Fat Tuesday

Warning: This piece includes medical crisis, emergency surgery, and explicit physical suffering. There’s mention of addiction-adjacent behavior, hospitalization, and a line about wanting to die.

Fat Tuesday

Years ago, before the real launch of the internet and absolutely before cell phones were a thing, I flew to a tony resort town in the middle of Baja Mexico with my then boyfriend, Esteban. It was a last ditch effort to mend the scrappy tatters of our long-term love affair already unraveled from too much work and his deep love for alcohol. During the flight I found myself daydreaming about warm sand between my toes, a bit of spice in my food and soaking up all of the local color amidst hopes of rekindling something that deep down I knew to be over. I felt a dull thud deep inside when we stepped into our room with its two separate beds, a cold realization that the writing was on the wall.

On our first day lounging on the beach we made friends with a couple who were also from Northern California. The four of us were inseparable. Lunches, dinners, horses, sight-seeing. The girl and Esteban were huge drinkers and the man and I were not. Two days before we were all going to head back home, we took a pleasure cruise to the Isla de las Piedras. Esteban and the girl drank something like 15 cocktails en route and back. We frolicked a bit on the wee island and then boated back to the little resort town where we all enjoyed dinner. By this time the two of them were annihilated and the hubby and I were eating and rolling our eyes. We bid goodnight and promised to hang out on the beach together on our last day in this so-called Paradise.

The next morning, Esteban complained of a stomach ache and moaned that he wanted to stay in bed. I figured he just had a massive hangover so I headed down to the beach where I met up with our friends. About every 2 hours I'd go check on him in the room and he'd either be snoozing or propped up with blankets tucked around him in bed. Finally, after dinner, I came back to the room to pack to go home. He mumbled that he felt worse and threw off the blanket to go use the bathroom. My jaw dropped. He looked 7 months pregnant, his face grimaced in pain with each step. I ran to the front desk and in Spanish asked for a Doctor. When the Doctor listened to Esteban’s tummy, his face went pale. Que? In Spanish he gently whispered that he couldn't hear any rumblings or any noise at all in his stomach, put the stethoscope up to my ear and all I could hear was silence. The ambulance was on its way. I packed our suitcases, thinking we could leave for the airport directly from the little seven room Clinica in the morning.

When they examined him at the hospital they said he needed surgery immediately, that he was suffering from a bowel obstruction and that he had severe pancreatitis. I called my cousin, a Doctor, on the pay phone. “Can I fly him home”, I whispered softly, “I want him to have surgery at home.” “No,” he said firmly, “he'll die without immediate surgery.” The nurses at the Clinica let me stay in a room there but absolutely no sleep was had. I felt scared, an icy fear that ran through my body, part of me realizing I was powerless to help. Plus, I had a cold and knew not to be near him. So, surgery it was.

I called everyone in the small coastal town where we lived. Employers, family. Never once letting my voice falter, keeping it well modulated and without emotion; We were not coming back on the plane. The Surgeon said we had to let him convalesce. I'd ask the nurse about him after surgery. Not a soul spoke English in that crummy hospital, and I was the only one of us two who spoke decent Spanish. The day after surgery, 11 in the morning and I was surviving on sheer adrenaline. The nurse came to me and whispered that he wanted to see me. "No," I told her in Spanish, "I'm sick, I shouldn't go near him." She insisted, grabbing me somewhat harshly by the wrist. What a mess trying to hold it together, haunted. I splashed icy water on my face and with false cheerfulness, walked into his room. It was everything I could do not to gasp aloud, but somehow managed to stay calm and centered. His heart monitor was chattering its staccato rate. Uppppppppp and then down and back up again, his arrhythmia clear to even my untrained eye. His skin was a gray mottled color and his eyes two little sunken holes. I looked at his chart, utterly baffled; they were only giving him aspirin for pain. Nothing else. He had been cut from his pubic bone to his chest, the bowel obstruction removed, his heart was showing signs of distress, he was in the throes of a severe pancreatitis attack and zero pain meds. “Hey you,” I managed to whisper with a wan smile. He gestured for me to come closer, the pain so obvious in his eyes and expression. I leaned in, trembling and put my ear close to his mouth. “Take me home so I can die,” he rasped.

And, so it began. There were no cell phones, no one who spoke English, a dying man I was trying to save, not to mention a doctor who refused to help me get someone from the states to come get us. He also wouldn't give Esteban any pain meds or antibiotics and his condition was worsening as the day wore on. With what felt like all the odds firmly stacked against me, I somehow was able to arrange for a medical Lear jet to come pick us up from the touristy beach town in the middle of the Baja peninsula. Many calls back and forth on a rickety old pay phone, in English, Spanish. I kept shoving away the fatigued feeling of wiry adrenaline flitting through my body. Crying was simply a luxury that I couldn't afford; I had to do this right, on my own, and quickly.

The medical team and Lear jet were on their way but wouldn't arrive at the clinic until right before nightfall when the doctor was off so we could sneak Esteban out. Thank God he had great medical insurance as well as traveler's insurance, which we had the good sense to buy, otherwise he'd have paid some ridiculous amount. Dusk came, the medics suddenly appeared, and those days of utter hell were about to be put behind us. Hurrying, they placed him gingerly on a gurney, gathered our things and off we went. The plane took off gently into the soft purple light of the lingering sunset and the moment we were aloft they plunged him full of morphine. He heaved a big sigh and I'm sure I did as well. A couple of hours later we landed in the tiny municipal airport near the town where we lived, our parents with an ambulance in tow. In a flurry of movement, the paramedics whisked him off to the intensive care unit at the local hospital where he stayed for two weeks leaving me behind, slumped against the cold door of the plane.