Through Cloud and Sunshine

by Dean Hughes

  Jeff glanced at Abby and saw her eyes fill with tears.

  “I’m going to meet with some other cardiologists and we’re going to try to figure this out. We’re dealing with coarctation, or narrowing, of the aorta, along with atrial septal defect—what you’ll hear people refer to as a ‘hole in the heart.’ But there are some other things going on. The left ventricle isn’t well developed, and yet, it doesn’t look like hypoplastic left heart syndrome. I think we—”

  “Dr. Hunt, I don’t know what you’re saying. How bad is it?”

  “I’m sorry, Abby,” Dr. Hunt said. He took hold of her right hand. Jeff was still holding her left one. “It’s all so hard to explain without—you know—using that kind of terminology.”

  “Is he going to live?”

  “I think so. I really do. But I can’t promise you that, Abby.”

  Jeff stood up. “You talked about one procedure that involved three operations. Is that what you’re thinking you’ll have to do?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know yet. It might be that we could repair the aorta and the increased blood supply would expand the left ventricle. But the hole is quite large. One of my colleagues thinks we should go in one time—open heart—and fix the aorta and the ASD, and do what’s called biventricular repair. We’re seeing—”

  “When will you know?” Jeff asked. He was still watching Abby. He could see that she wasn’t doing well. Her eyes were full of panic.

  “We don’t have to operate for a few days. I want to send our pictures to a couple of pediatric cardiologists I know—and get some more opinions. The one thing I can say for sure is that we must do surgery.”

  Abby was breaking down, finally crying. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just so scared.”

  Dr. Hunt leaned over her. “I know, Abby. I didn’t want to keep you waiting any longer, but I knew when I headed up here that I wasn’t really ready. I need to confer with other surgeons and make sure we identify the best possible approach.”

  “When can you tell us what you’re going to do?”

  “I won’t just tell you. I’ll give you the options and offer a recommendation.”

  “When?”

  “Today is Tuesday. I’ll schedule the OR for Friday. Today and tomorrow I’ll confer with my colleagues, and then on Thursday I’ll show you the echocardiogram pictures and I’ll bring in some charts that explain the way the heart works. We’ll make a decision then—day after tomorrow.”

  “We’ll get online and do some reading about all this stuff,” Jeff said. “I want to understand everything I can, and I’m sure Abby does too.”

  “That sounds good.” Dr. Hunt nodded, stood for a time, and then added, “I know you kids are religious. I just want you to know that I am too. I’ll spend these next two days thinking and talking with smart people, but I’ll also be praying—the same as you. We’ll find the right answer, and I promise I’ll do everything I can to save this little boy’s life.” He smiled. “You better come up with a name soon, so we’ll know what to call him besides ‘baby boy.’”

  “I’m thinking we might want to name him ‘William’ and call him ‘Will,’ if it’s okay with Abby.” He looked at Abby, who was staring at him. “You know, after my Grandfather William Lewis. I found out just now that he was always called Will.”

  “When did you—”

  “When I talked to my dad. He was the one who came up with the name, and it seemed right to me—since we live across the street from my grandpa’s house.”

  Abby looked at Dr. Hunt. “Well, then, I guess his name is William.” She smiled just a little. “It’s okay with me. I don’t mind the name.”

  “I like it,” Dr. Hunt said. “I like the old names myself. I’m not too big on all these made-up names people are coming up with these days.”

  Jeff smiled at Abby, but he knew better than to list some of the names she had been thinking of. Abby didn’t admit to anything. She told Dr. Hunt instead, “What matters to me is that he grows up.”

  “I know. I promise to do my best. And I have a good feeling, Abby. I do. I think we can fix that little heart of his.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. I needed you to say that.”

  “All right, then. I want you to stay in the hospital until Thursday. You’ll want to be nearby anyway, and you need a full day of rest. But I promise, by then we’ll be able to sit down and talk about the options.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry about all the medical jargon. I understand what you’re going through right now.” He patted her on the shoulder.

  “It’s okay. I have a lot of faith in you.”

  “Just put your faith in God. And pray for me.”

  “I will.”

  He patted her shoulder again, nodded to Jeff, and then he left.

  As he walked out, Jeff asked Abby, “Are you sure you like ‘William’ for a name?”

  “It’s okay. You like it, and your dad does, and I’m sure my parents will like it a lot better than Kadin. My mom almost died when I told her that was the name I liked.”

  “But if you—”

  “No. It’s good to give him a family name. Maybe Grandpa Lewis will look out for him.”

  “Well, we need to think about it some more. We don’t have to decide right now.” But Abby seemed far away in her thoughts, not really concerned with the name. “I’m glad Dr. Hunt prays,” Jeff said. “That made me feel a lot better.”

  “Me too. But just tell me—what are you feeling? Dr. Hunt said he had a good feeling about things. Don’t you?”

  “Abby, it’s hard for me to know what to say. I do feel positive about Dr. Hunt, and I do feel like everything will come out okay. But I can’t say that I’ve had any particular reassurance—you know, anything spiritual. You wanted to believe that nothing was wrong with his heart, but I couldn’t say that. I just didn’t know.”

