“I didn’t know if I could just pull the plug. Everything is so different here. I’m not a slob, really.”
“I never thought you were. I figured it was just as you said.” He smiled gently. “Now, let me at those wounds.” The room was filled with his presence, which made Brook uneasy, but she fought to overcome the feeling.
Lance treated and bandaged her leg and then turned his attention to her feet. “I’m going to have to spend some time on these pretty soon. There’s still debris in some of the cuts and we need to get it out so you don’t get infected. But, for right now I’ll just apply some drawing salve and bandage them.” He followed his words with the deed, pulled down her pant legs and rolled them up so she wouldn’t trip on them, then he slipped a clean pair of socks over the bandages. “There, all set. Are you ready to go out?”
“Not quite yet.” She smiled a soft smile and he gave her knee a friendly pat, washed his hands, and left the room.
Brook sat on the edge of the tub, wondering how long the bath had taken. Her ability to track time was severely compromised. As far as she could determine, it had been about an hour. Her thoughts tumbled; how long had she been a captive? She thought it had been less than a week. It amazed her that it could take less than a week to forever alter the person she was. But then, she supposed, sometimes it took only a moment. Sadness pressed down on her spirit and she sighed as she stood.
Looking into the mirror, she worked the strands of hair into some semblance of a style with her fingers. She leaned over the basin, brushed her teeth, rinsed and spit. Some lip balm would feel good, she thought, and remembered she’d had some in her purse at one time. She realized with a shock that she hadn’t brought her purse into the bathroom with her and became anxious.
She opened the door and limped a few steps. Lance dropped what he was doing, and came to her side. Wordlessly, he supported her with an arm as he led her to the table where a feast awaited her. She clung to his sleeve as she lowered herself onto the bench seat, glancing over to the bed to make sure her bag was still there. It was.
Chapter 32
Lance and Brook talked as they ate. He was surprised at how the words kept rolling out of him. Lance hadn’t enjoyed a good conversation with anyone for longer than he could remember. He told Brook about fixing up the cabin, about his adventures in homesteading and raising animals, the general location of the cabin, and how long he had been there. He found she was easy to talk to. For her part, she welcomed the distraction from her inner thoughts.
“With your skills, you could easily find a job,” she said encouragingly. “I’m sure there are lots of employers who would be happy to hire you. You don’t have to live like this.”
He stared at her for a moment, realizing she had misunderstood his life entirely.
“I’m not out here because I have no other choice.” He smiled at her. “I know I might look like some crazy hermit down on his luck, but I actually chose this life. I love it here.”
“I’m sorry.” Her cheeks flushed. “I didn’t mean any offense.”
“It’s okay; none taken.” He was quick to ease her embarrassment. “It’s not the kind of life everyone would want. But it works for me. It’s better for me out here. I wasn’t very happy before I came here.”
“Why is that?” she asked tentatively. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
“I was somebody else back then. It’s kind of a long story.”
"Well, I’m not going anywhere. I have plenty of time to listen.”
Lance’s expression turned thoughtful. “I had a wife,” he said finally. “And I lost her.”
He had been a different person then, with a different name. As Sullivan Proctor, he had worked as a CPA for Boyd Wilkins, a large accounting firm where he was just another face in the break room, just another suit and tie in a cubicle. He had assumed he was happy. Ellen was still alive and he was moving up the corporate ladder, taking classes to advance his degree. They’d had the requisite three-bedroom, two-bath home in the suburbs with a patio for cooking out and a privacy-fenced yard where their eventual children would hopefully scamper. Sully to his wife and friends, Sullivan had been just another ordinary man living an ordinary life. Although he did not involve himself in politics, clubs, or causes, he thought of himself as an educated liberal-minded guy. He woke looking forward to each day and encountered relatively few rough waters on the ocean of his life. Until Ellen got sick, that is.
It was a stroke that got her. Out of the blue. Not the kind of stroke where a blood clot develops and makes its evil way into the skull, but severe hemorrhagic stroke. She bled out into her brain. He had found her unconscious on the treadmill, dressed in her exercise clothes. Having no idea how long she had lain there, or even what was wrong with her, his shaking fingers dialed 911. The moments and days that followed were a blur in his mind.
The fear and sorrow of Ellen’s illness drained him. As days turned to weeks, he juggled hospital visits with his work schedule and dropped out of school altogether. His interest in work waned, and he did the bare minimum to get by, always anxious to return to Ellen’s side and watch for any little sign of recovery. He thought of Ellen’s parents as the walking wounded. In the first days, they had hung by Ellen’s bedside, their eyes red but hopeful. His own parents moved in and out of the room like shadows, taking care of things at the house, silently doing the practical chores, their quiet strength reinforcing him, holding him up.
