A Room of My Own

by Ann Tatlock

  The group had already arrived by the time we joined Mother at the window. "Do you want to munch on some cookies while we listen?" I asked Charlotte. She said she did, so we each grabbed a couple from the bag. We offered one to Mother but she declined, saying she'd already had a slice of banana bread, and it was delicious.

  Charlotte and I both bit into a cookie--they were pretty good, after all--and chewed contentedly while the singers fumbled for their key and started to sing. Our chewing slowed down, then stopped altogether as we listened to the group singing about the little town of Bethlehem. Charlotte moved her head in time to the music and seemed to enjoy the show. After another song or two, she asked, "Do you think they can do `I Found a Million-Dollar Baby in the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store'?"

  "Well," I explained, "mostly they just do hymns and Christmas carols and stuff like that."

  Charlotte stared at the group a moment, then lifted her shoulders in a shrug. "Well," she replied decidedly, "that's all right. I like 'em anyway."

  Good old Charlotte.

  Chapter Thirty

  Every day as soon as the bell rang at the end of the last class, I gathered my books, reluctantly disengaged myself from Charlotte's arm, and ran to catch the trolley to the hospital. It was the time of year when everyone was making little bonfires of the autumn leaves in their yards, and on those afternoons when I stood on the street corner waiting for the trolley, the scent of burning leaves hung heavy in the air. Normally I loved that distinct fragrance of autumn and inhaled it as deeply as I did the aroma of spring flowers. But now the scent of those innocent fires conjured up in my mind images of destruction, of Soo City in blazes, of Papa being beaten against the backdrop of the flaming shanties. Even autumn was a stranger and not the season I had always known.

  I was glad when the trolley came and swallowed me up into the scent of my fellow passengers' various perfumes and tobaccos. But my relief at escaping the burning leaves was always short-lived. As soon as the driver shut the doors and the car jerked forward into motion, I remembered where I was going. I wasn't escaping the Soo City fire; I was heading right for it. With the passing of each block, with every turning of the trolley's wheels, my fears grew. Maybe, by the time I get there, he'll be dead, I'd think. Or maybe he's dying now, this very minute, and he'll be gone before I arrive. By the time I'd reached the hospital, I'd be so wound up I could hardly breathe. I'd hurry through the lobby and past the nurses' station to Papa's room, but before I came to the door, I'd stop and take a deep breath, trying to prepare myself for what I'd see. Every day it was the same. Papa was still lying in the bed, his chest still rising and falling. Not yet, I'd think, light-headed with relief. He's still here. I can still hope.

  And yet as the days passed, the chances of his waking up became slimmer. Edema set in on the sixth day, causing pressure on his brain, which was relieved through regular lumbar drainage. He was also given repeated injections of dextrose, a hypertonic solution used to deplete fluid in the tissues, thereby combating the edema. While Papa's fluid intake was restricted, he was watched for over-dehydration, and the whole routine became a delicate balancing act. And, of course, all the while, we were still on the lookout for blood clots, hemorrhaging, convulsions, meningitis, and so forth, any or all of which could develop at any moment.

  Although at first I hadn't wanted to hear all the medical mumbo jumbo Dr. Rawls insisted on throwing at us, I eventually made up my mind to try to understand as much as I could about what was happening to my father. Ignorance may be bliss, but I could no longer pretend that Dr. Rawls' big medical terms had nothing to do with Papa. They had everything to do with Papa. And so I asked Dr. Hal again and again to explain Papa's symptoms and the measures taken to relieve them. And again and again Dr. Hal patiently obliged, always ending his simple lectures with an assurance or two that Papa would come around.

  Still the days slipped by, and Papa didn't come around. Though they didn't downgrade his prognosis from guarded, the doctors and nurses began to pass in and out of the room as solemnly as if my father were already laid out in his coffin. After a while I no longer looked to any of them--save Dr. Hal--for reassurance, for they seemed determined not to give it.

