by Gary Kinder
Though Cortney had not yet begun to respond to his surroundings in a purposeful way, Dr. Johnson hoped that with these apparent small gains in consciousness he might now be alert just enough to take tiny amounts of soft foods and fluids orally without choking or aspirating any of them into his lungs. For the initial feeding a nurse dripped 20 cc of water into Cortney’s mouth with a special tube feeder. Twenty cubic centimeters equals a little over one-half ounce of water, and that was placed on Cortney’s tongue about an eighth of an ounce at a time. At first he held the water in his mouth, refusing to swallow.
The nurses pleaded with him, “It’s water, Cortney, just plain water.”
Still he wouldn’t swallow. The nurses talked to him and reassured him, coaxing him along until finally Cortney’s face folded into a slight grimace and he spit up about half of the water. But the other half of that first sip entered Cortney’s throat, and slid easily down to his stomach. More half-sips followed, and when the ordeal was over, Cortney had swallowed and kept down a quarter ounce of sterile water.
After this modest success, Dr. Johnson had the nurses every hour put drops of lukewarm broth or cool ice cream between his lips and try to persuade him to swallow. Cortney would hold the liquid in his mouth for a long time while the nurses talked to him. Sometimes he would then close his eyes, tighten the muscles of his face, and swallow. But most of the time even the meager two ounces of fluid they placed in his mouth simply dribbled down his chin. Even when it appeared that Cortney had swallowed the liquid, sometimes a nurse watching him later would see that he had only been holding it in his mouth. Then he would part his lips and let it spill out of the corners. Finally, on May 20, Dr. Hauser wrote on Cortney’s chart:
Four weeks today from injury. Recent gains in level of consciousness being maintained, but still unable to take maintenance fluid requirements by mouth. Gastrostomy should be planned with long-term nursing care in mind. Prognosis for functional recovery at this point quite grim.
The doctors had given Cortney five days to respond to the oral feedings, and now it was clear that though he seemed to be rousing slowly from coma, Cortney was not yet alert enough to swallow the fluids he needed to stay alive. Dr. Rees scheduled the operation for placement of the gastrostomy tube directly into Cortney’s stomach for the following afternoon.
During the five-day period that the doctors had been trying to get Cortney to swallow, Brett had visited his younger brother one morning. When he walked into Cortney’s room and gave his usual greeting, “Hey Cort, how’s it going?” Cortney had opened his eyes slightly and watched as he walked from the door of the room over to the bed rail. The nurse had noticed right away: Cortney had never “tracked” before. When he had opened his eyes in the past, they had rarely seemed to focus on anything, and never had he followed anyone moving across the room. But that morning Cortney had actually watched Brett. After that episode he would sometimes follow the nurses with his eyes in jerky movements around the room, his right eye still deviating outward.
As Cortney’s responses to his surroundings gradually became more frequent, his periods of resdessness seemed to intensify. With his left hand he began pulling at his hospital gown, wadding it in his gnarled fingers, sometimes gripping the bed rail on the left side of the bed and jerking himself over to that side. His left hand and leg were moving continuously, and his eyes were open much of the time. When the nurses rolled him onto his left side or his right side, immediately he would pull himself onto his back again. Frequently, the nurses noted that Cortney seemed “restless” or “in some distress” or “apprehensive.” They constantly reassured him that everything was fine, that he was safe and there was nothing for him to worry about. That’s when Cortney would silendy begin to cry.
One night, within an hour’s time, Cortney pulled the IV needle out of his right arm, then grabbed hold of the larger needle infusing into his right groin and the Foley catheter draining his urine. The nurse was able to stop him before he could pull out the Foley or the larger needle. Two days later he pulled the trache tube out of the base of his throat. The next day, he pulled at the IV in his right groin again, slipping the needle a quarter of the way out before a nurse could wrest his hand from the line. The day after that he grabbed hold of the Foley again and this time pulled it all the way out.
