Chapter Sixteen

Doctor Cleveland Umbra

Cleveland Umbra began his career at Children’s Hospital in Green Bay. It was an infant who caused his path to shift. When Doctor Umbra first met Deadra she was in the ICU because of breathing difficulty. She was a fragile-looking three-month-old from the Oneida tribe, and she lay lifeless and stiff upon the ICU crib. Her breathing sounded like a rhythmic hiccup, each breath shallow and rapid, insufficient to fill her lungs with oxygen. Cleveland Umbra placed an endotracheal tube in her trachea and correctly diagnosed a new onset seizure.

Several minutes later, when the seizure was under medical control, Doctor Umbra obtained a CAT scan of Deadra’s head. The results were not shocking to him because he had provided medical care to many abused infants and children before. What shocked Doctor Umbra was the response he received from the infant’s mother. He carefully reviewed the CAT scan with Ms. Canalize, pointing to the fractured skull and myriad punctate areas of hemorrhage within the white matter of the baby’s brain. He shared with her his rather learned opinion that her infant had been shaken. Then it happened. Ms. Canalize spit upon Doctor Umbra’s face. Even as the foul-smelling spittle hung from his nose the woman berated him with all the anger and venom she could muster.

“You fucking cock sucking asshole,” she said. “You got another thing coming if you think I did this to my baby, my own flesh and blood.” Doctor Umbra stood before the inelegant woman apoplectic, spittle dangling from his face. The nursing staff came to his rescue. They called security and ushered the surprisingly nonresistant Ms. Canalize out of the ICU. She looked over her shoulder as she was led away, her eyes brimming with hatred for the black physician who was obviously trying to take her baby from her.

Doctor Umbra recovered from the trauma caused by that episode, but the arc of his life shifted under the weight of the events that followed. Around the time that Ms. Canalize’s boyfriend confessed to shaking little Deadra, her brain damage had become so catastrophic that parts of her brain stem were all that survived. She had only enough brain cells alive to initiate an occasional breath but she would never be capable of conscious thought, independent movement, vision, laughter, hearing, or meaningful interaction with other human beings. The entire ICU staff, with the backing of the hospital ethics committee, unanimously recommended withdrawal of medical support for the unfortunate infant. They pleaded with Ms. Canalize not to subject her baby to a surgical airway or a lifetime of dependence on a ventilator, given the severity of her brain injury. They could not take her off the ventilator without Ms. Canalize’s permission.

At the behest of her boyfriend’s attorney Ms. Canalize refused to comply with their request. Withdrawal of medical support, they accurately believed, would hasten little Deadra’s death. This would change the punishment under the law. By continuing full medical support they would reduce the charges against Canalize’s boyfriend from murder to assault.

Deadra received a surgical tracheostomy as well as a feeding tube. She was ultimately transferred to Grace Station, a pediatric chronic care facility in Milwaukee. Ms. Canalize and her boyfriend departed the hospital to continue their lives together. She visited her baby girl once a month for the first year and then twice a year thereafter, once on Christmas and once on Deadra’s birthday. Eventually she stopped visiting altogether.

Doctor Umbra took it upon himself to visit the abandoned girl. He told her stories about other abused children whom he treated, recognizing that she was incapable of sharing his mounting anger. There were lots of Deadras as well as Ms. Canalizes and a growing cadre of abusive boyfriends, mothers, uncles, and fathers. The perpetrators of these crimes were sometimes remorseful but were easily forgiven by society and by themselves. Doctor Umbra’s disgust with humanity became an obsession.

Cleveland Umbra, or “Cleve” as he liked to be called, became more socially withdrawn. As recently as one year prior, people described him as fun-loving and distinguished. They now saw him as sullen, withdrawn, and troubled. He had grown up the eldest child of an affluent and socially connected black family in the suburbs north of Milwaukee. He attended the University of Chicago, majoring in biochemistry with a minor in theology. He earned his M.D. at the Yale School of Medicine and was rewarded early in life with national fame through his research in the field of resuscitation medicine. He became a full professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin by his thirtieth birthday.

In body he was a muscular and agile man, well above middle height, lean and athletic. He was prominent of nose, light skinned for a black man, and his head was always shaven down to the scalp. His mouth was long, full lipped, and mischievous. He was considered handsome, and his ever-searching, luminous eyes were the focal point of his beauty. Something had changed over the years, though. He was harder of mouth, and his body had become leaner and more muscular. More powerful. One could see a great pack of muscle shift beneath his collared shirt, though he spent little time engaged in activities of an athletic nature. It was as if his obsession with the world of victimization had molded his body into a weapon. His voice had become more arrogant as well, and there was an air of cruelty about him now where kindness had once dwelt.

His work in the ICU began to suffer. He was no longer attentive to the needs of families who sought consolation and hopeful insight into the condition of their critically ill children. When the mother of a burned toddler explained that the linear scald marks over her little boy’s buttocks, legs, and palms had occurred accidentally, Doctor Umbra laughed so hard and for so long that the nursing staff had to call the director of the ICU in from home. Doctor Umbra retired from the practice of critical care shortly thereafter.

He had a dream one night that others of a more occult nature might call a vision. An ancient black walnut beckoned him from the steep bank of a dark river. The gold – leafed tree thrust its two gnarled and burly limbs outward like an angel with extended wings. A dark angel.

A rain of leaves fell upon Umbra as a cold wind whispered urgently from the depths of the lightless forest. Follow the fractured sunset, he heard. Follow the fractured sunset.