T. Parker - Summer Of Fear

"This is what I want it to be l-l-like."

"What to be like?"

"The dying."

"You're not going to die."

"You know I am, Russ."

"We all are."

"But I'll die sooner than you. And I w-w-want it to b-b- be like this. N-n-not an end, b-b-but a… change."

"A beginning."

"Yes. And I think it w-w-would best be done w-w-ith the eyes closed. Th-then you could see where you're going. l-l-like this."

She shut her eyes and continued on, arms opening, arms closing. Grace appeared in the mid-distance, then was gone. Beyond Izzy's profile, the cars on Coast Highway crept along beneath streetlamps, and the bottom-lighted palms of Heisler Park drooped green-black against a sky of specifically rendered stars.

"Russell, c-c-close your eyes and come with me."

I did. The world became immediately louder. The water lapped at my ears with a new sharpness; the cars echoed from town with a kind of muted urgency: Izzy's breathing rose to a forceful rhythm.

"K-k-keep them closed, like me. Let's see h-h-how far out we can go. Kay-o?"

"Kay-o."

Blind, we continued. I turned onto my back so I might feel her, intermittently, with my fingertips. I stopped kicking and allowed my legs to sink partially, like hers. I listened to her breathe.

And then, strangely, I began to do something I had not done in a long time, something I once practiced with conviction. I had lost that conviction as Izzy lost her legs, as I sat in her hospital room asking for it to stop-imploring, begging-to no effect whatsoever upon the continuation of Isabella's relentless and irreversible (the doctors refused to use that word) damage.

I prayed.

Dear Father in heaven, I am small, corrupt, hateful, mean-spirited and too much a coward to sin importantly: I am a fool. Hear my prayer. I know how you value humility, so I confess to all this to assure you I know my place in your order of things. I deserve nothing. I expect nothing. I will ask for nothing. But you are absent here, you ceded this earth to us, and there are some things you should know. We suffer. We cry. We toil. Sickness comes to us. Death moves among us with arrogance. We die, trembling, bound for unspecified destinations. Christ died for our sins once: we die for them again. His agony is over, but ours continues. Our anguish is real. Do you remember how it feels? I know that your design is huge, so I have stopped trying to understand it. In your larger hands, we leave the larger motions.

My concern is this life you have given us. I am too stupid to believe it is only a prelude. I am too weak to be happy that there may be a reward at the end of it. I am too literal to believe that the heart of the matter lies elsewhere. This is the heart of this matter. Do not think less of me for holding dear the life you've given. I lied when I said I would ask for nothing. This is what I want: I want you to treat Isabella with respect. I want you to give me the love that I want so badly to have for Isabella in these coming days. Give it to me so I can give it to her. I ask to be your representative. Do not leave us without love. Respectfully submitted to you in this hour of need,

Amen.

Two hours later, I got into bed and lay down beside my wife. We whispered and kissed and embraced and we made love.

Whatever motion she lacked, I tried to offer for her; whatever feeling she missed, I tried to feel. The cry that came to my throat hurt, and my ears rang and my eyes burned and my daughter whom I had quite frankly forgotten was downstairs, banged out of her room and threw on a light. Of all things at that moment, I was only dimly aware, except for the quaking of my body and Isabella's voice.

"It's kay-o, Grace. Russ just s-s-sort of… well."

My father was waiting on the steps of the UCI Medical Center when we admitted Isabella just after sunrise the next day. He nodded at me rather curtly, which, in the minimalist language of his body, meant that everything was okay. Obviously, Amber was not with him. He smiled and wrapped his weathered dark arms around Isabella and held her for a long while in a strong and gentle embrace.

The morning was already hot as I pushed her wheelchair up the ramp toward the tower. We were expected; all was in order. A medical student from China conducted the preop interview. He explained the procedure to us-debulking by resection-introduced our anesthesiologist, and informed us the one of the possible side effects of this procedure, among others, was death. We signed the consent forms. Paul Nesson appeared an hour later. He was grave and gentle as always, and I sensed in him the focus and intensity of a soldier preparing for combat. He seemed reassuring, in an invisible way. He shaved Isabella head again, though there wasn't much hair to take off. Then the six of us-Grace, Joe, Corrine, Izzy, Dad, and I-squeeze into the prep room when Nesson left. Isabella was given Dermerol. Her smock was tied in only two places at the back, an she shivered in the rampant air conditioning of the medical tower. A few minutes later, she was helped onto a hospital bed and we wheeled her up to the swinging double doors of the OR. She held my hand fiercely. I kissed her, then two orderlies took the bed and disappeared into a territory of chrome and tile and tubing and sheets. A group of green nurses converged on my wife as the doors swung shut.

The minutes could have been hours; the hours seconds. I drank coffee, bought all the morning papers, glanced at my front-page article, noted the garishly big headlines the Journal reserves for garishly big stories, two people, 27 pets die in canyon slaughter- Special to the Journal by Russell Monroe.

Theodore informed me that-as I suspected-Amber had never returned. But she had called the night before, late, to tell him she was all right and not to worry. I shook my head, hardly able to factor worries about Amber into the larger concerns of the moment. If she didn't have enough sense to stay with Theo, then she could suffer the consequences.

I was heading outside to smoke a cigarette and passed the main desk, where I overheard this snippet of conversation between a small, somewhat disheveled-looking woman and the security guard.

"I would like you to page a Mr. Russell Monroe for me. It is very important."

"Your name?"

"Tina Sharp, with Equitable."

Without breaking stride, I made it outside and sucked down the comforting smoke. I had another. I walked the hospital grounds for half an hour and then went into the cafeteria the back way.

I ate breakfast, locked myself in a bathroom stall an threw up, rinsed my face in cold water, then found an empty seat in the waiting room and leaned my head back against the wall. I felt like the most vital and precious part of me had been removed and that it might not ever be returned. I wondered how forty years of life could suddenly boil down to a lesson in triage. I closed my eyes, said a prayer, lost my train of though and fell asleep. In the dream-short and vivid as a memory-I approached a table tucked under a palapa at the edge of a orange grove, at which sat Isabella, who, when she lifted her face to me and moved her lips, made no sound at all.

Six hours later, Paul Nesson eased across the waiting room an approached. He looked calm, composed, and, strangely, shorter. He still had on his pale green scrubs, and each shoe was wrapped in a green plastic moccasin that bunched at the top like a shower cap. He smiled wanly at Joe and Corrine and Grace.

"She's doing fine. Everything went very well."

"How much of it did you get?"

"All I could. There are viable brain cells on the perimeter of the mass, so I worked with the core-the necrosed tissue.

"How much tumor is left?"

"It's hard to say. These astrocytomas grow in fingers, very small. They're like the roots of weeds. In a day or two, we can talk about some new modalities of treatment."