Despite everything—including my protests—Pat stuck to his busy schedule. He dragged himself to a couple of events in nearby Bluffton and Savannah to help promote another Story River author, our friend Ellen Malphrus. Many of the authors had become close friends of ours, so Pat felt he was helping out friends as well as promoting books. He never would have put it this way, but the truth was, if he appeared with a newly published author, a crowd would turn up. Otherwise, it was hit or miss.
Bernie continued to come over for his late afternoon visits, and he and Pat took to the porch with their cigars regardless of the cold December breeze off Battery Creek. One afternoon Bernie forgot Pat had a signing, and I was the one to join him on the porch, bundled in a shawl and waving off the smoke from his cigar. “How do you think Pat’s doing, Berns?” I asked.
“As big an asshole as ever,” Bernie said. “Why?”
“Be serious for once in your life. You know he hasn’t been feeling well.”
Bernie was immediately suspicious. “That son of a bitch better not be drinking again.”
At first I shook my head, then confessed that it’d crossed my mind too. It was hard to believe that Pat would jeopardize his newly restored health, though. He’d talked openly about it for the past couple of years—how getting off booze, eating healthy, and exercising regularly made him feel better than he’d ever felt. He’d sworn never to go back to his destructive old habits, and I’d seen no evidence of his backsliding.
Bernie thought it over. “Naw, I’d know if he had.” He studied me for a long minute. “You’d know too, wouldn’t you?”
I nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. He’s definitely not drinking. It’s got to be something else.”
“He’s probably just tired, don’t you think?”
I was eager to agree, even though tiredness was beginning to wear thin as an explanation. Bernie puffed on his cigar then said, “The idiot needs to stop catering to everybody by running to all those damn Story River signings. I’ll remind him that I’m his only real friend. From now on, he needs to cater only to me.”
Christmas Day with the Conroy clan was a merry occasion where we exchanged gifts before our communal feast. Whether the dinner was held at our house or Mike and Jean’s place on Fripp, Pat usually did something with lamb; Mike and Jean brought a honey-baked ham; and I fixed turkey-and-dressing. Everyone contributed a side and dessert and departed as stuffed as the turkey. That Christmas, however, Pat made a face when I asked how he planned to cook the lamb. “Don’t think I will this year,” he said, not meeting my eye. “Nobody really likes it but me. And I haven’t had much of an appetite lately.”
He repeated that at Mike and Jean’s Christmas table after picking at his plate, then left early while I stayed to help with cleanup. Again, I got bombarded with questions: Is Pat okay? Is he going to Atlanta to see the girls? To Birmingham to see your family? I could only shake my head helplessly. I had no answers.
Pat didn’t like the idea of canceling his visit with the girls in Atlanta, but he finally decided he had no choice. His back pain hadn’t eased up despite heat, rubs, ice packs, and tons of Aleve. Though I was reluctant to leave him, he insisted I stick with my plans to see both families. While I was gone doing all that “family crap,” he said, he’d double-lock the door and stay in bed the whole time. When I returned, he’d be back to his old frisky self, just wait and see.
* * *
Two thousand sixteen arrived on schedule, as those things are apt to do. Pat and I celebrated the new year, then a Bama victory in another national championship game. It would turn out to be our last happy moments together. I returned from the Christmas visits expecting (or more truthfully, hoping and praying) to find Pat rested and refreshed, as bright-eyed and robust as he’d been before the first of December and the downward spiral. He faked it when I first got home, peppering me with questions about the family as a way of deflecting mine about his health. He even insisted he felt better.
But it was no longer possible to pretend that things were as they used to be. He still had no appetite, and his pain had worsened. A note from that time, evidently written while I slept, verified how bad things were, and would be the last note I ever got from him. He wrote,
Dearest Sandra—been up all night throwing up. Overall, exhausted. I emailed Mina. Please let me just sleep until I’m a recognizable human again. I love you to pieces, your beloved second husband.
Pat not only agreed to see Dr. Laffitte again without putting up an argument, he let me drive him. Because he’d only allowed me to drive him to the doctor’s in emergency situations in the past, I took that as a bad sign. When the receptionist beckoned Mr. Conroy into the exam room, I didn’t ask if I could come along, I just went. Normally Pat would’ve given me a you’ve-got-to-be-kidding look if I’d even tried such a thing.
