Prayers for the Dying: Pam of Babylon Book #4

by Suzanne Jenkins

  Throughout the night he noticed she was struggling to breathe and finally, early in the morning, they called the doctor, who agreed she needed to go to the emergency room. Nelda fussed with her while they were waiting for the ambulance; she put a lovely nightgown on her and combed the few strands of hair she had, securing them with a ribbon. Steve sat by her side, waiting. He knew it was critical, but still had that tiny bit of hope that something would happen and she would pull out of it. That all of the damage that had been done to her body would miraculously disappear. He kept his hand on her belly, really just a small melon hanging there, and he could feel their little baby rolling around inside in spite of her sad situation. It was a her; they’d determined it shortly after the holidays. Marie was thrilled. Her only verbalizations toward the end of consciousness were, “It’s a girl.”

  When they got to the hospital, Dr. Garpow met them and told them what they feared: she was near death. Her obstetrician thought the baby needed a few more weeks for her lung development to be optimal, so with the family’s consent, he wanted to intubate her—put a breathing tube down her into her lungs and let a machine breathe for her. They agreed without question that it was the best thing, stifling their fears, those words near death.

  Nelda would later call Pam and tell her, “Marie is near death. They are going to try to keep her alive for a few more days for the baby’s sake.” It was surreal. Was she really saying her daughter was near death? How could it be? At night as she sat with Steve next to Marie’s bed, listening to the ventilator pumping oxygen into her daughter’s lungs, regrets flooded over her. She remembered finding out she was pregnant with Marie. She thought it was the change starting early. Her period didn’t come and it was a joy. Thank God I’m done with that mess. And then she started to show. Frank’s mother was furious with her. How could she even think about having another? Genoa was indispensable and she knew it; Nelda wouldn’t have survived motherhood without her mother-in-law. Now there would be a fourth baby. Frank was delighted; he loved being a father. But he wasn’t home all day, didn’t see his wife unable to cope with the stress of watching four children.

  When Pam got married, they practically packed Marie’s bags so she could stay with her. Pam never batted an eyelash. She loved having her there! Why was Nelda so guilt-filled? Because she knew there was something wrong and never addressed it. Her daughter was anorexic. She had trouble in school. She was a behavior problem. And then a few months ago in the middle of one of her screaming night terrors, Nelda discovered the truth. Marie fell back on her pillow and started mumbling about Jack. She loved Jack. They’d been in love all of her life. She used words Nelda had never heard a female use before, words Marie used to describe the way she loved Jack.

  Nelda was going to lash out at Pam the next time she visited, but then Nelda saw her oldest daughter, saw how thin and pale she was, and thought that possibly AIDS was taking its toll on her as well. She bit her tongue. And that night, when Steve saw Nelda without gloves on, wiping up blood where Marie had scratched her face, he told Nelda that Marie had AIDS, too, and that cinched it in her mind. All the pieces fell into place. Both of her daughters must have gotten AIDS from the same man. From Jack. It made Nelda ill. She went through all of the stages of grief in one day, so angry she could have killed someone, and finally that night, she resolved that it was what it was. There was nothing she could do about any of it but make restitution for being an awful parent by caring for Marie now to the best of her ability. She became her servant in those last months.

  One day shortly before Marie stopped talking, Nelda was fussing with the bedside table, trying to neaten things up, and Marie grabbed her wrist with surprising strength.

  “Mom, stop that for a minute, you’re making me nuts,” she mumbled. Nelda forced herself to stop fidgeting and looked at Marie.

  “What?”

  Marie gave a rare laugh. “I love you, Mom,” she said.

  Nelda relaxed, her shoulders sagging, and she bent over to kiss her daughter on the cheek. “I love you too, Marie. I’m sorry for everything,” she said.

  “Me, too, Mom. I’m sorry, too. Now we both sound like Pam,” Marie said. They laughed, and then the effort made Marie close her eyes. She could barely speak without becoming exhausted. Before she fell asleep, though, she had one more thing to say. “Mom, help Steve with the baby, okay?”

