The Madhatter's Guide To Chocolate

by Rhett DeVane

  THE HOSPITAL

  After the requisite mound of paperwork, I was admitted to room 312. For the second time in one day, I shucked my clothes for the fancy hospital attire and crawled into bed.

  Jake studied the tan-walled private room. “It could use a woman’s touch.”

  I plopped my purse down on the bedside table. “Hey, I’m just glad to have a private room. This place is packed!”

  “Well, we’ll at least have to see about getting a few plants and flowers in here.

  “This place needs some color.”

  “Maybe you can sign on as their interior designer.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  We heard a soft rap on the door, and a lanky male nurse in dark blue scrubs whisked into my room. “Hello, I’m Jon Presley. I’ll be your nurse this afternoon till about 11:00 PM.” He took my left hand and checked the identification band against the chart.

  “Your name?”

  “Hattie Davis.”

  “Date of birth?”

  “October 5, 1956. I’m a Libra.”

  The nurse smiled. “Who’s your doctor?”

  “My primary care physician is Dr. McCray. But, now there’s Dr. Thomas and Dr. Crowley.”

  “What procedure are you in for?”

  “Colon surgery.”

  Satisfied that I was, indeed, Hattie Davis, he took my vital signs.

  Jake cocked his head and smiled. “You any kin to the King?”

  Jon rolled his eyes. “No. But, I have a Pomeranian named Elvis if that counts.”

  “Jake Witherspoon.” Jake extended his hand to Jon.

  “I thought you looked a little familiar,” Jon said. “You were in ICU here, what, two or three years back?”

  Jake’s eyebrows flicked upward. “Memory like an elephant. Were you working in the intensive care unit then?”

  “No, one of my dear friends has worked the unit for years. Of course, your face was splashed all over the Tallahassee Democrat for awhile.”

  Jon scribbled notations in my chart. “I’ll check back in on you in a bit. If you need anything, just buzz. Have they told you what time your surgery is scheduled?”

  “I’m a work-in. I guess Dr. Crowley will be by sometime soon.”

  Jon nodded. “Okay. We’ll need to get an IV started on you with some fluids since you won’t be able to eat.”

  I smiled weakly. “I lost my appetite about an hour ago.”

  After Nurse Jon left my room, Jake clutched his chest. “Is he a doll, or what!?”

  “I guess my hospital stay just got a lot more interesting to you.”

  Jake huffed. “Now…Miss Evil Rita, you know I’m only here for you, dear love. If it was up to me, I’d steer as clear as possible from this place—not that they didn’t take excellent care of me. I’ve just had enough for one lifetime!”

  For the next half-hour, Jake busied himself on the telephone rounding up the troops. Soon, half of Tallahassee, and, I’m positive, all of Gadsden county knew of my impending surgery. Jillie stopped in around 4:30 PM with a small bag containing my toothbrush, toothpaste, hair brush, shampoo, deodorant, and several changes of underwear.

  Jake tucked and smoothed the top sheet. “I’ll go on home tonight and pack a big bag for you and me. I’ll check on the kids. Then, I’ll come over and stay with you after the surgery.”

  By 5:00, Evelyn, Joe, Bobby, and Leigh were pacing my room, and several of my friends from Tallahassee Police Department and Leon County Sheriff’s Office had stopped in to wish me Godspeed. Mary popped by for a few minutes on her break from the emergency room. Because Aunt Piddie was in the final stages of a head cold, she had opted to stay at Elvina Houston’s house. Between the two of them, the old lady hotline would likely catch fire before the evening was out.

  When Dr. Crowley hadn’t shown up by 8:00 PM, I sent the whole group packing. “I’m fine. You guys need to go on home and get some rest. It may be a long day tomorrow. All I’m going to do is sleep, anyway.”

  Jake leaned over and kissed me on the forehead. “I’ll keep trying to reach Holston. I’ve left a couple of messages on his voice mail. I’m sure he’ll call tonight.”

  I flipped the channel changer until I reached the Cartoon Network. After ten minutes of Bugs Bunny, I felt the weight of adulthood lift from my shoulders. Yosemite Sam was in his usual snit when Dr. Crowley knocked on my door at 8:30 PM.

