A Small Matter

by M. M. Wilshire

  “When you checked out on me at the altar,” she said, “it produced a few side-effects. One of them was, I went home and tried to kill myself with the pills you gave me. I was angry at you for leaving me--I wanted to hurt you by taking my own life. I hope you won’t condemn me. I’m really hoping you’ll sympathize with me. I tried to kill myself because I wanted freedom from the pain. I think that maybe I intended to fail in my attempt--after all, I could have put a twenty-two caliber bullet in my brain, the way you once said you feared you might do yourself one day. But I didn’t kill myself, and I don’t really know why. Maybe I wanted more time to think about it. Perhaps I wanted more time to think about you, you big lug. Or maybe I wanted more time, period.”

  She’d have been naive to think Mulroney heard her. Of course, she’d heard all the stories about coma victims hovering overhead in out-of-body experiences, watching everything around them. Something told her there was none of that going on here--but could she be sure? What did she, or the powers that be, really know about it? She’d have to have more faith--to continue to act “as if” he were with her, could hear her, could feel for her enough to do something about it and return to her.

  “I’ll tell you what I didn’t want--I didn’t want to be deprived of your love and companionship for the rest of my days. I didn’t want to be left alone. You shouldn’t have left me, Mulroney. You shouldn’t have. One thing good came of it, I must admit. I learned from your death how deep my passion was for you.

  “I have a sense of strangeness about myself now. I believe myself to be healed of my cancer. I feel better than I have in months. I don’t know if you were able to see what happened to me from where you are now. But I have changed. I don’t feel helpless anymore, but I feel very lonely now that you’re gone. I suppose it will be awhile before I can start my life up, you know--attempt to find something to do with myself--get a new job, travel, visit with friends, go out to dinner, all the little things we do to keep ourselves occupied. I suppose it will be awhile.”

  Mulroney, kept alive by the high-impact innovations of the best minds in the country, his body flat and immobile inside his windowless chamber in the temple of healing, his vital functions monitored by the array of synchronized machinery, lay passionless and unmoved by her speech, preoccupied, no doubt, by the conflict within his breast, to wit--to beat the odds against his chances of freeing himself from the tangle of confused and downwardly spiraling chemistries his body had fallen prey to and thereby escape his deadly conundrum and return to the land of the living before it was too late.

  Vickie, reflecting that if anything was going to happen, it was going to be because of a miracle, kissed the rosary, touching it to his forehead before placing it over his heart, crucifix down, so the tear of the Lady could contact his flesh. She retrieved the boom box purchased earlier from the music store from where Dalk had hidden it under the bed.

  “We’re not going to throw you away, Mulroney,” she said. “But you’ve got to come back to me.” She got on her knees beside the bed and took his hand in hers. “This is your little girl out here, baby,” she said. “I need you back. I love you and don’t want to live without you.”

  She pressed the play button on the boom box. The Beatles--She Loves You--began to blast--Vickie’s and Mulroney’s special song, dedicated to themselves the day he proposed--if anything would bring him back, that would be it.

  “It’s you she’s thinkin’ of,” she sang.

  She waited in the din, waited for her husband to feel the tears of the Lady, to hear the music of their song and press forward from across the veil and return to her. She waited for Mulroney, for his homing instinct to kick in and bring him back. She waited for him to put an end to the disruption his passing had created. She waited for him to put an end to her helplessness and hopelessness. She waited for a signal, a sign, that he understood and was on his way. She waited for a flutter of an eyelid, a flicker of a finger, a deepening breath. She waited for Mulroney to return to her and help her life begin again.

  She waited on her knees until her knees went numb. She waited. The song came to an end. She waited some more.

  But the big man never moved.

  Chapter 32

  “There is a time and place for patience,” Dr. Sellers said. “Once you’ve tried everything you can think of--but my feeling is you haven’t really tried everything, so it’s only natural you should want to shake Mulroney back to life.”

  “I’m too angry to be patient,” Vickie said. “Something was ripped away from me--I’ve been cheated out of my destiny. I know I should be feeling deep sorrow over Mulroney being in a coma and all, but the plain truth is, I feel angry. I guess that’s why I was shaking him--I’m angry that he left me like he did--and right at the time when we could have had the most happiness together.”

