(2006) When Crickets Cry (25 page)

I fought to free myself from Charlie's grip, but no matter what I did, I could not get him off me. He buried his head against mine and screamed, "Stop it! Stop it! You hear me? She's gone! Reese, Emma's gone!"

The words reverberated in my head without meaning.

The paramedic walked out of the kitchen, talking into his shoulder radio. "We've got a situation here. I've never seen anything like it. The patient's thoracic cavity is cracked open ..." He lowered his voice. ". . . with hand tools, kitchen utensils ... via the rib cage. We've given high-dose epinephrine-intracardiac, shocked each time to 360, and ..." He paused and looked back into the kitchen. "She's not coming back."

For several minutes Charlie and I lay on the floor, Emma's head on my chest. I didn't know anything was wrong with Charlie until he pulled his face close to mine and said, "Tell me what this looks like. I want to know." That was the last image Charlie ever saw.

An ophthalmologist later confirmed that when Charlie had fallen, he detached his right retina and injured the left. If he had stopped there he'd still be able to see out of one eye, but as he squeezed and strained to push fluids into Emma's body, he saw the curtain come down over his left as the other retina came fully detached.

The paramedics gave a full report of my heroic attempt to save Emma's life. Several hospitals heard about it and sent doctors to interview and research. In a vain attempt to exonerate me, the professionals in my field coined what happened that day the Mitch Procedure. Three years ago I read in Chest that an unnamed doctor in Atlanta, Royer no doubt, had hired lawyers to remove a description and accompanying history of the Mitch Procedure from all future medical textbooks, citing inconclusive evidence.

He was unsuccessful.

t was midnight when the rains came down in force. The winds blew in first, rattling the house; then the lightning lit the night sky like an angry woman shaking her fist. I stood on the porch, face hovering over a cup of tea, watching the wind tear at the trees and water. I looked across the lake and in the lightning flashes saw Charlie's dock. I strained my eyes against the nowsideways rain. What I saw did not surprise me.

Charlie stood on his dock, dressed in boxer shorts and skin, facing the rain. The waves were crashing against the corner dock post and soaking him from the waist down. The rain took care of everything else. He was dancing in place, waving at the rain, and his face was upturned, scanning the sky for lightning. Every time it cracked a tree and sent flames skyward, Charlie roared in delight, threw his arms in the air, and screamed at the top of his lungs.

"Hah! I saw that!"

The thunder rocked again.

"Hah, hah! I can see! I can see!"

Lightning cracked again, this time longer with five or six flashes. It hit another tree nearby, and the percussion sounded so loud it rolled through the house like an earthquake. Charlie stepped nearer the edge of his dock. The wind whipped through our cove and pulled at him; he wrapped himself in its arms and danced with the storm.

Lake Burton is known for its violent storms that pass as quickly as they come. The storm cracked another time, then blew northward and, like a jealous lover, left Charlie standing alone and mostly naked on his dock. Georgia came running out of the house, whining, licked his shins, and the two climbed up the walk to his house. Dance over.

In the quiet that followed, the slow, mournful melodies of Charlie's harmonica filtered through the leaves and cried a lonely tune. Charlie was the eternal optimist. Life was always sunny, always half-full, but at times his soul cried. And when it did, it did so through that instrument. If you wanted to know what he was really feeling, what his heart might say, you needed to listen to him breathe through that harmonica.

I walked down to the dock, stepping over fallen limbs and more leaves than any backpack blower could handle. Across the lake, the shoreline was spotted with an irregular pattern of house lights, suggesting that the power was out up and down the lake. The water had returned to its dormant, black-glass state. The clouds had blown through, ten billion stars shone down from above and, east over my shoulder, a lazy half-moon appeared. It looked like it had kicked back and was watching a ball game.

I sat down in my favorite chair, an Adirondack, propped my feet up on a makeshift ottoman-a planter holding no plant-and leaned my head back. The storm had cooled the night air, but it was not cool. Sort of a warm summer blanket that you didn't mind wearing.

I thought of Royer, his kindness, and how much I missed him. Of working alongside him in the OR, discussing cases, sharing successes. Together, we were good.

I thought of Annie, her cough, the purple beret that was too big, her yellow dress and Mary Jane shoes, the water jug that was almost full, and her gentle, trusting eyes.

I thought of Cindy, the weight on her shoulders and her outer frail facade that was so close to cracking. I didn't know how much longer she could keep it up.

Then I thought of Emma and how much of her I saw in Annie.

"Son of David," I whispered, "I want to see."

ike the scalpel I was so accustomed to working with, Emma's death severed me. I watched my heart roll through the dirt like a discarded piece of rotten fruit, beating outside myself.

My whole life, everything about my existence, had led to one singular moment, but that moment had come and gone and left me alone. All my preparation had been in vain.