  During those interminable hours at the hospital, I turned often to Mother for consolation and strength. I knew she was afraid, of course--how could she be otherwise?--but if she gave up hope, then I, too, would give up hope, and even without my saying so, she knew that. At the same time, she needed me to encourage her as well. We were like two playing cards leaning up against each other to form a teepee, one thin paper edge touching the other in so fragile a construction that the slightest movement of air could topple it. And if one of us fell, the other would certainly fall as well. So almost unconsciously, we buoyed each other up with a certain simple liturgy of hope. I'd say--and it'd be a statement, not a question--"It's still possible he'll wake up, isn't it, Mama." And she'd respond quite confidently: "Yes, Virginia. With God, anything is possible." Even as Papa's recovery became more and more improbable, the fact didn't change that with God anything is possible. That was the only hope we had.

  While Mother and I held each other up, the two of us were together reinforced by the daily appearance of the Soo City singers. Every evening at six o'clock they gathered outside Papa's window, and every evening the group grew larger as more and more of the scattered residents of the burned-out shantytown learned of my father's plight and came back to offer what help they could. They had somehow scraped up a couple of hymnals so they wouldn't have to improvise so much on the words of the songs. Like clockwork they assembled there--minus the signs, the guitar, and the accordion--and though they appeared weary and hungry and almost without hope for their own lives, for half an hour every evening they put all thought of themselves aside and sang to Papa.

  The days were cool and the nights were downright chilly, but not even the cold deterred the singers. They hugged themselves and warmed their fingers under their armpits and stamped their feet between songs, and sometimes their breath wafted like little clouds in the early autumn air, but on they sang. Mother opened Papa's window only a crack when the Soo City singers came around, then she and I put on sweaters and pulled an extra blanket up around Papa's chin to keep him warm. Whenever we did this, I thought of all the blankets I had collected for our friends in the camp, and I was sad to think that, before the cold of winter had even had a chance to set in, all those blankets had become fodder for the sheriff's fire. All except, perhaps, the one that Dr. Hal had used as a hammock to carry Papa to the car after he was wounded.

  Mother and I weren't the only ones to gain encouragement from the Soo City singers. Their arrival soon became a ritual that other patients and their families looked forward to as well. Shortly before six, we'd hear people in the halls say, "It's almost time," and wheelchairs were pushed closer to windows, and those people who were ambulatory shuffled in their hospital slippers down to the dayroom to listen. Even some of the nurses and orderlies paused in their work for a few minutes to turn an ear toward the singers on the lawn. On occasion we'd hear someone call out, "Would you mind singing--" and one song or another was requested. The singers would riffle through the hymnbooks till they found the song, then Joe O'Hanlon tooted a note on his harmonica, and the choir quietly serenaded their grateful audience. I think even Mr. Donner, the hospital administrator, came to appreciate the singers. He never said so, but once I saw him at his own window in the opposite hospital wing, his hands behind his back, his head nodding slowly in time with the music.

  And every evening after they sang, before they went away to wherever it was they went away to, they stopped to ask about Papa.

  "Any change for the better, Mrs. Eide?"

  "None yet, but we don't give up hope."

  "He's a tough one," someone would offer. "He'll pull through yet."

  And someone else would say: "Any man deserves to live, it's Doc Eide."

  And still another: "I'd trade places with him if I could. He means tha
t much to us."

  Words of consolation, encouragement, prayers were passed through the crack of the open window, then, "We'll be back tomorrow, same as always. Take good care of the doc."

  Papa's Bible, which Mother and I continued to read aloud, reminded me that God was near, not on a distant throne. Not only near but here. Here in the room where Papa lay, where Mother and I spent so many hours waiting and wondering. But while I prayed for Papa, I remembered the Lindbergh baby, and that in spite of the prayers of thousands, he hadn't been returned home safely. He had been found dead and decomposing in a field. And I knew that God wasn't obligated to answer my prayers for Papa in the way I wanted him to, either.

