kidney. “Hmm,” he said gruffly, and I couldn’t be sure if it meant he didn’t believe or didn’t care. “I’d like to go home, now.”
I turned to his wife, who looked as desperate as I felt. She leaned over his hospital bed and whispered, “Please, honey, for me. If you love me, you’ll stay until the doctors are done.” He sighed, and agreed to stay a few days.
But I knew that wouldn’t be enough time. I set up a self-administered morphine drip for him, and eased the restricted dose ever so slightly past the protocols. He told me it was the first time in months his sleep wasn’t interrupted by pain. And that bought us another day, maybe two.
Then Dante began talking about leaving again. “A man ought to be able to die in his own home,” he said. Of course, we weren’t stopping him, but there was just enough old fashioned deference in his character that he wasn’t ready to walk out against his doctors’ wishes. Dr. Rice, head of our oncology department, spoke to him, using all the right words like “aggressive treatment” and “have you out of here as soon as we can.”
In my office afterward Dr. Rice confessed to me why he had convinced Dante to stay. The cancer in his kidneys was likely terminal, but Dante’s insurance covered everything, and would beef up Rice’s numbers at the end of the calendar year- when they mattered most to the administrator. I thought about going to her, or even the medical ethics board, but it gave us another day and a half.
Only, I couldn’t let it go. I knew what Dante wanted, and I knew that letting Dr. Rice talk him into staying wasn’t right. So I told Dante the truth; he said he didn’t care that Rice had twenty years, myelination and one good kidney on him, he still wanted to punch him in his smug little beard. But his anger was short-lived; “You almost went along with it, because you still think I should stay, don’t you?” He didn’t wait for my answer, just sighed, and his shoulders shrunk in. That bought us still a little more time.
But after only half a day he changed his mind. He was tired of waiting, tired of testing, poking, prodding. He wanted to go home. By God, he didn’t care anymore how many other doctors I presented him with who thought he should get more treatment, he wanted to leave. Only, he was saying this to another doctor, because I had already gone home for the evening; “Oh,” he said, when Dr. Mitchell told him that. He thought he owed me enough to wait until I came back the next morning, to tell it to me himself.
Dr. Mitchell talked with him for several hours after his wife fell asleep in a chair at his bedside. “I don’t want to be here. But, if I can’t not be here, then at least I want to be in control of when I leave,” he said. Dr. Mitchell explained that we couldn’t force him to stay, but that we also couldn’t help him leave, either; all we could do was help him with his pain. Dante seemed to understand; “Yeah, of course. It was silly of me to even ask about. Forget it.” Dr. Mitchell stayed there for most of the night, except when she had to make her rounds.
Early the next morning, his wife left and came back with paperwork for him to sign. She said it was from the lawyer: the “Do not resuscitate” order he’d requested, as well as some medical proxy documents. He signed them without reading them, because it was his wife, and because he’d misplaced his glasses.
By the time I arrived, Dante wasn’t speaking with her. She was now his medical proxy, and in that capacity, had gotten him declared mentally incompetent to make his own medical decisions. “He’s staying,” was the first thing she said to me. We spoke for several minutes; Dante simply glared at both of us, conspiring over his medical care.
“I’d rather have him alive and ornery; just so long as he’s still there,” she said. I told her it wouldn’t work that way. His cancer, the MS- her husband was dying, and there was little, if anything, we could do to prolong his life. What she needed, and what he needed, was for them to be together. Her eyes welled up with tears, “He can’t- I can’t live without him,” she pulled me close to her chest, and I think she realized her only option was to live with him for as long as she could.
When Dante saw his wife’s tears he forgot their quarrel. “Come here, Suzanne,” he said, and held her.
We took him home shortly after. Standing in his open door, where I had first met Dante, were the rest of his family: his sister, his children, grandchildren, his old dog, his old tail waggling sluggishly from side to side. And Dante smiled; it was the first time I’d seen him smile since the day we met.
I realized then that it had always been Dante’s journey, that my place was not as guide, but as companion, that the roads and decisions, taken and not, were his. He died six hours later, and I took some comfort that while I could not prevent his end, at least it was his end as he desired it.
