Second Lives

by P. D. Cacek

  Ryan waved him back and walked to the bed, placing the bag on the sheets covering Jamie’s chest. Any lower and he wouldn’t have felt it.

  “Pistachio baklava from the Greek bakery over on Crenshaw. Gus sends his love. He wouldn’t even let me pay for these.”

  Jamie touched the bag with his fingers. “Thank him for me.”

  “I did, but I will again.”

  “You know he can’t have pastries,” Jamie’s mother said.

  “Maybe later.” His hand moved away from the bag and took Ryan’s hand. “Don’t get upset, okay?”

  Ryan tightened his grip. “Now you’re starting to scare me. What’s going on, J-man?”

  “Maybe we should go,” his mother, the martyr, said as she stood up. “I don’t want you to get upset, honey, and it is his day.”

  “Mom…Dad, please, it’ll be easier if you stayed.” Ryan watched the beautiful gray eyes turn toward the foot of the bed. “Jiro…would you?”

  Jiro cleared his throat and began, and somewhere halfway through Jamie’s mother started to cry and Ryan’s hearing must have gone because he was only hearing every other word and they didn’t make any sense at all.

  “What?”

  Jiro stopped and looked at him and it was only then that Ryan noticed their friend had been reading from a very formal-looking sheaf of papers in his hand.

  “It’s what Jamie wants.”

  Ryan shook his head. “What is?”

  “No!” Jamie’s mother was on her feet, clawing the air between her and Jamie’s father as she reached for his hand. “I won’t listen to any more of this. It’s insane! It’s not going to happen, Jamie, it won’t happen.”

  “Mom, please, sit down.”

  “Jamie, you’re not thinking rationally.” It was his father this time. “It’s just the situation.”

  “Dad, I know what I’m doing.”

  “No! No you don’t, you can’t—”

  And just like the night of the accident, the words came unglued and started floating around Ryan’s head. Only this time he didn’t have the luxury of being drunk, this time the alcohol couldn’t be blamed for not understanding. One by one, while Jamie and Jiro and his parents all talked at once, Ryan put the words together.

  Executor.

  Will.

  Power of attorney.

  Life support.

  No extraordinary measures.

  DNR.

  Jamie had signed a DNR – do not resuscitate – order with the hospital so that should anything happen he would not receive life support nor would extraordinary measures be taken to sustain him. And while Jamie had made him the executor of his Will, he’d given Jiro his power of attorney so neither he, nor Jamie’s parents, would be responsible for seeing that his final decision was carried out.

  “Stop.”

  They didn’t hear him, so Ryan said it louder. “I said stop!”

  And they did.

  “No way, Jamie. It’s not going to happen.”

  “That’s what I’ve been saying,” Jamie’s mother said and, for once Ryan agreed with her…to a point.

  Ryan shifted his weight and leaned down so he was looking into his partner’s eyes. “There’s no way I’m going to let Jiro have your power of attorney, pal.”

  “Listen to me, Ryan.” Jiro closed the sheaf of papers and became a lawyer. “While it is customary, in cases like this, for the next of kin or designated loved one to be granted power of attorney, Jamie thought it would be easier if someone outside the immediate domestic unit—”

  God, was that what they were? A domestic unit?

  “So, what say we get married? I’ll marry you right here and now and a spouse’s rights have got to trump a POA, right?”

  “Not legally,” Jiro said, “sorry.”

  Jamie smiled and for the life of him Ryan couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen him smile before that.

  “How could you? You…you… Why couldn’t it have been you?” This time Jamie’s mother didn’t wait for her husband. She fled the room weeping.

  Jamie’s father got up more slowly. Ryan leaned back to give the man room to kiss his son.

  “I – I’ll talk to her. We’ll be by tomorrow. Good night, son.”

  Ryan listened to the man’s slow steps echo through the corridor.

  “You know that was a lousy proposal,” Jamie said.

  “Hey, it was my first. Now – ” he looked at their friend, “ – how soon can you transfer the power of attorney to me?”

  “The paperwork is easy, but I seriously don’t think it’s the best course of action.”

  “Why? And please stop talking like a lawyer…just answer me as a friend, okay?”

  “Okay, then as a friend let me ask this…could you do what was necessary?”

  Ryan had a feeling he knew what was coming, but couldn’t stop it. “Like what?”

  “Like letting them turn off life support?”

  There were so many things he could say…wanted to say…but they all came down to one simple word: no.

  So he lied. “Yes.”

  Jamie smiled up at him, gray eyes brimming with crystal tears. “I don’t want you to have to make that decision, Ry.”

  “It won’t come to that, J-man.” Ryan shook his head. “Look, it’s only natural you’d feel this way…now…you’re depressed, it’s normal, but I’ve talked to your doctors and they say you’re getting better. It’ll be okay, just give it a little time and—”

  “Time?” The tears in his eyes overflowed. “How much time? It’ll never be okay. This is all I’m going to be from now on and time’s not going to change that. I’m not the same person I was, the person you fell in love with.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I’m nothing.”

  Ryan grabbed Jamie’s shoulders and squeezed hard enough to make them both blink.