  “Miss Davis?” he asked as he walked into the room.

  “Hi, Dr. Crowley. I’m sorry to see you again like this.” I motioned to the hospital bed.

  “Me, too.” He held my hand for a moment. “The massage you gave me a while back—I can still recall how good I felt afterwards! I’ve been meaning to get back in to see you. I never seem to have any down time here lately.”

  “I guess Mary’ll have to give you another gift certificate.” The massage session had been Mary’s way of thanking the doctor for his excellent care of her daughter, Carrie.

  Dr. Crowley’s easy cowboy-on-a-holiday manner was instantly soothing. His kind brown eyes and gentle nature immediately put me at ease.

  He slid a chair close to the bed. “You and I need to talk about some things.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I don’t believe in flowering things up, Hattie. Best case scenario—I go in, remove the tumor, suture the colon together, and you’re good as new in a few weeks. Dr. Thomas assures me I have enough room to do just that.” He paused, as if choosing his words carefully. “When cancer occurs in the descending colon, the patient will generally have recognizable symptoms early on, giving the best chance of successful treatment.”

  “Dr. Thomas said the same thing.”

  “Unfortunately, it presents a problem if the cancer excision doesn’t leave me enough room to reconnect the bowel before the rectum. Dr. Thomas tells me that I have at least ten centimeters to work with, on the low end. Much less than that, and you will end up with a colostomy. That’s the worst-case scenario.”

  A fist of fear clenched my heart. My throat closed around the words I wanted to speak. It had never crossed my mind that I might end up with any kind of permanent disfigurement.

  Dr. Crowley held up his hands. “A colostomy is not the bug-a-boo it once was, now. We’ve come a long way. You just need to know all the possibilities going into this—not that you have a choice. Left to its own, that tumor would mean the end of your life. That is not acceptable. It has to go.” He smiled warmly. “I will do everything in my power to take care of this for you, Hattie.”

  Dr. Crowley stayed a few more minutes, going over the sequence of events for the upcoming procedure. “I’ll see you tomorrow. I don’t know how the surgical schedule will pan out, exactly. It may be first thing around 7:00 AM. More than likely, it will be after noon.” He turned to leave. “I’ll leave orders for a mild sedative to help you get some sleep.”

  After Dr. Crowley left, I freaked out. I’m usually calm under fire, taking control and getting things done. Later, I fall into a heap after it’s all over and everyone else has calmed down. This was different. I was alone and scared witless.

  Jon pushed his monitor unit into the room. “Hattie? You all right? I saw Dr. Crowley leaving.”

  “No. Not really.” I burst into huge sucking sobs. Jon stood by the bed and held my hand until I calmed down a little. He handed me a cool washcloth for my face. “I’ll be right back, Hattie. Let me get someone to cover my patients for a bit.”

  He returned shortly. “Do you want me to call your family?”

  “No. They’ll be here enough tomorrow. I can handle this. I just had a fear bubble.”

  Jon settled himself on to the hospital’s version of a comfortable chair: a tan Naugahyde-covered high-back number with stiff rolled cushions. “I do understand your fear.”

  “I’m sure you’ve had a lot of patients in here facing surgery for cancer. It seems that it’s all around us these days. Better detection…blah, blah, blah! I don’t know if I buy that. Almost every week, someon
e I know—friend, client—tells me about someone in their family who’s been diagnosed. I have two women friends who’ve had breast cancer, both barely over forty!”

  Jon nodded. “It seems we’ve poisoned our poor bodies and planet so terribly. I often think it’s Nature’s way of shoving back.” He paused, considering his next words. “Actually, my experience with cancer is more personal. To look at me now, you’d never guess I’d almost succumbed to leukemia when I was in my mid-teens. I’ve stared it in the face. So I do understand your fear, anger—the entire mish-mash of emotions.”

  “I guess I don’t get the whole thing. I mean, I understand the genetic set-up in my case. But, I don’t drink excessively. Heck, I’m singing under the table after one beer. I’ve never smoked. I eat a fairly good diet…well, some chocolate. Why did I develop cancer?”

