CHAPTER FIVE: Time

ON THE BREEZE

The soft breeze whispers

Through the leaves

Murmuring in the world

“There is hope and light

In the

 following of God’s Word.”

Dark clouds may sometimes shroud

The rays of the shining sun

But the promise always glimmers

In the hearts of His chosen ones.

           

CHAPTER FIVE.

APRIL 7, 2000. 5PM

            I pause tonight in my supper preparations, watching Allen in the backyard. It has gone by many names, the piece of wood he deftly wields. He twirls it, crouches low, then brings the stick around, ready to attack. The monsters in the backyard have been gone for years, chased off by Allen’s older brother and this same formidable weapon. Dennis called it “Ooga-Booga”, but in Allen’s possession it has become a light saber, a limbo stick, and a sub-machine gun. The one-eighth of me that is Irish recognizes it as a shillelagh. It does not matter what name it goes by. What matters is what it has come to mean to my youngest child.

            He has grown this winter, I think as I turn away from the window. At fourteen, he tops me by two inches. The hands that hold the stick are larger than mine, but they are still the hands of an adolescent, hands that will need more years of guidance and training before their owner can, like his older brother, leave the nest and find his own way in the world. They are hands that still need a father.

            I lay the plates for supper on the table. There are only three.

            It has been six weeks since the accident and in some respects our lives have returned to normal. The church ladies no longer bring us meals. I go to work. The kids go to school. We eat and do laundry in the evenings after hospital visits and  play long games of Monopoly when we cannot sleep. In the early days, Allen dragged his sleeping bag into my bedroom most nights, settling himself down at the foot of my bed without a word, the threadbare Clifford dog that has accompanied him through childhood clutched in his arms. Bonnie usually joined us, carrying her pillow and the afghan stitched by a great grandmother long passed on. We huddled together in the hours before dawn, listening to the tick of Ron’s alarm clock and waiting for the phone to jangle its ominous ring.

            Lung collapse. Blood clots. An unidentified bacteria. Kidney problems. Bowel obstruction. I became an expert at deciphering the medical codes on our insurance forms.

            Nightmares punctuate Allen’s sleep. The hammer between his sheets was replaced by a succession of other tools that found their way into his room. “Protection,” he told me when I finally asked. “In case someone breaks in during the night, so I can take care of you and Bonnie.” What an immense pressure to put on an adolescent!

            The boy in the backyard, wielding the stick, no longer sleeps with the stuffed red dog or the hammers and wrenches. Since the reappearance of the shillelagh at our house, Allen has taken on a new strength, trying hard to be the man of the house. It is no accident that this gnarled piece of wood re-entered our lives just when he desperately needed the support. The shillelagh and Dennis arrived on the doorstep at the same time.

            Dennis came home six days after the accident, staying for a week to pace the floors of the ICU with us. He visited his dad, played games with his brother, and went to school with his sister. He let me talk about the tests and the doctors and the surgeries and while he had little understanding of them, he listened and patted my shoulder. Dennis and Allen walked to the river together one afternoon, punching each other in the shoulders. And when he left the next day to return to his own life in the city, the shillelagh stayed in Allen’s care, propped up next to him at the dinner table and slid discreetly under the couch as he watched Small Soldiers in the evening. It, instead of a tool, was tucked between his covers at night.

            “Did Dennis say you could have that?” I asked casually at breakfast the next morning. Life cannot forever stay on hold in intensive care wards and Allen was bolting his cereal in order to catch the school bus. The shillelagh sat on the floor.

            Allen nodded and took a gulp of juice. “He said I could borrow it. For as long as I wanted.”

            “Well,” I said slowly, “you can’t take it to school.”

            “I know.”

            After Allen flew out the door, book bag trailing behind him, I examined the stick more closely. Dennis had always carried it so easily, his tall frame dwarfing its length, his straight back and shoulders a contrast to the twisted handle and gnarled wood. To Dennis is was merely a prop, purloined from a school play. He did not require its support.

            Allen does. Ron’s therapist said that Allen was handling this latest tragedy “as well as anyone could” and that he needed lots of family support and routine right now. Supper is almost ready and I open the back door to call out to my youngest child, the one who has felt the absence of his father most keenly. I pause, watching him for another moment. The wooden shillelagh has become a cane. He leans his weight upon it and its strength holds. He is lucky, I realize, to have a wise older brother who knew that words alone were not enough to help this fourteen-year-old cope with the enormous changes in his life. The shillelagh is more than just a stick of wood or a tool for the imagination. It is a bond between brothers. In the endurance of that bond, as in the endurance of the wood, there is strength.

