Wild and Precious Life

by Deborah Ziegler

  Carmen got her cell phone and searched for his number.

  Dan slumped on a chair. With a perplexed expression, he said that he’d heard them order Narcan, a drug used with drug addicts who have overdosed.

  “Who ordered what?” I stopped whimpering and tried to focus. “The doctor overdosed her?” I asked and began to cry again as Dan strode out of the room on a quest to find out why Britt had been given Narcan.

  Carmen held the cell phone against my ear and I heard it ringing. I grasped the phone. Gary’s voice broke my last bit of reserve.

  “Come now,” I sobbed into the phone. “Britt’s bad. Very bad. I need you.”

  “Honey, slow down. I can’t understand.” Gary’s voice faded as I handed the phone back to Carmen.

  I gave in to a guttural noise building from deep within. An animal-like howl erupted as I rocked back and forth on the floor.

  My wails had quieted to sobs by the time Dan returned to the waiting room, a smile on his face. Brittany was conscious. The Narcan had worked.

  She’s alive.

  I followed him down the hallway, where someone opened the double doors to let us in again.

  The curtain to Britt’s room was drawn, and the room was dimly lit. Machines blinked numbers, but nothing beeped a warning. The nurse said we must follow the brain injury protocol written on the whiteboard. “Dim light. No television. Speak softly.” Brittany sat propped up at an angle.

  “This angle must be maintained at all times,” the nurse warned us. “Don’t lower the head of the bed.”

  I approached Brittany and softly said, “It’s Momma, Britt. Momma’s here.” I touched her hair.

  Britt opened her eyes. Her pupils, tiny pinpoints, focused on me. One eye opened wider than the other. The heavy eyelid fluttered.

  “I’m sorry, Momma,” she whispered. “I’m not going to be able to take care of you when you’re old, the way you take care of Grandpa.” Tears welled up and rolled down her face. “I’m not going to live that long.”

  Where had this thought come from? Watching me care for my elderly father for the last three years? I touched her flushed cheek. “Hush, sweetness. Just rest. Everything will be all right. I’m here now. Momma’s here.” These words rushed out in a loving whisper, but the mournful warning continued to sound rhythmically inside me. I tucked her tangled hair behind her ear.

  “I feel so bad. I want these out.” She tried to reach for the IV lines, but it was as though she couldn’t see where her hand was.

  “Let’s leave them in for now.” I stroked her hair as Dan untangled each of the four lines running into Britt. He gently laid them out straight on her bed.

  Dan talked to Brittany about keeping the lines in. “What happened?” I whispered to the nurse.

  She couldn’t seem to meet my eyes. “Oh my, yes. Well, we’re not sure. She might have had a seizure.”

  My hackles rose. “But she was unconscious, not jerking.” I didn’t buy this explanation. “She’s never had a seizure.”

  The nurse patted my back. “Well, nevertheless, it was a terrible way to see your daughter when you first arrived. Don’t you worry, all of her stats are fine now.” She busied herself punching buttons on the machines, and then bustled out of the room.

  Dan left to update Carmen.

  I was trying to determine if the nurse was someone who could be trusted around my child. My daughter was of me, and a great deal like me, but younger, smarter, prettier. She was the hope of my heart. She embodied the grandchildren I eventually hoped to have. She was the promising career, the result of the excellent university education I’d scrimped and saved for. She didn’t owe me these things; she was already all of this, and more. She was my only child—my everything.

  Sitting next to her bed, I felt old, even ancient. I felt my youth slipping away, my future sliding away, the rest of my life tumbling into oblivion. Inside my gut, I knew that Brittany, my baby, was going to die. Looking back, I realize that my animal instinct discerned this. However, the thin veneer of my purportedly superior human knowledge denied it. Everything I’d learned in the fifty-seven years of my life—from my parents, schools, and life experiences—told me to keep that mask of human superiority on and deny the warning whimper inside.

  Science. Medicine. They would save Brittany. Or perhaps God, through a doctor using science and medicine, would save Brittany. Yes, a combination of faith and science and medicine would be unbeatable. Or so I told myself.