  “Why, why, why. Same questions I had, even at the age I faced it. Why would a healthy 16-year-old’s blood suddenly turn against him?” Jon’s soft brown eyes grew misty with the memory. “My mama was the sweetest woman who ever graced this planet. She wasn’t educated formally past the tenth grade, but she had deep pools of wisdom and faith that lifted both of us, and my whole family, up and over crisis and heartbreak.” He smiled. “There were seven of us stair-step kids. When someone flubbed up, she’d call the roll until she hit on the right kid’s name. Of course, you knew you were the culprit, but you held your breath through the list of names, hoping she’d land on one of the others. I always knew when she meant to call me. She’d say sugar-monkey!”

  I lifted an eyebrow. “Sugar-monkey?”

  “Her nickname for me—mama’s little sugar-monkey.”

  We chuckled together.

  Jon wagged his index finger. “I don’t tell that to many folks.”

  “Our secret.”

  He dipped his head. “Thank you for your discretion, miss. When my mom and dad heard my diagnosis, my dad just clammed up. He couldn’t discuss it at all. But, my mama—she gathered information like a doctoral student. ’Course, that was way before the internet. She wrote letters and talked to everyone she could. I’m sure I wouldn’t be here without her dedication to my healing. That and the monetary support from several civic service groups. There’s no way my family could’ve afforded the expensive treatment I had to undergo. I have a deep, abiding respect for service groups… like the Shriners, for example.”

  “I guess I’ve always associated them with the funny hats and motorcycle parades.”

  “Most people do. Not me, nor my family. They’re one of the few organizations I regularly donate money to.”

  “How long’s your mama been gone?”

  His gaze fell to the floor and his shoulders slumped slightly. “Almost five years. My daddy passed about a year after she did—stroke.”

  I reached over and touched his hand. “I’m a mid-life orphan, as well. So’s Jake—and Holston, my fiancée. A lot of us are, come to think of it. Your illness, just out of curiosity, was it the reason you went into nursing?”

  “Partially, I suppose. My mama told me I was always nussin’ something. I’d find little hurt animals—wild or tame—and baby them back to health. She said she caught me a few times crying over the little grave of something I’d found dead in the yard.” He paused. “The nurses are the people who got me through the treatments—the transfusions and chemotherapy. I have great love for the folks in my field.”

  “I think you have all the responsibility without enough compensation.”

  “Money’s not everything.” He reached over and patted my hand. “As for you—my mama would say, get in touch with your God-side, Hattie. She was not what I would call religious—more, deeply spiritual. Her faith was a cloak over me and my family. Just to believe in something—a higher power interested in your wellbeing. It certainly got me through then, and now.”

  “Jon! Location?” A voice sounded from the speaker above the bed.

  “Three Twelve,” he answered as he stood to leave. “Break’s over. Back on my head! I’ll make sure you get something to help you sleep. Dr. Crowley left the orders. My suggestion to you—between friends—get up early and have the nurse or one of your family members help you take a shower. It’s amazing how therapeutic water can be. Brush your teeth, just don’t swallow the water. I have friends in the O.R. and in recovery. Lots of eyes will be watching over you tomorrow.”

  “Jon?” I called as he reached the door. “Thank you, sugar-monkey.”

  He smiled, nodded, and scurried off.

  The light sedative that Pat, the second nurse on the evening shift, administered through my IV began to soften the edges of my anxiety. I mused on my personal version of spirituality.

  Raised Southern Baptist—the all-folks-are-miserable-sinners, hellfire-and- damnation sort of religion. Though the church’s party line had softened in the last decade, I was indoctrinated early with a healthy fear of an all-powerful God who kept a big ledger of transgressions.

  When I reached my thirties, I began to question the validity, not of a higher power, but of the fear of recrimination that was used as a tool for control. I broke with the Baptist philosophy to search for my own truths, my own innate sense of value and goodness.

  From the teachings of several Eastern religions, I gleaned a sense of oneness with all life (I still had issues with cockroaches, snakes, and mosquitoes) and the theory that you get back what you put in. Ultimately, I vowed daily to be the best person I could be, work diligently, and to overcome learned biases against people with different philosophies. As Piddie so often put it—live and let live. I failed miserably a great deal of the time. Being human, and flawed, was a tough habit to break.