  “And you were right. There was something wrong.”

  Jeff heard her frustration. She didn’t say it, but he knew she wanted him to command the baby to be well, and he simply hadn’t been able to get those words out. “I wasn’t right, exactly. I didn’t know what to expect.”

  “Jeff, I just don’t want you to be so logical about everything. You’re praying, too, aren’t you?”

  “I am, Ab. Constantly.”

  “Well, that’s what I want to trust in. The Lord can heal him. We need to believe that.”

  “I do, Abby. Don’t think that I don’t.” But he knew what she wanted from him. It was what he wanted to give her: more strength, more conviction. The problem was, he still felt no assurance that everything would turn out all right. And he wasn’t going to lie to her about that.

  • • •

  On Thursday morning Abby was in the process of being released from the hospital. She got dressed and then sat down to wait for Dr. Hunt to come by with his pictures and diagrams. Jeff had sat by her bed with his laptop much of the day Wednesday, and he had explained a lot of biology and anatomy that Abby had thought she already knew—but he added a myriad of details about defects and surgical repairs. She asked him a few times not to tell her any more. What she read between the lines—and what she knew he was withholding—was that some defects were just too severe to be repaired.

  When Dr. Hunt arrived, he asked Jeff and Abby to walk down the hallway to a little office. Jeff was armed with a dozen questions, and when they reached the office, he leaned over the desk and the diagrams with Dr. Hunt. The discussion turned technical and detailed. Abby understood what the two were talking about, but she didn’t want to wade through all the possibilities. She wanted to know what Dr. Hunt was recommending. Abby was still embarrassed by her emotional responses on Tuesday, so she didn’t interrupt the conversation.

  What Abby was wondering was whether her attempts at faith had really been misplaced hope. She was well awa
re that God’s intentions couldn’t be overruled by sheer stubbornness. Still, she wished Jeff would show more evidence that he trusted God. Most of what he had said for two days was science-based. He hardly seemed aware of what she was going through, even though he kept telling her that he was.

  Since the first time Abby had agreed—tentatively—to the baby’s name, he had become “Will” to Jeff. She actually liked “William” better, and she thought of him that way in her own mind, but it didn’t really matter. He was finally “someone.” She had been allowed to hold him a few times in the last two days, and she had never seen anything that indicated his little heart was so distorted. All she knew was that she loved him as though she had known him forever, and there was no science that could explain to her why she should now have to give him up.

  That very first night, after the birth, she had nursed her William. No question, he had the impulse to suck, but he wasn’t very good at it. He was catching on fast, though, and her milk was coming in. She was going to run home for a little while today, but she wanted to be at the hospital most of the time so that William could feel her warmth and know that she was there to feed him, to love him.

  “Okay, let me see if I can summarize all this,” Dr. Hunt was saying. He looked at Abby. He finally seemed to be aware that he hadn’t included her the way he should have. “We think what we have is hypoplastic left heart complex, not ‘syndrome.’ It sounds about the same, but there’s a big difference.”

  That set off another long series of questions from Jeff. What became clear gradually, however, was that Dr. Hunt was recommending that a team of doctors perform a long surgery and correct several defects. The hope was that once the aorta was repaired and the hole was patched, the additional blood pumping into the left ventricle would open it up, and William would be normal in time. Abby liked that idea better than a series of operations, but she finally asked the one question that mattered to her.

  “Doctor Hunt, what if it doesn’t work?”

  “Well ...”

  “He’ll die, won’t he?”

  He finally nodded. “Yes.”

  “Could you try something else that isn’t so dangerous?”

  “Yes, we could—and that’s one of the options. But I really believe that William’s best chance to have a normal life is for us to do open-heart surgery. We could try some other repairs, but I don’t see a good long-term outcome.”

  “How many babies make it through this operation and grow up to be normal?”

  He didn’t answer for a time, and he didn’t look at her. “I haven’t seen any exact figures,” he finally said, “but I have to tell you, it’s probably only a fifty-fifty kind of thing.”

  “But you prayed about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is it what you would do if he were your little boy?”

  “Yes. It is.”

  Abby didn’t want to talk anymore. She just wanted to move ahead. Looking at Jeff, she asked, “Will you give him another blessing?”

  So the decision was made, and Jeff and Abby left, but that afternoon they came back to the hospital. Abby nursed little William again and held him for a long time. When Malcolm and Kayla showed up that evening, Malcolm rubbed a spot of consecrated oil on William’s head, and, as Abby held him, the two men placed their fingers on his little head. Jeff blessed him with heartfelt words, shedding tears in the process, and Abby was touched. But she still wished he could find the faith to say, “Be healed.”

  On the following morning Abby let a nurse take William from her. She followed him to the door of the OR, but she wasn’t allowed to go beyond. She walked back to the waiting room, and she and Jeff sat there all day. They got up from time to time, ate a small lunch, made phone calls, and they received a few reports that all was going well, but there was no telling from that what the final outcome would be. Eight hours went by, and then, down the hallway, Abby noticed some scurrying going on. She stopped a nurse and said, “What’s happening? Is the surgery finished?”

