Fathermothergod: My Journey Out of Christian Science (26 page)

“No?” I hear myself ask uneasily, as if it were yesterday.

“Lose a few pounds,” he answers, holding up one finger. “Not too many. Three, maybe four,” he says, “and learn to play a
great
game of tennis.”

That was the last time we’d spoken.

A receptionist with a thick Minnesota accent answers his phone and puts me through without delay.

“Hi, Uncle Jack, this is Lucia.”

“Hi, Lucia,” he says. He doesn’t sound surprised to hear my voice.

“I’m calling from Princeton Medical Center,” I say, nervously running a pencil along the booth’s smooth, perforated metal. It makes a clicking sound and breaks the lead, so I stop.

Silence.

“We rushed Mom here about an hour ago. We—She’s—”

I take a deep breath. My uncle waits. I would prefer to flee, to hang up, but I can’t. I push through the feeling of dread.

“She’s in critical condition. They’re moving her to ICU. She’s been sick for a long time—since Christmas.” My words barrel out of my mouth. “We came home for the holidays and realized something was wrong, but Mom and Dad didn’t want to talk about it … maybe they thought we wouldn’t notice.”

Not a sound from the other end. I continue.

“Uncle Jack, she wanted to use Christian Science. She wouldn’t go to a doctor. And they wouldn’t let us call you. Dad was going to call you back in January, when she went to Tenacre—a nursing home for Christian Scientists in Princeton. But then they—she—they didn’t want anyone to know. They were keeping it a secret—Church doctrine. But she got sicker and sicker, and we wanted to call you—Olivia and Sherm and I—but we didn’t want to—we felt we couldn’t—betray her wishes. They’re saying … the doctors are saying, she may not make it through the night.”

More silence.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Uncle Jack.”

The more I speak, filling the emptiness, the more frightened I feel. What am I going to hear?

Then, in a calm voice my uncle simply says, “Lucia, thank you for calling me.” I sense he is pausing long enough to … what? Light a cigarette? Jot something down? Is he at a loss for words? Or is he choosing them extra carefully? Has he been caught unaware? Or did Aunt Mary already tell him about Dad’s letter?

“What your mother needs right now, is for you—you and your brother and sister—to be strong,” he finally says with conviction.

He doesn’t include my father in this piece of advice, but the
omission seems fair to me, generous, even. I know that my father and Uncle Jack’s relationship has been acrimonious at times, and he might very well have responded by going on the attack; that he hasn’t—that maybe he has chosen not to, or has restrained himself with me—is an act of kindness. Instead, he offers advice that, for me, is a salve. I am overcome. My eyes brim.

“Thank you,” I say. “Uncle Jack?”

“Yes?”

“Can you help us?” I know this request comes much too late, and may elicit his anger, but I also know there is nobody else in our family with his medical background, so I need to ask him. “Can you help us with the doctors? We are in over our heads.”

He asks for the name of the attending physician. I tell him: Dr. Sierocki.

I return to the round table and sit with Olivia and Sherm for what feels, again, like too long. Dad and Mr. Florence are talking quietly at the other side of the waiting room. Where is she? What is taking them so long to bring her to the ICU? Should one of us go check on her? (Are we allowed to?) Each time the elevator doors open, we stand up and move closer to get a better look. And each time we see somebody other than our mother. Once, it is a team of bespectacled med students in white coats, all holding clipboards. Another time, an orderly pushes an old man in his wheelchair, while the old man tugs at a rolling stand from which several IV bags dangle. In his free hand he holds an extinguished, half-smoked cigar. I notice that neither he nor any of the other patients coming off the elevator look all that sick to me.

Eventually, Sherm and I position ourselves at the elevator. Each time we hear the rumble of the car moving up and down the shaft behind the closed doors, our nerves shift to high alert. Suddenly, the doors open again, and two orderlies struggle to pull and push a hospital bed and two IV posts strung with countless tubes and clear pouches through to the lobby. The mattress is propped up facing the back of the elevator, making it impossible to see the patient.

The hospital bed rotates to reveal an old woman convulsing in a semifetal position. The only sounds I hear are moaning and gasping and wheezing. For a terrifying moment I think, Is this Mom? But then I see that the woman has only clumps of matted hair between patches of baldness, and the sheet covering her torso has been cast aside, revealing a left breast, shriveled, folded, and scarred. I turn away and seek assurance in my brother’s eyes. I feel ashamed, frightened, relieved, nauseated, bereft, and guilty, all at once. The bed disappears around the corner, through the double doors leading to the Intensive Care Unit, and my brother and I are left in our aftershock to process what we have just witnessed.

