by John Coston
Happy Birthday, Steven
Everyone in the family gathered for Steven’s fourth birthday. His grandmother gave him a collection of new toy cars, which he promptly took outside to the play yard. The date was Friday, September 22, 1989, only nine days after the family had been through the scare with Stacy. Now she was fine. Ellen had kept a close eye on her since the incident. Steven, too, had long ago recovered from his low blood sugar condition. The following day he was scheduled for a doctor visit for routine inoculations and a checkup.
The pediatrician was Dr. Robert Spewak, who had offices on Chippewa Street, but that day Steven would be seen by his partner, Dr. Martin Schmidt. The doctor found Steven to be in good health. The records showed that he was behind in his immunization shots, but that discrepancy was corrected on the spot with inoculations for measles and diphtheria. Steven was also given an oral polio vaccine. The only thing Ellen was told to watch for would be a mild fever over the next day or so.
Dr. Schmidt, who knew about the death of David less than a year before, thought it odd that Ellen had let Steven fall behind schedule, because in his experience parents are usually very careful to have regular checkups after the loss of a child in the family. Ellen, who typically kept the children on schedule with their checkups, explained that she had had problems seeing their previous pediatrician.
After they left, Ellen drove the children to a Casa Gallardo for a fast-food lunch of tacos and Pepsi. By the time they got home, it was close to 3:30 and Steven was feeling ill. He started vomiting before dinner, and she put him to bed for the rest of the night, though he continued to experience bouts of vomiting. While Dr. Schmidt had said that the shots could lead to a mild fever, rarely did they result in vomiting. But Steven was experiencing the opposite condition: He couldn’t keep anything down but he had a normal temperature. Or so Ellen was saying.
By Sunday morning, Steven was feeling a little better, and Ellen decided to keep him on a liquid diet. He ate very little, and in fact spent the greater part of the day in bed, sleeping.
The next morning, Ellen decided to stay home with Steven instead of going to work and leaving him with her mother. After Stacy caught the school bus, Ellen took Steven to her mother’s house.
“I think we’re just going to stay home,” Ellen said.
Catherine Booker saw nothing wrong in this arrangement. The little boy did seem a little pale, and it made sense to her that he was still getting over the shots he had on Saturday.
Ellen didn’t stay long. She drove away with Steven and headed down South Broadway. Her next step was to call the office. She pulled her white Chevy Cavalier into the Mobil Fifty-Five station at Fifth and Broadway to use the pay phone.
It was approximately 8:15 A.M.
Elaine Herman is usually one of the first people in the office, and she was there when Ellen called.
“Elaine, the same thing that happened to David is happening to Steven,” Ellen said in a panic. Before Elaine could get a word in, Ellen continued, “We’re on our way to Cardinal Glennon. I’m at a pay phone.”
Steven was still seated in the front seat of the car, fidgeting, glancing at times toward his mother in the phone booth.
“It just happened. When I was getting dressed for work, Steven just stopped breathing.”
“Ellen,” Elaine said into the phone, while also looking down at her watch, noting that Ellen was actually due in the office at 8:30, “if you need anything, whatever, I’m so sorry. Please call. Ellen, please call and let us know.”
“Okay. Sure.”
After Ellen hung up, Elaine was bewildered and troubled. She walked over to see Ruth Brock, a manager in Ellen’s department. Ruth noticed that Elaine was visibly shaken, and then she learned why. They both shared the shock of the news, which also recalled the horrible memory of what had happened only last Thanksgiving, ten months ago.
“Elaine, keep me posted if you learn anything new.”
As the rest of the office staff arrived, the word spread. Everyone began to share the new worry about little Steven. Those who had attended David’s funeral were fighting back the memory of that previous tragedy.
Ellen got back into the car and pulled onto Broadway, heading home. She made a couple of stops, first at the National Food Store at Grand and Chippewa, and then picked up some children’s Tylenol at Kare Drugs. When she was finished with the errands, Steven had an idea of his own.
“Mom,” Steven said, “I wanna go to Taco Bell.”
