Taylor's Gift (9 page)

But it wasn't fair. We didn't deserve this.

I
didn't deserve this.

Maybe I did.

Lost in my thoughts, I started to ask,
What kind of horrible person would think about leaving their family at a time like this? Who does that?

I
did.

I realized how dark my heart could be. I was capable of further hurting those I loved most when they were already in so much pain. I started to sob at the ugliness that grew inside of me.
How had I come to this?

I felt a hand on my shoulder and glanced up to see Bill in the chair next to me. His cheeks were tearstained and his eyes were red. I could see the empathy and love in them.
I bet he wasn't thinking about running.
I deeply respected and admired Bill. Not only were Bill and I brothers-in-law, we were also good friends. A few months earlier, we'd attended a Band of Brothers retreat together. We had spent the weekend being vulnerable about our strengths, but mostly about our weaknesses, as husbands and fathers. We'd both grown a lot spiritually that weekend. As a result, I'd learned to trust both Bill and God in new ways.

I wonder if he knows what I am thinking about right now?

Tell him.

It wasn't an audible voice; it was more like a feeling that came from somewhere inside me. Without a doubt, I knew it was the Holy Spirit prompting me to tell Bill what I was thinking. I knew I
could trust Bill, but I was ashamed. Just across the room, my wife, his sister, was passed out from exhaustion and grief. My daughter was lying in the hospital bed and she was probably going to die. And I was angry at the world and trying to run away from them both. I cried harder as I realized how lost I was.

“I need your help,” I said, choking on my words.

“Anything,” Bill said.

“I am going to want to run from this, from my family, from the pain. I need you to help me not do that.”

“Okay.”

I told Bill how I had been thinking about leaving and the anger building up inside.

“I feel like an atomic bomb, Bill. I'm ready to explode. It's just so powerful. It's this scary, huge thing growing inside me, and I don't know what to do with it. I just feel so much hate and anger. It's like a violent, murderous rage. It's almost warlike. Like something a soldier feels before going into battle. I feel like I want to kill every living thing I can get my hands on.”

I buried my head in my hands and sobbed. It was the first time I had really let loose since the accident. Bill put his hand on my back, and I could hear him praying for me.

When I could speak, I continued. “I know what I'm capable of. I'm going to come home from this, and either I'm going to want to save the world or destroy it. I'm not sure which one it's going to be. But I need to stay close to God, and I need your help to do it. I'm scared to death, Bill, and I need you to hold me accountable.”

“I'm here for you,” he said.

I looked at my hands and fingered my wedding band. “I can't handle this on my own. I can't fix this like I can fix everything else. This is too important, too big, and too horrible for me to face. I need you to hold me accountable to prayer. Help me give this pain to God. I can't do this on my own.”

We talked for a while, and then Bill said, “Let's pray.” He reached out and took my hand.

As Bill prayed for me, I felt the weight of my shame and guilt lift and my anger subside. I felt as though I had been to confession and now I was being cleansed, forgiven for the dark thoughts I'd been entertaining. By the time he finished praying, I knew what I was supposed to do.

“God wants me to be a husband, and He wants me to be a father. He needs me to be here for my family. I just need you to help me,” I said.

“I've got your back. I'm here for you,” Bill said.

And I knew he was.

I also knew God was.

The doors of hell had opened, and I had taken a good, long look. Perhaps God wanted me to get a glimpse of the evil I was capable of so I would cling to Him alone. Thankfully, graciously, mercifully, God, through the working of the Holy Spirit, had rescued me from my own thoughts and those doors had closed. I was weary from the battle, but at least my soul was comforted.

I pulled out the footrest on the chair, leaned back, and closed my eyes. My hand was on Taylor's foot, and my hope was in the Lord. I sat back to wait for the scan that would decide our future.

Tara

I opened my eyes, and it took me a minute to remember where I was. Then I saw Taylor lying next to me. Todd was sleeping in a chair, and Bill was awake in the chair next to him. It all came flooding back. I sat up and rubbed my eyes.

“What's going on?” I asked.

