Dozens of friends, many of them doctors, scoured the Web and medical literature, hoping to find a cure. We learned of a brand-new chemotherapy drug called CPT-11. The FDA had rushed to approve it after clinical trials showcased its effectiveness against metastasized colorectal cancer. To try it, we traveled 250 miles to the Cancer Therapy and Research Center in San Antonio. I rigged my Suburban so that Deborah could lie on a soft pallet for the whole five-hundred-mile roundtrip, her feet facing the tailgate, her head on the pillow-topped console where I could stroke her hair while I drove. I made arrangements for us to stay at the Hyatt Hill Country resort, hoping a sumptuous suite with a sweeping view of San Antonio’s rolling country-side might take the focus off our circumstances. It didn’t. Nor did the peppy mariachi band singing through their noses in the hotel courtyard seem the appropriate soundtrack for beating back death.
But Deborah had been born in San Antonio and on our second day there, before her first scheduled treatment, she began to reminisce as I drove out of the hospital parking lot, her head on the console beside me. “Daphene and I were the first Rh-positive twins born in the Nix Hospital with an Rh-negative mother. We both had to have blood transfusions,” she said to the ceiling. “That was risky back then. Now I’m back again for another risky treatment.”
Tears welled in her eyes then. “I don’t want to die here.”
“You’re not going to die here,” I said, smoothing her hair. But the truth was that the specter of death had begun to gnaw at the edges of my hope.
The next day, we found the rat-infested second-story apartment on Fabulous Drive that we had shared for three weeks in 1970. We had moved there for a job I’d accepted selling stocks via cold calls on straight commission. Lured by $100,000 in potential annual salary, I did receive one pay-check before the company went broke—for thirteen dollars and eighty-seven cents. Deborah and I ate thirteen-cent bean rolls for three weeks until the money ran out and we hightailed it back to Fort Worth. Now, thirty years later, we had returned, hoping this second gamble in San Antonio would pay off better than the first.
It didn’t. For Deborah, CPT-11 was a disaster. A veteran of scores of chemotherapy treatments, as soon as this one invaded her veins, Deborah’s eyes locked onto mine: “Please tell them to stop!” she cried. The nurses quickly reduced the flow, but burning cramps still rolled through her guts.
Still, we kept up the treatments for weeks. The CPT-11 treatments ravaged Deborah, stripping her down to a gaunt and hollow-eyed waif. During this time, I would often see Denver, sitting outside our home in prayer.
On July 14, 2000, we celebrated her fifty-fifth birthday. At the end of that month, Carson flew out from New York and drove with us to Colorado to visit Regan at Crooked Creek Ranch, Deborah lying in the rear seat, which we’d converted into a bed. But the trip was cut short when the altitude began, literally, to suffocate Deborah. The chemo had so depleted her red blood cell count that her heart had to race to pump oxygenated blood. We rushed her down the mountain at hair-raising speeds, dodging deer and rabbits on the way to the hospital. We were able to return to Crooked Creek, but only so long as Deborah remained tethered to an oxygen bottle.
After we returned to Texas, she caught me off-guard one day. “I’ve called Pastor Ken,” she said, “and asked him to come over to discuss my memo-rial service.”
On the Saturday before Labor Day, Regan realized it was time to come home. She called Carson, who hopped the next flight from New York to Colorado, helped her pack, and drove her to Fort Worth.
I, too, sensed time was growing short, like shadows nearing noon. Dr. Senter, Deborah’s first surgeon, confirmed my suspicions on October 8. Deborah’s condition had deteriorated to critical, and I rushed her to the hospital. She had begged me not to take her to the hospital, afraid she would never come out.
“I don’t want to die there,” she said, tears welling. Then she broke down: “I don’t want to die at all.”
After a stint in the ER, the hospital staff admitted Deborah to a private room. Trying to collect myself, I paced the hall outside until I ran into Dr. Senter, who asked me if I would come to his office for a personal talk—not as a doctor, but as a friend.
“Deborah is very sick,” he began. “The last patient I knew of in her condition lived only three or four days.”
I wasn’t surprised. Deborah’s waking hours had dissolved into a blur of writhing agony. But I didn’t want to believe him. That death was so near didn’t square with our prayers, our faith.
“You should start calling family and friends that she would want to see before . . .” He paused and rearranged his words: “Ron, the clock can’t be turned back. I’m sorry.”
He walked me to the door and gave me a hug, something doctors don’t do enough of. Then I wandered out of his office, down the antiseptic hall-way, fumbling with my cell phone as I went. Who to call? . . . Carson, yes, of course, Carson . . . and Regan . . . and Daphene. I walked across a street to a parking lot. I don’t know whether cars passed. I got into my car. I closed the door, laid my head on the steering wheel, and wept. At some point, I realized I was screaming.