Cortney began pulling things out so frequently it became necessary to tether both of his hands to the bed rails. The restraints were long enough that he could still pick at his blanket and gown, but could not reach any of the tubes or needles. Though Byron knew the restraints were necessary, when he saw the anguish in Cortney’s face and the boy’s hands trembling at the end of the restraints, he wanted them off. He did not want his son continuing to relive those hours spent tied up on the floor of the Hi-Fi Shop basement. But Cortney had pulled out every tube in his body at least twice, and without his left hand tied it would soon be impossible to keep in any of the tubes.
Byron himself came up with a solution to the problem. After observing the incision and placement of the gastrostomy tube by Dr. Rees and Dr. Johnson on May 21, he contacted a woman named Maxine Bradshaw, president of an organization of LDS church volunteers called the Relief Society. Byron asked her if she could find volunteers who would be willing to sit with Cortney a few hours a day, to watch him and talk to him, and primarily to hold onto his hand so he would not have to be tied. The solution was an imposition to the ICU staff and annoyed some of the nurses, but it was tolerated out of respect for Dr. Naisbitt and sympathy for the situation.
The volunteers began their shifts holding Cortney’s hand at seven the following morning. Since the gastrostomy tube can’t be used for feedings until the wound around the tube has sealed, the doctors were especially concerned that Cortney not tug at the tube while the incision still was in this three-day healing process. Having to wait three days before they could use the tube anyhow, they couldn’t afford to have Cortney yank at it and delay the feedings even longer. Cortney now weighed 101 pounds.
When Byron wasn’t at the hospital with his son, he was either seeing his own patients and delivering babies at the rate of one a day, or it was late at night and he was home. Since Gary stayed at the hospital at night and Claire often spent time with her fiancé Scott, Byron was usually alone there. He had strong support from his brother and his in-laws and the community, but his life was nothing like it had been before the murders.
There’s an emptiness. No matter who you talk to or what work you do or how interested you are in what’s going on, there’s still an emptiness. There’s always something missing. Something been left out. Especially right there at first. And then as time goes on, it doesn’t change. You have to make off with an entirely different kind of life. Any time you go out of the house, or go someplace, you’re used to having someone with you. Used to having your meals together. Used to coming home for lunch and having someone there. And now you are doing things all by yourself. I mean there is no one there. You want something, you fix it. If you want to go someplace, you go alone. When you come home, there’s no one there to greet you. You come in the house and it’s empty. And you’re the only one there, and it is blacker than hell. And when it’s night, it’s a black beast.
That probably was about as tough a part of it as anything. The house is dark and it’s quiet and there’s no one there. And it just gets lonely. But you know that’s the way it’s going to be.
* * *
For the next three and a half weeks the Relief Society provided a twelve-hour vigil over Cortney every day. When the last woman had completed her shift in the early evening, Byron or Gary or Brett or Claire, or frequently Uncle Lynn Richardson or Uncle Paul Naisbitt, would sit with Cortney until midnight, when nursing students from Weber State continued the vigil as volunteers until seven the following morning, when the first woman from the Relief Society arrived to begin the day again. Byron told the women: “I’m positive that Cortney can hear. I know he’s not responding much, but I know he can hear. Hold his
hand and keep talking to him, tell him what’s going on.”
One of the women talked to Cortney about sailboats and airplanes. Another knew that Cortney was interested in astronomy, so talked to him about stars and the planets. Others had children in Cortney’s classes at Ogden High and told him what was happening with the class these last few days of their sophomore year. They read books to him and held pictures before his staring eyes, and when Cortney had progressed to sitting in a wheelchair in the afternoons by the window, they would talk about the city and point out landmarks. Cortney never responded to their efforts, never nodded in recognition of a picture or a building or the sound of a familiar voice. Even with his eyes often open now, he stared straight ahead seeming not to hear.