“Nothing has changed. We're still waiting for the CT scan at seven o'clock. Todd fell asleep a few minutes ago. You're both exhausted, you should sleep when you can,” Bill said.

“I need to know what's going to happen next.” The words spilled out quickly because I wasn't sure if I really wanted to know. Bill and I had been close since I was a baby. He knew what I needed to
hear and how to tell me. We talked about the scan and how doctors were looking for signs of activity in Taylor's brain.

“Like blood flow?”

“Exactly.”

“What happens if they don't see anything?”

“Then they're going to ask you two questions. The first will be about taking her off the ventilator.” Bill explained how we could be with her as she died.

“What's the second question?”

“Would you be willing to donate her organs?”

“What would that involve?” I asked.

Bill explained how he and Todd had already had this conversation, and he didn't want to do anything to persuade me one way or the other. “You really need to talk to Todd about that,” Bill advised, his voice cracking.

I nodded, and the tears began to flow again.
Bless his heart. Not only is he being a doctor for us, but he's also a brother, a brother-in-law, and a friend. And he's Taylor's uncle!
I knew he was trying to play a lot of roles to support us, but I knew he was also experiencing his own emotion.

Bill wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and then glanced at his watch.

“It's 6:48.”

We had twelve minutes before Taylor was scheduled to have the CT scan. “Oh, God, please heal her. Please let there be signs of life,” I prayed as I crawled into bed with her again. I slowly stroked her face. “Please, baby, you've got to show the doctors they're wrong.”

Tara

At 7:00 a.m., the medical technicians arrived to wheel Taylor down for her CT scan. Todd, Bill, and I prayed the entire time she was gone. At 7:30, the technicians wheeled her back in and told us we'd know the results soon.

We thought that meant 8:00.

But 9:00 came and went, and so did 10:00. By 11:00, we still hadn't heard a word. Bill walked back and forth to the nurses' station, checking to see if they'd heard anything from the doctor. Bill had the neurosurgeon's cell phone number, but he didn't want to use it—he knew she'd get back to us when she could. Todd alternated between sitting in the chair, holding Taylor's foot and talking to her, and pacing the room. I stayed as close to her as possible, lying in bed with her or just holding her hand and talking to her. I was still dealing with nausea, but there was nothing left in my stomach to throw up.

By 11:30, none of us could wait any longer. Bill picked up the phone and called Dr. Pemblee. “I hate to bug you,” he said, “but the CT scan has been done, and we're all on pins and needles waiting
to see what the next step is.” Bill listened attentively as she spoke, and then looked at me and raised his eyebrows.

“What did she say?” I asked when he finished the call.

“She's just down the hall. I'm going to meet her so I can look at the scans.”

It was such a blessing to have Bill with us. He would think of questions to ask and tests to run that we wouldn't even know about, much less consider. My heart started racing in anticipation of finally getting the news we'd been waiting so long to hear, but my stomach churned at the thought that it could be bad news.

Before he left, Bill paused in the doorway and turned to look first at me and then at Todd. “The two of you should have a conversation about organ donation, just in case.”

Bill and I are extremely close and always have been. In pictures from our youth, Bill was always the one holding me. As soon as he walked back into the room after speaking with Dr. Pemblee, I knew.

“You have to tell me,” I said. “You have to!” But he didn't have to. I saw his face, looked deep into his eyes, and I knew. “That's it, isn't it? There's no hope, is there?” I buried my head in my hands and began to weep. Todd was in his chair at the far end of the bed, weeping too.

Dr. Pemblee's cold exterior seemed to have melted a bit as she followed Bill into the room. With red-rimmed eyes, she simply said, “We didn't see anything to indicate brain activity.”

“Are you sure? Isn't there anything you can do?” I pleaded.

She shook her head. “I'm so sorry,” she said, wiping away a tear. “There's nothing more we can do.”

“So, what's next?” Todd asked.

“Well, one small part of her brain looks like it still could have a small blood supply,” Dr. Pemblee began. “To officially pronounce her brain-dead, we'll have to repeat the scans until that blood supply dies off.”

“How many days are we talking about?” Bill asked.

