Beauty in the Broken Places

by Allison Pataki

  I needed them, and I accepted that. It was the season of life that I was in, and I was lucky that all of these people showed up for me and for Dave in the ways they did. All I could do was hope that the season would pass, that at some point I would get back to the place where I would feel strong and where life would feel stable enough that I could return the love.

  Chapter 22

  Dave’s rehab floor at RIC afforded glorious panoramic views of Lake Michigan, and on the Fourth of July, we looked out over an expanse of shimmering blue water dotted with boats. Music traveled up to us on the warm air and rattled our windows. The beach was packed, and our view was filled with people swimming, laughing, reveling.

  That week was to have been the first week of Dave’s fourth year of residency.

  Dave’s parents drove down the morning of the Fourth of July, his mother bringing us sweets and baked goods, before heading back north to join the rest of the family for a parade. How I envied them all the ability to do something as ordinary and carefree as go to a parade. There is just something about holidays and happy times that makes it so much harder when you yourself are in pain. It is hard to feel deeply unhappy on any day—but all the more so when you are confronted, like on a holiday, with so many other people who just look and seem so darn happy.

  Our friends Lizzie and Kevin came to RIC that afternoon, and the four of us walked outside to the lake. It was Dave’s first outing far from the RIC campus without medical supervision, and he was not himself—unsteady on his feet and not entirely coherent when he spoke—so we joked that everyone would assume he was just another reveler who had perhaps enjoyed too many adult beverages.

  * * *

  —

  We were one month out from the stroke, and I was still running on adrenaline and positivity. But I could not ignore the fear and confusion and discomfort I saw on the faces of some of the friends who visited. I knew some people had to be thinking, Thank God this didn’t happen to me. It was only natural. One particular remark that stung was when the wife of a visitor told me she had “hugged her husband extra close in bed the night before, thinking about how it could have been him.” I knew people had to be thinking that, of course. Candidly, I would have had the same thought had the places been reversed, but she did not win any awards for empathy by saying it aloud.

  In an email to Dave’s friends updating them on the move to RIC and letting them know about the policies for visitors, Andy laid out some basic facts to prepare people for what to expect. He asked people to project positivity during their visits; to talk to Dave and ask him questions and try to trigger fond memories and associations. Andy wrote, “I know it’s sad to see a guy wearing Yale Lacrosse shorts who can’t cut his own food.” Yes, it was, I realized, when I saw it spelled out so plainly in writing.

  May we always remember how lucky we are.

  After long days in the hospital, I would return home to our empty apartment and I would see that photo of the four-leaf clovers and I would want to tear it off the wall and hurl it across the room. What had I been thinking, writing such a thing? Had I really needed to tempt the fates like that? Had I needed to revel in my good luck, gloating before the gods, daring them to rob me of my fortune?

  Sometimes I would stare at my iPhone calendar and lust after the life of June 8. I’d relive the moments and days that predated the stroke, all of them now washed in a blissful, halcyon glow of bygone innocence and ease. I would rewatch the iPhone video from the day, just a week before the stroke, when we found out we were having a girl—our shocked, delighted faces, our long hug. I would wallow in a temporary amnesia that pretended that life was as it had once been, back when the biggest problem was a parking ticket or a tight work deadline. I would barter in my head, negotiating with God: “If only you will give me Dave back, I promise I will…”

  May we always remember.

  Remember? Dave could not even remember what city we lived in. He could not remember our anniversary. He could not remember the name of our beloved pet dog.

  Fatigue, too, was a constant combatant. Dave would nap between most therapy sessions, on top of thirteen hours of sleep each night. At bedtime I would cuddle him—full light outside the window, these being the longest days of the year—in the narrow hospital bed until he fell asleep. As he drifted off, I would pray for healing. I would pray that the Holy Spirit would work miracles in that room and inside his head.

  In our old life, the life before his stroke, our bedtime ritual had been very different. I was always the one who took longer to get ready—all Dave had to do was brush his teeth, whereas I would brush my teeth and take out my contact lenses and wash my face and apply a whole lineup of toners and lotions. Dave would lie in bed, battling sleep. “Hurry up, I’m falling asleep!”

  I’d hurry through the rest of my routine and then hop into bed beside him and Penny (yes, we let our dog sleep with us). Dave would wrap his arms around us, a big sandwich, and he would say, sighing: “This is my idea of heaven.”

  One night at RIC when I got in bed with him to snuggle before sleep, I told him about that. “You’d always say: ‘This is my idea of heaven.’ Do you remember that?”

  He shook his head. Marya, visiting, had witnessed our nighttime hospital ritual, and so, several weeks later, a pillow showed up with Penny’s face on it. She wanted the three of us to be able to continue our bedtime ritual. So each night we would snuggle, the two of us and my big belly and the Penny pillow, and I would say, “This is my idea of heaven.” I would fight back the tears as I hoped that one day Dave would remember that ritual from our old life. That one day we would return to the place where he would hurry me through my nighttime face-washing and I could hop into bed and he could say: This is my idea of heaven.