  Nelda was taking the trash can out of the room to empty, and she stopped in the doorway. She walked back to Marie’s bedside. “Are you sure you want me to help? I would think you’d want Pam,” Nelda said, sincere.

  “Pam has enough on her plate. I want you to help him. Tell me you will so I can take a nap. I’m tired, goddamnit!”

  Nelda said she would and consoled her, staying at her side until she could tell that Marie was sleeping. Nelda felt better about life from then on, until the nights in the ICU. Then, all of the boogeymen came out full force. Sitting with Steve was difficult enough. He had two modes: sleeping with his head thrown back, snoring for all he was worth; or sitting next to Marie’s bed with his head on the sheets, sobbing his heart out.

  “Steve!” she said one night. “Go get in the other bed. Your snoring is giving me a headache.” He got up and did as he was told, climbing into the empty bed next to Marie’s. The nurses were wonderful. Someone from labor and delivery would come in every hour to check the fetal monitor and Marie’s vital signs. How long could she go on like this?

  “It won’t be much longer,” a nurse finally told them one night. The doctors seemed afraid their words would be too harsh to hear, but Nelda needed the truth. “She’s deteriorating further. We need to deliver the baby before the blood supply to her placenta starts to diminish.”

  They were doing tests to determine its blood flow, first daily, then more frequently. Finally, it was time. They would take her to the Operating Room that afternoon to deliver the baby. And although no one said it, after she was born, they would take Marie off life support with Nelda’s permission. Nelda called Pam, Sharon, and Susan, who arrived in time to say good-bye to Marie. The doctor said it was possible that the dramatic drop in fluid volume after the delivery might make death come naturally.

  The family was waiting for the team to come to get Marie. There was nothing left to say to each other. Pam was drained emotionally and physically; it was obvious to Nelda that this might be all it took to push her over the edge, too. She couldn’t lose two daughters. At four p.m., they came to get her. Marie’s entire bed with all the monitors and pumps would go rather than moving her onto a stretcher. Nelda fully expected to be told to step out of the room while they prepared her, but they didn’t, instead telling her what a great job she had done taking care of Marie, her hair adorned with ribbons still. As the bed was pushed out of the room, a nurse asked the sisters and Steve and Nelda to accompany them to the OR. The nurses and family crowded onto an elevator together, and the harsh light, after the dim room lights, showed the damage the days had done to Marie. It was clear she was dying.

  Steve was invited to don surgical scrubs and come into the delivery room, but he declined. Instead, he turned to Nelda. “I wish you would go,” he said. “I feel like she was more relaxed when you were around. I can’t stand the sight of blood, anyway.”

  So Nelda went into the dressing room and changed into the smallest scrubs they had, still too large for her, and a bouffant cap to cover her hair. When she came out of the room, Pam had to choke back the tears. There was her mother, high heels and nylons under her scrubs, the too long pants rolled up, her makeup on like she was attending a party. Nelda was all business, though. The nurse gave her a mask to put on and led the way into the room where Marie was laid out, her arms stretched out at her sides, entirely covered with blue paper drapes. Just her belly was exposed through a big square cut out so they could get at the baby. Nelda was directed to stand off to the side, next to the heated table where the baby would come. In a normal C-section, the loved one would stand at the head of the table to offer
support, but it wasn’t really needed in this case. If Marie should crash and die, it would be better if Nelda were occupied with the baby.

  The whole process didn’t take as long as they thought, and before she knew it, a tiny baby girl, one who looked exactly like her mother did at birth, was whisked to the heated table and looked over by a team of pediatric doctors and nurses. Nelda was encouraged to join them; after what she had been through, nothing needed to be hidden from her. But as it turned out, little baby girl Marks was perfect, if slightly underweight. The doctor left to give Steve a report, while Nelda planted herself like glue at the baby’s side. She was being given a second chance and no one was going to take it away from her.

  38

  On the first Friday in June, Dave from Organic Bonanza pulled into Pam’s driveway with a load of mulch in the back of his pickup truck. She was kneeling down in the flower beds directly in front of the house, planting a flat of marigolds that Dave had started from seed.