The women found it difficult to talk to Cortney for the two, sometimes three, hours they were with him each day. Though they exhausted topic after topic that might interest him, nothing they said ever changed the expression on his face. Some of them described it as a look of extreme boredom, while others said there was hatred in his eyes. But something else made the visits difficult for the women emotionally: most of them had children Cortney’s age. Watching their own children grow, they also had watched Cortney through the active phases of his youth from the time he was a baby. One of them, a neighbor of the Naisbitts’ with two sons of her own, had seen Cortney one evening a week before the murders. As she had driven by the Naisbitt home, Cortney had been standing alone on the front porch, the setting sun reflecting from his blond hair, making it appear gold. Cortney had smiled and waved at the woman as she passed, and she remembered thinking what an impressive young man Cortney was growing up to be and what an appealing smile he had. A month later she walked into the ICU to sit with Cortney for the first time and saw him lying comatose and skeletal, the tubes rising from his stomach, from his throat, the wires in his arms, and before she could stop herself she began to cry.
Venice Flygare, another Relief Society volunteer who sat with Cortney in the ICU, later talked about her own experiences during that three and a half weeks.
“I happened to be there I guess at the hour that By came in a lot. Because he’d come in before rounds, and then if he had a break between deliveries or surgery, he’d come in, in an operating gown, you know, just for a minute to let Cortney know he was there, and that he loved him. One day when By was there—course I had noticed this with Cortney before—he would lay with his eyes shut and then he’d kind of scowl and pull a face. And he did this once when By was there and I said, ‘Do you think he’s in pain?’ And he said, ‘He could be remembering.’ That’s all he said. So, I often wondered if he was remembering the torture he’d gone through. One thing that bothers me to talk about, maybe the other ladies had it, too. But you’d hold his hand, because if he got nervous like that, he’d start fighting. So, I always held onto his hand, and if he could get his fingernails under mine, he’d just dig. And I never did tell him not to, I mean I just tried to handle the situation. Or if he could get his finger under my watch, he’d twist it real tight. One day By came in when this was happening with my hand, and he tried to explain to Cortney that I wouldn’t hurt him in any way and that he wasn’t to hurt me.
“I felt that By was mighty strong, I don’t know about inwardly, but he sure never let down one minute in front of that boy. When he came in, I asked him if he wanted me to go out. I felt like maybe they needed to be alone. But he never asked me to leave. He talked to Cortney about who was there and visited with him just like he could hear, which maybe he could. That’s something we don’t know. One thing I did notice, course you know what a proud man By Nais-bitt is, and there were comments by the nurses that he still had this pride. Never ever did he ever look like he hadn’t slept. His clothes were pressed and clean and sharp, he looked like that every morning when he came in. Just his old self. And to think that he could ever take the time to look and act like he did with all he had on his mind… . He would come in and he would hug Cortney and rub his face and his head and kiss him on the cheek and tell him that he loved him. And he would talk about the things they were going to do. They were going to take a boat and they were going to go places. I don’t know if it was to take Cortney’s mind off of what he might be remembering, but it was the plans that he was making for what they were going to do. I think he talked about them going on an ocean liner. It’s hard for me to talk about ... I guess this is where I was asking if he would like me to leave. Because it was just ... oh, I don’t know. I’d never seen a man act like that. So completely emotional. And I would think about the hurt that he was going through with the loss of his wife, and yet he had to turn every energy he had right to this boy. I’m sure it was a contact thing that he felt Cortney needed, and maybe By needed it as well. I often wondered if his feeling was the feeling that I had, that it just seemed so futile, you know, that it was never going to do any good the way that Cortney was.”
Cortney’s uncle, Lynn Richardson, often visited in the evening, assuming the responsibility for holding Cortney’s hand after the last woman from the Relief Society had left for the day. Recently, he had got Cortney to respond to him by saying, “Cortney, if this is your Uncle Lynn talking to you, squeeze my hand.” And Cortney would. If his uncle told him any other name, Cortney’s hand would remain limp.
