“Do you realize what happened a few minutes ago?” I asked. “Do you realize what Dr. Werner told us?”
“I do. I do,” Peg said between sniffles and giggles. “I do.”
“You’re coming home, Peg. To me. To Jennie. To John.”
“I’m going to see my children again. I’m going to be their mommy again. Oh God, John. I can’t believe it. I just can’t believe it.”
“Well, you better believe it, because it’s true.”
Peg nodded, blew her nose a few times, wiped her eyes and then laid her head back on her pillow.
“You know what’s funny? The things I’ve missed most and want to do most when I get home are the simplest, silliest things you can imagine. I want to bury my face in Jennie’s hair and smell it. I want to pick up John and feel his warm little body. I want to sleep in our bed. I want to take a hot shower whenever I want to. I want to listen to Jennie’s non-stop nonsensical chatter. I want to feed John and watch him swallow his food and watch him smile as he tastes it. I want to unfold little shirts and little pants and little dresses and little sweaters and dress my kids. I want to tuck my children into bed. I want to hear Jennie say her prayers.”
She stopped to blow her nose again. “I want to see my roses. I want to see the sky and the sun. I want to smell fresh air and feel the breeze on my face.”
She looked up at me. “I want to come home. And I want to live.”
Peg and I had what could only be described as a victory celebration that night. We both knew she wasn’t out of trouble yet, but we also both knew she had cleared the toughest hurdle. For the first time in two weeks we talked about how life would be when she came home. She even brought up the trip to France on the
QE 2
and told me she’d love to go again someday.
It was an evening focused on the future instead of on the moment or the past. It was as good an evening as one can have in a cancer ward.
On Saturday morning, August 16th, Peg developed a fever.
Although expected, the fever was nevertheless frightening, because it meant she had already contracted an infection, even though twenty-four hours had not yet passed since Dr. Werner had declared her in remission. She was given massive doses of antibiotics intravenously throughout the morning and into the early afternoon, but her fever continued to rise. As a result, around two o’clock, she was once again placed on a chill blanket.
By the time my parents and I arrived shortly after five, Peg’s temperature was almost back to normal, and she had been taken off the chill blanket. But she was a wreck. She was soaked with perspiration, she was shivering uncontrollably even though she had been off the chill blanket for over an hour, and she was exhausted from the fever and the antibiotics. So the visit was short and nothing like the night before. But the good news was that Peg had won another round.
As we prepared to leave, I remembered I had wanted to tell Peg that Dave had called.
“When did he call?” she asked with obvious effort.
“This morning. Just before lunch.”
“How is he?”
I gave a half chuckle, half snort. “He’s good. So is Beth. And he asked me to give you a hug for the two of them.”
“What else did he say?”
“What do you mean ‘what else’?”
“You laughed when I asked you how he was,” she answered, eyes half closed.
“You don’t miss a trick, do you?”
“Mmm-mmm,” Peg whispered.
“He wanted to know if I’d like to go sailing on our boat.”
Peg looked at me, her eyes now fully open, questioning, confused.
“What he wanted to know was,” I continued, “would I like to go sailing tomorrow with Beth and him? He thought maybe I could use a few hours of relaxation and thought some time on
Windsong
might do the trick.”
“What’d you say?”
“I told him no.”
“Why?”
“Because if I went out on the boat, I wouldn’t be able to visit you tomorrow.”
Peg smiled. Weakly, but she smiled. “You should go,” she said softly, eyes again half closed. “He’s right. It would be good for you.” She took several shallow breaths before continuing. “And given the way I feel right now, I probably won’t be very good company tomorrow anyway. Seriously. Go. I don’t mind.”
“I’m not going to do that. Especially not after what you’ve gone through today.”
“You really should. You can’t do anything for me, and I could use the rest.”
“You can’t rest while I’m here?”
“Of course I can,” Peg replied with a heavy sigh. “But I try not to. I try to stay awake when you’re here. So I can see you. But tomorrow I should sleep. Go. I mean it. Call Dave when you get home, and say yes.”
I smiled but shook my head. “I can’t do that.”
“Yes you can. Enjoy the day for both of us, and tell me all about it on Monday.” She reached out for my hand and squeezed it. “Go. It’s okay.”
