The Hummingbird (12 page)

“We’re way behind schedule for bathing and dressing today,” I said. “But I’d like to get you outside before the afternoon is gone. It’s a gorgeous day.”

“Outside?”

“Right now.” I pressed the button to raise the head of his bed. “Chop chop.”

Within minutes he was settled in the chair, a blanket tucked under his legs. I wheeled him to the front door, jogging back to fetch his water bottle.

It sat on the rolling table, on top of the power of attorney document. I picked it up, seeing a wet ring in the middle of the page. But he had signed the paper after all. Barclay Reed had also written the name of the person who would be in charge of his final medical decision-making. Mine.

“WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?”
I asked as we rolled up the driveway.

“Bear right toward the little bridge,” he said.

“Fine.” I followed his directions. “But that isn’t what I meant. You signed the form. So tell me what I should do for you.”

“Ah,” he said, without elaborating. I felt a lecture coming, and waited.

We wheeled along the road, which smelled tarry from fresh repair patches. Though there wasn’t much sidewalk space, there wasn’t much traffic either. Just moms schlepping their kids home from school; it was that time of day.

Two boys on skateboards, eighth graders I’d guess, were already home, and had set up a ramp in a driveway. They were practicing stunts. I paused so the Professor could watch them.

I have no idea if they were talented or not, but their tricks struck me as impossible: spinning and flipping the board while they were not on it, causing it to leap with them when they jumped. The skate boards landed loudly, like planks clapped together, and the boys often missed. But they would hop up and try again right away. If one of them did something difficult, the other one would make loud crowd sounds of applause.

I wondered if the boys were aware that they had an audience. They never said anything, or glanced our way.

Then I remembered playing junior high basketball, how acutely we were conscious of our visibility, how exposed I felt whenever I made a mistake. At game’s end, I could have named every boy, teacher, friend, or parent in the stands. So there was no way the skateboarders were unaware of the Professor and me. This was a show, put on entirely for us. One of the boys jumped over a pipe and landed on his board again.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the other boy cheered, arms in the air, “for the first time ever in the history of skateboarding . . .”

I aimed the chair and began strolling again. “That’s pretty cool stuff, don’t you think?”

Barclay Reed raised his thumb and pinkie. “Yo.”

I laughed. “Did you really just say ‘yo’?”

“Nurse Birch, what is the purpose of suffering?”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m weighing what instructions to give you. But the question concerns more than making sure I don’t drool in public. There is the philosophical question of why we suffer, and whether it has any merit. Should I avoid misery without plumbing its potential value?”

“Entirely your call, Professor. It’s your life.”

“I’ve said it before, Nurse Birch: You are always weakest when you attempt to be evasive.”

“I am not being—”

“You have witnessed how many deaths? Hundreds?”

“More than a thousand, by now.”

“A thousand. And I have seen one. It was unforgettably horrible.”

I leaned over so I could see his face. “Who was that?”

He turned away. “Not now, and probably not ever.”

“Whose death did you witness, Professor?”

“Irrelevant.” He waved a hand in a papal dismissal. “The point is that you have vast experience in this area. I am not ashamed of my ignorance, so I ask you not to indulge in modesty about your lack of ignorance.”

I took a wheelchair handle in each hand. “You want to know what the purpose of suffering is.”

“And whether it has merit.”

I rolled him along, trying to organize my thoughts. Sunlight fell dappled through the trees. “Well. I can say that the suffering of my patients has been deeply educational to me.”

“Educational?”

“It makes me appreciate this period of my life when I am in full health, knowing that my own days of dependency will surely come. It reminds me that most of my daily concerns are trivial. And it teaches me to pay attention so I can do a better job with future patients.”

“All very well for you, Nurse Birch. But what purpose does suffering serve for the patient?”

I pulled his chair to a standstill. We had reached a little bridge, and a brook feeding Lake Oswego gurgled below. “You are not going to like my answer.”

“Yours is not the only mind I will consult on this matter. Plato, for example, may have written something worth considering. But I am curious.”

“What I have seen, in my work, is that suffering enlarges people.” He opened his mouth but I pressed on. “I know, of course they’d rather not be in pain, or in fear. We all would. But there is a thing that I have seen.” I moved around in front of him. “Many people, confronting their mortality, appreciate existence more. They realize that they are part of something greater than themselves. Spiritually, they enlarge.”

