Chapter 32

 

Lance and Brook talked as they ate. He was surprised at how the words kept rolling out of him. Lance hadn’t enjoyed a good conversation with anyone for longer than he could remember. He told Brook about fixing up the cabin, about his adventures in homesteading and raising animals, the general location of the cabin, and how long he had been there. He found she was easy to talk to. For her part, she welcomed the distraction from her inner thoughts.

“With your skills, you could easily find a job,” she said encouragingly. “I’m sure there are lots of employers who would be happy to hire you. You don’t have to live like this.”

He stared at her for a moment, realizing she had misunderstood his life entirely.

“I’m not out here because I have no other choice.” He smiled at her. “I know I might look like some crazy hermit down on his luck, but I actually chose this life. I love it here.”

“I’m sorry.” Her cheeks flushed. “I didn’t mean any offense.”

“It’s okay; none taken.” He was quick to ease her embarrassment. “It’s not the kind of life everyone would want. But it works for me. It’s better for me out here. I wasn’t very happy before I came here.”

“Why is that?” she asked tentatively. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I was somebody else back then. It’s kind of a long story.”

"Well, I’m not going anywhere. I have plenty of time to listen.”

Lance’s expression turned thoughtful. “I had a wife,” he said finally. “And I lost her.”

He had been a different person then, with a different name. As Sullivan Proctor, he had worked as a CPA for Boyd Wilkins, a large accounting firm where he was just another face in the break room, just another suit and tie in a cubicle. He had assumed he was happy. Ellen was still alive and he was moving up the corporate ladder, taking classes to advance his degree. They’d had the requisite three-bedroom, two-bath home in the suburbs with a patio for cooking out and a privacy-fenced yard where their eventual children would hopefully scamper. Sully to his wife and friends, Sullivan had been just another ordinary man living an ordinary life. Although he did not involve himself in politics, clubs, or causes, he thought of himself as an educated liberal-minded guy. He woke looking forward to each day and encountered relatively few rough waters on the ocean of his life. Until Ellen got sick, that is.

It was a stroke that got her. Out of the blue. Not the kind of stroke where a blood clot develops and makes its evil way into the skull, but severe hemorrhagic stroke. She bled out into her brain. He had found her unconscious on the treadmill, dressed in her exercise clothes. Having no idea how long she had lain there, or even what was wrong with her, his shaking fingers dialed 911. The moments and days that followed were a blur in his mind.

The fear and sorrow of Ellen’s illness drained him. As days turned to weeks, he juggled hospital visits with his work schedule and dropped out of school altogether. His interest in work waned, and he did the bare minimum to get by, always anxious to return to Ellen’s side and watch for any little sign of recovery. He thought of Ellen’s parents as the walking wounded. In the first days, they had hung by Ellen’s bedside, their eyes red but hopeful. His own parents moved in and out of the room like shadows, taking care of things at the house, silently doing the practical chores, their quiet strength reinforcing him, holding him up.

The medical staff was excellent at first, very understanding and caring. But as time went on, their attitudes shifted. They began dropping hints about “quality of life” and “letting go”. At some point, even Ellen’s parents began to look at him with pity when he spoke optimistically about Ellen’s eventual recovery. They said they had come to understand their Ellen was gone, that it was time to let go. But what it amounted to, in his opinion, was that they had given up hope, and he resented them for it.

It was with supposed kindness, and in a roundabout way, suggested to Sullivan by well-intentioned others that he was selfish, clinging to a woman whose life was technically over, a shell of a body kept alive by artificial means. But Sullivan would not give up. It seemed he was the only one who saw small signs of a living Ellen submerged inside the husk, struggling to return to him. The doctors called it wishful thinking on his part, her small movements nothing but normal mindless responses, mere reflexes. Sullivan disagreed. He simply knew she was still in there, sleeping maybe, but nonetheless alive and vital. Even when presented with proof of her reduced brain activity, he never wavered because he simply couldn't accept the test results. He believed that Ellen, held down by the invisible force of coma, but still feeling and thinking down deep inside, was trying to fight her way back to him. He just knew it. She was his Sleeping Beauty. If only a kiss was all it took to awaken her.

One morning the doctor requested a meeting with Sullivan. He left work and rushed to the hospital, hoping to hear that Ellen had awakened, shown some signs of life, or about a new treatment option or medication. Instead, the doctor had asked him to consider allowing Ellen to die. He suggested removing the feeding tube and withholding fluids.