  As I watched my daughter sleep, I felt no different, no less awed, than the day the obstetrician held her slippery naked body above me.

  “It’s a girl,” the nurse announced, holding what looked like a tiny Martian near my head.

  In that instant, I felt a love like nothing else in the world. I would have ruthlessly crushed anyone trying to hurt my baby. My daughter hadn’t been outside my womb five minutes, yet I knew I would die for her if need be. It was as though a switch has been thrown, and from that moment forward I would think constantly about her welfare. I was already fixated on keeping her warm and safe, guarding her against danger.

  Later, the nurse rolled a bassinet into the room. Inside was the most beautiful, tiny creature I’d ever laid eyes on. Her head was perfectly shaped, not flattened or pointed by having to pass through the birth canal, since I’d had an emergency C-section. She had dark hair and gorgeous skin, as though she’d been born with a tan. I loved my child with a fierce protectiveness that altered me forever.

  Brittany Lauren was the name I chose for my baby in November 1984. I thought it was original; my mother was British, and its Celtic meaning was “from Britain.” In truth, I’d fallen in love with a name that would become one of the most popular girl’s names in the eighties.

  A breech baby, Brittany arrived via cesarean because although I was already in labor the hospital classified first-baby breech births as “high risk.” My obstetrician told me I’d have to go to a different hospital if I wanted to try to deliver naturally. Brittany kicked hard and broke my water almost a full month early, avoiding, by one day, a painful procedure whereby the doctors would have tried to turn her manually. She was born with mild dysplasia, a hip click. She looked tan because she had newborn jaundice. She was absolutely perfect.

  Now standing beside my adult daughter’s bed, again I felt my body and soul go through extremely powerful reactions, as I had postnatally. Brittany lay there, helpless and in pain. Disease threatened her brain. She was in danger, and just as when she was a newborn, I realized I would die for her.

  However, a willingness to die for one’s child was, in this instance, of absolutely no use. There was no such thing as a brain transplant. I sat next to my beautiful girl repeating a useless circular prayer of “Take me, not her. Take me . . .” This begging, this entreaty, didn’t make any sense; it didn’t make any difference, and didn’t calm me in any way. But I couldn’t stop.

  2

  Bad News

  January 1—3, 2014

  In the real dark night of the soul, it is always three o’ clock in the morning, day after day.

  —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

  Two young men came rattling into the ICU room with a gurney. Brittany blinked awake for a moment, one eye droopy, and then disappeared into sleep again. Dan had left the room earlier to do research and make some important phone calls. “What are you doing?” I asked as they slid her limp body onto the gurney.

  “The neurologist ordered a functional MRI. It scans the brain while she’s asked to perform various tasks.” He was already rolling the gurney out of the room.

  “It’s just an MRI,” I said to Brittany, walking toward the ICU doors. “Nothing to worry about, sweetie!” I called to the gurney as it disappeared.

  “Momma, stay with me,” Brittany called out sleepily.

  She was back too soon. I knew that an MRI should take longer. I looked over at Dan, who’d joined me. Something wasn’t right.

  “She couldn’t do the MRI,” the guy pu
shing the gurney said to us. “She was claustrophobic. We’ll need to mildly sedate her and try again.”

  “She’s never been anxious or claustrophobic. She’s had MRIs before.” I didn’t want Brittany being drugged anymore; not after finding her unresponsive.

  Dan reiterated this, and stood up as they moved Britt back onto her bed.

  “She was trying to climb out of the machine. She was talking about paradigms.” The guy shrugged and left, passing a doctor entering the room.

  “She was most uncooperative, and very vocal about not wanting to do the test.” The doctor raised his eyebrows. “We may need to sedate her.”

  I locked eyes with him. “I think she’s too out of it. I don’t think she needs more drugs to make her even more out of it.”

  “I suppose we could wait awhile, let the Dilaudid wear off a little, and try again,” he conceded. “She’ll be better able to follow the directions to complete the tasks. I’ll try to reschedule for later today.”