  “That was fast,” she said as she walked toward him, brushing dirt off her gloved hands. He hopped out of the cab of the truck and walked around the back to meet her.

  “Is this the right stuff? There was another type that looked like shredded tires. I didn’t think you wanted it so dark,” he said.

  “No! This is perfect.” She stepped up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek, the kiss of a friend to another. “Thank you.” He put his arm around her shoulders as they walked to the garage to get the tarp onto which they would shovel the mulch. “Can you believe this day?” she asked, looking up at the blue, cloudless sky. The crash of the waves on the beach behind the house could be heard clearly through the din of sea gulls swooping in the air.

  “Who’d believe we had snow three weeks ago? It’s almost hot in the sun,” Dave said. They stood together and looked up at the sky. The kitchen window was open and they could hear baby Miranda crying and Nelda singing to her while she fixed her bottle.

  “Oh, I’ve only got one shovel,” Pam complained. They looked over the perfectly aligned garden tools. “And only one with a square bottom. Darn.”

  “Come on, let’s go back to the garden center. I want to get a weeping cherry for my side yard and they’re on sale this week,” Dave said. Pam hid her delight. It was the one wish she had: that she could walk through a garden center with a man like other, regular couples did. It was a small thing, and probably not enough to sustain her forever, but for today, she’d take it as a step toward normalcy.

  Steve Marks was hurrying around the office trying to tie up loose ends. His secretary, who was supposed to have completed a file for him to send to a client, had gotten bogged down with another researcher’s work. He cursed under his breath.

  “What’s your hurry, Stevie boy, got a hot date?” a coworker said.

  “Yes, actually, I do. I’m meeting a girl at the beach tonight and I have been waiting all week to see her,” he said with a smile. He stuffed everything into his briefcase and locked his office as he headed out. If he was fast, he’d miss the worst traffic going into Long Island on a Friday afternoon.

  “Give Miranda a kiss for me,” another colleague said.

  Steve smiled and yelled, “Okay.”

  “He likes them young,” the co-worker said, and there was laughter. Steve ran to his car, got it unlocked and loaded up, and headed toward the Fifth-Ninth Street Bridge in record time. He focused on getting out of the city before he’d allow himself to start thinking. He avoided thinking at all costs, but it was safe to do so when he was driving to the beach. One hour and twenty minutes of time, once a week, was all he rationed for thinking.

  This was the fourth time he’d made the trip. As often happens, things had changed dramatically in a short period of time. It seemed like once Miranda was born, and poor Marie died, everyone had been thrown into a storm of change. The first thing that happened was that Candy quit working for Bernice. That afternoon, Bernice fell down the entire flight of stairs in the mansion, and didn’t break a thing. But it was a heads-up: she couldn’t stay there without care. Nelda was occupied with the baby and it would be too much for her to be responsible for Bernice, too. So Pam made the tough decision without hesitation. Bernice was going into Eagle’s Nest Assisted Living.

  Steve snickered to himself. Eagle’s Nest was a fancy hotel where old ladies of means lived out their golden years in complete comfort. He hated to guess what it was costing Pam to put her there, when any number of places would have been just as nice without the Park Avenue address. But it was none of his business. He couldn’t ask for a nicer, more helpful family and he wasn’t going to criticize them.

  The coup de grace came two weeks after Bernice moved out. The mansion sold after just six months on the market. A big developer from Japan bought it with the intent of tearing it down. The community was up in arms, but Pam refused to cave in to their demands and sold it with the knowledge that the new owners had working plans that already had been accepted by the city. When Dave asked Pam if she was sad that the mansion was no longer in the family, her response was, “Good riddance.” She thought of the evil that took place there, and the evil that it spawned. It was a house of horrors. Steve didn’t know most of the story, and Pam wanted to protect he and Nelda from it.