“My god!” Sullivan had railed. “You can’t be serious. That’s unthinkable! You want to starve her to death?” Unbidden, a memory of an argument in the lawyer’s office sprang into his mind, but he pushed it aside.

“Now, now,” the doctor had soothed. “She wouldn’t starve; technically she would dehydrate. This is not a painful way to go.” His bedside manner was the worst Sully had ever encountered.

“How the hell would you know?” Sullivan had challenged. “You haven’t experienced it. Yet you want to deny a helpless woman the water and food she needs to survive? What kind of ghoul are you?”

“I resent that.” The doctor had pulled himself up to his full height. “What I’m suggesting is standard practice in many of these cases. Ellen wouldn’t want to live this way. You need to accept that. We would give her morphine and she would feel no pain. She would just slide into death easily. It’s cruel to keep her alive in this condition.”

“You have no idea what Ellen would want. Besides, she’s going to recover,” Sullivan said, pacing the small conference room.

“Actually, I do know what Ellen wanted,” the doctor said, his voice cold. “Her family doctor and I recently conferred regarding this case, and Dr. Alfron produced an advanced directive signed by Ellen herself. Somehow this document slipped through the cracks in the beginning.” The doctor sighed. “Contrary to what you may believe, Ellen made her wishes very clear. Unfortunately we didn’t have this document when she was admitted to the hospital. Now we must do the right thing and honor her request.”

Sullivan felt a sinking sensation in his gut. Ellen had gone ahead, then, he thought. Without telling me. His heart pounded in his throat at the news, but he fought the good fight anyway.

 “We don’t have to do any such thing. I don’t know what kind of sadist you are, but I don’t want you touching my wife again. I don’t trust you anymore. You’re fired!”

He started to storm from the room but whirled around. “In fact, I don’t trust the staff here either. I’m not immune to their little digs and jabs. I don’t think they have Ellen’s best interests at heart. And after what you just said, I know you certainly don’t. I’ll drag your ass to court, if I have to.”

“That’s fine with me,” the doctor said dispassionately. “But you must know that the courts will probably side against you since your wife had papers legally drawn up with her wishes.” He paused. “I was hoping you’d be reasonable, but apparently you lack the strength yet to let her go. Frankly, we can’t keep her here, occupying a bed that could be used for someone else. And, I’m not going to authorize any more therapy for her. It’s a waste of time and resources because she is never going to recover. I suggest you find a long-term care facility that is willing to take her. Oh, and a good lawyer.”

The doctor had turned to leave when Sullivan called him back in a soft voice. “Wait!” he said. “You don’t deserve the title of Doctor. You’re only thinking about the bed you can fill with another victim, another sucker.”

“You’re entitled to your opinion,” the doctor answered, his lips tight. “You’re overly emotional now. But, someday you’ll see that I’m just trying to do the right thing for my patient.”

“By killing her.”

“By allowing her to die with dignity.”

“Get out of here,” Sullivan whispered, anger and sorrow battling each other as the doctor left the room.

Sullivan called in to work and took the rest of the day off. He scrambled to find a facility that would take Ellen. He called the insurance company. He called Ellen’s family doctor and railed against her for her part in this. There was an unexplainable bad feeling inside him, a sick urgency. It slithered up his back, crept over his neck, and stood his hairs on end. He must get Ellen out of that hospital today!

The Loving Arms Facility agreed to take Ellen, but they could not admit her until the following afternoon. They, too, asked about an advanced directive. Sullivan lied to them. He didn’t know if he could pull it off, but he was damn sure going to try. Once he got her settled in the new facility he would hire an attorney to file some kind of action to protect her until the whole mess could be sorted out in a court of law. Resentment that any other person, a doctor, a lawyer, or even a judge, had a legal right to decide life or death for his wife, settled over Lance.

He rushed back to the hospital to advise them Ellen would be moved the next day. His information was met with cold civility. Gone was the warmth and sympathy in which he had previously basked. Word traveled fast, he guessed, courtesy of the offended doctor and staff.

Sullivan went up to Ellen’s room and took her hand in his. Guilt crawled around inside him, guilt over his decision to blatantly disregard her wishes. But she had made her decision thinking nothing would happen to her while she was still young, he rationalized. She wouldn’t feel the same had she known she would be stricken so soon. His way was the right way.

He stroked her hand gently, pulling her slender fingers straight as he massaged them. Speaking softly, he explained that she was being moved to a new facility. As usual, he told her about little things that had happened, leaving out the unpleasantness with the doctor.

