THE FACT THAT I had come all the way from Boston where I’d moved right after college, and on such short notice, confirmed what Bob had already grasped. I don’t remember how I greeted him. There was terror in his eyes. I felt as if I were bringing him the news of his death.
He was propped in the bed, his hands limp at his sides; under the covers, the soles of his feet were together and his knees splayed. For a moment I saw him as a stranger might, and I realized how years in his wheelchair had left him misshapen and how horribly his disease had weakened him. The muscles of his back could not support him, and he was kept in the middle of the bed by pillows on both sides. His legs were thin, atrophied, and his heavy sagging trunk tapered upward to his frail, bony shoulders and useless arms. He had trouble holding up his head. He hadn’t been shaved in a couple of days, and I noticed that his beard grew mostly under his chin, like mine.
Mom and Dad stood by the bed. Dad said, “You see, your brother Dick’s here now. Everything’s going to be all right.” Then he looked at me as if to ask forgiveness for saying such a stupid thing.
“You going to stay awhile?” Bob asked me.
“Few days,” I said. “Until you’re better.” The look he gave me made me turn my head away. I had betrayed him. I promised myself I wouldn’t lie to him again.
My father went to the door and motioned for me to join him. There was a sofa at the end of the hall, with Dad’s overcoat balled at one end to serve as a pillow; he had tried to get Mom to sleep a bit last night.
“I’m glad you’re here. We didn’t think he’d make it through last night. Have you eaten? There’s a coffee shop downstairs. Maybe you should go down and get us some sandwiches. They’re probably open by now. If you just want coffee, there’s a machine at the other end of the hall.” He took out his wallet, and his hands were shaking.
“Dad,” I said and touched him on the arm. He stopped a moment; then he let out a sob and hugged me, crying hard. My father is a big, heavy man and so much taller than me that when I try to comfort him, it’s always my head on his shoulder. We sat on the sofa. “This is it,” he said. “This is really it.” We had expected this so long, and yet we were astonished.
The light above the door to Bob’s room was flashing, and a nurse came running down the hall. We ran back to the room. The nurse was readying a suction catheter to enable Bob to breathe more freely. He gagged as she eased the plastic tube up through his nose and down his throat. Dad and I held him upright. He looked from one to the other of us, scared. Mom turned away and covered her face. The nurse withdrew the tube and wheeled the portable unit into the corner. “Thanks,” Bob said to her, “that’s better.” He needed the machine often after that, and he came to welcome its relief. During his last hours, early the next day, he asked for it when it was useless; he was confident that it could help him.
He could not find comfort; ten minutes in any position was all that he could bear. He said his skin hurt. “Move me! Move me!” he cried out. He insisted that my father move him; he said the nurses didn’t do it right and that I was too rough. His discomfort went on until my father couldn’t lift him anymore. Dad was beaten and crying. “Bob, please,” he said, “no matter where I put you it still hurts. Please try to bear it. Let Dick try it. Your mother. The two of them together. Try it. I can’t lift you anymore. I can’t.”
He was given drugs for the pain, but they made him sleepy and he was afraid to sleep. “I won’t wake up,” he said. His resistance to sedatives was magnificent. He asked for coffee. I left the room and went to the coffee machine. I planned to be gone long enough for the sedative to take effect. I stood at the machine and waited, worrying that I was betraying him again. I thought of his pain, his inability to relax, his fear of sleep, and I waited. I drank a cup myself before I finally put another quarter in the machine and carried the cup back to the room.
Bob was delirious. He was talking but the voice wasn’t his. The talk came from childhood: “One potato, two potato, three potato, four…” and a little tune: “Shave ‘n’ a haircut, five cents!” My mother held his hand, crying, and a tiny laugh came through her sobs at the memory of the tune. It was part of a song Dad used to sing to us when we were little. Dad took the coffee I had brought. He told me that he thought that this was the end. He said that it was good, that Bob was happy.
Bob squeezed his eyes shut tight, fighting the drug. He relaxed, but as soon as he had dozed off, he woke and looked around the room. When he saw me, he asked if I had brought his coffee. I looked at Dad, who said, “You were asleep, and it was getting cold, so I drank it.”
“I’ll get you another cup,” I said, and started for the door, but Bob said, “Never mind. It’s lousy coffee anyway.”
Well into the night, he was given pain medication, which he always managed to keep from putting him to sleep. He was weakened to the point of dying, but until his final surrender, he did not sleep during the thirty-six hours we were with him.
Nurses came and went; we didn’t pay much attention to them. Once I got it through my head that Bob knew he was dying, I was awed. I believe he saw that we were sometimes more afraid than he was. “The doctor told me the Phillies lost again. They got the pitching. Got nobody who can hit the ball.” He said that for Dad, who disagreed: “They hit okay, but never when it counts. You know they left eleven runners on base Monday night? That’s some kind of record.”
“And the errors hurt them,” Mom said.
“What’s the use of hitting if you can’t hit in the clutch?” said Bob.
By nightfall we were all exhausted. No one wanted to leave the room, but the night nurse insisted that, until morning, only one of us could be in the room at a time. My father was about to lose his temper, and my mother was shocked at the woman’s insensitivity. I was angry too, and I followed the nurse down the hall to her station.
“I don’t believe you people!” I railed at her. “My brother is dying. We want to be with him. What kind of rule forbids a family’s being with the dying? You think you’re God or something? You take your god-damned rule and shove it! Who the hell do you think you are?”
She was sitting at a low counter, writing in a chart, and she looked up, pointed her pen at me, and said in a loud whisper, “You think there’s a rule? There is no rule. Now listen. You know your brother won’t get well. I’m sorry. I really am. But stop and think about your parents. Do you know what they’re going to go through after this? You may be young and strong enough to stay up every night till this is over, but your mother…”
“Hold it,” I said. “Okay.” I remembered Mike’s funeral, and knew very well what the next week would be like. I went back to the room and told my parents I couldn’t get the nurse to budge.
Mom managed to sleep, and we didn’t disturb her. Dad took over for me sometime in the middle of the night, and I began my second watch at about five o’clock.
The dark of the lounge, Mom’s quiet snoring, the plan of a rotating watch, was some comfort. When I entered the room, I wasn’t ready. Bob was staring straight ahead at something I couldn’t see. His mouth was twisted in a snarl, his eyes were fierce, and his face was red with anger. He seemed so far away that I said, “Bob. Bob. It’s me. Dick.”
“Water,” he said. I filled a paper cup and held it to his lips. When he finished drinking, he said, “What was the name that Dad made up for the ghost? Remember? When we were scared? He told us not to worry when we heard a scary noise. A woman’s name.”
“He always told us it was ‘Maggie-behind-the-wallpaper.’”
“That’s right.” He sighed. “I thought it was something more profound than that.” He began to laugh.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“Get what?” I asked.
“Why can’t I find the words?” he said. He laughed again and then was quiet. For three or four hours I watched a pulse in his neck. It was like holding his heart in my hands. When it stopped, I went out into the hall and hugged my mother. At first she hugged me back; then she held me at arm’s length and looked in my eyes. I didn’t nod or anything but she broke into tears and slumped against me, and I lowered her till she was sitting on the floor in the hospital corridor, rocking and crying. My father leaped up—“No No No No No”—and ran into the room.
“Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid,” I had whispered in his ear, keeping my vigil at the pulse in his neck. I don’t know if he heard me.
I drove the car home, eyes on the traffic, Mom and Dad, their faces red, held each other in the back seat, moaning and crying out from time to time, “Bob!”