Following her last treatment, they ran one final series of scans. Given her condition and the fact that she’d “earned” the right to go to the front of the line, they fast-tracked her results and that afternoon found us waiting. I needed a walk—something I’d been doing a lot of lately. I felt like a traitor leaving Abbie, but she was always asleep and I needed to clear my head prior to Ruddy walking in with the news. I whispered, “Honey, I’m going to go hunt a muffin or something.” I left and walked down the hall. When I returned, one of the nurses had slipped her file—and results—into the plastic box on the door. I stared at it and I thought of my wife, sitting in there dreading more bad news.
Watching my wife die was killing me. I was sick and tired of being absolutely and completely useless. I was engaged in a battle, a life-and-death struggle, that I could not win. In my estimation, the only thing worse would be watching your child fight disease. I know this because I had lied and said I was hunting a muffin when in fact I was searching for a parent’s face, which when I saw it would tell me they were suffering as much if not more than I. When I had found one and felt the sick consolation of knowing someone else on this planet was hurting as much as me, I returned.
I know that’s wrong. I know that is absolutely twisted. And I’m sorry for it.
I flipped open the chart and found the letter sitting on top of the stack. It was from the radiation oncologist who’d read the scans:
Dear Dr. Ruddy Hampton,
I have reviewed Abbie Eliot Michael’s most recent CAT scan. I understand that she has completed her second course of six weeks of palliative radiation. Having just returned from the radiology deparment, I personally reviewed her films along with Dr. Steve Surrat, Chief Radiation Oncologist. He is convinced that the metastatic lesion in her brain is no smaller. In fact, it has grown measurably. I concur. At this point, my field has nothing further to offer. It is my professional opinion with cases such as this, Hospice is the only remaining option. Thank you for allowing me to share in the care of this nice young woman.
Sincerely,
Dr. Paul McIntyre
Radiation Oncologist
cc: Dr. Roy Smith
Dr. Katherine Meyer
Dr. Raul Dismakh
Dr. Gary Fencik
I read it once and more slowly a second time. Whispering aloud to myself, I read it a final time—hoping that I could hear it differently than I saw it. But each time I pronounced the words in my head, I heard glass breaking.
Only remaining option…
I closed the folder and leaned against the door. At thirty-five years old, she had physically exhausted her body, emotionally spent her soul and spiritually lost her hope. We had hit bottom—the fight was over.
I walked in and found the room was empty save the bed, dirty linens and the empty electrolytes bag hanging above her head. The clear feed line snaked down Georgie’s one-inch, stainless-steel chest. I looked around the room and wondered how many white-coated, Harvard-trained optimists had rained poison into her veins through the ever-present needle that stuck to her skin like a leech.
I stared at the Christmas cards taped to the wall and realized we’d been added to the list of most every oncologist at Mayo. I knew as much, probably even more, about the cancer in her as the interns who stood stone-faced at the foot of her bed, nodding, scribbling notes and thanking God it wasn’t them.
Heels clicked on the hard floor outside the door. The long gait and hard-soled wingtips told me it was Ruddy. His question echoed in my mind: Do you like to dance?
Ruddy walked in, set the folder on the bed and sat opposite me at Abbie’s feet. He gently patted her toes and put a hand on my shoulder. “The CAT scan…” He shook his head. “It’s replicating, too…”
Abbie opened her eyes. “How long do I have?”
Ruddy was hurting. “I don’t know if you have a week, a month or…” He was quiet a minute. “Hard to say.” He smiled. “You’re the toughest fighter I’ve ever met, so…I give you longer than the textbooks do.”
I asked, “What do the books say?”
“They say she shouldn’t be here now.”
Ruddy continued, “I’ve recommended you for a spot in a trial study out of M. D. Anderson. You don’t quite fit the parameters but I…” He shrugged. “I’ve asked anyway. And we have yet to see the results of your other two scans, but they’ll be a few days.
“I recommend you go home. We’ll give you whatever you want to keep you comfortable, and in the meantime, let’s see what happens with Anderson and these other scans.”