The medical staff was excellent at first, very understanding and caring. But as time went on, their attitudes shifted. They began dropping hints about “quality of life” and “letting go”. At some point, even Ellen’s parents began to look at him with pity when he spoke optimistically about Ellen’s eventual recovery. They said they had come to understand their Ellen was gone, that it was time to let go. But what it amounted to, in his opinion, was that they had given up hope, and he resented them for it.
It was with supposed kindness, and in a roundabout way, suggested to Sullivan by well-intentioned others that he was selfish, clinging to a woman whose life was technically over, a shell of a body kept alive by artificial means. But Sullivan would not give up. It seemed he was the only one who saw small signs of a living Ellen submerged inside the husk, struggling to return to him. The doctors called it wishful thinking on his part, her small movements nothing but normal mindless responses, mere reflexes. Sullivan disagreed. He simply
knew
she was still in there, sleeping maybe, but nonetheless alive and vital. Even when presented with proof of her reduced brain activity, he never wavered because he simply couldn't accept the test results. He believed that Ellen, held down by the invisible force of coma, but still feeling and thinking down deep inside, was trying to fight her way back to him. He just knew it. She was his Sleeping Beauty. If only a kiss was all it took to awaken her.
One morning the doctor requested a meeting with Sullivan. He left work and rushed to the hospital, hoping to hear that Ellen had awakened, shown some signs of life, or about a new treatment option or medication. Instead, the doctor had asked him to consider allowing Ellen to die. He suggested removing the feeding tube and withholding fluids.
“My god!” Sullivan had railed. “You can’t be serious. That’s unthinkable! You want to starve her to death?” Unbidden, a memory of an argument in the lawyer’s office sprang into his mind, but he pushed it aside.
“Now, now,” the doctor had soothed. “She wouldn’t starve; technically she would dehydrate. This is not a painful way to go.” His bedside manner was the worst Sully had ever encountered.
“How the hell would you know?” Sullivan had challenged. “You haven’t experienced it. Yet you want to deny a helpless woman the water and food she needs to survive? What kind of ghoul are you?”
“I resent that.” The doctor had pulled himself up to his full height. “What I’m suggesting is standard practice in many of these cases. Ellen wouldn’t want to live this way. You need to accept that. We would give her morphine and she would feel no pain. She would just slide into death easily. It’s cruel to keep her alive in this condition.”
“You have no idea what Ellen would want. Besides, she’s
going
to recover,” Sullivan said, pacing the small conference room.
“Actually, I do know what Ellen wanted,” the doctor said, his voice cold. “Her family doctor and I recently conferred regarding this case, and Dr. Alfron produced an advanced directive signed by Ellen herself. Somehow this document slipped through the cracks in the beginning.” The doctor sighed. “Contrary to what you may believe, Ellen made her wishes very clear. Unfortunately we didn’t have this document when she was admitted to the hospital. Now we must do the right thing and honor her request.”
Sullivan felt a sinking sensation in his gut.
Ellen had gone ahead, then,
he thought.
Without telling me
. His heart pounded in his throat at the news, but he fought the good fight anyway.
“We don’t have to do any such thing. I don’t know what kind of sadist you are, but I don’t want you touching my wife again. I don’t trust you anymore. You’re fired!”
He started to storm from the room but whirled around. “In fact, I don’t trust the staff here either. I’m not immune to their little digs and jabs. I don’t think they have Ellen’s best interests at heart. And after what you just said, I know you certainly don’t. I’ll drag your ass to court, if I have to.”
“That’s fine with me,” the doctor said dispassionately. “But you must know that the courts will probably side against you since your wife had papers legally drawn up with her wishes.” He paused. “I was hoping you’d be reasonable, but apparently you lack the strength yet to let her go. Frankly, we can’t keep her here, occupying a bed that could be used for someone else. And, I’m not going to authorize any more therapy for her. It’s a waste of time and resources because she is
never
going to recover. I suggest you find a long-term care facility that is willing to take her. Oh, and a good lawyer.”
The doctor had turned to leave when Sullivan called him back in a soft voice. “Wait!” he said. “You don’t deserve the title of Doctor. You’re only thinking about the bed you can fill with another victim, another sucker.”
“You’re entitled to your opinion,” the doctor answered, his lips tight. “You’re overly emotional now. But, someday you’ll see that I’m just trying to do the right thing for my patient.”
“By killing her.”
“By allowing her to die with dignity.”
“Get out of here,” Sullivan whispered, anger and sorrow battling each other as the doctor left the room.