  Papa had told me--and I thought often of his words--he wasn't afraid to die, that when he died he knew he'd just be going home. I believed that, too, and yet I wasn't ready to let Papa go. We still needed him here with us--Mother and Simon and the girls and me. And his patients needed him. So many people needed him. How could God take him from us now? But I knew if Papa could speak he'd say, "Now, look, Ginny, God knows what's right. What we can't understand we have to take on faith."

  I'd try, if Papa died. I'd try to take it on faith because surely I would never understand.

  Time dragged on, and every hour seemed a day, and every day a week. Restless nights were followed by weary days at school, then the trolley ride to the hospital, the afternoons and evenings with Papa, the nightly assembling from out of nowhere of the faithful Soo City singers. Each time I entered Papa's room, I looked for some small change for the better. I watched for any movement he might make, listened for any word he might try to speak--but there were none. Rather, he seemed only to grow thinner, paler, weaker, as though fading away.

  The morning of the fourteenth day was gray and overcast, adding dismay to my already struggling spirits. Everything always seems worse when the sky is covered over, the sun hidden.

  Just as I reached the bottom of the stairs on my way to breakfast, I overheard Mother and Dr. Hal talking at the kitchen table. I could see them, but they didn't see me. I sat down on the stairs to listen.

  "Why isn't he waking up, Harold?" Mother asked.

  "I don't know, Lillian," Dr. Hal said, so quietly I almost couldn't hear.

  "You expected him to be awake by now, didn't you?"

  "I thought he probably would have come out of the coma by now, yes."

  "It's not a good sign, is it?"

  "It's not necessarily a bad sign, Lil."

  "Level with me, Harold."

  "I'm telling you what I know."

  There was a moment of silence, then mother said, "Dr. Rawls and that other doctor, Dr. Murphy, they must be doing something wrong."

  "They're doing everything they can."

  "What about surgery, Harold? Some sort of operation?"

  "Surgery isn't called for, Lil. There's nothing a surgeon can do. We don't know the exact injuries to the brain, but opening up Will's skull and taking a look inside isn't going to tell us any more than what we already know. As a doctor's wife you must have heard it a million times: Medicine is an art, not an exact science. That's what they were always telling us in medical school, and I've since found it to be true. Healing the human body isn't like fixing a broken car. I wish it were that easy, but it just isn't so. There are too many variables, too many unique complications to each case. But you have to believe that everything that can be done for Will is being done."

  There was another quiet moment before Mother said, "It's just hard for me to stand by ... it seems I ought to be doing more."

  "We all feel that way, Lillian. A situation like this leaves everyone feeling helpless."

  "I know you told me that even if he opens his eyes, he may still be in a coma, may still be unaware of everything around him. But I really feel strongly, Harold, that if he would just open his eyes, I could get through to him somehow."

  "Well, it would be a good step forward if he'd open his eyes. But like I said--"

  "I know. We can't know at this point how much permanent damage ..." Mother's voice trailed off. The legs of her chair scraped across the kitchen floor as she rose to pour herself another cup of coffee. "Fourteen days, Harold. Two whole weeks--and he hasn't even opened his eyes once."

  "Well, granted, it's more common for people to open their eyes early on, whether they're out of the coma or not, but it's not unknown for people to go two weeks without opening their eyes. I heard of--"

  "Harold," Mother interrupted. She settled her coffee cup loudly on the counter and stood looking out the window above the sink. "We're grasping at straws, aren't we? I mean"--she turned to look at Dr. Hal--"you don't really have much hope left, do you?"

  Dr. Hal sat still as stone, like a child playing statue at the sight of a bee. As though, if he were perfectly quiet, he might somehow blend into the scenery, go unnoticed and not get stung. But slowly, very slowly, he lifted his face toward Mother, but what he said I couldn't hear, he spoke so low. Mother's face, though, told me what my ears had failed to pick up. Dr. Hal was loosening his grip on hope.