            Allen gives a final Ninja yell before catching sight of me. He runs towards me and throws an arm around my shoulders. As we walk into the house, the shillelagh dragging along, I notice the daffodils by the fence are pushing their heads up above the ground.

            They are not the only things that have bloomed this spring, things Ron has missed.

APRIL 10, 2000. 12 AM.

            I carry my cell phone in my pocket during the day, its weight always a tug on my heart. The principal and I have an agreement. If the hospital calls, I will leave no matter what I am doing. Each morning I arrange my lesson plans in scrupulous detail, in the event a colleague needs to pinch-hit in my sixth grade classroom. The faculty here at Westtown Quaker School have been more kind and supportive than I could have imagined. When I lean my head against the wall in the hallway for a few moments, trying to siphon some energy from the middle school population, it is almost inevitable that a colleague will come and offer a shoulder or the chance to grab a cup of tea while he or she covers my study hall. Ron’s various hospital rooms—four, so far—have been decorated with handmade cards and posters from the students here at Westtown. My class sent a crookedly sewn teddy bear sporting white bandages. Bonnie named it Patches.

            I am crossing from the main building in the dining hall when the phone rings. I freeze, knowing it is bad news. If I ignore it, will it just go away? Just last week Ron underwent a thoroscopy to re-inflate his left lung. Two incisions needed to be made into his back so his ribs could be separated. A tube now drains off the excess fluid that collected. I take a deep breath—my own lungs still seem to work—and pick up the phone.

            “Yes.” There is no need for a greeting. This is the Bat Phone, used only for emergencies.

            “Linda.” It is Dr. Huffman’s gentle, soothing voice. Unlike other surgeons we have had recourse with the last few weeks, Joanne always makes the calls to me herself. “It’s his pancreas,” she says. We had talked about his last night. Despite the time and some healing, Ron’s pancreas has been unable to digest whole food. He has been receiving most of his nutrients through the “banana pudding” bag and central line that were put in the first night. This time last year I had no idea what a pancreas did, although the high school students would joke about “having a pain in the pancreas.” Now I know the pancreas is a gland that breaks down and processes food. Ron’s was virtually crushed out of shape by the steering wheel in the Taurus and has since been invaded by pernicious bacteria.

            We had prayed for healing. Ron’s supper last night consisted of some chicken broth and lemon-lime gelatin—a hospital favorite—and we had hoped his system would be able to handle it.

            “His fever’s spiked to 104,” says Joanne. “He’s a bit out of it and in a lot of pain. I think we’re going to have to go ahead with the surgery, but I need you to come and sign the release.” Since Ron had given power of attorney over to me, I needed to okay all medical procedures. “I don’t think we’ll need to remove it all,” she hastens to say, “just the tail end that was virtually died anyway.”

            A person can live without the whole pancreas, Joanne assured me yesterday. But Ron’s body needs more nutrition that the central line can currently give him. He’s losing weight and the lack of nutrients makes him prone to bacteria and leaves him in a weakened state. I head towards the middle school building, grab my purse from the desk drawer, and stop by the secretary before I exit. I’m leaving. I do not know what tomorrow may bring. Marie pats my hand and murmurs sympathetically. It will be okay.

            But will it? I check my watch, knowing I will not be able to reach any of the children at 12:30 and loathe to leave a message on the home phone. Let them have a few more hours of peace, I decide. They will know soon enough.

APRIL 10, 2000. 6PM.

            It seems as if I have been sitting in this same waiting room outside the operating suite for days, not hours. Ron was heavily sedated when I saw him at 1:45, just before they wheeled him up to surgery. He will not be returning to One North after the procedure is over, so I busied myself for a while with packing up his meager belongings: cards, socks, shaving gear, underwear, his Bible, a few sports magazines. I take down the cards from the Westtown students, a colorful array of cheerful drawings and hopeful messages. He will be assigned a room on the surgical floor when he is out of recovery, so I place his personal effects in a plastic carryall bag supplied by the hospital. It is generally for carrying a patient’s belongings home, not to the trunk of my car where it will stay for a day or so.

            I have grabbed my book bag from the car while I was there and I am trying to study Ladson-Billings Dreamkeepers for a paper that is due next week. I reread the same words for the third or fourth time, slam the book down, and walk to the pay phone. Time to give the kids a call. We have come to refer to these as “life checks.” Earlier, I had called them on my cell from outside the main lobby doors, visitors around me puffing cigarette smoke into the crisp air. I thought of Ron’s damaged lung, struggling to inflate. In deference to the sign on the waiting room wall, I have turned off my cell phone. I drop coins in the slot of the pay phone in the hallway.