  “Can you let me go, Ry? Can you do that?”

  Ryan let go of Jamie’s shoulders even though he knew that wasn’t what his lover was talking about.

  “Look guys, I understand, and I promise I’ll do whatever needs to be done…if the time ever comes.”

  The lie was so easy, Ryan almost believed it himself.

  But it was obvious Jamie didn’t.

  “Ry, I appreciate this, I really do, and maybe you’re right about this place and all, but if something happened that turns me into a rutabaga with no hope of ever coming back, would you be able to let me go?”

  NO! “Of course I would. I hate rutabagas.”

  Jamie laughed and Jiro cleared his throat.

  “Jamie?” Jamie nodded. “Well, in that case I informally relinquish my claim as your power of attorney. When I get back to the office I’ll start all the paperwork and give you a call when it’s done.”

  “Thanks, Jiro,” Ryan said.

  Jiro walked over to Jamie and leaned down, hugging him as best he could. Jamie was still smiling when their friend walked around the bed to give Ryan his share.

  “The transfer shouldn’t take more than a couple days.” He stared into Ryan’s eyes. “Are you sure about this, Ry?”

  “I’m sure,” he told them and this time he wasn’t lying, “because nothing is going to happen.”

  As Jiro headed for the door, Ryan lowered the bed rail and sat down on the thin, plastic-covered mattress.

  “Bye-bye,” Jiro said from the doorway. “Gotta get home or Oren’ll change the locks on me. We’re dealing with a diaper rash issue at the moment.”

  Ryan smiled. “Tell Oren to wear boxers.”

  “Hah hah.”

  Ryan took Jamie’s hand and kissed it.

  “You’re not going anywhere except home. And once you’re there, everything will be okay. You’ll see.”

  And it would be…he’d get better
and stronger and the two of them would laugh and say ‘Remember that time in the hospital when all you could think about was that stupid DNR?’ and throw a Power of Attorney Burning Party and Bar-B-Que.

  BYOB.

  Ryan smiled. As soon as Jamie got home everything would be okay.

  Chapter Twelve

  Helen

  Helen turned the page and scanned the article on reality television’s newest young and beautiful media whore, and wished, for what must have been the hundredth time, she’d brought her Kindle.

  You’d think one of the nation’s top cardiologists would have better reading material in his waiting room beyond the latest issues of Hollywood gossip and golf magazines. Yawn.

  Helen closed the magazine with a slap and glared at the large wall clock above the glass-enclosed front office. Despite the fact that she’d asked for and had been given the first appointment of the day – 8:30 – it was now 9:45.

  A nurse practitioner had come to the lobby at 9:00 to tell her there’d been an emergency at the hospital and asked if she’d like to reschedule.

  Helen had answered, no, she would not.

  She had the time now and if that meant twiddling her thumbs and reading drivel in order to see a doctor whose credentials and internet rating put him in the top two per cent of heart specialists, so be it.

  She just wanted her life back.

  In the five weeks since she woke up on the beachfront sidewalk with someone’s towel wadded up under her head to find her friend in hysterics and strangers snapping pictures of her with their phones, her life had become a soap opera.

  A bad one.

  Everyone she knew, friends – especially Kate – law partners, even her clients had begun treating her as if she’d break at any moment: walking on tiptoes, constantly asking how she felt and telling her to ‘take it easy’.

  AUGH!

  Although it hadn’t been pleasant being literally tied to a hospital bed by electronic leads, wires, tubes and IVs, as she’d told a depressingly young cardiac resident, she felt fine.

  He’d smiled and told her she was lucky she’d had a myocardial infarction, a minor one, because if she hadn’t they might not have discovered the extent of atherosclerosis, a hardening of three of the four arteries in her heart, until it was too late.

  Whee.

  But she shouldn’t worry because it was something that could easily be ‘managed’ with a few lifestyle changes.

  Avoiding fatty foods and eating a well-balanced diet low in fat and cholesterol.

  Not drinking more than two alcoholic drinks a day.

  Exercising a minimum of thirty minutes a day.

  That sort of thing.

  All of which, Helen had told him, she’d been doing.

  Great! And, of course, she’d have to take medication – aspirin and Plavix® and Crestor®, oh my – for the rest of her life.

  Her partners had wanted her to take at least a two-week medical leave. She reminded them of the potentially high-profile, revenue-generating case she was working on and countered with seventy-two hours plus time served. A final settlement of one hundred and twenty hours was reached and amicably agreed on by both parties.

  Helen spent the five days of enforced rest searching the internet and compiling a list of top cardiac surgeons.

  She had the money and enough frequent flyer miles to go anywhere in the country, but was happy to discover three of the leading specialists had offices within driving distance.

  Helen made appointments in alphabetical order.

  The first two, Abrams and McMannus, had more conservative approaches than she liked, taking the ‘let’s wait and see how the medication works’ stance, but agreed that surgery might be a good secondary option ‘if it came to that’.

  Helen thanked them, deleted them from the list and hoped Dr. Franklin A. Stanton, MD, FACC, lived up to his internet hype. Stanton was one of the top interventional cardiologists who specialized in catheter-based treatment for coronary artery disease. If anyone would be willing to perform a percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty – the procedure Helen found on the internet that involved inflating a tiny balloon in her coronary artery – it’d be him.

