No words
http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/002072.htmlT
I have a kiss, too, among a longer list of more pedestrian kisses, that stays with me.
Sometimes I don't even think that it really happened. Like it was a dream.. or like the whole half-year was a nightmare. Of course, more than a decade later, it has grown larger in my head. Details become inflated, romance added. The thing is, at the heart, it's true.
Just like there are certain elements from the periodic table that can only exist briefly under select circumstances, there are emotions that exist the same way.
I was 20 years old, a patient on the bone marrow transplant unit at the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals. There were six rooms on that ward, all sealed for sterility because we would have no white blood cells for the better part of a week, then new immune defense systems for another few months. So, we only saw each other.
A girl, I think 18 (funny how time plays with the details - never mind, though, it's the image that matters) came onto the floor the day one patient was released and another died. She came, like me, bald already from months of treatment, skinny as a sheet of wax paper. (I jokingly told her we were so skinny we could "hanglide off Doritos." When you've got late-stage cancer, you get your laughs where you can find them).
The other 4 on our ward were older. Most had just been re-diagnosed or come out of remission and instead of risking long-term chemotherapy that might not work, decided to do the bone marrow transplant up front while they were still healthy (also funny how your re-define words like "healthy" when you have cancer) and had the best chance for survival.
So we sort of gravitated toward each other, Sheila (yep, that was her name) and I, because of our age, I guess, and because our rooms were next door to each other. Interestingly, she said she originally had jet black hair, then did a course of treatment and it grew back blond, which broke her heart she said, but also gave her a great conversation starter. I would never see what color was planning on coming out after this treatment.
We could only see each other maybe once a week out of our own physical weakness. However, my transplant "took" and I started moving around more.. walking to visit the other patients, especially when I heard they had a bad day. Looking back, this was the beginning of the compulsion to go to where hurting people were and do what I could - I've been an emergency room chaplain and ICU chaplain for a while now.
Sheila, on the other hand, was not getting better. She grew frail and tired and non-responsive. The nurses kept asking me if I could visit from time to time when I could, so when I had that rare hour or so with some energy I'd roll my IV stand (mmm... lunch! I only took in food intravenously for 5 weeks) into her room. Usually she'd be asleep. Always on her back, her head on its side in the pillow, a few straggling strands of hair against a face that was literally white now. It had been yellow and jaundiced for a while, but this far along all the color had gone out of her life I guess, and her skin was the metaphor.
It always makes me stop to remember that ghastly (when you were in the same sinking boat, you could call each other "ghastly") struggle for breath, like her lungs were fighting against her. A loud inhale, as if surfacing from minutes underwater, then sinking down to the bed, then repeat.
That day, Sheila had a bloody nose for 7 and a half hours. In the morning it started and, with no white blood cells and no healthy marrow to help produce reds, clotting was nearly impossible. (My dream kisses never used to include the word "clotting," but there it is) She had something on the order of 4 blood transfusions that day.
I came in (it was late May) around 7:30. Just a little light left outside, bleeding in through the wall-sized hospital room windows. I shuffled in, really. I had heard reports from Sheila's room all day. There is a time when time is just over.. when you're waiting for the inevitable outcome and trying to ease pain however you can. At these moments, anything is allowable... forgiveness, irrationality, anger, romance, even pulling of plugs, as the metaphor goes. It is what James Taylor indirectly refers to as "time spent out of time."
She had confessed the week before that she had never had a boyfriend. Certainly she had been kissed, she said, but never a boyfriend. Those are the things that hurt you when you heard them, more than negative diagnoses... sick since she was 12.. never had a boyfriend, never been to a water park, never gone to college... I mean, what the Hell was God thinking? And it meant more to the six of us.. we all had our list of "never"s, didn't we?
So I shuffled in. She was awake; looking back, four transfusions can give you a bit more vigor... like a sudden rush of blood to the head, only in this case a rush of blood everywhere. In Sheila's case, "a bit more vigor" meant coherence.
She turned her head and smiled just a little when she saw me. You cannot imagine anything more frail-looking. I think to this day that you could see the light from a flashlight through her body if you held one up to her back.