I wanted nothing to do with medicine, with surgery, with my past, or with sick and hurting people ever again. I tried to forget all I had learned, all I had become, all the faces and hearts I had helped heal, to push Delete and blank the tape that had become my mind and walk away.

After the funeral I packed one bag, listed our Atlanta penthouse with a Realtor, called the Vietnam Veterans to pick up anything they wanted, and drove north. Somewhere around the 1-285, I threw my pager out the window. Another few miles and I tossed out the second. Once on State Road 400, I pitched the first of the cell phones into oncoming traffic, where a semi-tractor flattened it. Soon I followed it with Emma's cell phone, which hit the asphalt and shattered into pieces. When I got to the lake, I walked to the end of the rickety old dock and threw my second, and last, into the water.

Hours later, I walked into the house and unplugged the ringing phone. I looked around, locked the door, and drove out the driveway.

Eight months later I returned. I can't really tell you where I went. It's not that I'm ashamed, but rather, I just don't remember. On more than one occasion, I had to look at the cover of the phone book just to tell myself what city I was in. At one point in the first couple of weeks I remember looking down at the odometer, and five thousand miles had clicked by. Three months later, the trip set had turned over, and I calculated the mileage at around fifteen thousand.

A couple of things stand out. I remember seeing the Atlantic, I remember seeing the Canadian Rockies, I remember seeing the Pacific, and I remember being encouraged to turn back at the Mexican border. Other than that, I can't tell you much. I guess my credit card and ATM receipts would tell the real story.

When I finally showed up at the lake, Charlie was just returning from a "school" where they teach blind adults how to live after losing their sight-most by violent accidents. We walked around each other for a couple of days like the same ends of two magnets turned to repel rather than attract. It's not that we didn't want to talk, we just didn't know how or where to start. I mean, how do you talk to the brother of the wife you couldn't save?

Finally he just walked over, put his hand on my shoulder, and said, "Reese, you're the greatest doctor I've ever known."

Maybe that hurt most of all. I hugged him, we cried some, never really said more, and then just started picking up the pieces, which by that time had scattered all over the place. Every now and then we'd find one. Still do. Sometimes together, sometimes alone. Building the house, the boathouse, and then boats just became our own group therapy. We've been regular attendees ever since.

indy called and said Annie was too tired to make a trip south of Macon. "Besides," she said, "I couldn't get the day off."

I thought for a minute. "Would you mind if Charlie and I went without you?"

"'Course not." Cindy sounded surprised. "If that's okay with you. It's great with me."

I wrote down directions, and Charlie and I drove south pulling a trailer down 400, then 1-75. In Atlanta we stopped at the Varsity, where Charlie ate a not-so-healthy lunch of two chili dogs, onion rings, and a Coke, and then pulled back out on the highway. I drank some orange juice and ate a banana.

We arrived at Cindy's place about two o'clock, and she was right. It was run-down and needed about six months of TLC. Most of the trees were dead, the grass was overgrown and weeds rampant, the house caked and peeling and in need of a sandblasting and then three coats of paint. But she was right about one other thing. The barn was a gem.

Charlie and I walked the premises, me describing and him pulling back the kudzu and reading with his hands. Then we walked inside the barn, where I led Charlie to the timbers and his eyes really lit up.

"This is a gold mine," he said, smiling. There was no use driving home empty-handed.

We pitched camp outside the barn-a pup tent, card table, cooler, and propane stove-set up a portable shop that included a planer and a table saw, and set to work. Charlie pulled the boards, ripped them out of the two-hundred-year-old home, and handed them to me so I could pull any nails and then fed them through either the planer, table saw, or both, depending on the character of the wood.

I would have described each piece to him, but his hands could tell him far more than my mouth, and I didn't need to rob him of the discovery. He was having too much fun. Georgia watched us from her perch atop the trailer. Never far from Charlie, she'd occasionally hop down to come check on me.

By dark, we had thirty or forty boards loaded in the trailer, all eight to twelve inches wide and maybe two to three inches thick. Good planks that would bring good money. I figured we had two more days of plank-pulling and then we could get to the timbers, the mother lode.

I called Cindy after eight, when I knew Annie would be asleep. She answered the phone as if she had been connected to it. "Hello?"

We small-talked, I asked about Annie, she asked about the drive, and then I told her what we had found. "Your barn is in good shape. Charlie and I think we'll be here two, maybe three more days, and we can bring home some lumber. Maybe even a good load."

I knew she was afraid to ask, but she must have been paying bills because she was wearing her business hat. "How much do you think we can make?"

I had done some figuring, measuring linear feet, and I had a pretty good idea of the wood's value, but I didn't want to get her hopes up. I threw out a conservative number. "Maybe twenty-five thousand."

There was a stunned silence, followed by a "Wow."