After the exam, Dr. Laffitte’s furrowed brow told me more than I wanted to know. Suspecting pancreatitis because of the back pain and increased inflammation, he acted quickly to set up an appointment with Dr. Stewart, the GI specialist who’d patched up Pat’s internal bleeding four years before, and to order a CAT scan. I went from being concerned to scared. I could hardly wait to get home to google pancreatitis. It sounded awful, and I prayed that wasn’t what Pat had. Looking back, I can’t understand why I didn’t consider a more dire diagnosis. Instead I reverted to my old habit of denial and refused to see what was becoming more and more apparent. Something was terribly wrong.
Dr. Stewart was far from reassuring. One thing Pat revealed during the examination startled me. Yeah, he’d lost a great deal of weight since his last visit, a routine checkup a year ago. “Even my fingers are getting skinny, Doc,” Pat said with a grin, holding up his left hand. “My wedding ring won’t stay on.”
“Likely story,” I said to the doctor with a wink, but fear clawed at my throat. Sudden weight loss was a red flag that I’d seen with both my mother and my sister. But I wouldn’t let myself go there.
Pat nodded his head toward me. “My wife’s been working her butt off cooking everything she can think of to get me to eat, but I can’t hold anything down. Been living on smoothies.”
A sharp knock at the door interrupted Dr. Stewart’s questions. The results of the CAT scan had arrived, and I could tell by the doctor’s face that it wasn’t good. A shadow, or a mass, presented in the pancreas area, Dr. Stewart announced, then left abruptly to set up an appointment at the hospital for an MRI. After he left, Pat looked at me with a frown. “Remind me what a pancreas is?”
Pat wouldn’t make it to the MRI appointment scheduled for the following week. Things went downhill fast. I had the sensation of being swept away, down a tumbling whitewater river, desperate to grab anything I could hold on to. But the current was too swift. It seemed that the more I struggled against it, the farther downstream it carried me.
Only a couple of days after the visit to the GI doctor, Pat got so sick and was in such severe pain that I called Dr. Laffitte in a panic. “Don’t try to bring him here,” said the doctor. “As soon as I finish with my last patient, I’ll stop by and see what’s going on.”
I’ve never been so glad to see anyone. Dr. Laffitte arrived and quickly took charge. Pat’d been throwing up for two days, and the back pain had become excruciating. Even so, he pulled himself up in bed to greet his doctor in his usual playful manner. “Hey, Doc! It’s beginning to look like you’re not going to have Conroy to kick around anymore.”
Dr. Laffitte, cool and composed as ever, was the perfect counterpart to Pat’s ongoing blarney. But I could tell by his expression, or lack thereof, that things weren’t good. “Let’s get you to the hospital,” he said before he calmly called for an ambulance. My face must’ve revealed my fears because he explained that we’d get him in quicker by ambulance. The hospital was always swamped in the winter, flu season, and Pat was in no condition to sit in the waiting room.
I nodded, forcing myself to stay calm too, and watched as Dr. Laffitte closed up his litt
le black bag. So doctors still carry those things, I thought inanely. In previous scary situations I’d noted how the mind tends to flit from one mundane thing to another as a diversion from the crisis. My thoughts had become a jumble, a mess of tangled fears, bouncing off one wall before slamming into another.
* * *
In the emergency room, the MRI confirmed what the GI doctor had seen—a suspicious mass on the pancreas—and Dr. Laffitte began to search for an ambulance driver willing to transport Pat to Atlanta through a snowstorm heading that way, where he’d have a liver biopsy at Emory Hospital. Because Susannah worked at the cancer center, she’d been able to set her father up with a specialist there. I ran home frantically to grab our suitcases, praying the ambulance wouldn’t be gone before I could get back. I planned on following it to Atlanta, snowstorm or not. At home I fixed Pat a smoothie, had a meltdown and fell on the floor crying, then pulled myself together to return to the hospital.
My fear of Pat being carted away before I got back almost came true. The cubicle in the emergency room was empty and a harried nurse waved me toward a back door. “They took him but the ambulance might still be here,” she said. I ran outside cursing myself for not checking my phone; Mina had left me panicky messages to hurry.