The evening of May 24, Lynn brought a deck of cards into the room. Byron also was visiting, and Lynn began dealing hands to Byron and himself on top of Cortney’s chest. Cortney’s eyes were open, and he was staring at the ceiling. As they played cards, Lynn and Byron talked, drawing and discarding on Cortney’s chest, Cortney lying with his eyes open, staring, sometimes blinking, sometimes closing his eyes for minutes at a time. After dealing one hand Lynn was getting ready to discard a ten, when he hesitated, fanned the cards out evenly, and held them up in front of Cortney.
“Pick me out the ten,” he said.
Cortney seemed to be looking at the cards, but he didn’t move.
“Go on, Cort,” urged his uncle, “I know you can do it. Pick me out the ten.”
Byron was watching Cortney’s eyes, and Lynn was offering encouragement, when Cortney’s left hand came up slowly off the bed, trembling. He blinked several times as though a film covered his eyes, the one eye still staring off to the side. His hand seemed to take forever to reach the cards, but eventually Cortney placed his fingers on the ten and pulled it from his uncle’s fist.
“You guided the cards under his hand,” said Byron.
“Okay,” said Lynn, pleased with Cortney’s response, “let’s shuffle ‘em and do it again.”
Lynn shuffled the cards and again fanned them out in front of Cortney.
“Show your dad here I didn’t cheat, Cort. Let’s do a different one this time. Why don’t you get me the four?”
Cortney’s shaking hand again came off the bed and drifted slowly upward. It took so long to rise to the cards Lynn had difficulty holding them still. But neither he nor Byron said anything as they watched the hand float across the top of the cards until it stopped and tugged at the only four.
Byron was always looking for signs that Cortney had retained his vision. He thought perhaps that Cortney had recognized his face a time or two in the past, but he wasn’t sure. That Cortney might be able to see small numbers and intellectually distinguish one from the other was a bonus he hadn’t hoped for. He praised his son and Lynn praised him too, but Cortney’s blank expression never changed. Soon he closed his eyes and did not open them again for the rest of the evening.
One morning at the end of May two nurses went into Cortney’s room to prepare him for what had become his daily routine of sitting in a wheelchair for an hour or two. Each day the nurses propped Cortney in the chair, wrapping a wide cloth strap around his midsection to keep him from sliding out or pitching forward. Without it he couldn’t sit up. Even with the restraint he would slump to the right, his eyes gazing at the floor and his right hand gnarled and lying limp in his lap.
When the two nurses that morn
ing clamped Cortney’s tubes, pinned the Foley to his gown, and lifted his IV bottles off their hooks to hang behind the wheelchair, one of them said to him, “Are you going to walk for me today, Cortney?”
Cortney’s eyes were open, but he seemed not to hear. For the past week, with Cortney becoming slightly more aware of his surroundings, the nurses had been challenging him to take a step or speak a word. While some tried a soft approach, others were more demanding. Cortney ignored all of their efforts. He had been in bed so long his muscles had atrophied to where his legs would not have supported him even to stand next to his bed. During that week the nurses had been rubbing his arms and legs, running them through passive range-of-motion exercises as he lay in bed, hoping he would soon try to take that first step since he had walked downstairs into the basement of the Hi-Fi Shop.
As Cortney was rolled onto his side and propped gently into a sitting position at the edge of the bed, the nurse said again, “Today would be a good day to try, don’t you think?”
With one of them on each side supporting him under his arms, the nurses lifted Cortney from the bed, and when they had him standing, limp and weak in their arms, he did not lean toward the wheelchair as he usually had, but continued to stand, swaying within their support. His body was rubbery; if the nurses had released their grip on him, he would have sunk to the floor. But he gave no indication he wanted to sit down. He just stood there next to his bed, shaking and holding onto the nurses.
On previous mornings the nurses had dragged Cortney from his bedside to the door of his room and back again, just to revive in him the feeling of movement. When Cortney stood with support that morning and did not merely collapse toward the wheelchair waiting for him, the nurses felt he might be ready to try on his own.