She closed her eyes, and a moment later she was asleep.
We stayed in Peg’s room for over half an hour—my mother in the one chair, my father and I leaning against the windowsill—watching her sleep, not talking for fear of waking her. And when we were finally certain she was asleep and resting comfortably, we tiptoed out of the room, retrieved our car and began another trip home to Long Island.
The telephone rang at ten minutes after seven on Sunday, August 17th, as I was about to leave my parents’ house to meet Beth and Dave at the yacht club.
“Who in hell could be calling at this hour on a Sunday morning?” I asked out loud as I ran to the desk next to the refrigerator, trying to answer the phone before either my folks or the kids woke up.
“Jesus, maybe it’s about Peg.”
I picked up the receiver on the third ring, suddenly afraid to put it to my ear. The voice at the other end asked for Mr. Herbert.
“Which one?” I replied automatically, knowing with a sinking feeling that I recognized the voice.
“Mr. John Herbert,” the caller answered.
“Is this Dr. Werner?”
“Yes, it is,” the caller replied.
“You’ve got me, Dr. Werner. John Herbert. Is something wrong? Has something happened?”
“Mr. Herbert, I’m afraid Peggy’s taken a turn for the worse. I think you should come to the hospital right away.”
My throat tightened. My heart began to race. My pulse pounded in my ears. And in the space of a second or two, question after question rose up in my mind, demanding answers.
What’s he mean by ‘a turn for the worse’? How bad a turn for the worse? What’s ‘right away’ mean? How much time have I got to get into the city? Is Peg dying?
But I asked no questions, and Dr. Werner offered nothing more. “I’m on my way,” I heard myself saying instead.
“Good,” Dr. Werner replied. “I’m leaving for the hospital now and should be there in about thirty minutes. I’ll see you there.”
He hung up. I stood next to the desk for ten, maybe fifteen seconds, staring at the phone, trying to collect my thoughts. The house was totally quiet except for the hum of the refrigerator next to me. Then, aware that seconds were passing, I turned and ran across the kitchen, through the family room and down the hall to my parents’ bedroom. I knocked hard on the door and after the third knock heard a sleepy response from my father.
“Yes?”
“That was Dr. Werner on the phone, Pop. He says Peg’s taken a turn for the worse, and he wants me to come to the hospital right away. I’m leaving now, so can you call Dave and Beth and let them know? Tell them I won’t be sailing with them this morning?”
There was silence for a moment, then the rustling of sheets and the sound of slippered footsteps walking across the floor. “Mom will do that,” he answered from the other side of the door. “I’ll go with you.”
“What’s the matter, Bill?” I heard her ask before I could reply.
“Dr. Werner just called John and asked him to come to the hospital right away.”
“Pop,” I called through the closed door, “I appreciate the offer, but I’m dressed and ready to go now. I don’t want to waste time waiting for you. All right?”
“I’ll only be a minute,” he replied. “Just give me a minute.”
“A minute, Pop,” I agreed reluctantly.
He was true to his word. In just about a minute, he opened the bedroom door—gray stubble on his cheeks and chin, his hair barely combed, but dressed—and came out into the hall, followed by my mother. He gave her a kiss, looked at me with sleepy eyes, and without a word to either of us, began walking down the hall.
“Drive carefully,” my mother said as she reached up to give me a kiss. “I’ll be praying for you.”
I gave her a hug and hurried to follow my father. I caught up with him in the kitchen, and we went into the garage. He hit the door opener, and we stood side by side watching the garage door roll up. We stepped out into a picture perfect August morning—cloudless blue sky, light breeze gently ruffling the leaves overhead, surprisingly cool—a day that would have been a great day for sailing or anything else.
“Want me to drive?” my father asked when we reached my car.
“No. This is going to be a fast trip, and I’ll feel more comfortable behind the wheel than next to it.”
He looked at me over the roof of the car and shrugged. “I won’t press it, but take it easy, will you?”
I nodded, unlocked the doors and slid behind the wheel.