  The afternoon ticked by. Dan went in and out of the room, making phone calls and sitting by Britt’s bed. When Britt surfaced, I told her that she’d been a little out of it before, and that they’d thought she was claustrophobic. I explained that they hadn’t been able to complete the test.

  “Can you do the MRI without any anti-anxiety meds, baby?” I asked. Dan pulled the curtain aside and slipped into the room.

  “Of course I can. I’m not claustrophobic. You are, Momma. That’s your issue.” Brittany sounded incredulous that anyone would think she was claustrophobic. “I want my laptop, Dan. Where is it?” Brittany spoke authoritatively, her heavy eyelid fluttering.

  Dan explained that computers were not allowed in her room while Brittany fiddled with her bed, trying to lower the head.

  “The nurse said your bed has to stay up at this angle. It’s not supposed to be lowered,” I told her.

  Dan reached out to stop Brittany from pushing the control.

  “I don’t give a shit what she says. I’m not comfortable like this.” Brittany continued trying to operate the bed. “And my head still hurts.”

  Thankfully she was interrupted by the young men with the gurney, back again.

  “Ready for a ride?” They smiled and chatted with her as they carefully transferred her to the gurney.

  “Dan, I want my laptop!” Brittany called, as once again the double doors swished closed.

  This time she was gone a good while, so I knew she must be successfully completing the MRI. I flinched at the thought of her poor hurting head, subjected to loud tapping and thumping inside the narrow cylinder of the machine.

  “How long do you think we can keep her computer away from her?” I asked Dan, who replied that we should for as long as possible.

  I stayed busy by googling what they were doing to her. During a functional MRI, physicians identified regions linked to critical functions such as speaking, moving, sensing, or planning. The goal was to detect correlations between brain activation and the task the subject performed during the scan. This sounded like a logical test. Then I looked up what happened in a Dilaudid overdose. The situation I walked into at the hospital, when Brittany was unresponsive, had lost consciousness, was described as a Dilaudid reaction requiring immediate emergency help. I found out that Dilaudid is eight times more powerful on a milligram basis than morphine. Brittany’s weak pulse, low blood pressure, and pinpoint pupils were all consistent with such an overdose. Finally, I found that the antidote was Narcan, the very medicine the doctor had ordered. Narcan was described as a pure opioid antagonist used to counter the effects of opioid overdose. While I do not know what exactly happened with Brittany, this information did not give me comfort in the care Brittany was receiving. I would need to talk to Gary about this when he arrived.

  I mulled over Brittany’s mention of paradigms when they first tried the MRI. Even though she was loaded up on Dilaudid, her reference seemed perfectly coherent to me. Brittany excelled in science. As a science teacher, I had hoped that she would go into the field. At one time she’d expressed interest in studying to be an immunologist.

  In the past we’d spoken of paradigm shifts, or great shifts in thinking; and also of paradigm paralysis, the refusal to see beyond current models of thinking. I wouldn’t know until later that my daughter would be leading a good bit of the country’s population toward a huge paradigm shift. My mother’s instinct told me that even on heavy medication, even before results of the MRIs were shared, Brittany was shifting her focus. She was always three steps ahead.

  Carmen thoughtfully picked Gary up at the airport and brought him directly to the hospital. He met me in the waiting room.

  I must have looked a sight with swollen eyes, smeared makeup, and a panicked expression. I rushed into his arms. He held me and smoothed my hair. “What have the doctors said?”

  “Nothing yet. But it’s bad.” I wept into his shoulder.

  Later I offered to stay with Brittany in the ICU that night, but I was firmly told that there was a “no overnight visitation” policy. I argued that I didn’t think it was a good idea to leave her alone, but the wall was up.

  Gary and I returned to Brittany and Dan’s house with him to catch some sleep, and found a giant pot of fragrant lentil soup simmering on the stove. As I ladled the hearty soup into a bowl, I thought of how kind it had been of Carmen to do this in the midst of running back and forth to the hospital. She was such a good cook. The soup was comfort food, and felt like a giant hug from her.