  Vickie had been interrupted at Mulroney’s bedside by Dr. Sellers, a grief counselor for the Medical Center who, at Dalk’s insistence, had sought Vickie out and caught her in the act of vigorously shaking Mulroney’s inert form. Sellers, a diminutive, elderly woman with graying hair accented by cheerful lips glossed an improbable shade of blue, had, at the sight of Vickie’s frenzy over the comatose giant, demonstrated considerable inner strength and took charge of Vickie’s outburst, leading her away from Mulroney and down the hall to the quiet comfort of a plush inner sanctum designed as a refuge for the downcast souls who were left behind to cope in the wake of a loved one’s illness. The two sat comfortably ensconced in deep leather chairs opposite a heavy marble-topped coffee table, where Dr. Sellers had, for over an hour, gently been coaxing Vickie’s account of the past three days from her and helping her come to grips with the high points as well as the low.

  “All it takes is one good idea to solve an impossible problem,” Dr. Sellers said. “But it takes patience to come up with that good idea.”

  “But which idea is the best one?” Vickie said. “Mulroney’s cardiologist, Dr. Lerner, thinks a good idea is to do the bypass while Mulroney is still in his coma.”

  “That’s not so unusual,” Dr. Sellers said. “They open up a lot of chests in the emergency room while the patient is still unconscious.”

  “But I can’t allow that,” Vickie said. “I have a different idea--I’m convinced if Mulroney doesn’t come back to life first, he’ll have no chance on the operating table. He has to come back and be present for the fight of his life. That’s why I guess I lost my patience and started shaking him--he’s taking too long to come back. Every minute he delays, the odds are going down. I’m in between a rock and a hard place--if I wait for him, and he dies, Dr. Lerner can say that I killed my husband by withholding permission for the bypass. But if I let them operate and Mulroney never comes back, then I’ll never forgive myself. So you can see why I’m out of patience. This whole thing has got me frazzled. I hate myself for not being strong enough to deal with it.”

  “The first thing you’ve got to do,” Dr. Sellers said, “is to stop hating yourself and feeling sorry for yourself. The self-pity will only make the problem worse.”

  “Why shouldn’t I hate myself?” Vickie said. “What good am I to anyone? I caused the problem in the first place. I pushed my husband into this coma. I’m jinxed. I’m already in hell. What makes the hell worse is that I recently had a glimpse of Heaven--it makes it all that more painful for me to be here.”

  “When did you see heaven?” Dr. Sellers asked.

  “Last night--I had an experience with another world--I was taken to a place that I believe we go after we die. When I came back, I found that my cancer was gone--I was freed from my death sentence only to find my husband facing his own version of death row. He’s been temporarily resuscitated, but I can see it won’t be long before what’s left of him will expire. I’m going to have to watch the man I love die--not once, but twice! If that’s not hell, I don’t know what is.”

  “You believe you were healed of your cancer?” Dr. Sellers asked.

  “I know it,” Vickie said.
“I can feel the energy surging through my body. It happened when I was touched by the teardrop of Our Lady--are you Catholic?”

  “I’m Jewish,” Dr. Sellers said, “But if you say you saw the Virgin Mary, far be it from me to argue the point. I’ve worked for this hospital for over fifteen years, and I know there are times when somebody gets better and the doctors have no rational explanation. If you say you’re healed, then so be it--although if you say it’s from cancer, you might want a confirmation of the remission.”

  “My brother said the same thing--he insisted that I get a clearance from my own doctor,” Vickie said. “He’s still hung up on the system in that way.”

  “Your brother seems to love you very much,” Dr. Sellers said. “His concern stems from that love--you’re lucky to have such a brother.”

  “That’s part of why I think I hate myself right now,” Vickie said. “When I tried to kill myself, I felt ashamed, because he’d have to live the rest of his life with the shadow of his own sister’s suicide over him.”

