Fireflies (17 page)

But dopamine has plus and minus effects. It raises critically low blood pressure. However, to do so, it must stem the flow of blood to such crucial organs as the kidneys.

Matthew’s kidneys shut down, stopped filtering poisons into the bladder. He needed a hole cut into his abdomen. A tube was inserted, through which fluid was poured in and an hour later drained out—to vent the poisons.

But now he was also on oxygen. If given long enough, oxygen poisons the lungs. Fluid accumulates. That fluid puts pressure on the heart.

Three organs in trouble. And that’s not counting the remnant of the tumor in his chest, four missing ribs, and …

In David’s nightmare, Matthew struggled against an oxygen tube crammed down his throat. Finally morphine had to be given, to put him to sleep, so he wouldn’t yank the tube from his mouth.

Just before the tube was inserted and the morphine injected, the director of Intensive Care told David, Donna, and Sarie, “If you need to tell him something, now’s the time. He might not come off the respirator.”

Next to David, Sarie paled. “What does he mean, Matt might not come off the respirator?”

“It means”—David couldn’t believe he was saying this—“Matt might die.”

“Jesus.”

What do you say to your son when the ultimate reality kicks him and you in the teeth? You’ve got five minutes to tell him the last words he might ever hear. Then, whether you said the right thing or not, you don’t get another chance.

Your character, your upbringing, your
self
take charge.

Sarie chose to say, “I love you, Matt.”

David chose to be practical. “Don’t get panicked. Fear will increase your shock. Trust the system. I’ll push these doctors to their limit. I promise, they’ll do everything they possibly can.”

Donna said … wise Donna … “Matt, you’re a perfect boy.”

A priest in the background said, “No, a perfect
man
.”

Donna kissed her son.

The tube was inserted, the morphine given.

And that was the final communication.

Except … before drifting into a morphine stupor, Matt (unable to speak because of the oxygen tube crammed down his throat) pointed with determination toward letters on an alphabet board. His trembling finger wavered, spelling. The gist was clear.

Take this tube out. Need a root beer.

And then …
Die?
he spelled.

“We’re doing our best,” a doctor said.

Matt nodded. His eyelids fluttered. He slept.

The final communication.

Five days later, his injured lung collapsed.

But it reinflated, giving cause for hope.

Three days later, his heart became infected. His blood pressure plummeted, and this time nothing on earth or in heaven, no medicine, no prayers, would help.

In David’s nightmare. But now, heartbroken, desperate for a second chance, David stared at the nurse taking Matthew’s temperature.

“It’s back to normal.”

“Blood pressure?” a doctor asked.

“Up. Ninety over sixty-five.”

“He’s coming around,” another doctor said.

“There.” The doctor in charge of the ward turned to David. “A false alarm.”

“Pressure—a hundred over seventy.”

“I repeat,” the doctor said.

“A false alarm? I watched you,” David said. “You were afraid. But believe me, you couldn’t have been as terrified as I was. What I did last night when I gave him the Vancomycin …”

“Was irresponsible.”

“I saved my son’s life!”

In David’s nightmare, one of the bitterest ironies had been that as Matthew had worsened in Intensive Care, his recently transplanted bone marrow had started to multiply, producing healthy blood. Four days after the onset of his septic shock, Matt’s white-blood count rose from zero to eight hundred. Not strong enough to fight infection but, under other circumstances, encouraging. As a rule, a white count of one thousand is considered the minimum safety level. The next time Matt’s white count was tested, it had risen to sixteen hundred. And the next time, thirty-two hundred. When he died from heart arrest, his white count was over six thousand. If he hadn’t contracted septic shock, his healthy blood would have permitted him to be released from the hospital the day of his death.