  The days were long and full of rehab, and I continued to add to my DearDave Word document each night. I would write as the sun dipped through the window over Lake Michigan. I would look from Dave’s sleeping figure around the darkening room. Just beside the bed, the digital picture frame our friend Russell had sent would be rotating through photos, the scenes of our former life on an endless loop. Dave, suntanned and relaxed with our friends in Lake George. Dave and me, jubilant, running out of the church on our wedding day as flower petals rain down. Dave, proud, standing next to his father at his medical school graduation. Dave playing lacrosse in college. Each photo was a fresh punch in the gut. The shards of a life that had once belonged to two very different people.

  Dear Dave,

  Holding you tonight, watching you drift off to sleep, I wept silently, not wanting to wake you up. This digital picture frame in your hospital room reminds me of so many joyful memories, so many memories that, now, hurt to look at. Will you ever come back to me in the same smiling, strong, glorious form as the one in the pictures I now see? God, I miss you.

  There’s a phrase I like, one that I have told myself often during hard times. It’s always darkest before the dawn. I do not know whether that was necessarily the darkest moment; there would be no point in trying to identify that. It was a dark moment, but it is certainly true that a major spear of light followed shortly after.

  Chapter 23

  New York

  November 2011

  Dave and I were married exactly two months before I realized that life had completely changed.

  Dave had just begun his fourth and final year of medical school, and we were now looking ahead to the next step in his training. Residency would be five years, and he would be training in orthopedic surgery. Dave cast a wide net, applying to programs all over the country.

  His first interview was at Duke, a place where he had nearly gone for undergraduate, the place where his parents had met and courted and spent the early years of their marriage. Dave loved Duke, and he called me from his residency interview elated, telling me: “Alli, you’d love it here. Forget our one-bedroom apartment, we could have a house for wh
at we pay in rent.” Next was UCLA, and I got the phone call: “You’d love it out here. It’s seventy degrees in the middle of winter. You’d be far from your family, but think how often they’d want to visit!” He loved most of the places he saw. I went on this roller coaster beside him, Googling apartment rentals in each subsequent city or town, wrapping my head around each possible plunge that we might take together.

  Ultimately, though, it came down to two places: Columbia in New York City and Rush in Chicago. Dave, being from Chicago, was predisposed to like the programs there, but he especially loved the program at Rush University Medical Center, which he believed could not be more perfectly suited to him. He had also enjoyed his time at Columbia and had a close relationship with several of the attending orthopedic surgeons and therefore gave serious consideration to continuing there.

  Programs aside, in our perfect worlds, Dave wanted to be in Chicago and I wanted to be in New York. I had grown up in New York. Heck, not only had I grown up in New York, I had grown up in “I Love New York” commercials. My family and most of my closest friends were there. I wanted to be a writer, and much of the publishing world and media were headquartered in New York City. But as passionate as I felt about New York, as rooted as I felt there, that was exactly how Dave felt about his hometown near Chicago. So, what were we to do?

  This was, without a doubt, the single greatest challenge our relationship had faced to that point. We both loved our families and friends and were both eager to work in the city where we felt most rooted—so who got to win this one?

  Dave got the message through the orthopedic grapevine that if he really liked a program much more than all the others, if there was one program that he knew he wanted to rank at the top of his list, it would help significantly to let that program know how serious he was about going there. “Alli, I think I should tell Rush that they are my first choice.”

  He told me this one night over the phone as I was wrapping up work and preparing to head to dinner with some girlfriends. I paused, irritated. Dave had not even completed all of his New York interviews yet. There was a big one coming up at a really competitive New York program; couldn’t he at least try to keep an open mind and not shut the door on the idea of New York until he had at least seen all of the options? What if he fell in love with a New York program?

  The night before, I had heard Dave in the other room on the phone with his dad, practicing for an upcoming interview. “My greatest achievement? Easy. My greatest achievement is, without a doubt, marrying my wife,” Dave had said. Now I thought: Well, excuse me, if I’m really your greatest achievement, then can’t you please think about my perspective here?

  But he was running out of time to let Rush know—he’d already interviewed there and he had heard through the rumor mill that Rush would be ranking their applicants in the next day or so. If he wanted to rank in their top five and thus stand his best chance of getting into his dream program, it made sense for him to at least let them know how much he loved it there. I dug in. I withheld my blessing for such a conversation. It all struck me as premature and unfairly rushed; I felt it was only fair that he finish his interviews and give the New York programs a shot before committing us to a move I was not crazy about, one that I worried could pull me away from my own career opportunities in New York.

  We took a few hours apart, both of us tense and frustrated that the other one seemed to be calling the shots over our respective futures. Dave called Louisa and spoke with her. Louisa then called me. It is a testament to my mother-in-law and the remarkable woman she is that she listened to each of us with complete fairness and open-minded understanding. She helped us each to see the other’s perspective, and she urged us to communicate in a respectful and considerate manner.