  Fingers crossed.

  I need my life back.

  “Miss Harmon?” The receptionist peeked over the top of the curved desk that separated her from the sick and dying. “Dr. Stanton just pulled into the parking garage. He should be here in a few minutes.”

  “Thank you.” About bloody well time.

  Helen crossed the empty waiting room to the large picture window that looked out on a typical SoCal vista: palm trees drooping in the smoggy air above a swath of drying grass and wilting shrubs. The shrubs in this case bordered a meandering walkway that separated the cardiology wing of the medical center from the shimmering parking lot.

  Yawn.

  A tiny movement caught Helen’s eyes and she looked down to see a small white butterfly flutter among the faded peony blooms. Delicate as a snowflake, it bobbed and weaved and dipped among the faded blossoms. Then the butterfly’s wing touched an invisible line of silk and almost too fast for Helen to track, a fat black-and-yellow spider raced out and pulled the butterfly into its embrace.

  “In the midst of life we are still in deep doo-doo.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Helen turned and smiled at the man standing in the doorway.

  “Something my grandfather used to say. Dr. Stanton, I presume.”

  The picture on his Wikipedia page didn’t do him justice.

  Tall, broad-shouldered and athletic by the way he moved and, according to Wikipedia, only a few years younger than herself, divorced with no children, Dr. F. Stanton would have been a contender if one of her grandfather’s other sayings hadn’t been, “Don’t crap where you chow down.”

  As much as she regretted it, she would only let him fix her heart, not steal it.

  Alas.

  He straightened the lab coat as he crossed the room and offered his hand. Helen took it, pleased to find his grip strong, but not too strong, and the skin surprisingly soft.

  “Miss Harmon.” He pumped her hand once and let go. “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting.”

  Helen smiled and thanked him for taking the time to see her, adding, as they walked back to his office, her hope that everything had gone all right with his earlier emergency.

  “It did, thank you,” he said. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

  He sat after she did then picked up the copy of the file she’d given to the receptionist when she arrived.

  “Well.” His eyes moved back and forth across the half dozen pages like a metronome. “I assume this didn’t come as a complete surprise. The file states your primary physician has been treating your hypertension for the last five years?”

  He looked up to visually verify her answer.

  “Yes,” she said, “but with a very low dosage, which, combined with diet and exercise, should have been enough to control it. Apparently it didn’t.”

  “No, it didn’t.” Dr. Stanton closed the file and placed one hand over it as if he expected it to try and get away. “It should have and in a number of cases it does, but I’m afraid medical science has yet to develop a one-size-fits-all treatment. So, how can I help you?”

  It took Helen just under two minutes to tell him.

  “And you feel surgery is a better option than continuing the non-invasive regimen of medication and lifestyle adjustments that you’re already employing?”

  “Yes.”

  “And why would that be?”

  Helen smiled and went into summation mode. “I don’t like things hanging over my head, Dr. Stanton, especially things that can kill me at any moment. I’ve done the research and feel a percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty will give me the best chance of �
� ” Getting my life back. “ – improving the quality and quantity of my life.”

  He sat back and chuckled, but Helen knew he was impressed by her answer. She wasn’t showing off (much) by rattling off the procedure by name, but wanted to make sure he understood that she not only knew what she wanted, but why.

  “I assume you know that even with the surgery you’ll still need to be on certain medications for the rest of your life.”

  “Maintenance.” She paused for a moment, holding his gaze. “And I know what you’re going to ask next – if I’ll need to be on medication after the surgery, why not wait and see how things go with a drug regimen now, right?”

  “And?”

  “And, it’s a difference between maintenance and forestallment. It is possible that even with the new medication and dietary restrictions, I may still be back here in a few years and by then having the procedure won’t be optional, but mandatory. I’ll also be a few years older and possibly much sicker, so why wait?”

  Dr. Stanton was studying her the same way she’d seen a jury study a defendant they knew to be guilty. Helen sat perfectly still and let him look.

  “You’ve done your homework.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know the risks involved.”

  Helen could have rattled them off in alphabetical order if he’d asked. Allergic reaction to the dye, bleeding at the site of the catheter insertion, blood clots, cardiac arrhythmia, cardiac dysrhythmia, coronary artery rupture, death.

  “Yes.”

  He nodded and the smallest hint of a smile touched the corners of his mouth. “Then you also know that PTCA does not cure coronary heart diseases. You could still be back here in six months.”

  “Or not.”

  “Or not. All right, you’ve done some research, I suspect a great deal of research…” he waited for Helen to nod, “…but that can be a two-edged sword. I don’t mind when a patient or prospective patient comes to me informed, but you have to remember that the information gleaned from Wikipedia and WebMD sites may not be one hundred per cent accurate. Or current. It’s that one-size-fits-all problem again.”

  Helen folded her hands over the purse in her lap. Inside the purse was a flash drive onto which she’d downloaded all the research materials she’d gotten from Wikipedia and WebMD sites.