To be sure, there would still have been dangers. The devastating chemotherapy had temporarily destroyed his immune system. For several months, he’d have been susceptible to such normally nonlethal diseases as chicken pox, which he’d already had and acquired an immunity to, but which in his present weakened, nonimmune condition could have killed him. To guard against that danger, he’d have been forced to stay at home, his visitors restricted to those who had no illness and hadn’t been exposed to any illness. Even then, his visitors would have been required to put on hospital face masks, just in case. When school started in the fall, Matt couldn’t have attended but instead would have studied through correspondence courses.

But eventually, by Christmas, say, his immune system would have reestablished itself, and he could have gone out in public, resuming a normal life. In time, a brace would have been implanted in his chest to compensate for his missing ribs. Because he’d lost a third of his right lung, he’d have been short of breath on occasion but not enough to incapacitate him. A small price to pay for having survived.

Of course, he’d always have suffered the fear that his cancer had not been cured, that one day the tumor and its excruciating pain would return, but as the autopsy of David’s nightmare indicated, no trace of malignancy was discovered. The devastating chemotherapy—possible only because of the bone marrow transplant—had been effective. The alien that Matt so loathed and wanted killed had been defeated.

Now, because Matt’s septic shock had been averted, David’s eerie déjà vu was restricted only to the no longer ironic increase of Matt’s white blood count. Matt’s vital signs remained at a normal level. His appetite increased. His only complaint was that he couldn’t wait to go home.

“We’d like that, too,” a doctor said, “but after what happened on Friday, we want to be cautious. It’s been a week now, Matt. You’re doing fine. I think by Sunday, if you can be patient two more days, you’ll be on your way.”

Matthew raised his thumb in a victory signal.

David felt so elated he didn’t care about the indignant looks a few doctors still directed toward him and the legal problems he’d be facing for having interfered with medical procedure. Yes, the hospital attorney had been called, but David didn’t object. After all, parents can’t be allowed to behave as if they’re licensed to practice medicine.

Under normal circumstances anyhow. But since his nightmare, since David had awakened on his kitchen floor, nothing in his experience had been normal. His dizziness remained, though his heartbeat and breath rate were under control. His dizziness was more like floating, and periodically, when he closed his eyes, he still saw fireflies. At unusual moments, he’d turn toward Matthew’s radio to reduce its volume, only to realize the switch was off, and yet he heard power chords. He and Donna continued to exchange what he felt were uncanny knowing glances, as if she understood the miracle that had happened and didn’t dare break a spell by referring to it.

A spell. Precisely. David felt he was under a spell. None of what had happened—his panic attack, his struggle to convince the doctors, his 3:00 A.M. injection of Vancomycin, Matthew’s recovery—none of it seemed real. He couldn’t believe his luck. But he kept seeing fireflies. He kept hearing power chords. The need to stay close to Matthew became an obsession.

“Your son’s doing fine,” a doctor said. “Go home for a couple of hours. Get some rest.”

“I’ll go home when my son does.”

The doctor frowned at David’s haggard features.

“Hey, I’m okay,” David said. “I’m just so glad he’s alive I want to be near him. To … it’s hard to explain … enjoy him.”

“You explained it perfectly.”

“Once he’s home, I’ll sleep for two days.”

“You deserve it.”

“So do my wife and daughter. None of us could have survived this without each other.”

“All of us give you credit.”

“No, Matthew deserves the credit. I don’t know how he stayed so brave.”

Then Saturday came.

Saturday. The day, in David’s nightmare, when Matthew died in Intensive Care. David’s dizziness made him feel that his feet floated off the floor. The fireflies brightened. The power chords intensified.

I’m losing my mind, David thought. That has to be it. I can’t imagine another explanation. I’m cracking up from relief after six months of hell. But if David
was
cracking up, why, despite his sense of floating, did his thoughts seem so clear?

Something was wrong. From all appearances, not with Matthew. But
logically
. Something was wrong.

Okay, let’s assume I fainted from running when I shouldn’t have, when the temperature was too high, David thought. So I fell on the kitchen floor, had a nightmare that Matt would die, and woke up with the certainty I could save him because I knew exactly when and what would kill him. Does that make sense? Do you believe in precognition?