“It could be one or two days, or it could be as much as a week.”

“We can't do this,” Bill said. “I know there has to be another way.”

“Well, there is. We can take her off the ventilator and see if she breathes on her own. We could do a couple of other tests at her bedside to see if she has any involuntary response, which, from the scans, we know she won't. But we can use those tests to rule out any possibility.”

“Let's do that. They don't need to sit around here waiting a week for the inevitable,” said Bill.

I looked at Bill, standing next to the neurosurgeon, and pleaded with him to do something, anything.

“I'm so sorry,” he said.

“There's no hope, Bill? A test? More surgery?”

He shook his head. “I looked at the scans. There's been no change between the scan they did in Vail and the one they did this morning.”

Months later, when we could hear it, Bill explained that normal brain anatomy hadn't even been visible in her scans. Taylor's brain had been so badly injured it didn't even resemble a brain.

Todd sat next to me on the small sofa and wrapped his arms around me. I buried my face in his neck, where our tears merged as we wept. When we finally pulled apart, Dr. Pemblee spoke.

“I have one more question,” she said. “Would you be willing to donate Taylor's organs?”

I looked at Todd to make sure we were in agreement.

“Absolutely!” he said.

“It's what Taylor would want,” I agreed, and then I burst into fresh tears.

Todd

The surgical team asked us to stand outside while they removed the ventilator and performed the bedside tests. They called her death
at 12:15 that afternoon, Monday, March 15, but we knew in our hearts she'd left us much earlier.

Doctors told us it would likely be the next morning before they would have everything in place to remove her organs. They said we could stay with her until then. Of course, we both wanted to.

I'd been on and off the phone since we'd left Vail, getting prayer chains started and informing friends and family what had happened. Tara's brothers were on their way to Grand Junction, along with her dad. I'd also talked to Matt Sunshine again, telling him that Taylor had died. When the nurses finished, Bill left to make a phone call. Tara and I were alone in the room with Taylor.

“What are we going to do?” Tara asked. I'd never seen her dark eyes look so sad and lonely. “How do you plan a funeral?”

I didn't have an answer. We sat in uneasy silence, and I could tell she was thinking. Finally, she said, “I'm going to call Mary Marshall.” Later, we would look back on that moment and know it had been a divine revelation. Mary became one of the angels who were there for us when we needed them most.

Mary and Tara weren't the kind of friends who got together often or talked on the phone every day, but even when they hadn't seen each other in months, they could still pick up where they'd last left off. Mary had a daughter who was friends with Taylor and a son who was friends with Ryan. Tara had often talked about Mary's exquisite taste and her ability to get things done, and done right. She was the perfect person to help.

I could tell from Tara's side of the conversation that Mary already knew at least part of what was going on. Coppell is a small community. Everyone knows everyone else. As soon as one person found out about Taylor's accident, it wouldn't have taken long for word to spread.

In addition, I was a big social networking guy, both personally and professionally. I'd been tweeting and posting updates to my Facebook page since we'd left Coppell. In fact, right before the accident, I'd tweeted it was a perfect day on the slopes, it was the best family vacation we'd ever had, and that it was the trip of a lifetime.

While we were on the shuttle bus between Vail and Grand Junction, I'd used both Twitter and Facebook to ask people to pray for Taylor. Somewhere, between the mountains and the storm, I'd lost my internet connection, so I wasn't sure how much had actually gone through. But by Monday afternoon, I realized at least some of the prayer requests had. People were responding with notes of encouragement and promises of prayer.

As Tara filled Mary in on the latest details, she'd have to pause as, between sobs, the words just wouldn't come out. I knew Mary was crying with her. At one point, Tara attempted to take a deep breath, and then through her tears, she pleaded, “I just need you to do this for me because I can't.”

Immediately, Mary's side of the conversation must have changed. I gathered from the answers Tara was giving that Mary must have gone into “get it done” mode.

“I don't know when her body will be back in Coppell,” Tara said. “They think they'll remove her organs in the morning, so it would be sometime the next day, or the day after that at the earliest.”

