark protruding from it: ‘Mr. Reed, you’ve begged me to tell you the truth, and I’m telling it to you now. The signs are not good. The tests I ran show a bad infection in both your kidneys and your lungs.’
‘How many days do I have left?’
‘Could be two, could be two hundred.’
‘But not two thousand?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘And in increasing pain?’
‘Yes, your systems are breaking down—all of them.’
‘Can you end it for me?’
‘You know I’m not allowed—by my oath and the law.’
‘So, I’ve got to stick it
out?’
‘That’s what you’re supposed to do, Jaqmeel. But I can ease your pain, you know.’
‘No sedatives for me, Doctor. I want to feel every minute.’
‘Then you’ll get none from me. You’re a brave fellow, Reed. Has anyone from the university been here to give you support? The coaches, maybe?’
‘They’re gung-ho only when you’re scoring twenty points and making six steals from the other team.’ Then, ashamed of such a bitter comment on colleagues from his days of glory, he softened his tone: ‘They’re scared to death of AIDS. You saw how the pros refused to play with Magic Johnson. College kids are just as jittery.’ As Zorn heard Jaqmeel talk he thought: What a waste! And he wanted desperately to ask: ‘How did you catch this disease? A needle? Some girl? Homosexual activity? Blood transfusion?’ But no matter how he might phrase his question it would be intrusive, moralistic and offensive. It had happened, and the tragic result made how it happened irrelevant.
‘So, you’re alone?’ Leitonen asked.
‘Not when my aunt is here.’ He smiled at Nora with such overflowing love that Zorn saw his nurse look away with shame at her earlier cowardly refusal to come to her dying nephew.
At this point the final meeting took such a bizarre turn that Zorn could never have anticipated it. Dr. Leitonen became once more the devout Lutheran he had been as a boy, and in a slow, comforting manner he said: ‘Mr. Reed, I want you to see yourself as you are—what you represent—your place in history.’
‘I already know what I am, the guy who threw it all away.’
‘No, you’re the young man three thousand years ago of whom God spoke in Leviticus, and I want Dr. Zorn to read aloud what instructions God gave men like you in those days!’ He handed Andy the Bible, opened at Leviticus 14, Verse 21, but before Andy could start reading, Leitonen added a medical note: ‘The Jews of that day were afflicted by a plague as devastating as your AIDS. Scores of people died of leprosy, their bodies falling apart, and there was no cure.’ Emphasizing his words, he looked straight at Reed and said: ‘For five thousand years there was no cure for their terrible plague. But like me today, medics did everything imaginable to halt the spread, to cure those who contracted it. Listen, Jaqmeel, to what God directed be done to try to cure a penniless Jew five thousand years ago.’
Before he gave the signal for Zorn to read, he took off his rubber gloves and stood before Reed like some ancient priest, with bare hands touching the boy’s bare hands. Then Andy read the instructions for helping a poor man fight leprosy:
‘And if he be poor, and cannot get so much, then he shall take a log of oil;
And two turtledoves, or two young pigeons.…’
When he came to the next verse Leitonen produced a vial of baby oil, which he poured into the palm of his left hand:
‘And the priest shall pour of the oil into the palm of his own left hand:’
As he was doing this, Andy looked ahead to the words of the next verse, pathetic, prayerful ancient words that the Jews hoped would combat their plague:
‘And the priest shall put of the oil that is in his hand upon the tip of the right ear of him that is to be cleansed, and the thumb of his right hand, and upon the toe of his right foot, and upon the place of blood.…’
When Leitonen bent down, uncovered the young man’s right foot and anointed his big toe, only the gravity with which the doctor performed this ritual suppressed Zorn’s nervous laugh, and he continued reading:
‘And the rest of the oil that is in the priest’s hand he shall put upon the head of him that is to be cleansed.…’
At these words Leitonen rubbed his greasy left hand in Reed’s hair, deeply and thoroughly, and then came the closing verse:
‘And he shall offer one of the turtledoves, or one of the young pigeons, such as he can get.…’
And Leitonen pretended to release one turtledove and one pigeon ‘such as this poor young man could afford.’
The watchers were dumbfounded by this display, but they remained silent as Leitonen continued: ‘Jaqmeel, you are now one with the poor man to whom God spoke. Like him, you have been anointed, and like him you have been part of a ritual that was as powerless to halt their plague as my futile rituals are powerless to halt yours. But you are one with that penniless Jew and I am one with that sad, frustrated priest, and may God have mercy upon us all.’
‘Why are you telling me these things?’ Reed cried weakly, hammering at his sheets and fighting back a convulsive cough, and Leitonen said softly: ‘Because I want both of us, you and me, patient and doctor, to comprehend the nature of our plague. Again and again through history it has struck, and brave men have striven to combat it as best they could. You and I, Jaqmeel, are lost, futile souls, but we’re part of a parade that reaches back through thousands of years.’