“I love you, Ellen,” he said tenderly as he watched her eyes move slightly behind their lids. Kissing her on the forehead, he left to sign the paperwork for The Loving Arms.

The next morning, Ellen was gone. The phone call he had dreaded for so long finally came, even as he was feeling hopeful about the future.

“She expired during the night,” the doctor told him when he had rushed to the hospital.

“Expired? Of what?” he had yelled. “She was fine when I left her.”

“Mr. Proctor, your wife hasn’t been fine for a long time,” the doctor said patiently. “While I, and the staff, sympathize with your loss, you have to know her passing is no surprise. We’ve tried repeatedly to warn you of this ultimate outcome. But, you wouldn’t accept the truth. Of course, I have ordered an autopsy.”

Of course it wouldn’t be a surprise to someone who engineered the event, Sullivan thought suspiciously. As the tears rolled down his cheeks, he tore at himself with unspoken questions. How did it go down? A nurse with a hypodermic full of air? An orderly with a pillow over the face? An accidental overdose of one medication or another? Sullivan would never know and it didn’t matter anyway at this point. She was gone and nothing would bring her back.

Alone, after the funeral, numbness settled over him. All the tears had been cried; it seemed he had been crying for such a long time. Something inside him now shut down. He rejected all expressions of sympathy, all offers of companionship, even those from his two closest friends. Work and home, that was his life. Soon, people began giving him the space he was looking for and left him alone.

As he finished this part of his tale, he became aware of Brook’s hand on his.

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

Looking into her bruised face, he saw heartfelt sympathy. Something inside him melted, something that had been cold and hard for a very long time.

“It’s horrible, what happened to you. Heartbreaking.” She lightly patted the back of his hand. Then, she became self-conscious. Moving her hand away from his, she took a sip from her mug before continuing. “So, Ellen had different views on death than you did." Her warm response encouraged him to continue.

Lance nodded. He found himself in the memory of a disagreement he and Ellen had had. It was one of the worst arguments in the history of their marriage. It started in their lawyer’s office, continued on the sidewalk and in the car, and lingered after they had returned home. Sullivan had scheduled the appointment with the attorney to have wills drawn up, since they had reached the decision to start a family.

“Now that we have the wills drafted,” the attorney said, “we should discuss advanced directives. Living wills, powers of attorney, things along that line.”

“What exactly is a living will?” Ellen asked. The attorney explained that living wills are documents that express end-of-life preferences, decisions about accepting or rejecting procedures that will prolong life in the event of a serious illness or accident. Ellen shocked Sully by agreeing with the concept.

“I definitely want one,” Ellen stated. “I don’t want to be kept alive if I’m too sick to ever recover.”

“What do you mean?” Sullivan was bewildered. “Where there is life, there is always hope. You’d want them to pull the plug on you?”

“Well, you don’t have to put it that way.” Ellen’s eyes flashed with the beginnings of annoyance. “Why would I want to lay there and suffer if I’m not going to get well?”

“How would you know whether you’d get well or not?” Sullivan persisted. “That should be in the hands of God, not a decision for some doctor to make. A doctor should do everything humanly possible to save someone’s life! Everything!”

“It’s my decision.” Ellen was adamant. “If I’m ever that sick, then it’s already in God’s hands. Without interference from a doctor, I’d die anyway.”

Sully was equally stubborn. “A doctor is an extension of God’s hands.” His voice rose. “A doctor should use his God-given skills to save life, not take it away! This whole subject is morbid. It’s creepy.”

“If anything is creepy, it’s the idea of keeping a body alive when the brain is dead! A doctor’s job is to alleviate suffering, not prolong it,” Ellen shot back. “A doctor is not God and shouldn’t be playing God with people’s lives!”

The lawyer looked uncomfortable.

“Maybe the two of you should spend some time talking this over before we proceed,” he advised.

“I don’t need to talk it over,” Sullivan retorted. “Do you have some kind of document that’s the opposite of a living will? Something that says a hospital can’t withdraw life support?”

“We can draft something that expresses your desire to be maintained, not to have fluids and nutrition withdrawn,” the attorney answered. “It is no guarantee, but it does give medical personnel and your family a guide to your wishes, in the event you are no longer able to make these types of decisions for yourself.”

“Fine.” Sullivan’s tone was clipped, his lips tight against his teeth. “That’s what we want, then. Draft up a couple of those.”