  She and Dave were flying to Los Angeles for Brent’s graduation from UCLA. He’d taken a job in San Diego, due to start in July, so there wasn’t time for him to come home. He had to get an apartment and move out of his current place. Pam knew the likelihood of Brent ever living in New York again was slim, and she was ready to make the trips to California that her son needed to her make. Lisa was coming in from Oahu. When they spoke on the phone last, Lisa was more upbeat than Pam could remember having seen her in months.

  “What’s going on?” she asked her daughter. Lisa laughed into the phone.

  “Boy, you haven’t lost it, have you Mother! You can still read me like a book,” she teased. Pam was getting nervous, starting to pace and laughing into the phone at the same time.

  “What’s going on?” she repeated. “Stop stalling, you’re scaring me.” But she was still smiling. Her daughter had something positive going on, it was clear.

  “Well,” she hesitated. “Well, I’ve met somebody! And it’s serious, Mom. I think you are really going to like him. He’s from New Jersey and we are going to fly back east together after Brent’s ceremony. He’s coming to graduation, by the way,” Lisa said. Pam’s heart quickened. She saw Lisa married and living in New Jersey. Pam was suddenly questioning what her reluctance to leave Long Island had been. She’d go to New Jersey or California as often as her children needed her.

  Everything was falling into place. The grad students who were renting Bill and Anne’s house in Greenwich Village finished school and were moving out. Bill was spending the next five years in Rikers for trying to kidnap Sandra, as well as his assault on Nelda. Anne divorced him and took their boys to live with her mother. They’d defaulted on their mortgage and now the house belonged to Pam. Pam thought that if Steve agreed, it would be a perfect family home. Nelda could have a room there so she could continue helping out with baby Miranda if she wanted to.

  Pam had drilled her unmercifully. “Mother, the last thing that little baby needs is a reluctant caregiver, and if you are doing this out of some kind of guilt, it won’t be good for her.”

  “I’m enjoying it,” Nelda said. “Besides, Marie asked me to do it. Those were the last words she said to me that I could understand.”

  “Well, Marie is dead. And speaking of last things, the last thing you need to do is take care of a newborn at the age of seventy-five because your daughter, who didn’t know what she was saying at the end, asked you to do it,” Pam said.

  “Pam, I promise you, I want to do it. We have so many secrets and lies in our family; I know I want it different for Miranda. I want her to have a different life than I had and I really want her to have a different life than her mother had,” Nelda confessed

  “Don’t y
ou want some freedom now?” she asked sarcastically. Pam remembered that just a few short months ago, Nelda complained about having to help Marie out; now she was willing to raise her baby.

  “Yeah, yeah, don’t remind me of that, okay? What do I need freedom for? My kids don’t want me hanging around and now that Bernice has lost her mind, she’s only good for a few hours a day. Besides, Steve is a good man, he likes to drink and play cards, all the important stuff. It’ll be fun,” Nelda confessed.

  “Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. I’d make sure Steve got another sitter in line in case you get tired. It’s not a good idea to let him think he can depend on you 100 percent. I don’t care how much you want to take care of Miranda,” Pam said.

  “So, Miss Know-it-all, am I moving into that brownstone of your brother-in-law’s? That is what I heard, is it now?”

  “I offered it to Steve. He can pay me what he’s paying for his current rental. It’s in a family neighborhood, almost the same distance to his job, and perfect for two adults and a child. I’ll have Marie’s furniture moved over there if he wants it. I’m here to serve,” Pam said, snickering under her breath.

  Nelda looked at her sharply. Is my daughter being a smart-ass?

  As Steve merged onto the Long Island Expressway, he started to think about the baby. She was so perfect, and her HIV status was negative. It was the best news. The doctors were amazed, but they assured Steve that a negative test in a baby was negative. She wouldn’t come down with it later. After she was born, they closed Marie’s abdominal wound and rather than sending her to recovery and putting those nurses through the trauma of taking care of a brain-dead patient, Marie was sent back up to her ICU room. The nurses in the unit had taken care of her since day one and wanted to support the family. The doctors gave them an hour with the new baby and then came in to talk to them about taking Marie off life support.