So what the hell was I supposed to do? This is one of the too-many moments I had in my life where I learned that sometimes comfort is impossible and during those times, the best form of communication is silence.
I just sort of shuffled to the side of the bed and stood there. There was a nurse in the room, at the foot of her bed. Later, the nurse would say she was "practicing being invisible."
Not knowing what else to do, I smiled as well as I could at Sheila. I took a few specks of crushed ice (BMT patients always have those white styrofoam cups with crushed ice near their beds - they are one of a hundred images that always bring the sense-memories) and leaned over her, just gently brushing her lips to moisten them. Looking back, in cancer patient terms, this is one of the most intimate, compassionate acts one human being can provide for another.
Another hard breath.
On a whim more than anything else, I leaned in and kissed her lips. Sometimes you do things because you don't know what else to do. Sometimes they are even the right thing to do.
Her lips were cold.
Wet from the ice.
Imagine it how you will. Lingering just a bit so that it was more than a simple peck. Not so long that it would interfere with her next breath.
I stood and she smiled again. (Fortunately, because I was internally and, I have no doubt, visibly terrified of what her reaction would be)
What else to do? What else to say? The nurse (nurses on BMT floors were usually like drill sergeants - Ride your stationary bike! Drink! Move!) quietly helped me back to my room. She even tucked me in (my temperature that day was over 100, but I didn't think that was the time to bring it up).
We are all products of our environments, of our circumstances. That was what I did with mine. I still cry to tell the story to my wife. So sue me.
I never realized until now that I've never written about this. I hope it doesn't take up too much space, Red. If so, do delete it... I'll remember to cut and paste it somewhere.
I saw Sheila one more time after that. She was in her room, her parents were there, and another nurse. Sheila was somewhere else, doing something else.
Her parents remembered me from their daily visits and her father, a tall, strong man who now walked like a much smaller, much more tired man, pushed me in a wheelchair beside her. I held her hand for a moment, I think.
She didn't hear a word I said.
I have a kiss, too, among a longer list of more pedestrian kisses, that stays with me.
Sometimes I don't even think that it really happened. Like it was a dream.. or like the whole half-year was a nightmare. Of course, more than a decade later, it has grown larger in my head. Details become inflated, romance added. The thing is, at the heart, it's true.
Just like there are certain elements from the periodic table that can only exist briefly under select circumstances, there are emotions that exist the same way.
I was 20 years old, a patient on the bone marrow transplant unit at the Medical College of Virginia Hospitals. There were six rooms on that ward, all sealed for sterility because we would have no white blood cells for the better part of a week, then new immune defense systems for another few months. So, we only saw each other.
A girl, I think 18 (funny how time plays with the details - never mind, though, it's the image that matters) came onto the floor the day one patient was released and another died. She came, like me, bald already from months of treatment, skinny as a sheet of wax paper. (I jokingly told her we were so skinny we could "hanglide off Doritos." When you've got late-stage cancer, you get your laughs where you can find them).
The other 4 on our ward were older. Most had just been re-diagnosed or come out of remission and instead of risking long-term chemotherapy that might not work, decided to do the bone marrow transplant up front while they were still healthy (also funny how your re-define words like "healthy" when you have cancer) and had the best chance for survival.
So we sort of gravitated toward each other, Sheila (yep, that was her name) and I, because of our age, I guess, and because our rooms were next door to each other. Interestingly, she said she originally had jet black hair, then did a course of treatment and it grew back blond, which broke her heart she said, but also gave her a great conversation starter. I would never see what color was planning on coming out after this treatment.
We could only see each other maybe once a week out of our own physical weakness. However, my transplant "took" and I started moving around more.. walking to visit the other patients, especially when I heard they had a bad day. Looking back, this was the beginning of the compulsion to go to where hurting people were and do what I could - I've been an emergency room chaplain and ICU chaplain for a while now.