“When will we know something?” I asked.
Ruddy stood. “Couple of days.”
I shook my head. After all that we’d been through, we were down to waiting on two phone calls.
I turned to Ruddy. “And if the phone calls don’t offer us anything?”
Ruddy palmed his face. “We make you as comfortable as possible.”
I stared up at the ceiling, then looked down at Abbie’s arm, the thin blue vein slightly visible. I thought of that scene in The English Patient where the nurse finally shoots Ralph Fiennes full of about eight vials of morphine.
Abbie climbed out of bed, and kissed Ruddy on the forehead. She pulled at the tape, slid the needle from under her thin, translucent skin, retaped it quietly around Georgie’s single leg and whispered, “Georgie, meet Lilith. Been nice knowing you.” Her voice was scratchy and dry. She turned her ear toward Georgie. “Nope…won’t hear of it. I really think it’s time we start seeing other people.” She held out a stop-sign hand. “I know…I get it all the time, but our careers are taking us different places, and you need someone who can stand by you, support you in your work and offer you more than just a few hours a week. Really…” She grabbed Georgie about his “waist” and pushed him, rolling him against the far wall.
I extended my hand, Ruddy hugged me, kissed Abbie and walked out. He had fought hard, too. They all had.
Given the movement, the familiar nausea returned. Abbie rested her head on her hand and closed her eyes. With her other hand, she rubbed her legs, begging for blood flow. She sat in the chair and I pushed her across the room. She whispered over her shoulder to Georgie, “You deserve someone better than me. Someone who can appreciate your commitment to your work.”
The afternoon sun breaking through the window was harsh and direct. Squinting, I rolled her to the closet where she stood and stared inside. Her gown, untied in the back, flapped under the flow of the oscillating fan on the floor. I offered to tie it but she waved me off. “I don’t care. Not much left to see anyway.” She let it slide to the floor and stood there in her birthday suit—which was baggy and two sizes too big. She pointed and I pulled down a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. She leaned on me as I helped her slide into a pair of panties. They too sagged, hanging loosely off her hips. She looked over her shoulder and realized her butt was pointed toward the hall where two male nursing assistants stood staring in. She whispered, “Free advertising.” She leaned against me while I helped her guide one foot into her jeans. “I used to work so hard to sell that space. Now I can’t give it away.” I buttoned her jeans and pulled the T-shirt over her arms. She didn’t need a bra. She slid on a baseball cap, and I slid her flip-flops onto her toes. One last time, I pushed her up against the windowsill where she let her eye follow the marsh from the Intracoastal Waterway to the ocean, shimmering in the distance. Shrimp boats dotted the horizon along with one gray aircraft carrier headed north to Mayport where Navy wives waited for their Davys with handheld flags and babies dressed in blue.
Getting dressed had taxed her equilibrium. The nausea climbed up her legs, shook her knees, gained strength in her stomach, launched into her throat and exited out her mouth like a rocket blast. I held her over the sink and wiped her mouth as the sound of footsteps grew closer. A young man stood in the hall. We’d met him several times—he was the acne-faced teenaged grandson of a patient next door. He stood some four inches shorter than me. Abbie opened
her eyes. “Yes?” she managed.
He looked away, tried to say something, but couldn’t quite get it out, so he pointed next door and walked away without looking back—something few men would have done two years ago. But we’d grown accustomed to that, too.
We rode the elevator down—Abbie vomiting again between the sixth and fourth floors. We crossed the parking lot, I laid her in the front seat and then started the car. Four hours later, we were home.
We’d come full circle.