At seven-twenty we turned onto an empty Oyster Bay Road, the first of several winding, tree-lined two-lane roads that we would be taking and which were typical of Long Island’s North Shore. Within seconds I was approaching sixty miles per hour, as fast as I dared given the curves and far in excess of the posted thirty-mile-per-hour speed limit.
Oyster Bay Road to Chicken Valley Road. Chicken Valley Road to Wolver Hollow Road. Wolver Hollow Road to Route 25A. Four and a half miles in just under six minutes.
We turned right onto Route 25A—straight, four lanes wide, almost empty—heading west towards New York City. I increased our speed to seventy-five, easing up only when we approached intersections, and even then only to fifty-five or sixty. If the traffic lights were red, I drove through them as fast as cross traffic allowed. Dr. Werner’s “right away” kept sounding in my head.
A left on Roslyn Road towards I-495, the Long Island Expressway, also known as the LIE to hundreds of thousands of weekday commuters. I was down to fifty now, and traffic was starting to build. We had been on the road twelve minutes.
A right off Roslyn Road onto the service road for the Expressway, then up the access ramp and onto the LIE, again heading west into New York. I left the acceleration lane at over sixty, moved into the inside lane, the center lane, then the outside lane and was quickly up to seventy-five, then eighty, then a little faster. My father looked over at me as we inched past eighty.
I turned my headlights on and started switching my high beams on and off as we overtook other cars in the outside lane. Most people sensed something was wrong in the car that had suddenly appeared behind them from out of nowhere; they seemed to know its speed had a purpose. A flash of our high beams and these drivers quickly moved over to the center lane. But if a driver didn’t move over immediately, I passed on the inside, refusing to be delayed. Outside lane to center lane to outside lane to center lane and back again. At times there was almost a rhythm to it.
As we got closer to the city, the traffic continued to build, and in spite of my best efforts our speed began to drop, not down to the speed limit, but slower nevertheless. At one point I found myself half hoping a patrol car would see us so he could run interference for us if the traffic got too bad. But then I realized if a patrol car saw us, he’d pull us over; and we’d have to explain our speed, perhaps successfully, perhaps not, and we had no time for that. I stopped hoping for a patrol car.
From the Long Island Expressway to the Grand Central Parkway to the Triborough Bridge to the toll plaza at the city end of the bridge. Incredibly, it was only five minutes to eight as we paid our toll and drove down the curved exit ramp to the southbound lanes of the FDR Drive. Three minutes later, we got off at the 96th Street exit, headed west on 96th to Second Avenue, and then left on Second and south to New York Hospital.
And then we were there. Our first left off Second Avenue brought us onto the hospital’s main drive. Our second left, halfway down the drive and past a permit-only staff parking area, brought us into the deep shadows of the cobblestone courtyard in front of the hospital’s main entrance. In a few hours this courtyard would be packed with cars, clogged with visitors coming and going. But right now at six minutes after eight on Sunday morning, the courtyard was empty. No cars. No people.
I stopped in front of the hospital lobby’s revolving glass doors, and we got out of the car. In sharp contrast to the conditions out on Long Island, the air in the courtyard was hot and heavy and still. High above us and all around us, a thousand air conditioners in a thousand windows roared, keeping the heat and the humidity at bay.
As we got out of the car, a parking attendant came out of his booth at the end of the courtyard and walked towards us. “Visiting hours don’t start ‘til one o’clock,” he declared aggressively when he was still several feet away.
“I’m afraid this is an emergency,” I replied. “My wife’s doctor called and told me to come to the hospital right away.”
The attendant looked at me for a long moment. “Well, you gotta have a claim ticket if you’re gonna leave your car. Wait here.”
He turned, walked back to his booth and a few seconds later was back, claim ticket in hand. He tore off my part of the ticket and handed it to me, this time without eye contact. “How long you gonna be?” he asked.
A simple question, but that morning a hard one to answer.
“I’m not sure,” I answered. “I guess we could be a while.”
He seemed to soften, to understand, and wrote something on his half of the ticket. “Well, whenever you’re ready, I’m here. At least ‘til four, and then I’ll let the night man know.”
Before I could thank him, he got into my car and drove out of the courtyard, leaving my father and me standing there, separated by what had been the width of the car.