I’ve never believed … No, put it another way. I’ve never experienced it before.

A phone call you felt would come, and then it did?

On occasion. Coincidence.

But you did save Matthew’s life. When the lab tests came back, they said his infection was due to strep and staph, and only Vancomycin—not the other two antibiotics you could have given—would have been effective against those bacteria.

Coincidence.

You don’t believe that.

No, you’re right. I don’t believe that. I knew more than I could have.

Then what’s your explanation?

As David’s sense of floating increased, and the fireflies brightened, and the power chords nearly deafened him, he repeated, I’m going crazy! Or …

Yes, or?

Or I really am … !

Think it!

Dying forty years from now! And if I believe that, I belong in the Psychiatric Ward!

But if you did come back?

I won’t consider it.

But if … ? There’s a logical problem, right?

Yeah, a massive logical problem. I can’t be in two places at the same time. If somehow I came back to change the past, then the future has to be changed as well. And I can’t be dying forty years from now.

Then you either had a nightmare.

Or I’m dying in the …

Future? You mean the present, remembering the past, wishing with all your heart you could …

Change it?

But the past can’t be changed. And on schedule, at 9:25 P.M. on Saturday, June 27, 1987 …

A chunk of debris from the dead staph and strep collected in Matthew’s heart, plugged a major artery, and caused cardiac arrest.

It happened in an instant. The monitors attached to Matthew wailed. Sudden straight lines and zero readings.

And David’s heart succumbed to its minor imperfection, the electrical blockage that had never bothered him. Till now. In the future. Which is to say, the present.

How long is an instant in eternity? Could it last ten earthly days?

David, who’d been hovering in the brilliant doorway, abruptly shot forward, at last released, finally at peace, no longer tortured by the greatest grief of his life.

His wife’s fatal stroke in late age he could understand, though he missed her fiercely.

But his son’s death at fifteen, his dear unlucky wonderful son, who embodied optimism, who exuded good nature, who believed in being useful and could have contributed so much to a troubled world …

That
death David had never adjusted to.

Until now. After forty years. At the instant of David’s own death. With a vague sense of his beloved daughter weeping over his corpse, David rocketed through the radiant doorway. It seemed he’d been held in suspension, not for a microsecond but for agonizing days, until whatever held him back suddenly snapped and long-accumulating thrust him toward the mystery.

Toward fireflies and power chords.

Toward one of the fireflies rushing to greet him.

“Dad!”

The word was soundless.

Just as their loving embrace—so long postponed—was bodiless.

But David had no doubt …

“Son, I love you.”

This was heaven.

Thus we end as we began, with agony and compulsion. But what exactly have we been through? What did you just read? As I said at the start, this book is fact, with a layer of fiction. But how much of each? You’ve got a right to know.

Ninety percent of the events have been described as accurately as I can remember them. But memory, like reality (or perhaps the two are the same), can be illusory. So to verify my recollections of the mostly factual events and conversations I’ve just described, I asked several persons who were with me to read this manuscript and compare it to what they perceived, to make suggestions for alterations. Where appropriate for accuracy, those suggestions were followed. As a further test for accuracy, I referred to hospital records and a lengthy diary that my wife maintained throughout Matt’s ordeal.

But what are the facts? Everything I described did happen—except for the obvious. I’m forty-four years old. Thus, at the age of eighty-four, I didn’t have a deathbed vision that took me back forty years to try to save my son. I didn’t anticipate the staph and strep that would give my son septic shock. I didn’t become an amateur doctor, sneak into the hospital in the middle of the night, and give my son Vancomycin. I didn’t head off the infection that sent Matt from the Bone Marrow Ward to Intensive Care, where after eight days of suffering he died from heart arrest. Everything that happens from the moment I wake up on my kitchen floor is invented. But everything in my nightmare during the fainting spell, all the specifics of the disaster I’m trying to avert, God have mercy, actually took place.