Chapter 7

I spent that first night in Fargo in a chair by Dave’s hospital bed, shifting my unwieldy body in a futile attempt to get comfortable. A jarring symphony of chirping hospital machines filled the room, the oxygen being pumped in and out of Dave by an endotracheal tube that snaked into his mouth. I was so cold. Even under several blankets brought to me by the kind and concerned nurses, I could not get warm. Even though outwardly I appeared calm and composed, my body was shaking and shivering, and I would come to realize later that it was because I was in shock.

The nurses came in at regular intervals throughout the night to check on Dave, who remained in a coma in critical condition, so there really was not much sleeping to be done. At seven A.M., when it became clear that Dave would not be waking or eating anything resembling breakfast, a nurse asked me if I would like to have his toast and jam. I was not hungry in the slightest, but I had not eaten anything since our dinner at the airport Chili’s the night before—the Last Supper, I thought morosely—and I knew I needed to eat, so I accepted the offer. And then, realizing that I was eating for two and probably needed something more nutritious than toast with jelly, I asked for directions to the hospital cafeteria.

How strange I must have looked, trembling, clutching my tray as I made my way, zombielike, through the cafeteria, listlessly selecting a Greek yogurt and a cup of fruit, an orange juice and a coffee. At the table, my hands shaking as I poured milk into my coffee, I took stock of where we were. It had been about twelve hours since Dave had lost consciousness. I knew I was going to have to begin the miserable work of letting people know that this had happened. I would have to inform Dave’s work that he had had a stroke and we were in Fargo. My mind still struggling to make sense of it all, I sent out a cryptic email to Dave’s four coresidents: “Can one of you please call me?”

Greg, one of the co-residents, called first. All of the guys knew that Dave was supposed to be on vacation in Hawaii, and Greg clearly sensed that something was amiss.

“Greg, I’m in Fargo, North Dakota, with Dave. We didn’t make it to Seattle.” I took in a long inhale. “Dave had a bithalamic midbrain stroke.” There, I’d said it, the first time those serious, scientific words had come out of my mouth—words I did not yet understand. The medical team had told Dave’s family via speakerphone, and with my own family, given their nonmedical background, I had simply used the word “stroke.” But here I was, trying it out for the first time. What did “bithalamic” even mean? And what was a midbrain stroke?

“Oh no,” was Greg’s immediate reply. Two words, but his tone said it all—his words came out tinged with disbelief, shock, and horror. “Oh no” is right, I thought.

“I’ll let you know as soon as I know more. Please just tell the program, OK? And ask around if anyone in the hospital knows any experts on this type of stroke?”

I wasn’t aware of it then, but with that phone call back to Rush University, the wheels were set in motion for Dave’s employers and colleagues to rally to find answers and to support him. Their answers would eventually lead us right back to where we began. But at that moment, all I knew was that I needed to force myself to swallow that Greek yogurt. And I needed to tell a few more people.

Next, I texted Dave’s best friends. “Please call me.”

Peter, the mutual friend from our college years, called first. I told him what had happened.

“I can’t imagine what you must be going through,” Peter said, a rare gravity in his voice, a voice that so often delivers side-splitting humor. “Please just let us know what we can do…absolutely anything…for you guys.” There it was again, that same devastating mixture of disbelief, shock, and horror. I tried to wrap my head around what the news must have sounded like to others; how I would have felt to hear from a close friend that someone our age, someone so healthy and active and alive, was lying comatose in an ICU in Fargo, North Dakota, and that we had very few answers.

I knew that my parents and Dave’s parents were scheduled to land in Fargo by 11:00 that morning and would be at the hospital by 11:30. As luck would have it, they had booked the same connecting flight from Minneapolis, and they would be arriving together. I went back to Dave’s hospital room to resume my bedside vigil, accompanied by the machines’ chirps and rhythmic hums.

My mind could not compute it all, could not connect the reality of the devastation going on inside Dave’s head with the silent, placid image of his resting frame. He looked so beautiful, so at peace. Dave, for as long as I’ve known him, has always had great skin; his cheeks have this rosy flush. It had always ticked me off—the fact that he could roll out of bed looking great, even after four hours of sleep and chronic sun deprivation, while I would have looked like a haggard vampire in his place. Even that day in the Fargo ICU, his beautiful face appeared rosy and full of health.

I sat there, rocking myself as the baby kicked in my belly, making her presence known. I was grateful for those kicks, for the confirmation that she was still moving around in there. Please God, please. I’m so scared. Please let him be OK. Please have him wake up. Please, God, hold Dave in Your hands. I recalled the words of a hymn I’d sung in the youth choir so many years earlier:

Dear God, I am so sorrowful; is there no other way?

Dear God, if it is possible, let this cup pass away.

I looked up when a nurse entered, arriving on the new shift as morning brightened over Fargo. She had a soft, kind face. She looked at me for a moment and then I saw her features crumple. “Do you have someone coming to be with you?”

“Yes,” I answered. “My parents are on their way, and so is his family.”

And just like that, the nurse began to weep. This reaction, so sudden and raw, filled me with a leaden sense of dread. “Why…why are you crying?” I asked, taken aback. What did she know that I didn’t know? I think a part of me was hoping that Dave might just wake up. That he would yawn and blink, look around, dazed by the foreign surroundings, and ask: “What happened?”

“It’s just that…I know how hard this is going to be for you. And, you’re…” She pointed at my belly before looking back to Dave. “Sorry, I’ve just gotten so much more emotional since having kids of my own. Can I give you a hug?”

I let her give me a hug, though this well-intentioned exchange was actually doing more to alarm me than give me comfort. She knew how hard this was going to be? But I myself did not yet know what was happening, what our outlook was—did she know something I didn’t? Did this mean that Dave would not be waking up?

I’m not sure if it was right then, or sometime around then, that a bizarre thought popped into my head. I can only attribute it to the shock of the situation, the fact that I was struggling to process all that was going on. I thought: I guess we aren’t going to make it to Hawaii, even for the end of the week. It was sinking in, in an odd and disjointed way. On the one hand, I had the very real fear that my husband might be dying right before my eyes. On the other hand, a part of me had still been holding out the irrational hope that Dave might simply wake up, that we might be able to resume our lives, even salvage part of our longed-for babymoon.

This nurse’s hug shook me from that fog of magical thinking; we were not going to make it to Hawaii in two days, or even later in the week. We were not going to be going anywhere, anytime soon. Dave was in a coma. I did not know whether he would wake up. And most horrifying of all—if he did wake, we did not know what, or who, we would find.