            “Hello,” Bonnie answers, her voice just a tad shy of its usual cheerfulness.

            “It’s me,” I say. “No word yet. Just checking in. The nurse said it might be another hour or so.”

            “I should come,” my daughter says. “You shouldn't be alone.”

            I hesitate, wanting her warm presence with me. But it is Wednesday, Bible study night. “More important that you an Allen should go to prayer meeting and let everyone know what’s going on,” I tell her. “Have you called MomMom and PopPop?”

            There is a pause. “No.” Then, “Do you want me to?”

            Yes, I want her to. I have already waited too long to tell them. They will wonder why I waited and while they will try not to show it, they will question my decision. I will need to reassure them that all will be well when what I need is someone to reassure me. But I cannot let my teenage daughter carry this burden. “No,” I say, :I’ll call them later on. When I know more.”

            There is a sigh on the other side of the phone; I know it to be relief. “I love you,” says Bonnie. “Wait a sec. Allen wants to talk to you.”

            “Hi!” pipes my son, owner of the magical shillelagh. “Do you want us to save you supper?

            “I don’t know,” I say. “What was supper?”

            “Bonnie made burnt macaroni and hotdogs,” he informs me, though I hear his sister protesting in the background.

            “Ummm. Pass,” I tell him. “I’ll get something here if I’m hungry.”

            “Eat something,” he urges me. “You need to keep up your strength.” Just when did he become the parent?

            “Yes sir,” I say. “Go to youth group and ask them to pray for Dad. Maybe I’ll be home when you get back.”

            “Love you,” says Allen. He hangs up.

            I should call my in-laws. They will want to know. They will want to be here. They will offer as much support as they can muster, but in the end I will end up feeding my limited energy to them. There will be questions to which I have no answers.

            I return to my molded plastic chair and pick up the book I am not reading, exchange a few words with a mother and daughter waiting on word about a valve replacement, and flip a few pages. Waiting rooms. We do so much more in them than wait. They are places set apart from the rest of the world where we relive the past, hope for the future, laugh a little, cry a little, and commiserate with total strangers, joined against the common enemy of time. Those of us within these beige walls are on hold. Waiting.

            Waiting for someone to come and comfort us. Waiting on a green-gowned figure to alarm or reassure us. Waiting, as the second hand of the wall clock continues its cycle, for a release. For an end.

            I have met them in waiting rooms, these worried parents and bereaved children and concerned friends and relatives. I am one of them. We wring our hands. We question God. We rail against our fates. We wait.

            I tap my fingers on the arm of the chair, debating. I am sorting out my thoughts as I wait, not concerned with my laundry or the cleanliness of my kitchen floor. Just Ron on the others side of those double doors. I think about things I’ve said and wished I hadn’t and things I didn’t say but wished I had. I pray for one more chance.

            Waiting rooms give us a taste of our own mortality, the knowledge that our lives are finite. Some day it will be too late to make amends. There will be no second change. Waiting rooms stop us dead in our tracks and force us into molded vinyl chairs next to other human beings who have been rudely torn from their lives.

            We wait. We pray. We catch our breath. We move on again. Maybe we recognize that this chance might be our very last.

            I rise from my seat again and stride to the pay phone to call Ron’s parents. They need to be here.

APRIL 10, 2000. 11:30 PM.

            It is after eleven when I arrive at home. Bonnie and Allen are still up, playing Monopoly and munching on frozen pizza. The burnt macaroni and hotdogs were apparently not sustenance enough. We sit and talk. Ron is out of surgery, out of recovery, safely ensconced in a room on the third floor, away from out familiar One North. He lost part of his pancreas and had a great deal of difficulty coming out from under the anesthesia. He is back on oxygen since his damaged lung still refuses to function. He is barely coherent but the infection seems to be abating. There is some continued concern about his aorta, so he is hooked up to telemetry machines. I fear power outages but am assured by the staff that there are backup systems.

            I however, have no backup system at the moment. Allen jumps up to bring me a paper plate of pizza and a glass of iced tea. We sit and move the Monopoly pieces around the board, not really playing, not really talking, until the streaks of sunrise peek though the dining room windows. We are just being together right now, treasuring one another’s company like the survivors of a shipwreck. I think that, in a few more hours, we will all call in absent to our schools, allowing ourselves the luxury of sleep and visiting Ron when we have filled up on pancakes at Denny’s.

            More than pizza or pancakes or burnt hotdogs right now, we need time