Is this what we can now expect? Is this what we have brought our mother to the hospital for? Maybe she should have stayed at Tenacre?

The elevator bell sounds twice, and Sherman and I, acting on impulse, escape through the closing doors into the privacy of the car, leaving Olivia, Dad, and Mr. Florence. I lean against the back wall, and my knees buckle under me as I slide to the floor. I look up at Sherm, who is still standing, his back to me, shoulders shaking. I stand up, move over to him, and each of us leans our head on the other’s shoulder.

“Lucia, do you think Mom’s going to die?”

I am caught off guard by the question, but it brings into focus the difference between how my brother and I see things. For Sherm, this is a new possibility, while I have been expecting our mother’s death for months. Now that she has been admitted to the hospital, I don’t know what to think.

The elevator starts moving. When it stops, the doors open again and a man and twin carrot-topped boys, who look to be about four years old, get in. The father looks tired but happy; his kids look dazed. Maternity ward, no doubt. The father pushes the button for the first floor. When the doors open to the lobby, one of the boys cautiously reaches for his father’s hand, while the other one rushes out. I know how they both feel. I want the comfort of an older, wiser
protector. I also want to get out of here as fast as possible. Sherm and I remain in the elevator, grateful when the doors close again before anyone else can join us. I push 5.

When we return, Dad is sitting at the table, mindlessly folding the edges of a newspaper and scratching scribbles with his thumbnail. Olivia stands at the pay phone, talking to Terry.

“Where did you two go?” Dad asks. He seems relieved that we have returned. Mr. Florence has left.

Sherm sits down on the windowsill, facing the elevator and the table, and I head over to stand near Olivia. The elevator doors open once more, and this time in the bed that emerges we see our mother. She is propped upright, snugly tucked under crisply pressed white sheets, which are clean except for a maroon blotch near her chest, where the main-line catheter was inserted. We gather close and offer smiles and “Hi, Moms,” then back away as the orderlies push her down the corridor.

I pucker my lips and blow a kiss. My mother’s head rests on its side, and she follows me with her eyes, but there is no real sign of recognition.

It is late
at night, and I am back at the house, as are Sherm, Aunt Nan, Aunt Lucia, and Dad. Dad was going to spend the night with Mom in the ICU, but Olivia urged him to get some rest at home while she took a night shift. This plan—
a plan!
—feels for me so inconceivably normal.

I have escaped to my mother’s Nook. Concealed behind double doors at the end of the upstairs hallway, the space is filled entirely by a berth-size water bed set to a soothingly warm temperature and piled high with pillows. The wobbly effort of climbing into this hideaway somehow improves my spirits. I lie still while the bed’s waves ebb. I close my eyes.

I am in shock over the day’s turn of events. This morning, benumbed, Sherm, Olivia, and I sat downstairs in the kitchen with
our father’s two sisters, sipping coffee, waiting for word that Mom had died at Tenacre. Now, near midnight, she is lying in the Intensive Care Unit at Princeton Medical Center. Along the life–death spectrum—if there is such a thing—I believe our mother’s condition has inched ever so slightly in the direction of life, even if her doctor—
her doctor
—the very words in their combined form are like a jolt; I shake my head, stunned—told us that she arrived in the emergency room in a premorbid state; that she might not make it through the night.

But now that a team of doctors and real nurses are caring for her, I feel, for the first time, hopeful. In the ICU she is clinging to life, and that should sound bleak, but to my ears it sounds positive. Given this new tack we are on, it feels like there’s a real, if outside, chance that Mom will survive. Her departure from Tenacre is nothing short of a miracle: leaving Christian Science for real science, rejecting the denial of illness for the possibility of diagnosis and treatment. I feel—viscerally—that another miracle can happen.

Down the hall, Aunt Nan and Aunt Lucia are asleep in my room. In the master bedroom, Dad snores loudly. Sherm is downstairs in the living room, sharing the couch with Felix and Oscar, my parents’ Doberman-shepherds.