I caught the ambulance just before they lifted Pat’s stretcher into the back. In freezing weather, he was in a short-sleeved T-shirt, sweatpants, and bedroom shoes. Mina was on one side of him and Bernie the other, with Dr. Laffitte supervising. The ambulance driver and a woman EMT were doing the lifting. Despite Mina’s English being quite good for someone who’d only been in the country a few years, she was having trouble communicating with the driver. Over his arguments, she kept trying to wrap her hoodie around Pat, although Mina wore a size four at best, and Pat an XXL. To add to the confusion, Bernie was joking as usual, helpfully telling the ambulance workers they’d never lift Pat’s lard ass that far up. Maybe they should just tie the stretcher to the back and pull him along behind it.
“Wait!” I yelled. Everyone stopped when they saw me, but only for a moment. Since they’d already hoisted the stretcher, the EMTs completed their task and hopped in to secure their passenger for the journey. They wouldn’t let me get in, so I crawled up far enough to grab hold of Pat’s hand. He was surprisingly cheerful. “Hey, kiddo,” he said with a weary smile. “Fun day, huh?”
“I feel really good about you going to Emory,” I told him in my fake-cheery voice. “They’re the best. You’ll be in good hands.”
The ambulance driver hustled me out of the way and said gruffly that they had to get on the road. No time for lingering, so Bernie, Mina, and I told Pat goodbye as they closed the ambulance. “I’ll be right behind you,” I cried out just before the doors closed in my face. Pat waved bravely and blew kisses, but he looked so helpless with his strapping body on that little-bitty stretcher that my heart broke all over again.
I was standing behind the ambulance swallowing back tears when both the ambulance driver and Dr. Laffitte accosted me. “Listen to me, Mrs. Conroy,” the driver growled. “That storm’s coming in fast. No way in hell you’re following me.”
Dr. Laffitte took my arm. “You’re not driving to Atlanta tonight, Cassandra. That’s ridiculous. Wait and see how tomorrow looks. The snow will be gone in a day or two.”
A day or two? Didn’t they understand that I couldn’t stand not being with Pat now? No one should go through something like this alone. When I started protesting, the driver walked off in disgust and cranked up the ambulance. It was Dr. Laffitte who had the final word. He knew exactly how to get through to me. “The last thing Pat needs is to worry about you.” He was kind but firm. “He made me promise I wouldn’t let you go tonight.”
I was defeated, of course. There was nothing to do but get in my car, the suitcases and Pat’s forgotten thermos in back, and drive home. Bernie and Mina pleaded to come with me but I wanted to be alone. If I wouldn’t let him come with me, Bernie said, he’d send Martha as soon as she got home from work. I shook my head. I couldn’t talk to anybody right then, not even my nearest and dearest. By the time I got home they’d spread the word, and friends and family called to ask what they could do. There were kind, heartwarming offers of drinks, supper, or just being with me. I told everyone I was going straight to bed. What I didn’t tell them was, I’d be setting my alarm for six. I intended to drive to Atlanta come hell, high water, or a blizzard.
I awoke in the icy darkness of early morning, surprised to see that Pat had left a message on my phone only a couple minutes before. I called back immediately without listening to his message. When the phone in his room rang and rang with no answer, I figured they’d taken him out for more tests.
Listening to Pat’s lengthy message, I was flooded with relief at how upbeat he sounded. Chuckling, he told me about the ambulance ride from hell. The attendants were great but the ambulance lacked toilet facilities. They stopped once to relieve themselves, but Pat was stuck with a bedpan as they sped along at top speed. “You can imagine how that turned out,” he said. In spite of the horrific weather, the five-hour drive took them less than four. Just outside of Atlanta, the snowstorm hit hard, and the roads to the hospital were closed. That’s when he found out that the crew had never been to Atlanta—they’d just moved to Beaufort from Michigan. Fortunately, Pat knew the area and was able to help them navigate through the backstreets.