Sheila, on the other hand, was not getting better. She grew frail and tired and non-responsive. The nurses kept asking me if I could visit from time to time when I could, so when I had that rare hour or so with some energy I'd roll my IV stand (mmm... lunch! I only took in food intravenously for 5 weeks) into her room. Usually she'd be asleep. Always on her back, her head on its side in the pillow, a few straggling strands of hair against a face that was literally white now. It had been yellow and jaundiced for a while, but this far along all the color had gone out of her life I guess, and her skin was the metaphor.
It always makes me stop to remember that ghastly (when you were in the same sinking boat, you could call each other "ghastly") struggle for breath, like her lungs were fighting against her. A loud inhale, as if surfacing from minutes underwater, then sinking down to the bed, then repeat.
That day, Sheila had a bloody nose for 7 and a half hours. In the morning it started and, with no white blood cells and no healthy marrow to help produce reds, clotting was nearly impossible. (My dream kisses never used to include the word "clotting," but there it is) She had something on the order of 4 blood transfusions that day.
I came in (it was late May) around 7:30. Just a little light left outside, bleeding in through the wall-sized hospital room windows. I shuffled in, really. I had heard reports from Sheila's room all day. There is a time when time is just over.. when you're waiting for the inevitable outcome and trying to ease pain however you can. At these moments, anything is allowable... forgiveness, irrationality, anger, romance, even pulling of plugs, as the metaphor goes. It is what James Taylor indirectly refers to as "time spent out of time."
She had confessed the week before that she had never had a boyfriend. Certainly she had been kissed, she said, but never a boyfriend. Those are the things that hurt you when you heard them, more than negative diagnoses... sick since she was 12.. never had a boyfriend, never been to a water park, never gone to college... I mean, what the Hell was God thinking? And it meant more to the six of us.. we all had our list of "never"s, didn't we?
So I shuffled in. She was awake; looking back, four transfusions can give you a bit more vigor... like a sudden rush of blood to the head, only in this case a rush of blood everywhere. In Sheila's case, "a bit more vigor" meant coherence.
She turned her head and smiled just a little when she saw me. You cannot imagine anything more frail-looking. I think to this day that you could see the light from a flashlight through her body if you held one up to her back.
So what the hell was I supposed to do? This is one of the too-many moments I had in my life where I learned that sometimes comfort is impossible and during those times, the best form of communication is silence.
I just sort of shuffled to the side of the bed and stood there. There was a nurse in the room, at the foot of her bed. Later, the nurse would say she was "practicing being invisible."
Not knowing what else to do, I smiled as well as I could at Sheila. I took a few specks of crushed ice (BMT patients always have those white styrofoam cups with crushed ice near their beds - they are one of a hundred images that always bring the sense-memories) and leaned over her, just gently brushing her lips to moisten them. Looking back, in cancer patient terms, this is one of the most intimate, compassionate acts one human being can provide for another.
Another hard breath.
On a whim more than anything else, I leaned in and kissed her lips. Sometimes you do things because you don't know what else to do. Sometimes they are even the right thing to do.
Her lips were cold.
Wet from the ice.
Imagine it how you will. Lingering just a bit so that it was more than a simple peck. Not so long that it would interfere with her next breath.
I stood and she smiled again. (Fortunately, because I was internally and, I have no doubt, visibly terrified of what her reaction would be)
What else to do? What else to say? The nurse (nurses on BMT floors were usually like drill sergeants - Ride your stationary bike! Drink! Move!) quietly helped me back to my room. She even tucked me in (my temperature that day was over 100, but I didn't think that was the time to bring it up).
We are all products of our environments, of our circumstances. That was what I did with mine. I still cry to tell the story to my wife. So sue me.
I never realized until now that I've never written about this. I hope it doesn't take up too much space, Red. If so, do delete it... I'll remember to cut and paste it somewhere.
I saw Sheila one more time after that. She was in her room, her parents were there, and another nurse. Sheila was somewhere else, doing something else.
Her parents remembered me from their daily visits and her father, a tall, strong man who now walked like a much smaller, much more tired man, pushed me in a wheelchair beside her. I held her hand for a moment, I think.
She didn't hear a word I said.