  Aunt Piddie served as my living example. She was technically a member of the Baptist church, but attended worship services with both black and white friends. The black services she found much more appealing. They’ve just got more heart in what they do, she said. When they sing, they throw back their heads and belt it out like their lives depended on God takin’ notice! Not like the slow funeral dirges we white folks call singin’. Lucille Thurston stopped by on average of once a month to gather Piddie for church services. She would come back all filled with the spirit.

  I called to that spirit now.

  Excerpt from Max the Madhatter’s notebook, April 9, 1956

  I have a deep scratch on my left hand. It has been there for three days now. At first, it was raw and sore, and I couldn’t touch it. I am watching it heal. The edges have turned from bright red to light pink. Just the middle is still painful. Pretty soon, I will have to look hard to tell where it was.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  SURGERY

  The family arrived en masse at 6:15 AM. After the 11 to 7 nurse, Yolanda, took my vital signs, Evelyn helped me maneuver the rolling IV pole so that I could take a quick shower. Jon’s suggestion was on target. The warm water flowing across my skin felt wonderfully soothing. My caffeine-starved nervous system was sending bongo-drum throbs to my temples. At least the pre-op medication would squelch the dull, nagging headache.

  “Has anyone heard from Holston?” I asked as Evelyn helped me towel dry.

  “Jake finally talked to him this morning. He’s trying to get a flight home.”

  When 10:30 rolled around, we resigned ourselves to the fact that I wouldn’t be included in the morning’s surgery schedule. Leigh was feeling light-headed by 11:30, so I insisted that she and Bobby grab lunch in the cafeteria. Evelyn and Joe went along, too, promising to hurry back.

  Jake’s foot tapped a staccato beat on the tile. “This waiting’s making me want to ruin my manicure.”

  A loud rap sounded on the door, and a hospital attendant rolled a gurney into the room. “Time to go on down,” he said. Holding my chart for reference, he went through the check-off sequence, and compared the information against my wristband.

  “Never begrudge that set of questions, sister-girl,” Jake said as he accompanied the gurney down the hall, “even if everyone we meet needs
to ask you who you are. You want them to operate on the right thing, you know.”

  When the elevator doors opened on the first floor, Jake kissed me gently on the cheek before the attendant wheeled the gurney through the double doors into the surgical holding area. Knowing Jake, he would hobble madly to the cafeteria to gather the troops and herd them back to the waiting room.

  “Hi, Miss Davis, I’m Jaye Anderson. Jon Presley told me to keep an eye on you. I’ll be with you until you are called back.” Jaye checked my chart and wrist identification, and went through the question/answer routine. “I’ll give you a little something to help you relax.” She administered a sedative through the IV.

  Gradually, the warming effects of the drug washed over me. I loved everybody and everything: the attendants rushing by, the warm blanket over my feet, the IV tubing, the mint-green mushroom hair cover on the woman in the cubicle across from me. The world was a wonderful place. Life was good.

  “Nice hat,” I mouthed to the woman.

  She smiled back—a lopsided, drugged grin. She loved me, too. How beautiful.

  Jaye appeared by the side of the gurney. “Here we go, Hattie.” She wheeled me into the surgical operatory, where I was transferred to a steel table under glaring bright lights.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Hattie.” I dimly recognized Dr. Crowley’s voice behind the mask. “Let’s go get that bad boy out of you!” The flesh beside his eyes crinkled as he smiled.

  The gas mask was fitted over my nose. “Breathe deeply now…”

  I heard dim, disembodied voices around me. Where am I? Conversations came in bits and pieces—beeping noises, something attached to my arm, pumping up, holding, then, releasing with a hiss. I began to shiver, deeply chilled. A warm blanket was spread over me. My chattering slowed…ceased. I drifted off to sleep.

  “Bag…bag…” I tried to whisper. My throat was sore and parched.

  Evelyn, Joe, Bobby, Leigh, Jake, and Holston huddled near the bed.

  “What’s she saying?” Evelyn said. “Is she in pain?”