  He pushed back his chair from the table, said a few more words to Mother, then left the kitchen. When he passed me in the hall, I looked up at him from where I sat on the stairs. Our eyes met, but only briefly. He turned abruptly away so that I wouldn't see what was written on those two dark mirrors. But I already knew. Mother had had a premonition. She had stood at the door with her hand upon the screen watching Papa go, fearing there was something there in Soo City that would keep him from ever coming back. And now her fears appeared to be justified.

  After that, I dragged my heavy emotions with me all through the day, from the first morning bell to the last afternoon bell when I was finally able to leave school and go to the hospital. The sky had remained overcast all day, and only during that brief ride did the sun momentarily discover a break in the clouds, pushing its golden shimmering rays earthward from heaven. Aunt Sally's ladders. I looked for angels. How I longed to see angels coming to help. But then I remembered--Aunt Sally said those sunbeams were also the ladders that souls climbed up to heaven.

  I didn't cry out, and I didn't feel fear. Rather, what filled my heart was the greatest sadness I had ever known. Oh, Papa, I thought. Don't go, Papa, please don't go.

  The clouds shifted, filling in the gap, and the sun withdrew the fingers with which it had touched the earth.

  I was sure then that Papa was gone. He had climbed up the ladder of light and the sunbeam had been pulled back up into heaven behind him, the door to heaven shut and padlocked as Papa disappeared inside.

  The trolley rumbled on its way. A middle-aged woman with a Pekingese got on and plopped down in the seat beside me, holding the small dog in her lap. I offered her a wan smile, but the woman sniffed and didn't return it. Her haughtiness, which at any other time wouldn't bother me, was almost enough to make me break down and cry. It was a busy hour for the trolley, with people getting on and off at every stop, filling up the seats and even standing in the aisle. Most of them were traveling home from work, from shopping, from appointments. I envied them, going about what I imagined to be the mundane routines of their lives, uninterrupted by something as awful--as final--as death. I felt cut off from them all, isolated by my grief, the only one among them touched by tragedy. If only one of them, I thought, would turn around and see me and know that something was wrong. If only I could say, "My papa's dead," so that they might answer, "You don't know for sure yet. Don't say that until you know for sure." But no one noticed me, and I had to go on looking out the window and waiting for my stop as though nothing in the world were wrong.

  When I got off the trolley in front of the hospital, my knees were so weak they threatened to buckle beneath me and leave me in a heap on the sidewalk. But I mustered up whatever strength I could find and managed to drag myself beyond the double glass doors into the lobby. The sterile smell of disinfectant assaulted me and turned my stomach. I scanned the room. The lobby was quiet and orderly. No one rushed a
bout as though someone had just died. The nurse at the front desk smiled in my direction when she noticed me. She wouldn't have done that, I thought, if Papa were gone.

  And indeed, in spite of my fears, when I reached his room I found Mother sitting placidly beside the sleeping figure of my father, the same as always. The tableau was the same; it hadn't changed. I had expected a different scene, was so sure that the curtain had opened on a new act. But you were wrong, I told myself. The sunbeam came, but Papa didn't climb up it.

  I gazed upon Papa's sleeping figure with quiet acceptance, thinking of how I had always tried to write the outcome of the story--by spinning the globe, by dreaming and wishing, by fearing and doubting. Always trying to set the story line, always trying to lay out the plot. Yet I could speculate and guess and conjecture all I wanted, but in the end, the fact remained that I wasn't the author of the play. Someone else was, thankfully.

  "How is he, Mama?" I asked quietly.

  Mother closed the Bible in her lap. "No different," she replied. "I'm glad you're here."

  After an hour, a cold, sparse rain began to fall, and I was afraid our friends from Soo City might not come. But they came--improvising, as always. Instead of umbrellas, they held leaves of newspaper over their heads. Only Mrs. Everhart stayed away to keep baby Caroline protected from the damp chill, though Mr. Everhart was there with the two boys.

  "You'll catch your death of cold," Mother warned the singers. "Perhaps for tonight you should--"

  A barrage of mild protests interrupted her.

  "A herd a wild horses wouldn't keep us away, Mrs. Eide."

  "Gotta see how the doc's doing."