Every Note Played(36)
“Karina, would you please feed me a bite or two of the makowiec?”
She doesn’t react at all at first, her blank face not seeming to comprehend his request. He’s never asked her to feed him. Apprehension fills her eyes as she registers his question.
“I don’t know. Is that allowed?”
“Just a couple small bites. I’ll wash them down with milk shake. It’s not Wigilia without makowiec.”
That won her. Karina’s a sucker for tradition. Still unsure, she cuts a thin slice of the cake and sets it onto Richard’s plate. She then sits in the empty chair next to Richard and faces him. She pinches off a small piece of cake between her thumb and finger, barely the size of a corn kernel, and holds it up.
“I’m not a bird. A real bite, please.”
Still uncertain, she takes an unused fork from the unexpected guest’s place setting and cuts a modest helping of cake. She makes eye contact with Richard and gingerly sends the piece of makowiec into his open mouth.
Richard closes his lips and lets the cake sit on his tongue. If his taste buds could weep with joy, they would. His mouth is watering, so maybe they are. The moist cake, the sour cream and butter, the sweet honey, a hint of lemon, the bumpy poppy seeds. He chews. He chews! He can’t remember the last time he chewed. It might’ve been a bagel. Whatever food it was, it wasn’t memorable. This cake is divine, every taste and texture swirling through his mouth a scrumptious celebration.
Once he’s mashed this small bite of heaven into a liquid paste that could be sucked through a straw like a smoothie, he begins consciously swallowing. No problem. He sticks his tongue out like a child to prove that it’s gone.
He raises his eyebrows and tips his head toward the plate. Karina loads up another forkful. Richard opens his mouth, and she feeds him. They stay connected through eye contact as he chews, Karina vigilantly searching for any issues, Richard wordlessly letting her know that he’s all right.
He clears that bite and asks for another. As he chews, he looks into Karina’s unwavering green eyes, and the cruel awkwardness and pity he dreaded in being fed by her in particular isn’t there. Instead, a gentle intimacy, a quiet tenderness passes between them that he never expected. After the next bite, she wipes his bottom lip with a napkin, and he feels appreciative instead of ashamed. She smiles. He wishes he hadn’t sworn off being fed so many months ago and is imagining all the delicious chewable meals and lovely moments he’s unnecessarily forgone when he begins to choke.
Maybe he got a little cocky. Maybe he was distracted by the unexpected connection with Karina. He inadvertently moved the bolus of cake to the back of his mouth before it was entirely pureed, triggering the swallowing reflex before he was ready. He doesn’t know if he panicked first and caused the problem, or if a piece of cake went down the wrong pipe and caused him to panic, but he’s got a hunk of gooey makowiec paste stuck in his windpipe, and he can’t breathe.
Worse, because his abdominal muscles and diaphragm are weak, he can’t produce the simple cough a normal person could to blast the gob of food out of there. His eyes bulge wide-open, unblinking, and Karina stares back, terrified but unmoving, paralyzed. He’s straining every muscle and vein in his neck, trying desperately to cough, to breathe, to yell for help, silently choking.
“Mom!” Grace screams, waking her mother into action.
Karina starts pounding on his back with the heel of her hand as if he were bongo drum. It’s not working. He envisions the half-chewed lump of cake as a wet concrete stopper in his trachea. He looks across the table at Grace, who appears fuzzy and scared through his watery eyes.
Karina switches tack. She stands behind his chair, wraps her arms around his middle, and starts rapidly pumping her fisted hands into the soft space below his sternum, between the bones of his rib cage. Over and over she thrusts her fists into his abdomen. The makowiec won’t budge. He tries and tries to help her, but he can’t cough with any real force. His head begins to tingle. Grace and the entire room blur. Karina’s saying his name, and he knows she’s right here, pounding on him harder and harder from behind his chair, but she sounds far away.
Maybe this is how it ends. Maybe this is what happens next.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Karina uncaps the plastic MIC-KEY button that lies flush against Richard’s skin two or so inches above his belly button, attaches a small length of tubing, and begins pressing on a fifty-milliliter syringe plunger, delivering a total of 500 cc of Liquid Gold over the next half hour directly into his stomach, his fifth and final “meal” of the day. They watch a rerun of Friends on TV while they wait for the syringe to empty.
The past three weeks have been all about tubes. After his nearly fatal choking episode on Christmas Eve, Karina took him to the ALS clinic. His neurologist, pulmonologist, radiologist, speech-language pathologist, and gastroenterologist listened to what had been going on and assessed his breathing and swallowing. Two major things were discovered. Two monumental decisions, both involving tubes, were made. The mother of all decisions, involving the mother of all tubes, still awaits a verdict.
First, he had a swallowing study. He drank barium dissolved in a thin liquid and sputtered as he swallowed. He next consumed barium mixed in applesauce and had to swallow several times to clear the feeling of mush stuck to the side of his throat. He then suffered a violent coughing fit trying to eat the tiniest bite of a bariumsprinkled cookie. A radiologist and the speech-language pathologist studied the X-ray video and determined that his ability to reliably and safely swallow had become significantly compromised in the past three months. No kidding.