“I think we’re just going to go home.”
“No, I wanna go to Taco Bell.”
Ellen relented. After all, she was in a time warp anyway, having just telephoned her office to say that her son had stopped breathing and that they were on the way to the hospital. She had time to kill before her next move.
Steven had one of his favorites, a bean burrito with pintos and cheese. They got back into the car and once again headed home. As Ellen headed southward along Meramec, she passed the Gebken-Benz Mortuary, the funeral home where David had been laid out. Little Steven, who could barely see out the front passenger seat window, remembered. He remembered that was where his brother had been, and he said, “Mommy, I want to go see David.”
Ellen said nothing, just kept driving.
“That’s where David was.”
“Steve, Steve, yes, that’s where David was.”
“Mommy, I want to go see David,” Steven said, employing an innocent directness that Ellen couldn’t ignore.
“I miss him,” Steven said, his voice cracking. He was beginning to get teary-eyed.
Ellen brought her hand up to her nose. Now she was beginning to cry, and Steven thought it was his fault.
“Don’t blame me. We all miss David,” she told her son.
At the rambling green grounds of Trinity Cemetery, David’s grave was still identified only by the plastic marker provided by the funeral home, now beginning to lose its color. As Ellen and Steven stood there, they both began to sob some more. Ellen reached over and hugged Steven. He hugged her back, holding on to his mother with as much strength as he could summon. When the moment subsided, Steven spoke.
“Mommy, I wish I was with David.”
Those words undid Ellen. She couldn’t stand to stay longer, and she motioned toward the car. Steven just followed her.
“That was our little ‘Da-Da,’” Ellen said, hoping to comfort Steven a little.
On the way out of the cemetery, Ellen also decided to stop at her father’s grave. Ten years had passed since his death, and she never had a kind word to say about him to her friends. Ellen didn’t remain long at her father’s graveside, for she realized that she’d better call the office again. Somehow hours had elapsed. It was after 11:30 when Elaine Herman got a second call from Ellen. For the past three hours, she and all of Ellen’s coworkers had sat around wondering and waiting for news about Steven, and when they got the story this time it was as curious and confusing as before.
“We’re heading back to the hospital,” Ellen explained. “They couldn’t find anything wrong with Steven, so they let him go. Then, while I was driving home, Steven stopped breathing again.” Ellen also explained that Steven had started to turn blue.
Elaine wasn’t sure what to say. She asked Ellen if she was satisfied with the care Steven was getting at Cardinal Glennon, and whether she wouldn’t prefer to take him to Children’s Hospital instead. Ellen answered that she was going to stay with Cardinal Glennon because it was closer.
“Of course, of course,” Elaine comforted. “Keep us posted.” After she hung up, Elaine went back into Ruth Brock’s office to give her the update.
Ellen, on the other hand, was bringing her morning meandering to an end. She returned home with Steven and told him he could watch TV while she did some housework.
Ellen straightened up Steven’s and Stacy’s rooms, making the beds and putting some things away. She could hear the laughter from the living room, where Steven was stretched out on the sofa, watching Ses
ame Street. After Ellen finished in the bedrooms, she moved into the kitchen to do some dishes. At one point she heard him cough, and she looked in on him. He was half awake and half asleep.
Ellen walked into the living room. She reached down and raised his head so she could remove the sofa pillow underneath. In the next instant, she pushed it over his face. She gripped the pillow by its corners and held it down firmly.
The Sesame Street broadcast in the background didn’t faze Ellen as she counted away the seconds. Steven didn’t offer much resistance, not like David, who had struggled to breathe, and by the time Ellen estimated that thirty seconds had passed, she pulled the pillow away. She wasn’t sure that he was dead, but she put the pillow back under his head anyway.
Ellen stood over her son, looking down at him, watching his chest for a sign. Another minute or two passed. She detected the slightest tinge of blue in his pallor, and then she ran for help.