“How dare you! You will not choose for me!” Ellen exploded. “You’re acting like an arrogant controlling bastard.”

“Ellen!” Sullivan’s face was contorted. “I love you. I’m not trying to control you, dammit. I just can’t face the idea of losing you.”

“I want a living will.” Ellen directed her comment at the attorney. “Give him whatever he wants, but I don’t want to be kept alive like some kind of monster in a horror movie strapped to a bunch of machines.”

“I’m out of here.” Sullivan snatched his jacket from the back of the chair. “You know what I want. Write mine up so nobody can kill me just because I might become inconvenient.”

“Inconvenient!” Ellen was outraged. Sullivan stormed out of the law office with Ellen on his heels. “You think I would make that kind of decision based on convenience?” She was shaking with fury.

“That’s what it sounds like to me!” Sullivan called over his shoulder as he flung the door open and stepped out into the crisp autumn sunshine. The receptionist watched them go, her eyes wide with interest.

“It would!” Ellen yelled, marching out behind him. “You don’t give me any credit at all. None! You’re selfish, Sullivan Proctor! Selfish and cruel.”

They reached the car, and Sullivan unlocked the doors, not bothering to hold Ellen’s door open for her as he usually did. His anger was deep and barely restrained.

“It’s cruel to want to keep you with me? It’s cruel for me to want to live? To want you to live?” He slid behind the wheel and inserted the key. Then he turned to her, his eyes hard. “I’ll tell you what’s cruel. Cruel is taking food and water and medical treatment away from a helpless sick person, someone too weak to fight back. Cruel is starving someone to death who can’t defend himself. I can’t believe you would do that! You’re not the person I thought you were, Ellen. I don’t think I can trust you to make decisions for me.”

“You don’t trust me?” Tears of rage shone in her eyes. “Well, I don’t trust your ass either! How could you insist on keeping my body alive, suffering, possibly for months or even years? Not able to talk, or hear, or move. It’d be a living hell! And you’d put me through that? Now, that’s cruelty! And it’s purely selfish. All because of what YOU want. Nothing about what I want. All to save you grief.”

“It wouldn’t save me any grief, Ellen. If anything happened to you, I’d be grieving more than you can imagine.” Sullivan’s voice held a note of anguish. He started the car, backed out, and pulled carefully into traffic. In a burst of renewed anger, he hit the brakes harder than necessary at the corner and then accelerated recklessly. That was one habit of Sully’s that Ellen disliked intensely, his tendency to express his anger or frustration behind the wheel.

“Slow down, Sully,” she cautioned. He threw her a look of irritation, but backed off the accelerator in deference to her request. It dawned on him they were each focused only on their individual concerns. Logic asserted itself and told him there were four issues here: What would happen to him if he got sick, what would happen to her if she got sick, and each person’s individual response to the situation. But to hell with logic; he decided to appeal to Ellen's emotions.

“Don’t you have any compassion?” He shot her a sideways look, brief but filled with a confused hurt.

“Don’t you?” she returned, equally wounded.

“Look, I love you, Ellen.” Sully took a deep breath. “I love you, goddammit! I’m not going to stop just because you become ill, get hurt in an accident, or get old and feeble.”

“I know that,” Ellen said, her voice still shaky. “But, it wouldn’t be fair to me. And it wouldn’t be fair to you either. I wouldn’t want to live that way! And, you shouldn’t want me to live that way. If you really love me, you’d respect my wishes.”

“Your wishes are wrong,” he stated flatly, and her anger flared again.

“You think you’re so perfect. You think you always have the right answer, and that your way is the only way. I get so tired of it sometimes.” She stared sightlessly out the passenger window, locked in her own thoughts and resentments.

“So, if you get sick, you’d just give up? Leave me? You wouldn’t even try to fight it? I mean so little to you?” He choked on the words. “How could you just leave me?”

Ellen's voice became gentle. "Honey, if I'm that sick, then I’m already gone. It wouldn’t be a choice.”

He slammed the palms of his hands on the steering wheel. “Bullshit! It is a fucking choice and you’re making it right now.”

She felt her anger suddenly dissipate. His agony was heartbreaking to witness. How could she make him understand?

“You’re right, Sully! It’s my choice. I have the right to make it just as much as you have the right to make your choice." She turned in the seat to look at him. "I would never want to leave you. I love you, too. You know that. Sully, you know that. But we’re talking about my body, my life!” She was surprised to see the glimmer of unshed tears in his eyes. They pulled into their driveway and got out. He waited for her on the sidewalk in spite of his anger, and they walked into the house together. As soon as the door closed behind them, the argument resumed.