  “Uh ... yes,” the woman said, but she was already hurrying away. “I can’t answer questions. You’ll have to talk to your doctor.”

  Almost immediately the phone rang in the waiting room and Jeff picked it up. Abby saw his face lose color and she almost passed out herself. “Is there something you can do?” he gasped.

  Jeff listened, and then he put down the phone. He came to Abby and took her in his arms. “The surgery went okay, they think, but Will’s heart won’t start up. They’ve shocked it, but it didn’t work. They’re trying something else—and then they’ll call us back.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No. I mean ... maybe. They’re still working on him.”

  By then Jeff and Abby were dropping to their knees together. There were people at the other end of the room, but Abby didn’t think about that. “Please, Father,” she whispered. “Please. Help my son. Bring him back to life.”

  “Please, please,” Jeff was whispering, and the two clung to each other and cried.

  Then Abby heard Dr. Hunt’s voice at the door. “It’s okay. His heart started beating.”

  Abby jumped up, rushed to Dr. Hunt, and threw her arms around him. What surprised her most was what she had heard in the doctor’s voice. He was crying too.

  Dr. Hunt patted her back, let her cry for a time, and then he said, “I think we did a good job. We felt good about all the repairs.”

  “Does that mean he’ll be all right?”

  “Everything depends now on that left ventricle expanding as blood is forced into it.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “A while. It will take at least a couple of weeks before we can say for sure that it’s happening. We’ll keep a nurse with him every second for now—and leave his chest open, just in case we have to go back in—but once we close him up, it’s just a matter of giving that little ventricle time to respond.”

  “Why wouldn’t his heart start?” Jeff asked.

  “Who knows? I can explain the biology of circulation, but I have no idea what spark makes a heart decide to beat.”

  “I think he’ll be okay now,” Jeff said. “God kept him with us. I don’t think He’ll take him away now.”

  Abby spun from the doctor and grasped Jeff. Those were the words she had wanted to hear from him.

  Chapter 3

  Will and Liz were relieved as the weather began to soften at the end of summer. They also felt blessed not to have fallen ill. Most conversations with neighbors began with news that another infant or child in the city had died, or, not uncommonly, that an adult had succumbed and left children in difficult circumstances. There had been dozens of deaths again this year.

  Late in August Joseph Smith had emerged from hiding and had surprised and thrilled Church members by appearing at a Monday morning gathering at the grove west of the temple. Two days later he had spoken at the grove again, this time to the Female Relief Society. Liz had been invited to join the society, which now had around a thousand members, and she was delighted to attend and hear Brother Joseph. What moved Liz was the emotion in Joseph’s voice as he expressed his gratitude to the sisters for their prayers and their letters to the governor on his behalf. He also proclaimed his confidence that members of the society were fulfilling their purposes by practicing holiness. As she walked home that day she wondered whether she hadn’t fallen short of holiness during this summer of discomfort. She knew she hadn’t been as kind to others—especially Will—as she might have been. She told herself she had to do better.

  She also wanted to be more involved with the sisters, even though her time of confinement was not far off. Will sometimes returned from work in time for prayer meetings, held in homes around their neighborhood, but more often than not, he felt he couldn’t quit his work that early, and Liz hesitated to attend alone. She knew of social gatherings, too, and visitors who lectured in the up
per room of the brick store. Will promised that in time he wouldn’t have to work quite so hard, and they could become more involved, but Liz wondered whether that would ever happen. For now, attending Female Relief Society meetings was a joy to her, and she wanted to offer all the help she could to people in need—and there were many.

  One day early in September a storm rolled in across the Mississippi—purple clouds filling up the sky—and the heavens let loose with a torrent of rain so hard that it ripped leaves, even branches, from the trees around the Lewises’ house. Lightning flashed and sizzled, and a thunderclap crashed so close overhead that Liz thought for a moment the house had been struck. The following morning was clear and bright, and the air was much cooler. Autumn was in the air.

  Some of Liz’s energy returned as the temperature subsided. Though she felt awkward with her great belly, she decided to keep her resolve to look beyond the confines of the little clearing in the woods where she lived. One morning she walked down from the bluffs to the house where she and Will had lived the first few months of their time in Nauvoo. Will had promised to help with the garden and share in the harvest, but he had rarely found time to keep his promise. Liz needed some of the root crop Will had planted, and she hoped for some of the pumpkins she had watched grow all summer. But how could she ask for anything if she and Will didn’t do any of the work? She thought she could hoe for a time this morning and it would do her good—and help the Johns family. Will had told her that the entire family was sick. Brother Johns had worked a couple of weeks for Will, but he had had to leave one day with a burning fever and hadn’t come back.

  When Liz reached the garden she didn’t see anyone stirring yet, but it was early—even though Will had long since left for work on a road project he hoped to finish soon. She found a hoe leaning against the little garden shed and went to work without announcing her presence to Brother and Sister Johns. She had been hoeing for almost half an hour, taking her time, trying not to exert herself too much, when Brother Johns appeared from around the house, looking gaunt and pale. He stared at her, seeming confused, but he didn’t speak.