“You are beginning to sound dangerously religious, Nurse Birch.”

“I don’t mean that, though there are plenty of times that religion is the way they enlarge. It’s more like acts of generosity, or forgiveness, or humility, that people simply were not capable of making when they were well. It sounds corny, but suffering makes some people more loving.”

Barclay Reed scowled. “While I was sleeping today, you must have had too much sun.”

“I said you wouldn’t like my answer.”

A trio of girls on bikes came zooming past at that moment, the red-headed rear one calling to the curly-haired one at the front: “Amy. Amy, hold up.”

They were around the corner and down the lane in five seconds.

The Professor watched after them. “To put a finer point on it, precisely who am I to shower with all of this eleventh-hour love? Melissa the sweaty nursemaid? Cheryl who cannot complete a crossword?”

“I didn’t say it always happens.”

He gripped the arms of his chair and cleared his throat. “Here is my instruction to you, for my advance directive.”

“I am listening.”

“No needless prolonging. And no suffering.” He pointed his bony chin out at the lake. “None. Nada. Zilch.”

“Earlier on, you were resistant to pain control.”

“That was ages ago.”

“One week?”

“Intellectually, that could be a century. Today I am better informed. I have experienced the benefit of medicinal assistance. Also I recall the death I did witness, how ugly the medical care was, how needlessly cruel, and above all, how indifferent to suffering.”

“The death you don’t want to talk about.”

“Will not talk about. Moreover, I am not interested in suffering as a mechanism of character building. My character is already built.”

“Fair enough. I understand.”

“And will obey?”

“And will uphold your instructions completely.”

“Good. Now what are your thoughts about . . .” Barclay Reed turned the wheelchair so that he was facing down the lane. The sun fell across his eyes, making him squint, and he tugged on a tuft of hair at his forehead.

“Yes?”

“What is the purpose of your husband’s suffering? How has he been enlarged?”

Ouch. I had not expected the conversation to take that turn. My first impulse was defensive, protective as at the police station. But the Professor had signed his medical power of attorney to me, had just that moment given me instructions for the manner of his death. How could I withhold an honest answer?

Besides, the question had a weight all its own. What
was
the purpose of Michael’s pain?

“I don’t honestly know,” I said.

“Are you shaving him yet?”

“Not even close.”

The Professor ruminated, running one thumb back and forth on the rubber of one of his wheels. “Are you hopeful?”

“Almost.”

He said nothing.

I stepped back behind the chair. “Time to head home?”

“One more thing.” He stopped rubbing the wheel and lowered his hands to his lap. I noticed that he was staring out at the glimmering reach of lake.

Someone was hoisting the sail of a Sunfish, a triangle of red and white stripes. He narrowed his eyes, studying the little boat and its solitary sailor. “Inform me about what the need will be.”

“I don’t understand the question.”

“You gain the powers of the advance directive when the need arises. I want to know when that moment will occur.”

“There is really no sure way—”

“I have metastatic kidney cancer. That is a solid fact. Therefore I imagine an experienced medical expert can predict. I would like you to predict.”

“Every person’s prognosis is different.”

He snorted. “The ever-evasive Nurse Birch.”

“You always say that. But everyone has different appetites, different sleep needs, different immune systems. And different disease trajectories.”

“For God’s sake,” he barked. “I am asking you how I will die.” He pounded the armrest. “Please do me the courtesy of candor.”

“Professor.” I let the air settle around us. Holding his chair for balance, I squatted so our faces were level. I felt like a knight kneeling before the throne. “I can predict how, but not how fast.”

“Be as honest as you dare.”

I took a deep breath. “Your chart says you have cancer in many sites now. As the tumors grow, they will starve you, metabolically. You may have pain in your bones, which is a symptom we can suppress, but that’s a distraction. The primary disease will only cause fatigue.”

“Thus does a vigorous man sleep until noon.”

“Actually, yes. Gradually you will begin wasting away as the cancer robs more of your nourishment. You will become weaker, and completing daily functions will be more difficult. Eventually, your digestive system will lose the competition for nutrients, and you will stop eating. At that point, life will be mostly about resting. One day you won’t take fluids either.”

I wanted to hold his hands, curled there on the blanket in his lap. They were so pale and vulnerable. But I had never felt invited to that level of contact with the Professor, and this was not the time to test his limits. So I continued to grip his chair.