Todd Andrews lived two doors down in Apartment 503. It was not unusual for this single, twenty-eight-year-old California transplant to be home in the middle of the day, for he was a medical student at St. Louis University. He had lived in the building for about two and a half years, and he saw Ellen and her children occasionally. To him, the children always seemed happy.
Unlike Ellen, Todd, who was in every respect an agreeable neighbor, had a working telephone in his apartment, but Ellen ran right past his door.
Instead, she took the elevator to the eighth floor. That’s where Pauline Sumokowski lived, but Ellen was guessing at that. Pauline was Ellen’s mother’s age, and was sort of an acquaintance of her mother’s only because Pauline also baby-sat in the play yard and had gotten to know Catherine. Ellen would never have found Pauline on the eighth floor, because she lived on the sixth floor, in Apartment 608.
When Ellen began pounding on the door to Apartment 808, she had no idea it was the residence of William C. Curtis, an eighty-two-year-old retiree. Curtis wasn’t home. He had left three days before on a trip to Washington, D.C., to visit an old friend. While he was away, his daughter, who lived across the river in Columbia, Illinois, had promised to stop in and do some cleaning, and she was in the apartment that day when she heard the urgent pounding on the apartment door.
Gail Zavadil, a thirty-three-year-old housewife, was alarmed by the racket. She was comfortable enough in her father’s apartment, but didn’t know anyone in the building, and wasn’t sure what to do when she looked through the peephole of the apartment door and saw the frantic stranger outside.
Ellen was standing in the hallway. Gail waited for about a minute and looked back through the distorting lens of the peephole. The woman was gone, and Gail returned to her cleaning.
No one knows if Ellen sought out other apartments for help, but soon she pounded on the door of Apartment 503, where her neighbor Todd Andrews lived.
It was shortly before one o’clock when he heard the pounding.
“Todd, I need your help. My son isn’t breathing.”
“He’s not breathing?”
“No.”
“Is his heart beating?”
The questioning was rapidfire. Todd was already moving for the phone to call 911.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Ellen answered.
The dispatcher Todd reached took down the address and the other particulars. When EMS paramedic Todd May, who was assigned to Medic No. 1, along with Gary Simmons, got the call, he was told it was a Code 303, which indicated subject with shortness of breath. His unit dispatched at 12:55.
Todd raced nextdoor with Ellen, where he found little Steven on the couch. The boy was lying on his back, just as Ellen had left him. Todd immediately began to perform CPR.
“What happened?”
Ellen had the simplest of answers, “I had put him on the couch. He was watching TV.”
All the while Todd was concentrating on the rhythm of his procedure, trying to revive this fair-haired, four-year-old.
“Then, about fifteen minutes later, when I came in to check on him, I found him like this.”
Todd didn’t say much. He had positioned Steven a little differently and was now administering mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Todd’s own heart was running faster than usual. He was giving it everything he had, but Steven wasn’t responding. After a couple of minutes, Ellen went down the hall to wait by the elevator, where she would greet the paramedics.
At exactly 12:59, the doors opened.
“Here, here.” Ellen pointed down the hall. “I’m the mother.”
Paramedics May and Simmons followed Ellen to the door of Apartment 501. They carried the standard assortment of life-saving gear, plus a folding stretcher. Like all paramedics, they were a welcome sight for Todd Andrews, who was continuing his mouth-to-mouth even though it was well beyond the time limit for his efforts to succeed.
Todd moved away, and May and Simmons went to work. Their priority was clear: get this boy to Cardinal Glennon as fast as they could. They performed a few checks, but spent little time getting him on their stretcher and out the door. Simmons made a mental note as they moved Steven from the couch: The little boy was in full cardiac arrest. Ellen accompanied them to the elevator entrance on the fifth floor, but she told Simmons that she wouldn’t be riding in the ambulance. She would drive herself to the hospital.
When the doors opened to take them down, Gail Zavadil, who had finished cleaning her father’s apartment, was surprised to see two paramedics and a boy on a stretcher. She immediately got off to make room for them, and took another elevator to the lobby. When she got there, she saw the woman who had been pounding on the door.