  The three of us sat eating dinner with our glasses of red wine. We were tired, hungry, and quiet. I wanted to cry again. The house was full of Brittany’s Christmas things. Her love of the holidays surrounded me. In fact, their whole house was infused with the very essence of Britt. Her wedding photos and pictures from her trip to Africa livened the family room walls.

  Dan insisted on doing the dishes himself, so Gary and I went to bed. Before I turned out the lights, I stood gazing at photos that Brittany had taken at the elephant sanctuary in Thailand where she’d worked for a while. A close-up of a giant elephant eye was my favorite. The elephant’s kind, expressive eye gazed at me as if she knew and understood my fear and sorrow. Brittany had told me mother elephants often became deeply despondent after the death of their calves. She said that a mother would stand over the remains of her baby, touch the body with her sensitive trunk, turn it over, and caress it. There was no greater love in an elephant herd than maternal love.

  Help me, Mama Elephant, I thought as I turned out the light.

  In the wee hours of the morning, Dan received a phone call from the night nurse. Brittany had pulled all her IVs out and was trying to walk out of the ICU. Could he come help? I slept on, unaware of the call.

  Gary and I awakened the next morning to find Dan gone. We drove Brittany’s car to the hospital. A succession of doctors came and went. Over and over, she was asked to sit up and do a series of tasks. The doctor seemed pleased that Brittany was acing these tests. She was asked to stare at his nose, and her peripheral vision was checked. The doctor used a pen-sized light, watched her pupils react, and asked her to follow the light from side to side. He gently tapped just below her kneecaps with a rubber hammer, and they bounced in response just as anyone’s would. She was asked to smile, grimace, and frown. She was asked the name of the president, what day of the week it was, what year it was. I was amazed; I could have easily answered 2013, since it was only January 2. But Brittany answered all questions correctly.

  Even when they listed three objects and then asked her to list those objects after more tests, Brittany was on it. She felt the pinpricks, and was able to identify a number traced on her back. She was able to move her finger from the tip of her nose to the physician’s finger. She could identify the stethoscope when asked to feel it with her eyes closed. With each test, my heart swelled with hope and reassurance. She could smoothly rub one heel up and down the opposite shin. My daughter could perform every task with ease. Surely, nothing was serious
ly wrong. It had to be an eye problem, I thought; just that one drooping eye.

  Late in the afternoon of the third day at the community hospital, a doctor we’d seen before entered Brittany’s dimly lit room. He repeated the tests: the light, the hammer, the pushing up and pushing down. Dan, Gary, and I watched as he checked Brittany’s chart, scribbled something on it, and prepared to leave. He was dressed casually, in what looked like a jogging suit, almost as though he planned to take a run after this quick look-see.

  He was almost out the door when I heard Brittany’s voice. “Hey, are you my doctor? Don’t leave. I want to talk to you.”

  The man hesitated, and then stepped back into the room. “Yes, I’m the neurological surgeon on this case,” he said.

  “Have you seen my scans? Can you tell me what’s going on?” Britt’s voice seemed to emanate from the shadows of the room. “I’ve been here for more than forty-eight hours, and no one’s talked to me.”

  The doctor shifted his weight. He opened the file in his hand and flipped through some pages, buying time. Those few seconds did not bode well.

  “You have a large infiltrating nonenhancing lesion present in the left prefrontal lobe, and it extends posteriorly into the left temporal lobe. It is also crossing into the left hemisphere and pushing on the right ventricle.” The neurosurgeon spoke in a soft but clear voice. He looked up from the file for a moment, and then back down. He moved toward the door.

  Stupidly I felt relief. A nonenhancing lesion didn’t sound too bad. He hadn’t said tumor. He hadn’t used the C-word. I’d had a lesion in my mouth after oral surgery; wasn’t that sort of like an ulcer?

  “So I have a brain tumor. A big brain tumor?” Brittany’s voice was firm, and much louder than the doctor’s. “Can you elaborate a bit? Infiltrating?” Brit’s eyebrows arched up. “Can you tell me what a ‘large infiltrating lesion’ is? What does that mean?”