  In the end, I told Dave to have the conversation he had been wanting to have—to let Rush know they were at the top of his list. He answered by telling me that he had decided not to do it, to keep his mind open until he was done with all of his New York interviews. It was like our own version of the O. Henry story. We would hold off on making our rank list…for now. But the big unanswered question loomed, and we still had not sorted out how we would answer it.

  Then something happened that was very hard, and that, in turn, made our decision very easy. If the question of Chicago versus New York was some choppy water rocking our marital boat, we soon forgot about that choppy water when we realized that we were smack dab in the middle of a hurricane.

  I remember the phone call. It was early February, just a few days before Dave’s birthday and Valentine’s Day and the day Dave had to submit his final rank list for residency.

  It was the middle of the day, and I was at work at my father’s consulting group in Midtown Manhattan, where I did work researching and writing. For the past few months, my mother-in-law had been feeling pain in her back. In recent weeks it had gotten worse, and physical therapy was not helping. Her voice was shaky on the phone, entirely unlike her usually chipper tone. “It’s the Big C,” Louisa told me. Cancer. My mother-in-law had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a rare cancer of the blood. They say that “there is cancer, and then there is CANCER.” Well, this was CANCER. No cure exists as of yet for multiple myeloma, and we were told that the life expectancy was just a couple of years.

  I called Dave immediately. He was up on the Columbia campus in Washington Heights, and he broke down, sobbing into the phone. He had spoken with his parents right before I had. He adored his mother—everyone who knew her adored Louisa, and Dave was her baby. He was a mess. “I can’t be away from her as she’s going through this, Alli. We’ve got to be in Chicago. I need to be near her.”

  I could feel the anguish in his voice—fear, helplessness, the overpowering desire to be near his mother during the coming months of uncertainty and hardship and physical pain. “Of course you do,” I said.

  We put Rush University number one and University of Chicago number two, to ensure that we would end up near Dave’s family. In the end, fighting over which city to live in felt like a luxury compared to the news that a loved one might not live.

  Chapter 24

  Dear Dave,

  You are working so hard. I am so proud of you. Watching you on the treadmill, hooked up to a harness and practicing hand-eye coordination exercises with balls and balloons, singing at the top of your lungs to Billy Joel, I’ve never been more in awe of you or more in love with you.

  Today while you had your hour-long occupational therapy session I went for a walk along Lake Michigan. I’m starting to feel things again, small things, like appreciation for sunshine. I’m smiling back at people who comment on my baby bump. I’m coming back to life along with you.

  Dear Dave,

  Today was a day of ups and downs. In your psychology consult, you had a frank conversation with Dr. Pratt about what happened to you, and it seemed like one of the first times that it really sank in. You got really sad. Your entire demeanor seemed to sag. You told us that you felt sad, that you felt like you weren’t your old self, that you didn’t understand why this stroke had happened to you. It took all I had not to burst into tears right there; I wanted to be strong for you. I told you that I felt sad, too. That I didn’t understand it, either. But that I know you will beat this. That I do not want to call anything a “silver lining” in this shitty situation, but that I know, somehow, somewhere down the road, we will find positives out of this hell. That it has been the worst three weeks of your life, and that fighting your way back after this stroke will be the hardest challenge you will ever face, but that there is no doubt in my mind that you will win this fight. That we will win this fight together. And that, in the end, you will not only be 100 percent of yourself, but that you will be 110 percent of yourself. That, after surviving this hell, you will come out of it with a greater appreciation for life and all of its beauty. Hey, you are ALIVE. Let’s start with that: you are still here with us. I have never bee
n more grateful for anything in my life. You are here and you will get better and at the end of this, I believe you will have an entirely new outlook on life. You will be a better man and an even better husband and brother and son and friend. An even better doctor. An even better father. A kinder, gentler, more appreciative man.

  Fortunately, we followed that psych talk with physical therapy, which you always love. We hooked you up to the anti-gravity machine, which was pretty cool, and you ran with 50 percent of your body weight. You enjoyed that, though you did comment (ALOUD!) that it “made your balls feel weird.” The PT really liked that one. Yikes. Following your PT session you had a steady stream of visitors. You had a childhood friend from Lake Forest, Teddy; you had a college friend, Peter; and you had a residency friend, Will. Three friends from three different phases of your life all in one room because they love you so much. You laughed big time. Your mood totally lifted as you recalled childhood memories and listened to the latest residency gossip.

  We ended the day on a high note. In bed, I repeated our daily mantra: “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.” I asked you if you truly believed that and you told me you did. I couldn’t stop hugging you. I’m just so happy to have you here. You are so beautiful to me. Watching you sleep, your face innocent, your body tucked up snugly under the white blankets, you look so peaceful. I hope you are dreaming wonderful dreams. I have always loved to watch you sleep (sorry if that sounds creepy)—I have. You just look so…at rest. But now even more so. OK, you have an early morning tomorrow with the breakfast group, and I need to get home to walk our sweet pup. I love you. Sleep tight and dream happy dreams, my love. May this sleep tonight be restorative and healing and peaceful, and may God be working miracles in your brain and your body. I love you.