It was heartbreaking to listen to my wife talk about the details of our
daughter's body
. I felt a shiver down my spine. How would I ever get used to talking about her in the past tense?

Over the next hour, I had many similar conversations. While sitting at the end of Taylor's bed, and absentmindedly massaging her foot, I called Father Fred at our church, gave him an update, and let him know Mary would be calling him.

At some point, Tara said, “We should do something. People will want to help in some way; we should do something to honor Taylor's life.”

After a brief discussion, we agreed we'd plant a tree at Coppell Middle School East. Taylor loved her school, and this would be a great way to memorialize her. If people wanted, they could contribute to the tree rather than sending flowers.

Tara called Laura Springer, our beloved middle school principal. She finally reached her at one of Taylor's friends' homes. Springer
was with a group of middle school students who'd gathered to pray for Taylor. Tara filled her in on what had happened that morning. Together, the women cried over the phone.

“We want a way to honor her life, and we were thinking about planting a tree on the school property,” Tara said.

“I'll work it out with the PTO to collect donations, and we'll get something nice,” Springer promised.

Tara's brother Kary and his wife, Juli, arrived within the hour. They'd left Texas in the middle of the night and driven sixteen hours. Shortly after that, Tara's brother Chris and her dad, Bernie, made it to the hospital. Bernie had gotten on the first flight out of Abilene and flown to Dallas, where Chris had met him and joined him on the flight to Colorado. We were glad to see all of them, but each time someone new arrived, we had to repeat the whole story all over again. As soon as they hugged us, they rushed to be by Taylor's side. We could see how they loved her and how much they were hurting.

As soon as things settled down and Tara could catch her breath, someone new would show up, or she'd make a phone call, and she'd lose it again. I watched as Tara relived the trauma over and over through each of their reactions. I was worried about her. She hadn't eaten or drank anything in almost forty-eight hours. Through the night, we'd slept only fifteen minutes or so at a time. She had to be as exhausted as I was. I wasn't sure how much more she could take.

Tara

I felt as if I was losing my mind. I was having trouble thinking, and I couldn't recall things that happened only moments before. My brain was like Teflon—nothing stuck. People would ask me questions, and I would look at them blankly, not knowing what to say. Finally, Bill or Todd would answer for me.

It was late in the afternoon when the team came in. They were all wearing green scrubs with a logo stitched on the left side of
their shirt, right above their hearts. I tried to read the words, but they didn't make sense. “Transplant” something. While the two men stood near the door, the woman came over to the sofa where I was sitting and knelt down in front of me

“Taylor would make a beautiful candidate for organ donation. You're willing to consider it?” she asked.

I stared at her, unable to comprehend what she was asking.

“Absolutely, absolutely!” Todd said.

When she left, things started to move quickly. Someone mentioned the need to do some tests. A male nurse came in and injected something into Taylor to prepare the organs. A sweet female nurse dressed in cheerful scrubs said, “I know you don't want those stitches showing. How does she wear her hair?”

I looked at her with a mixture of gratefulness and confusion. I wanted to open my mouth, but I couldn't. I didn't even know how to answer her. Fortunately, the nurse just figured something out.

“I think she wears her hair on the side. In a braid,” she said, manipulating Taylor's long locks in her hands. While the woman braided Taylor's hair, others cleaned and washed her. I held Taylor's hand, and at one point, I thought it felt a little warm but I dismissed it. When the nurses finished, I climbed into the bed and lay next to her. I could feel Taylor's skin growing hot to the touch. Something was happening with Taylor!

“She's hot! Her body is hot!” I yelled.

A nurse came running.

“What does that mean? Is it a sign?” I asked, desperately wanting to believe they were all wrong.

The nurse tried to calm me down. “It doesn't mean anything; it's just the medications working.” It happened several times, and each time the nurses would remind me this was expected and it wasn't a sign of anything.

Todd and I took turns lying with our daughter in the bed. “I'm so proud of you, Tay,” he said, using her nickname. “We're both so proud of you. We love you so much. You're Daddy's girl, you know.”

We stroked her face and touched her hair. We told her how beautiful she looked. We wanted to soak up every moment we could.