  “You’ve got a problem with your husband,” Dr. Sellers said. “My advice to you is to not aggravate that problem by adding to it. Don’t make it worse by wallowing in self-pity, anger, or lack of faith. Stop blaming yourself for your husband’s condition. This may sound odd, but you’re giving yourself too much credit for your impact on other people’s lives if you think you’re responsible for putting them into comas. Unless you have some secret psychic powers you haven’t shared with me. You said you experienced a miracle--well, I must ask you--where’s your faith? Why can’t your husband have the same experience? Or are miracles reserved exclusively for you?”

  “Gimme a break, Doc,” Vickie said. “I know I’m not responsible, but it’s hard to shake the feeling that I somehow contributed to Mulroney’s demise. I did have faith--earlier, anyway, when I tried to bring my miracle to him. I placed my rosary on his chest and touched him with a teardrop from Our Lady--it should have brought him back, but he never moved. It drove me insane. It’s exactly like what happened with my mother when she died of cancer. First, she went into a coma, and then she died. Now, my own husband is lying comatose in a hospital bed, smelling like death, and the doctors are telling me that they still have work to do, that I shouldn’t give up hope--but no matter what they do, I get the feeling that he’s going to die like my mother did--then I’ll be alone. Can you blame me for feeling sorry for myself? Do you have any idea what I’m going to go through if he dies? I’ll be completely alone.”

  “First, you’ve got to put your mother’s death behind you,” Dr. Sellers said. “the two incidents are unrelated--secondly, you don’t have to be alone. If it comes down to that, we can help you learn how to handle it. There are some great people who have survived the loss of a loved one who meet here every week to help the new survivors.”

  “I’ve got to give you credit, doctor,” Vickie said. “I fully expected you to pitch for the status quo, to use your powers of persuasion to convince me to allow Dr. Lerner to open Mulroney’s chest. But you didn’t go that route.”

  “I’m not here to tell you what to decide from a medical standpoint,” Sellers said. “I’m here because I believe that when you’ve got a big problem, you shouldn’t have to play it out all alone. Somewhere inside you is the answer--by talking with me, you may discover what it is.”

  “Look, Dr. Sellers,” Vickie said. “I know you mean well. But forgive me if I don’t jump for joy at the news that after Mulroney dies, I can come back here and sit with a bunch of other grief-stricken folks and cry on their shoulders.”

  “There is no right way for you to feel,” Dr. Sellers said. “You’ve been through a personal nightmare with your own cancer, and a second nightmare with the collapse of your husband. Your sense of confusion, anger, panic, loneliness, and grief may come and go. They may be very mild, or very extreme. The reason we offer group support is because you’ll need it. It’s a way for you to let your feelings and reactions happen in a caring environment. At first, your feelings are going to overwhelm you, but this will lessen over time--that’s why the group can help--you’ll have someone to talk to when you’re feeling overwhelmed.”

  “You mean, like when I tried to kill myself? That kind of overwhelmed?”

  “Exactly. If you’d had someone to call, things might have turned out differently.”

  “Okay,” Vickie said. “I’ll give it some thought.”

  “Your emotions are important,” Dr. Sellers said “They’re a large part of who you are. You want to give them a place to come out and be respected. If you’d had such an outlet, you wouldn’t have been trying to shake Mulroney awake like you did.”

  “I envy you,” Vickie said. “You’ve spent a lifetime helping others.”

  “I’m not saying you should accept the inevitable,” Dr. Sellers said. “I don’t want you to resign yourself to Mulroney’s death. As long as he has breath in his body, there’s a chance he’ll come back to you. But meanwhile, you’ve got to show some courage. You’ve got to hold on for your miracle. Remember, even though success isn’t certain, it’s still possible. Are you willing to take the emotional risk of believing in his recovery? Are you willing to set aside your self-pity for the time it takes to do everything you can to help him come back to you?”

  “You’re asking me to make a sacrifice,” Vickie said. “To sacrifice myself for the greater good of my husband. You’re asking me to behave like a saint.”

  Dr. Lerner laughed. “Why yes,” she said. “I suppose I am. Will you do it?”

  “Okay,” Vickie said. “I’ll do it. And why not? I came from one miracle. There’s no reason to think there won’t be another.”