“We’re talking about my life, too,” he pointed out, tossing his keys onto the hallway table and shrugging out of his jacket. “What would my life be if something happened to you?”

“You’d grieve. But then you’d go on. You’d eventually find someone else, and I’d want you to.”

“I feel like puking.” He sunk to the couch, his expression a mixture of frustration and pain. Ellen put her purse on the coffee table and sat next to him.

“It’s a tough subject,” she agreed. “But I’m glad it came up. We need to find some resolution to this.”

“I just can’t believe life means so little to you,” Sullivan said. “I can’t believe you would let go of it so easily. So, if something happened to me, you’d just give up? Pull the plug on me?”

“No,” she said carefully. “I’d respect your wishes.”

He groaned as her words skewered him. “Touché, Ellen.”

“You’ve never had to make that kind of decision, have you?” Ellen asked, her voice gentle. She picked up his hand and held it tenderly. He was unresponsive, stiff.

“Neither have you,” he replied

“No, not personally. But I saw my mom go through it with Grandma Rhonda when she had her heart attack. It’s horrific. What a burden to put on somebody. It broke her heart to take Grandma off life support.” Ellen shivered.

“Well, she didn’t have to do it.”

“Yes, she did.” Ellen was firm. “Grandma wasn’t going to get better. It was her time to go, Sully. Keeping her alive was just postponing the inevitable.”

“Yeah, well, I have a story like that, too.” He turned to her, his eyes hard as flint. “You’ve met my cousin’s daughter, Lucinda. What you don't know is that Lucy was born prematurely, was very small, less than two pounds. At that time, they couldn’t do what they can today for preemies. The doctors gave my cousin a choice of turning off the respirator. Little Lucy had all kinds of things wrong with her, and she’d had a brain hemorrhage that day. The doctors predicted she would never recover. If she did, they said, she’d be little more than a vegetable. They told my cousin and his wife to think about letting her go. Well, they thought it over for about two seconds, and then they refused. And today she’s alive, twenty some years later. It didn’t happen overnight. It took a long time for her to heal. But, she’s alive and well today.”

“That’s different,” Ellen said. “She was a baby with her whole life in front of her, and she couldn’t make the decision for herself. I can understand why they made the choice they did. But, my grandma was old and debilitated.”

“I see,” he said coldly. “When you’re old, you’re not worth anything anymore.”

“God! You make me furious!” Ellen withdrew her hand and stood. She paced back and forth in front of the picture window.

“Look,” she said, trying to be reasonable. “Why are we doing this to ourselves? We probably won’t have to even worry about it for years. Years! We’re young and healthy. Nothing is going to happen to either of us for a long time.”

“Maybe, but you never know.” Sullivan felt a chill walk up his back on small icy feet. Later, he would think of it as a premonition.

As usual, they made up in bed with tender words and gentle touches. But Sullivan’s feelings for Ellen had been altered subtly. Although he loved her as much as ever, he felt that her particular set of experiences had warped her judgment. He still believed his way was the better way. When they went back to the attorney’s office later that month to execute their wills, end-of-life decisions were not discussed. No such documents were drawn up, not a living will for her, or its opposing counterpart for him. Sully didn’t know until Ellen’s illness that she had taken care of it secretly, at her doctor’s office. Her advanced directive was put in place, waiting in a file somewhere to confound and hurt him when the unthinkable happened.

Horrified, he realized his voice had become husky and his eyes moist as he had related the memory. But, Brooklyn passed no judgments on him, one way or another. She merely listened, which, of course, was exactly what he needed. He noted she had tears in her eyes also, feeling with him the long buried pain.

“So how did you come to be out here on the mountain?” she asked, moving the conversation away from the raw emotions.

“You know what, you look pretty tired. Why don’t we save that story for tomorrow?”

As he reached for her plate, she flinched. Their eyes met, and she relaxed.

“I’m still jumpy, I guess,” she explained weakly.

Lance set her plate back on the table and went around to her side, where he knelt on the floor and put his hand on the seat beside her. Brook cringed. He thought how small she looked when she was afraid.

“Brooklyn,” he said. “Let’s get one thing clear right now. I don’t mean you any harm. I will NEVER hurt you. Never.”

“I know,” she said, but even to her own ears her answer rang false.

Lance sighed. He figured it might take some time before she could accept his words as truth.