Simmons hurried out through the lobby. Ellen was explaining again that she would come right along. It struck him as very unusual for a mother not to accompany her child to the hospital, but he didn’t have time to waste. At 1:19, the red-and-white EMS ambulance pulled out of the parking lot at 4720 South Broadway. As Ellen stood in the lobby, a small crowd of onlookers gathered. Ellen had already called her mother and told her to stand by, that she would pick her up on the way to the hospital. Pauline Sumokowski had heard the commotion, and when Ellen saw her, Pauline offered to meet Stacy at the school bus and take her to the hospital.
When the ambulance arrived at Cardinal Glennon, it was 1:24. The time that had elapsed between the call to 911 and the arrival at the hospital was twenty-nine minutes. When Ellen stopped at her mother’s apartment to pick her up, her mother wasn’t ready. She still had to change her clothes, so Ellen gave her a five-dollar bill and told her to take a cab. By the time Ellen got to Cardinal Glennon, it was shortly after two.
Ellen’s strange pattern of phone calls resumed. First she called Elaine Herman at work, giving the details.
“They’re talking about taking him off life support.”
“Oh, Ellen.”
Elaine was concerned that Ellen was comfortable about the doctors’ decision to stop life support, and she asked, “Do you want me to contact the company physician?”
Ellen was noncommittal on the subject, and Elaine didn’t press any further. She told Ellen that she would come to the hospital later in the afternoon, and that was the end of the conversation. When Ellen got off the phone, she called two of her friends, Sandy Nelson, and Debbie Siegel, who was another old high school girlfriend. She then tried to reach Deanne at work, but was told that Deanne was home sick with the flu. Ellen faintly knew the receptionist at Deanne’s office. They had met when Ellen had visited once, and she knew about Ellen’s tragedy with David. When she wanted to know if Ellen would like to leave a message, Ellen gave her one.
“The same thing that happened to Davie happened to Stevie.”
“Oh, Ellen, I’m so sorry,” the receptionist said. When did it happen?”
“Sometime in the middle of the night.”
This was, of course, a new version of events, but the receptionist would have no way of knowing that Ellen had told her supervisors at Andersen, as well as the doctors and her neighbors, t
hat Steven had stopped breathing while watching Sesame Street shortly before noontime.
Deeply saddened by the news, the receptionist decided to call Deanne at home to tell her about it.
After Elaine Herman had hung up, she immediately had gone to tell Ruth Brock about the latest development.
“Would you come to Cardinal Glennon with me? They’re talking about taking him off life support.” Ruth agreed to go along. Elaine also would notify administration and personnel about Ellen’s son.
When Elaine and Ruth arrived at the hospital, it was shortly after four. The nurse behind the desk pointed them toward a door that led to a waiting room, where Ellen was seated by herself. A priest was with Stevie, and though they had understood the gravity of the situation before, the appearance of a clergyman hit home.
The two women walked over to Ellen and began to console her. Ellen launched into another description of what had happened, explaining one more time the horror of it: While she was preoccupied getting dressed for work, Steven suddenly stopped breathing. While this version matched up with what Ellen had told Elaine earlier in the day, it didn’t track with what Ellen had told the paramedics or, for that matter, anyone else she had seen from noon onward.
Elaine, in fact, was less interested in the recounting of events than she was about caring for Ellen’s daughter, Stacy, who had been brought to the hospital after school, and who now sat in the room with them. Ruth, however, made a disconcerting observation. She noticed that Ellen was not really dressed well enough to have come to work. If Steven had stopped breathing while Ellen was getting dressed for work, why would she be wearing these casual clothes? This fact puzzled her, but she let it pass.
The priest came in and mentioned something to Ellen about administering an electro-cardiogram. He indicated that the doctors thought it would be helpful if both she and her daughter got one. The priest also said there would be some forms to fill out so that Steven’s organs could be donated, as Ellen had offered. Neither Elaine or Ruth up to this point knew whether Steven was still on life support or not. In a few moments, Ellen followed the priest out of the room. She was going to get the EKG right then, and Elaine and Ruth looked at each other.