They finally made it, and he got settled in a room a little after midnight. One of the nurses was a hoot, he told me. When she asked if he needed anything, Pat said yeah, a double martini extra dry. “Uh-huh. I’ll bet that kind of shit has gotten you in trouble all your life,” she retorted, which tickled him good. His final words to me were what I expected: “Now listen to me for once in your life. Do not even think about coming over here today. The roads are closed and you can’t anyway, but I know how stubborn you are. I’m fine and they’re taking good care of me. You hear me? Do not try to drive to Atlanta today.”
His words of warning were wasted on me, as he knew they’d be. I was dressed and out the door before the sun came up. On the drive I played his message again, smiling at the story of the ambulance ride and the night nurse with a sassy comeback for his smart mouth. I had no way of knowing it’d be the last voice message I’d ever have from him. A year later an update wiped it out, and like the Rubaiyat’s moving finger, no amount of tears or pleas to my cell provider could bring it back.
* * *
I arrived midmorning to find Pat in good spirits and cutting up with the nurses. I had the utmost sympathy for any of them who had to put up with him. For pure aggravation, he’d pretend they were killing him whenever they drew blood and holler like a stuck pig. In response to how he was feeling, his eye-rolling answer was always the same: Oh, great. Just great. Having the time of his life. And heaven help the ones who asked if he needed anything. Why, yes, thank you. He’d take a double martini. Put it on his supper tray next to the caviar and filet mignon.
When Susannah came by for visits, Pat’s face lit up. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for her to see him so changed; when she’d seen him at the birthday bash just two and a half months before, he’d looked so well. Would the capricious god of chance deny them an opportunity to become reacquainted? The terrible irony of their reconciliation followed by his illness couldn’t be lost on either of them. She’d returned to him after all the years apart; now it seemed that fate would snatch him away.
Susannah had pulled some strings and gotten her dad into a spacious room, with the unbelievable luxury of a pullout sofa for me to sleep on. When I’d stayed with Nancy Jane after her surgery, I’d made do with a plastic bench. (In Pat’s hospital stays to come, I’d learn to sleep on even worse.) At Emory everything was top-notch. The nurses quickly caught on to Pat’s teasing and gave it right back to him. He became a favorite patient, and it wasn’t unusual for a nurse or doctor to pay him a visit after their shift, pulling up a chair and telling him their stories. When he was relea
sed five days later, the staff gathered around to hug him goodbye, and many of them wiped away tears.
The downside of Pat’s time at Emory was the false sense of security and well-being I came away with. Why, he’d be fine, just fine! Even if the liver biopsy revealed cancer, the worst-case scenario, he could beat it, I knew. Pancreatic cancer was no match for Pat Conroy. Didn’t his jovial manner and upbeat spirits prove that? A positive attitude was everything. And if he had one, by God, then so could I. Together, we’d get him through this. I ignored the taunting voice in my head that reminded me how well that had gone in the past. I’d said the same about both the Great Santini and Nancy Jane.
A few days after we returned home, the last week of January, the call from Emory came with the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. By then, Pat had gotten so much worse that the confirmation was hardly necessary. His Emory doctors had made it clear that the biopsy would confirm what they already knew. They were straightforward and answered our questions without hedging. The palliative care staff was amazing, and I thanked God for all the new approaches to dealing with terminal patients. Things had changed in the three years since my sister’s death when palliative care simply meant hospice at the end. Even so, I prayed that Pat wouldn’t ask for a prognosis because I sure as hell wasn’t about to. Neither of us did. As long as it wasn’t put into words, we had hope. And one thing I came to believe during that time: false hope is better than no hope at all.
Chapter 20
Dark Days
As soon as we came home from the week at Emory, I began working on plans for treatment, making calls and filling out paperwork. At that stage of the illness, treatment was aimed at symptom relief, not a cure. We’d been impressed by the excellent care at Emory and could’ve returned there, but MD Anderson in Houston was a more obvious choice for us. My oldest son and his family had recently moved to Houston, where Jim would be heading up one of Anderson’s new research clinics. If Pat went there, I’d have not only somewhere to stay but also insider help finding my way around. But getting a very sick patient there proved too much of a challenge. Pat was simply not able to make the trip. In a matter of mere days, he’d gone from joking around with nurses and visitors in his hospital room to barely being able to sit up. We had no choice but to stay as close to home as possible.
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