42
JUNE 9, AFTERNOON
After our flight lesson, we returned to the cabin. While Abbie napped, I ran through the rain to Bob’s to ask for some coffee. When I got there, he pointed at the TV. “Looks like your buddies caught on.” He turned up the volume. On the screen, a reporter stood in a hospital room and held the microphone in front of a man with raccoon eyes, whose face was black-and-blue and whose nose had been taped up. His voice was nasal and he sounded as though he had a bad cold. It was Verl, the broad-shouldered, thick-legged troll that I hit in the face with the revolver. Next to him stood Coal Miner, or “Buf.” He was the first guy to walk in and stand over Abbie. I remember his face being shiny and he was wearing glasses. They hung on his face now, bent and held together with tape. Last time I saw him he was running out of the room with Rocket attached to his crotch. His voice at the time had been rather high-pitched. Currently, all he could muster was a cracked whisper. “Yeah, he come out of nowhere. Like a tiger or something. I never seen nothing like it. He was swinging shi—I mean stuff, and he was like a crazed badger or something.”
The reporter interrupted him. “What were you doing on the river when you encountered Mr. and Mrs. Michaels?”
Verl spoke up. “We’uz frog gigging.”
The reporter waved the microphone in front of a third man. It was Limpy, the tallest of the four with the high-pitched, devilish howl—the one Bob smacked in the face with the lumber. She asked, “Is this something you’ve done before?”
Limpy nodded. His mouth was a mess. One tooth up front was badly cracked and several others were missing. He whistled when he spoke. “Aw, yes, ma’am. Lots of times. Me and Buf here, we’s grown up doing it.” The camera panned across the three men. The only one missing was shotgun man—the guy that had hit me with my own shotgun.
She continued, “And how many frogs had you gigged by the time Mr. Michaels allegedly attacked you?”
Limpy scratched his head. “Done what?”
Verl, the self-appointed spokesperson, piped in. “Shut up, dummy.” His hands accentuated his mouth. “See, they’uz a storm coming and so the frogs felt the change in the baron-metic pressure and so we had us like fi’teen or twenty. And we wuz coming round this bend when we heard this screaming…” He snapped his fingers. “Sounded like a woman in distress.”
Bufort tapped her on the shoulder. “Dat’s right. Di’tress.”
Verl continued, “Anyway, we wuz paddling up ’er near Brickyard—not the racetrack but the ramp—and we seen dis feller and dis woman. She didn’t have no clothes on, and she looked real sick, you know, and he didn’t have no clothes neither. We thought maybe they’s part of that resort upriver. So we paddled by, uh…and then got on the cell phone and dial 911…cause, uh, she look sick, and then we wuz coming in close to the bank, about to get out of the boat when he come running off the bank like a…like a Ninja Turtle.”
Bufort’s eyes grew wide and he karate-chopped the air. “Yeah. A Ninja Turtle.”
Verl pointed at his face. “Smacked me in the mouth, broke Buf’s nose and it was just an awful mess.”
She held the microphone to her mouth. “So, he attacked the three of you.”
Bufort nodded, then shook his head. “Yes. Well…no. I mean he jumped us’n three and Pete.” He counted on his fingers. “That makes four.”
She stared at the three of them. “Tell me about Pete.”
“He got knocked out when Mr. Michaels hit him upside the head with a…a iron pipe.”
“Is he in this hospital?”
Bufort shook his head. “Naw, he’s home drinking beer.”
She nodded. “I see.”
Bob laughed. “This is better than reality TV.”
She placed the microphone in front of Verl. “And what about the frogs?”
“Oh they, uh…they jumped back in the water when he done tumped the boat over.”
She raised both eyebrows. “I thought you said they had been speared.”
Bufort poked her in the shoulder. “Gigged.”
Verl thought a minute. “Uh…yeah. See we gig ’em just enough to sting them so they’s knocked out. We’re sort of like sniper-giggers. And, uh…when the boat tumped, they come to and runned off.”
She said, “What do you do with them?”
Verl nodded. “We eat them. They taste like chicken.”
Bufort elbowed his way into the picture. “And ya’ll need to be careful ’cause he’s armed and dangerous.”
Verl pointed at the camera. “That’s right. Armed and dangerous.”
“I see. Thank you, gentlemen.” She returned to the camera. “Back to you, Sam.”
Sam spoke to his teleprompter. “Barbara, any idea where Abbie Eliot and Doss Michaels are now?”