Sullivan called in to work and took the rest of the day off. He scrambled to find a facility that would take Ellen. He called the insurance company. He called Ellen’s family doctor and railed against her for her part in this. There was an unexplainable bad feeling inside him, a sick urgency. It slithered up his back, crept over his neck, and stood his hairs on end. He must get Ellen out of that hospital today!
The Loving Arms Facility agreed to take Ellen, but they could not admit her until the following afternoon. They, too, asked about an advanced directive. Sullivan lied to them. He didn’t know if he could pull it off, but he was damn sure going to try. Once he got her settled in the new facility he would hire an attorney to file some kind of action to protect her until the whole mess could be sorted out in a court of law. Resentment that any other person, a doctor, a lawyer, or even a judge, had a legal right to decide life or death for his wife, settled over Lance.
He rushed back to the hospital to advise them Ellen would be moved the next day. His information was met with cold civility. Gone was the warmth and sympathy in which he had previously basked. Word traveled fast, he guessed, courtesy of the offended doctor and staff.
Sullivan went up to Ellen’s room and took her hand in his. Guilt crawled around inside him, guilt over his decision to blatantly disregard her wishes. But she had made her decision thinking nothing would happen to her while she was still young, he rationalized. She wouldn’t feel the same had she known she would be stricken so soon. His way was the right way.
He stroked her hand gently, pulling her slender fingers straight as he massaged them. Speaking softly, he explained that she was being moved to a new facility. As usual, he told her about little things that had happened, leaving out the unpleasantness with the doctor.
“I love you, Ellen,” he said tenderly as he watched her eyes move slightly behind their lids. Kissing her on the forehead, he left to sign the paperwork for The Loving Arms.
The next morning, Ellen was gone. The phone call he had dreaded for so long finally came, even as he was feeling hopeful about the future.
“She expired during the night,” the doctor told him when he had rushed to the hospital.
“Expired? Of what?” he had yelled. “She was fine when I left her.”
“Mr. Proctor, your wife hasn’t been fine for a long time,” the doctor said patiently. “While I, and the staff, sympathize with your loss, you have to know her passing is no surprise. We’ve tried repeatedly to warn you of this ultimate outcome. But, you wouldn’t accept the truth. Of course, I have ordered an autopsy.”
Of course it wouldn’t be a surprise to someone who engineered the event
, Sullivan thought suspiciously. As the tears rolled down his cheeks, he tore at himself with unspoken questions. How did it go down? A nurse with a hypodermic full of air? An orderly with a pillow over the face? An accidental overdose of one medication or another? Sullivan would never know and it didn’t matter anyway at this point. She was gone and nothing would bring her back.
Alone, after the funeral, numbness settled over him. All the tears had been cried; it seemed he had been crying for such a long time. Something inside him now shut down. He rejected all expressions of sympathy, all offers of companionship, even those from his two closest friends. Work and home, that was his life. Soon, people began giving him the space he was looking for and left him alone.
As he finished this part of his tale, he became aware of Brook’s hand on his.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
Looking into her bruised face, he saw heartfelt sympathy. Something inside him melted, something that had been cold and hard for a very long time.
“It’s horrible, what happened to you. Heartbreaking.” She lightly patted the back of his hand. Then, she became self-conscious. Moving her hand away from his, she took a sip from her mug before continuing. “So, Ellen had different views on death than you did." Her warm response encouraged him to continue.
Lance nodded. He found himself in the memory of a disagreement he and Ellen had had. It was one of the worst arguments in the history of their marriage. It started in their lawyer’s office, continued on the sidewalk and in the car, and lingered after they had returned home. Sullivan had scheduled the appointment with the attorney to have wills drawn up, since they had reached the decision to start a family.
“Now that we have the wills drafted,” the attorney said, “we should discuss advanced directives. Living wills, powers of attorney, things along that line.”
“What exactly is a living will?” Ellen asked. The attorney explained that living wills are documents that express end-of-life preferences, decisions about accepting or rejecting procedures that will prolong life in the event of a serious illness or accident. Ellen shocked Sully by agreeing with the concept.
“I definitely want one,” Ellen stated. “I don’t want to be kept alive if I’m too sick to ever recover.”
“What do you mean?” Sullivan was bewildered. “Where there is life, there is always hope. You’d want them to pull the plug on you?”
“Well, you don’t have to put it that way.” Ellen’s eyes flashed with the beginnings of annoyance. “Why would I want to lay there and suffer if I’m not going to get well?”
“How would you know whether you’d get well or not?” Sullivan persisted. “That should be in the hands of God, not a decision for some doctor to make. A doctor should do everything humanly possible to save someone’s life! Everything!”