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The Ghost Club
Now I know you’ve heard the stories about Mr. Houdini, but at least one isn’t true: he’d performed the Chinese Water Torture Act dozens of times. It wasn’t the torture cell that killed him- it was a burst appendix. When he first introduced the cell, which he called the Up Side Down, it was a part of a one man play- a trick to copyright the effect and prevent imitation. That was because his previous bread and butter, the milk can escape, had been stolen a hundred times over.
But something you may not know is Mr. Houdini was friends with none other than the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself. They met in the 20s, while Mr. Houdini was touring England. Doyle was a member of a group of spiritualists that went by the name of the Ghost Club. Ostensibly, their work focused on rooting out frauds in the spirit world, but Doyle became convinced that Mr. Houdini was a great medium- which teed Mr. Houdini off.
They were quite a pair. Conan Doyle was a full head taller- and nearly two Mr. Houdinis thick. Mr. Houdini didn’t cotton to spiritualists and grifters who had tried to take advantage of him and his family after his mother Cecelia’s passing. Conversely, Doyle, following the death of his wife Louisa and his son Kingsley, found solace in the idea that those he lost weren’t really and truly gone.
I think that’s why they became friends: they both wanted to believe, and the difference came down to whichever side of skepticism they landed. Their friendship ended abruptly- as many people know- but there’s one incident that neither man, despite their books on the subject and their general outspokenness, ever told.
It was the year before Mr. Houdini’s death, and they hadn’t spoken since before he published A Magician Among the Spirits. Doyle sent a letter over the ocean: “I’ve spoken with Louisa. You must come. A. Conan Doyle” (signed).
When Mr. Houdini arrived at Doyle’s door two weeks later, he asked, “Whatever was so urgent?”
Doyle smiled. “I’d hoped you would arrive today. It’s the anniversary, you might not recall, of the séance with Lady Jean. I won’t abuse the proverbial beast of burden, but it was the last time I believe we attempted one to another to see the other’s eyes. In the past you’ve accused me of incaution- even zeal- and perhaps I’m culpable on both counts. But I’ve found someone- a mystic beyond anything I’ve seen, and I’d wager beyond even the cleverest artifices of your luminous mind.”
Mr. Houdini was immediately taken aback. Doyle had sworn for quite some time that his feats were, to a one, supernatural, owing to powers he was perhaps unaware of, but certainly of a metaphysical nature. “You believe you’ve found a genuine spiritualist?”
“I have,” he paused. “It’s strange, without knowing firsthand the actual article, how simple it was to… confuse the merely mysterious with the magical. But I have seen-” Doyle stopped himself, “I can’t expect, after all these years, for you to take anecdote for evidence of it. You shall see, with your own eyes, the very thing tonight.”
“Will Lady Doyle be joining us?” Mr. Houdini asked after a moment’s pause.
“No. There’ll be plenty time enough for pleasantries. And perhaps Bess will join us before you take your leave. But come. I’ve an audience scheduled on the hour, and we should have just enough time for it.”
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br /> They walked maybe two-thirds of the way to the Queen’s Head pub before Doyle said something to the effect of, “It’s a good feeling, walking with you again. It has been a great sacrifice.”
Houdini snapped back at him. “It is no ‘sacrifice’ to convince people who have recently suffered a bereavement of the possibility and reality of communicating with their dear ones.”
Doyle smiled pleasantly. “Our friendship has suffered. I am mocked openly in the presses. If not sacrifice, what word would suffice?”
“To me the poor suffering followers eagerly searching for relief from the heart-pain that follows the passing on of a dear one are the ‘sacrifice.’”
“I’ve missed your passion, Houdini; I pray it survives its trial.”
“I would like nothing more than to believe, but unlike you, Conan, I must be convinced. Validation mustn’t be sought after; it must be manifest.”
“You should have your proof,” Doyle said, holding the door into the Queen’s Head open. There was a small room near the rear of the pub, and Doyle led the way through a gentle mob of patrons. Inside the room, Doyle spoke. “This is the medium I’ve spoken of, Albert Roberts. And Mr. Roberts, this is the great Harry Houdini. Not to sell Mr. Roberts short, but he’s
Selected Short Stories Featuring Ghost Dust Page 16