Barbara shook her head. “If, in fact, these gentlemen encountered Abbie Eliot and Doss Michaels, then the best guess is that they are making their way down the St. Marys River.” She shrugged. “But given the storm, exactly where is anybody’s guess.”
Sam narrowed his eyes and spoke to a second camera. “We take you now to Senator Coleman’s home in Charleston. Senator, any word on the location of your daughter and have you had any contact with her?”
The camera showed her dad in the front hall of their house—eight microphones stuffed in his face. Oddly enough, Rosalia hung quietly behind him on the wall. She was looking down on him. The senator cleared his throat. “We’re zeroing in on their location. Getting closer, but Doss grew up down there, so he’s a step or two ahead of us. The storm isn’t helping much. As for contact with Abigail Grace, no. No one that we know of has had contact with Abigail Grace or Doss in over a week and a half.” I guess that means he hadn’t received Abbie’s letter yet.
Bob clicked off the TV. “What’s with the double names?”
“It’s a Charleston thing.”
He continued, “I don’t think anybody in their right mind is going to believe the story of the three stooges, but they just pinpointed you. And put it on national television. Listen closely. The helicopters are probably outside now.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
43
We’d had hundreds of tests, each one confirming further improbabilities, but throughout that, there was always the hope of another test, another new medical development, another something possible that strung us along. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, midnight snack, we fed on hope.
While Abbie slept off the residue of chemo and radiation, I walked laps around the house and realized that something had changed. Something was gone. We’d stopped feeding. The buffet of options had been slowly taken away—one by one—leaving only empty stainless-steel trays and spent Sterno cans. Dying is one thing. Knowing you’re dying and having to sit there and wait on it is another. And having to sit there and watch someone who’s having to sit there and wait on it is yet another.
A few days passed. I circled the inside of the house, waiting on two phone calls while Abbie slept some of the toxins out of her system. Late in the evening, I walked out of my studio, climbed up into the crow’s nest and stared out across the expanse. The moon cast shadows on the water and the lights of Fort Sumter glistened in the distance. Moments later, my phone rang. I checked the faceplate and saw the Texas area code. “Hello?”
“Doss Michaels?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Anita Becker, assistant to Dr. Paul Virth.”
“Yes?”
44
JUNE 10
When I walked back into the cabin, Abbie was gone. I checked the bed but only the stain remained. The fly rod leaned in the corner and her clothes sat on the end of the bed. I scratched my head. A few seconds later, the steps creaked. Abbie walked up onto the back porch wearing only the top sheet as a sarong. She sat next to me. I said, “Bob says the outskirts of the storm should pass through tonight.”
“Yeah.” She held a spotted tissue. Her temple vein was throbbing, visually enlarged. She slid a trembling hand under mine. “I want you to do something for me.”
“Anything.”
She led me down the stairs to the river’s bank. She walked carefully, stopping every few steps to catch her breath and not aggravate the pain between her eyes. She’d not napped long, because she had it all set up. She sat me in the chair, the easel at my fingertips. Pencils sharp and canvas white. She had aimed me downriver. A few feet beyond me, a cedar tree lie fallen—water-beaten, sun-bleached and smooth—stretched across the bank. The top side of the trunk rested about bench height. The stub of a single branch stuck two feet into the air, making a natural niche to stretch out and watch the river. Untouched and unbroken.
“Honey, I don’t feel like—”
She pressed her finger to my lips. “Shhhh…”
She kissed me, walked around in front of me, and sat on the cedar, crossing her legs. She let the sheet fall. It slipped down around her hips, exposing her scars, and lay across the tree trunk like a tablecloth. She untied the scarf and hung it on the tip of the branch stub where it flagged in the breeze. She dabbed her nose and stared into the tissue, turning it in her hands. Another whisper, “I’ve learned something in all this.” A single drop fell from her nose and landed on her thigh. “You don’t have to be beautiful…to be beautiful.” She raised her chin, inhaling, filling her chest cavity and flaring her pink nostrils and whispered, “Breathe on me.”