“The final phase can pass quickly, or be frustratingly slow. But once fluid intake ends, it is a matter of days. The important thing for you to know is that almost one hundred percent of kidney cancer patients, very nearly all of them, die in their sleep.”

The Professor was quiet a long time. “Thus not suffering is a possibility.”

“And I will do my very best to make it a reality.”

He nodded to himself while continuing to observe the lake. I turned to follow his gaze.

The little boat had pulled away from the dock, its red and white sail bright against the blue water. It worked at an angle close to the wind, beating steadily against the waves as it moved up the lake.

As we watched, the boat tacked back and forth across the mouth of the bay. Sometimes it struggled, heeling high so that the sailor had to lean out to balance the Sunfish. But finally the boat reached the point, breezing around the corner to find its way up the lake and out of sight.

Just as we both had known it would.

HIS GRANDFATHER WAS KNOWN AS BIG DON,
his father as Mr. Donald. Thus was Donald Baker III instantly and ubiquitously called Donny. His diploma from Brookings Harbor High School in Curry County was issued to “Donny Baker III.” In sum, under every circumstance, from infancy forward, the man was known by a diminutive.

Big Don had been a logger, rough-skinned and hard-knuckled. Mr. Donald, whose aptitude with numbers exceeded his skillfulness with an axe, operated a modest but successful accounting firm. Mr. Donald’s wife was a homemaker whose pies won enough blue ribbons in local fairs to merit a brief profile, complete with apron-clad photo, in the Saturday “Home and Hearth” section of the
Brookings-Harbor Pilot
newspaper.

Donny’s early years left a negligible mark on the public record. Born in 1924, he was of prime age for military service in 1942. Yet there is no evidence that he sought to enlist in any branch of the armed forces, nor that he suffered any malady that would have precluded enlistment. He served in Civil Defense but was mustered out of that organization after six months for reasons that remain undocumented.

When the state forestry department established a civilian safety program in the wake of the Tillamook Burn—the aforementioned Advance Warning System—Donny found his calling. In early 1942, a supervisor’s letter supporting his promotion to “assistant area manager for fire prevention” asserted that Donny’s “agility in the backcountry, as a result of hunting since childhood, befits him for modest personnel oversight responsibilities including on-the-ground involvement.”

Which is to say that Donny Baker III patrolled the woods and hiked from tower to tower carrying not only binoculars, an axe, and a shovel, but also at all times a rifle. Brookings retailers recall that he was partial to Winchesters.

ON SEPTEMBER 9, 1942,
Donny was not scheduled for duty until nine
A.M.
Informed of Soga’s attack by his hunting buddy Howard Gardner, however, Donny dispatched a fire crew to the first bomb’s landing site by 8:45.

Four miles from the nearest logging road, the fire struck a remote area with steep embankments. Donny must have been in his element, however, for he reached the scene by noon—and well before the army. His later report boasted that the blaze was extinguished by two
P.M.
Total acres consumed: three.

If the day’s work had ended there, it would have been an unmitigated success for Donny Baker III. Instead, he nearly managed to get himself and his firemen killed.

An army patrol, approaching the scene that afternoon, heard shots in their direction. When they returned the volley, shouts from the fire team identified the source of the initial rounds as the sole crewman to carry a weapon. Army records indicate that Donny Baker III had thought Japanese troops were about to ambush his crew.

By the evening of September 9, Donny had returned to the Driscoll Hotel, where, still dressed in smoke-scented clothes, he held forth on the attack and his crew’s backcountry firefighting prowess. Moreover, he displayed fragments of the bomb, announcing that in coming days they would be for sale to the highest bidder.

Instead, the following morning, Donny was detained for questioning by investigators with the 174th Infantry. The record does not contain the officers’ names, but Donny later remarked that the two men were “tall and humorless.”

While presumably aware that Donny owned other weapons, the investigators deemed the rifle with which he had fired at the troops to be evidentiary, and confiscated it. They also directed that he be immediately discharged from the fire service for interfering with military evidence. As a final insult, they impounded his bomb fragments.

Following that intervention, Donny vanished from the public record of the 1940s. Civilian or otherwise, he would have no further role in World War II.

That December, a senior army staffer made the fragments into a pen holder, which he gave to a general as a Christmas gift.