27.
THE COLD BRIGHT OF THE DAY HELD STEADY.
Delivery men wearing dark blue T-shirts showed up at the former duplex to install the hospital bed in my mother’s room.
Nurses with name tags brought bedpans and enemas and walkers and machines with battery packs.
A man in light blue scrubs asked me to sign for the oxygen machine. He showed me how to use it so quickly that when he left I just sat down on the Saltillo tile floor and cried.
Sol called about something, said, “You sound like hell, Ariel. What’s wrong with you?”
And I thanked God that I didn’t have to do any of this to a Steely Dan soundtrack. I clicked the phone off, put Etta James on instead.
Runners from a pharmacy in Albuquerque came to the door with lunch bags full of prescription medications. Now we had morphine and fentanyl and Ativan and Oxycodone and Haldol and a dozen other pills and patches for pain and nausea and psychosis.
The palliative care nurse I’d only talked to on the phone appeared at the open door, walked in without knocking, red hair and turquoise cowboy boots. Tired gray eyes. She smiled and I never wanted her to leave me. “Are you managing, darling?” She cooed.
What could I say? I was trying very hard to manage.
“The night nurses cost twenty dollars an hour, darling,” she said. She sat down at the dining room table, started writing things on a half sheet of paper. Here was the number for the night nurses. Another service in town might send nursing students for ten dollars an hour, she said, but we had to go through an intake process. Here was that number. We’d need baby monitors so we could hear my mother from anywhere in the house. We’d need adult diapers, sippy cups, baby wipes, disinfecting wipes, soothing music, receiving blankets, soft foods.
I remembered a dream I’d had back in Portland when my mother was first diagnosed. A dream I was unexpectedly pregnant, crossing a desert border panicked and confused. I woke thinking that wasn’t a normal dream for a lesbian – unexpected pregnancy – but it all made more sense now.
I left the palliative care nurse in the house, ducked out to buy the baby products. It occurred to me that someone should throw me a “hospice shower.” Maybe I could register at “Dying Parents ‘R’ Us,” make a big tres leches cake. Then it occurred to me that I was perhaps getting a little bit morbid in my middle age.
I called the night nurse service from a parking lot. Yes, I needed someone for the first three nights at least. I did the math. All these nurse hours would add up, but there was no way I could move into the former duplex full-time again. My mother’s social security check would pay for ten nurse-nights a month. It boggled my mind to think that people poorer than me dealt with this kind of thing every day. People with less flexible jobs. I stopped at the new candle shop that had replaced ours, bought a Virgin of Guadalupe, headed to the Southside to pick up Maxito from his Spanish immersion daycare.
I knocked on the arched door the way I always knocked.
Maxito’s pretty teacher opened the door the way she always opened it, but she didn’t quite make eye contact. Two unfamiliar white people stood behind her.
I could see Maxito and his friend Diego playing with colored blocks in the main room, but something was off. The place smelled skunky like weed and smoke. “Everything all right?”
“Not really,” Maxito’s teacher hummed.
One of the white people piped up. “We’re with the Children, Youth and Families Department. We’ve suspended Ms. Martinez’ license until she works out a number of issues. This day care facility is now closed.”
Ms. Martinez’ lip quivered, but I just shook my head. Of course this day care facility was now closed.
I took Maxito’s little sweaty hand in mine, led him outside. As I lifted him into his car seat, he bit his lip. “Will I be able to play with Diego tomorrow?”
I squinted into the afternoon sun, buckled him in. “Probably not tomorrow. But you’ll see him again soon. How about we go get a Lego set?”
“A pirate set?”
“Sure.”
Subject: We need help in Santa Fe
From: arielgore@earthlink.net
Date: January 31, 2012 4:57:20 PM MST
To:
Greetings friends and friends of Eve,
As many of you know, my mom was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer over two years ago. Her health has taken a sudden turn, and I need your help now.
After three weeks in the hospital, she’s being released into home hospice care. This is not a 24-7 care service. I need friends willing to come for a few days or week each to help her here at home.
Please let me know if you can take on any time in February or March.
Thanks so much,
Ariel
I SENT THE email to the twenty or so old friends I could think of. No one I knew of had come to visit since we’d moved to New Mexico, but maybe now they would come. I hated to sound helpless, had been trained that asking for help meant I was a loser, but I had to grow up. I had to admit there was no way I could pull this off by myself.
Like a miracle they wrote back. A few of them wrote back, anyway. Yes, maybe they could come. They would check their calendars. Yes, three days or a week? They could probably commit to that. They’d had their hard times with Eve, they said, but they loved her. Maybe they even had some frequent flyer miles. They would check.
Leslie would come for a week if I bought her a ticket. Her son, Leo, would come next. A new-age priest we’d always known in California could do a long weekend. An old friend, Afton, would drive from Los Angeles. Would it be all right if she brought her seven dogs? Tom could be here as soon as he got home from the Middle East. A nurse who’d been part of my stepdad’s church community could come the weekend I had to go teach a writing workshop in Iowa City. My godmother, Deborah, would come from Monterey. Carmen would fly in from El Salvador.
I bought calendars and dry-erase boards, flowers and dark chocolate, medication logs and cheap wine. I set up the DVD player at the foot of my mother’s hospice bed, bought The Maltese Falcon and The Letter with Bette Davis. I set up the music player. Stacked Cat Stevens, Carol King, Simon and Garfunkel, Joan Baez.
I tried to be honest with my mother’s old friends: “If you need to see her alive, come as soon as you can. But if you can hedge your bets, we’re probably going to need people for at least a few months.” Was it harsh to put it that way? I didn’t know.
She could live five more years, the oncologist had said, but the palliative care nurse shook her head at that. “Oh, darling,” she said, “let’s just budget for six months. Your mum’s on her journey.”
Maxito focused on his pirate Legos. “Beautiful,” he kept saying. “Pirates are beautiful.”
It was starting to get dark, but no one turned on a light.
Six months. That worked for my brain. I could plan for six months.
The palliative care nurse’s cellphone beeped. She read a text from someone, looked up at me. “All right, darling,” she said. “They’ll bring your mum now.” She stood up suddenly, clicked her cowboy boots on the tile floor, grabbed the tape and a rolled-up piece of paper from the table, and unfurled the red and black sign. She marched over to my mother’s bedroom door and taped it up. DNR. Do not resuscitate.