  “Keep the faith,” Sellers said. “Faith never fails.”

  Chapter 33

  “First of all,” Vickie said, “I’ve gone and gotten myself into another heckuva pickle.”

  “I don’t see how that’s possible,” Dalk said.

  Vickie, Dalk, Mary-Jo, and Dalk’s sensei, magic-man and one-time business partner, Toyama, sat at table in the cafeteria of the Medical Center, where Vickie pointed out the recent processes and events which had combined to create her present predicament.

  “I’m banned from further activities in this fun palace,” Vickie said. “I’m not allowed in Mulroney’s room anymore. Dr. Sellers finked on me and now they think I’m a danger to his health, because I shook him a little bit. When I protested, Sellers said that I better watch myself. Apparently, because I told her about my suicide attempt yesterday, she said she could have me locked up for observation for three days--she strong-armed me with that threat.”

  “Wait a minute,” Dalk said. “Back up. What’s this about you shaking Mulroney?”

  “I shook him,” Vickie said. “Dr. Sellers walked in on me and caught me in the act. It was bad timing--another three minutes and I think Mulroney might have snapped out of it.”

  “Vickie,” Dalk said. “You might have killed him--all those wires and connections he’s attached to are there because he’s extremely delicate.”

  “I’m sick of technology,” Vickie said. “Whoever said that life can be prolonged by a bunch of machines with blinking lights?”

  “Hey look,” Dalk said. “Nobody’s saying the machines work all that well, but what else do we have? Mulroney’s experiencing some rather accelerated changes in his body right now, and somebody has to keep an eye on the store. Without the monitors, nobody knows whether he’s coming or going.”

  “Mulroney is a human being,” Vickie hissed. “He’s not some mass-produced artifact. He’s not something to be measured.”

  “You need to eat something,” Dalk said. “Try the chili.”

  “Okay,” Vickie said. “As long as you don’t tell me it’s as good as my own chili.”

  “Nothing beats your chili,” Dalk said. “But this stuff works on a certain level. For one thing, it has shredded beef and what appears to be real pieces of garlic. It tastes healthy enough.”

  �
��I’ll get you a bowl, Vickie,” Mary-Jo said, rising and heading for the start of the cafeteria line. The place was filled to capacity with hospital workers eagerly chowing down on the stuff, as though it were some heretofore undreamt-of substance which, having been recently discovered, transported the humdrum act of lunch into a higher reality of sorts. A few eyes followed Mary-Jo, bestowing upon her frankly approving looks, she looking, as she always did, better than any other woman in the place.

  “I’m sorry about all the trouble I’m causing,” Vickie said. “You’re supposed to be getting to know Mary-Jo in some romantic little Sunset Boulevard bistro, and yet here you are, eating bad chili in a hospital cafeteria. Under different circumstances, I’d be serving you a batch of my world famous prize-winning Lamplighter cook off chili. So tell me, how are you and Mary-Jo doing?”

  “We’re managing,” Dalk said. “No, let me say that we’re more than managing--we’re doing really well, in fact. The truth is, our first night together was spent in the waiting room while they resuscitated Mulroney. It’s a night we’ll both never forget. We each took turns standing watch while the other slept. By early morning, when they gave us the news that Mulroney had stabilized, we had such a beautiful moment together. I have to say, Vickie, that whatever crazy impulse caused you to put Mary-Jo and me together the way you did, I’m becoming more grateful for it every moment.”

  “Are you still going to marry her?” Vickie said.

  “If it’s up to me, I will,” Dalk said. “She’s one-of-a-kind. Irreplaceable, in fact.”

  “Dalk,” Vickie said. “I need your help.”

  “Anything,” he said.

  “Don’t promise until you hear what it is,” she said. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Even though Dr. Sellers threatened to commit me, before that, when we were talking, I think I saw my situation from a whole new angle. I mean, we actually talked about faith, can you believe it? Of course, she got me banned from Mulroney’s room--I can’t forgive her for doing that--but she did help me to see what I was doing to myself and to Mulroney. The good and the bad of it.”