Death
October 1, 1907
Icy pellets pummeled the hospital windows, impatient for answers.
“She’ll be dead by morning, more than likely,” the man in the bloody scrubs said. “I’m sorry.” With reverence, he removed the surgical cap from his head and held it against his heart, as if he paid his last respects at her funeral. Patches of gray stubble peppered his cheeks, and dark circles underlined his haggard eyes.
Cruel, harsh words for this man pawed at the back of my tongue. I swallowed them and glared at him in disbelief until the pungent, antiseptic smell of the hospital choked me. Nearly doubling over, I steadied myself on Ada’s bed frame, then looked at her and knew what he said rang true: her face had turned white as a ghost and her body stiffened with misery. If not for her perpetual, agonizing groans, the nurses would have surely pulled the sheet over her head and transported her to the basement morgue.
“I’m afraid we’ve done all we can. She’s now in God’s hands.”
The surgeon wouldn’t look me in the eye. I followed his gaze to his shoes—as tired and worn as the man and covered in blood, Ada’s blood.
Ada’s groans intensified, crescendoing from the depths of her soul. My mind went blank, but my body echoed her pain, threatening to turn my bowels to mush.
Mush—that’s how the surgeon had described Ada’s insides. Her gut had twisted on itself and gone gangrenous. He’d removed yards of her small intestine and sewed the ends together. It was a new procedure, one that had little chance of working, but the only alternative to stitching her up and signing her death certificate.
My body trembled involuntarily, soaked with sweat and tears, and I clutched her bed frame to stop the room from spinning. I stared at my wife helplessly, and she answered with another loud moan.
I looked back at the surgeon. “Have any of your patients survived this surgery?”
His head shook slowly but decisively.
“There is nothing more we can do?”
I glanced at my mother-in-law standing in the corner with our son, Donny, and she returned a look of utter disdain. This was somehow my fault. Her stoic sneer—that stinking I-told-you-so sneer that said Ada should have married Jimmy from down the street; Jimmy, who became a successful lawyer—and the smell of mothballs from her ratty fur coat magnified my nausea. God, how I hated that smirk. She stared at me through angry eyes, daring me to speak, then wrapped her tattered fur coat arms around Donny: seven years old and not understanding any of it.
I frowned at the surgeon, who hadn’t answered my question. Instead of speaking, he snapped his fingers at the young nurse, who pulled a syringe from her smock pocket and thrust a needle into Ada’s thigh and injected a clear fluid.
“We’ll make her comfortable with morphine,” the surgeon said. “I have nothing more to offer…” His words trailed off. “You should go home and get some rest. You can have the funeral home pick her up in the morning.”
Ada’s mother spoke for the first time. “I’ll arrange to have Lawry’s funeral home pick up my daughter. They are faithful members of First Baptist. My daughter’s service will be held at the church.” Her hostile glare gave no room to argue. She would command her daughter’s final hours.
She could not control our lives, and it galled her. But it never stopped her from loudly vocalizing her displeasure during our ten short years of marriage. On the day of our wedding, I overhead her complaining to Ada: “Why do you want to marry that boy? For Lord’s sake, Ada, you might as well go and marry a writer or artist or musician if you prefer to live a pauper’s life.”
She didn’t have a say in Ada falling in love with a no-good, traveling grocery salesman, a boy whose shadow seldom darkened the steps of a church, and a Scotsman to boot. But she certainly planned to take control in Ada’s death.
That was okay. She could do what she wanted now.
The nurse and Ada’s mother looked at me.
What were they waiting for? Curse it all to hell. I had no right to protest. Her scorn seemed to spread to the nurse, accusing me of being a lousy husband and killing her myself. Hadn’t they heard the surgeon say that this sort of thing just happens? He had suggested the malady came as an act of God. The bowel can just twist, he’d said, even the ancient Egyptians recorded it, and it’s as deadly now as it was back then.
I turned to Ada and knelt by her bed. Her gasping breath smelled of decay and death. I grasped her cold hand. As the end came near, I took heart knowing that whatever afterlife existed, she’d be welcomed into it with loving arms.
“Ada?”
She answered only with haunting groans as though her spirit had left already, and she no longer remained conscious of the torturous agony of her body clutching the shreds of life.
I rose to my feet and touched her lifeless and leathery face. “Ada, I’m so sorry. I love you so much. Please forgive me.”
Leaning in, I pressed my lips to hers, only to be assaulted by the smell of rotting bile flowing from her mouth into mine. I wanted to spit but swallowed instead. The vile bitterness set my gut on fire, and I stumbled from the room as fast as I could.
Partway down the hall, I couldn’t hold it back and let the contents of my stomach spill into an alcove. Gagging and retching, again and again, clinging to whatever would keep me upright, and then, catching my breath, I looked up. I had supported myself on a statue—a statue of Jesus. I knelt at the foot of a marble Jesus hung on the cross. He had a look of agony that matched Ada’s.
“You punishing me?” I wept. “I’m sorry for all the hell I’ve done, but please don’t take it out on her. Leave her in peace and give it to me, for God’s sake.”
Maybe this omniscient God knew. Perhaps my mother-in-law knew. Surely Ada did. She knew I had not been trustworthy in my thoughts or deeds.
I dropped to my knees, and my head fell into my hands. My stomach threatened to retch again. “Can I ever be faithful?”
I felt the statue’s eyes bore into my soul with conviction.
“You let her live, and I’ll change,” I promised. “Let her live, and you can have my miserable life.”
The cold tile stung my shins, and I pushed myself up. “Damn it all to hell,” I muttered. “I need a drink.”