Zorn was watching Reed as the ritual ended and did not see that a fourth figure had entered the cubicle. Reed, who had apparently talked with the newcomer before, welcomed him with a wan smile: ‘I’m glad you’ve come to save me.’ But Dr. Leitonen, far from greeting the man, grabbed his Bible from Andy and strode from the room: ‘Zorn, you can testify. I did not see this man; I did not speak to him. I do not know him.’ He rushed down the stairs and slammed the door behind him. Mrs. Angelotti’s strong voice echoed: ‘Nurses, you can testify that neither I nor Dr. Leitonen saw him.’
The stranger who had caused this volcano of action and denial was the one whom Andy had glimpsed briefly that first day, the man in black wearing the Borsalino hat. When Zorn tried to leave the cubicle. Nora surprised him by pleading: ‘Please stay,’ and he could not refuse.
‘Name’s Pablo,’ the stranger said in a midwestern accent that bore no trace of either Italian or Hispanic heritage. ‘I change it every week so you can deny you ever saw me, or helped me. You saw the doctor run away. He had to. You heard Mrs. Angelotti say she never saw me sneak into her hospice. You have courage, Doctor, to stay.’
When Zorn asked: ‘Why do they behave that way?’ the stranger jerked his thumb toward the curtained window: ‘Because those two out there with the camera keep an eagle eye on places like this,’ and when Zorn peeked out, careful not to make the curtain move, he saw on the opposite side of the street the same tall man and dumpy woman maintaining their surveillance of the Angel of Mercy.
‘Police?’
‘Self-appointed. Moral watchdogs on doctors, nurses and people like me. They’re the ones who preach that all human life is sacred. Under no circumstances can death be hastened or abetted. They won’t do a damned thing to help Reed here, or find him a place to die in dignity, but they insist that he struggle through eight or ten months of hellish agony so that in the end he can die in the way they consider proper.’
When Andy peeked out again he saw the couple in a different light. Their self-righteousness angered him, but to his surprise Pablo defended them: ‘When you remember how Hitler killed off anyone he judged undesirable, like Jews, Gypsies and half-wits, you have to grant that society needs watchdogs, and I accept that life is almost always preferable to death. But AIDS is different. No one in this damned nation seems to realize that. AIDS is death in the midst of life, inescapable and irrevocable. The old rules simply do not apply.’
‘Why are you here?’ Andy asked, and he said in that flat nasal twang that would have been at home in Texas or Arkansas: ‘You must be kidding! I’ve been in all the Florida papers. They’ve nicknamed me the Trusted Friend, but they have it wrong. There are three or four of us doing this work. No one knows who we are and we sure don’t know one another. We’re a solution to a problem, and I’m probably the least of the four. But this fellow’—he indicated Jaqmeel—‘knows me from the other place,’ and when Zorn looked at the patient, he nodded, and the man in black said: ‘In that dreadful place, they call for me often.’
‘For what?’
‘Do you want me to say it right out? The police are after me enough.’
Andy’s fears were confirmed: the Angel
of Death had been summoned by Jaqmeel to help him commit suicide. Wanting nothing to do with this criminal action, Zorn tried to flee the cubicle and drag Nora with him, but the Angel barred their way: ‘You two can help. It’s better if friends remain,’ and from his bed Reed, too exhausted by the day’s events to sit up, lay back and pleaded with tears flooding his eyes; ‘Aunt Nora, stay with me.’
In his nasal voice the Angel consoled the man he had come to help: ‘You were right, what you told me in that other place. It’s better to leave at the right time and in the right way. A cleaner bed doesn’t mean a cleaner life or a more appropriate death.’
‘What are you?’ Zorn demanded. ‘You speak like a clergyman, or a lawyer, or maybe a teacher.’
‘You’re partly right.’
‘Have you left my name anywhere?’
‘So you, too, are afraid? It’s natural … You want to know what I do—well, I was studying to be a high school principal. Needed an M.A. and was close to getting it at a university I won’t name, in a state I won’t name, either. But then I watched two of my friends die with AIDS, and it’s terrible, as Reed will tell you.… When I saw that these friends were forbidden to die in decency, I decided I didn’t want to teach children, I wanted to teach our whole society. But I’m only one of many, you know. When churches and courts and hospitals and the police refuse to do what’s right, men like me spring up everywhere. This nation is racked by a terrible plague and we refuse to admit it. Jaqmeel had to call on me as a last resort.’
He went to the bed. ‘Jaqmeel, have you reconsidered?’
‘No,’ came the whisper.
‘Of your free will you ask me for help?’
‘I do.’
‘Will you tell your aunt and Dr. Zorn that?’
‘I want to go. I can’t stand it any longer. This tunnel, there’s no light at the end.’