My eyelids quiver. I am restless, in part because of the dreadful hospital coffee. In the next few days Aunt Mary, Aunt Kay, Uncle Jack, and Grandma will no doubt be arriving. So will Terry. Between now and then, there will be much to do: talking to doctors, trying to learn about Mom’s illness and the options for treating it. But for now all we can do is wait for her to regain her strength.

I can’t sleep, so I slip into my shoes and head downstairs.

The television is tuned to a rerun of
Taxi
. The dogs are curled up near my brother’s feet.

“Sherm, you awake?” I whisper. My brother sits up with a start. I feel bad that I have awakened him with nothing to report.

“Sorry. Go back to sleep.”

“What’s up?” he asks, rolling onto his side to face me.

“No news, if that’s what you mean. I’m going back to the hospital.”

“Do you want me to come?” he asks.

“Nah. I’ll take over for Olivia. Maybe she’ll come home for a few hours.”

“What time is it?”

“After one.”

I drive Mom’s car, park in the deserted hospital garage, and, after informing the night receptionist that my mother is a patient here, I head up to the ICU.

I find Olivia asleep on one end of the L-shaped couch in the lounge. I’m not sure how visiting hours work at hospitals, especially in the ICU. Can I just walk up to Mom’s bed? I don’t want to disturb Olivia to ask her, so I sit down in a lounge chair and gaze up at the television.
The French Connection
is on.

I feel myself dozing off when someone taps me on the shoulder. A nurse stands in front of me.

“Would you like a blanket and a pillow?” she whispers. She has frosted hair, and a lovely smile that reminds me of Mom’s. That she is caring for me too, and not just her patients, makes my eyes well up.

“No, thanks. Uh … can I go see her?” I ask. “My mom? I mean, is it okay?”

“Sure.”

She smiles again and beckons me with a nod of her head. When the nurse turns her back, I use the shoulder of my sleeve to wipe my eyes.

I stand at the curtain that separates my mother’s bed from the next one over and peek in to see if she is awake. She sees me right away. I love that I am face-to-face with her, and there is nobody else here. Just Mom and me. Her cheeks look rosy, flushed, and she is calm. A real change from Tenacre.

“Are you tired?” I ask. I hold my mother’s hand, and it feels so good.

“I’m sleepy, but I can’t sleep,” she says, smiling at me when I squeeze her hand. She sounds groggy, tranquil.

“Me too.”

We sit there for several minutes in silence.

I realize that she should at least try to sleep.

“Mom, you need rest,” I say, reluctantly. I would rather stay like this, holding hands.

“I know,” she murmurs. “This is fascinating.”

“ ’Scuse me?” I ask. “Did you say something, Mom?”

Reaching under the bedsheet with her left hand, Mom pulls out a black satin eye mask and holds it up proudly, as though she has pulled a rabbit from a top hat.

“Have you ever seen one of these?” she asks, clumsily securing it over her face. “All the pretty colors change …”

“What?”

“It’s very interesting. The patterns change …”

“No, Mom. That’s an eye mask, to block out light.”

“Oh.”

My mother readjusts the mask on her face, and her hands retreat beneath the sheets. I can’t know if she feels defeated, ashamed, or at ease behind the mask. I am relieved that she can’t see my face, read my fear. She is quiet again, and soon she drifts back to sleep.

I sit beside Mom and fend off sleep for another hour. Being here, I feel like a good daughter. At three, Olivia taps me on the shoulder.

“When ’dju get here?” she whispers, pulling up a chair. She is wrapped in a hospital blanket, wearing a pair of hospital socks.

“About one-thirty. You were asleep, so I didn’t wake you up.”

My sister looks away, and I can’t tell if she is too tired for conversation or if perhaps she’s miffed that I’ve stolen her spot. Now that Tenacre is behind us, we can vie for our mother’s attention unfettered by the Christian Science gatekeepers.

We sit together in silence and watch our mother sleep.

At four-thirty, I surrender. I’m exhausted. My sister will get
credit for the first overnight shift. But maybe Mom will remember that I was here too. It is comforting to feel that now I
can
be a good daughter. I am tempted to remain in the ICU, but there really is no point in both Olivia and me staying up all night. We could have weeks of this ahead of us, months even. I get an uneasy feeling when I consider the days to come, but the fact that we got Mom here, that maybe it’s not too late, brings tears to my eyes. I wipe them away and take a deep breath.