scope 2009-FINAL.qxd_scope06Final.qxd - SIU School of Medicine

Promise Made, Promise Kept
“What do you want to do?” the nurse asks.
What do I want to do? I want to do anything but this, be anywhere but here. I
don’t want to watch the heart monitor anymore. I don’t want to hear the rhythm of
your heart flutter. I don’t want to be standing in an ICU. I don’t want to call my
brothers again with even more bad news. I don’t want to hear Mom cry. I don’t want
to answer this question, Dad, I really don’t.
Time telescopes in on itself, fractures, and ruptures backwards. I want to be 6
years old on a beach in West Dennis, jumping through the waves with my hand in
yours. I want to be 10, standing near your family’s farm in Feeding Hills and hear how
you fetched the cows in before the Great Hurricane of 1938. I want to be 12, sitting on
the top eave of the house, holding a can of paint while you hung over the side painting
the last, almost inaccessible place above the garage. I want to be a teenager, bicycling
down to the field where you hit fungo after fungo after fungo to my brothers on crystal
clear New England summer eves. I want to be an adult, listening to your World War II
stories and your experiences in Scheinfeld and Nordhausen, how at the latter you heard
how starving Jewish prisoners managed to sabotage the Nazi’s V2 rockets, probably
saving thousands of lives and maybe even the war. I want to be in college, hearing your
reassuring voice on the phone during finals week. I want to be any age and hear your
fine Irish tenor. I want to watch you read the Economist and relate some of the topics
back to lectures from the Jesuits at Boston College, which the GI Bill got you into, and
your hard work got you out with a magna cum laude. I want to hear your vast stories of
baseball lore and your passion for the skills of the game (and your love for the Red Sox,
no matter how hard it was, until, finally, 2004 came). I want to hear you talk to your
grandchildren, your laughter suffused with love. I want to see you happy and well, getting
stronger after you and Mom moved in with me 3 and a half years ago, losing the
stress of living alone, getting better, eating regularly again, even putting away your cane.
We went everywhere together, to Farmer’s Market, to breakfast, to the hardware store,
to get ice cream on a hot summer’s night. You laughed again. You smiled at Mom.
Normal things. Before the myeloma came.
“Do you want to draw blood for more tests? We might be able to stabilize him for
a few hours. What do you want to do?” the nurse asks again, my blue Power of
Attorney sticks out from the bottom of her clipboard. Time reverses with a jolt,
screaming to a stop as my heart breaks.
I teach medical students and residents. I listen to the clinicians in my department.
I know what the choices are. I know the sepsis is progressing. I know your kidneys have
shut down and your liver is failing. I know the priest has come and gone. I know the
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