Widowish: A Memoir(16)

Them staying behind gave me pause. It was always like Joel to give up the best seat or the best piece of cake or the best anything for me, but I worried that maybe he wasn’t feeling as good as he let on. Yet I also didn’t want to miss Nice. We were in the South of France! I wanted to see it.

So I went. Alone. I ate crepes. Explored a gorgeous open-air market with some of the most beautiful flowers I have ever seen. I managed fine on my own, but I missed Joel and Sophie. I would have had a better time if we had all been together.

By the time we got to London, Joel seemed better. There wasn’t quite as much schlepping. The climate was cooler. We spoke the language. We had the best time with our friends! We saw plays, went to Stonehenge, watched the changing of the guards. That trip to Europe was worth the time, effort, and expense. It was everything we had hoped it would be, even if Joel had to move at a different pace.

We were gone sixteen days. In that time, we experienced different cities and languages and adventures. We tasted new foods and learned the most basic and conversational phrases in Spanish, French, and Italian. We were active and busy; we met people from Ireland and Ohio. We had high tea and Limoncello and tapas. We traveled by plane, by boat, by train. We lived a lot of life in those sixteen days.

It was now the same amount of time that Joel had been in the ICU.

His EEGs revealed that his brain function had slowed down significantly. One of the neurologists said that Joel had paralysis from the waist down. They feared that whatever this virus was, it was attacking Joel’s central nervous system. He was on a machine that helped him breathe. He was being fed by an IV. They still talked about Joel recovering. But to what end? The thing both Joel and I cared about the most—his quality of life—had already been severely compromised. Intellectually, I knew things were dire. But emotionally, I was still holding on.

Every day I went to the hospital. I was on the morning shift and would go directly from dropping Sophie off at school. I overlapped with Hal, who would come around lunchtime. He would stay a few hours until Joel’s mother, Nancy, would come and sit with Joel in the evenings. It took a lot of coordinating. Because I was the wife, I was the only one the doctors would relay any information to. Every night, I would call Hal and Nancy with an update.

One night I could barely get the words out when I called Nancy.

“It’s not good,” I started. I didn’t bother holding back my tears.

She gasped.

“The neurologist says he’s paralyzed.”

She gasped again.

“His brain activity has slowed down a lot.”

“Oh no!” she cried.

“Nancy!” I shouted. “I can’t keep doing this! You have to let me talk. I know it’s difficult, but I have to call Hal when I hang up with you. I’m trying to relay information so you have it, but I’m the one who’s doing everything and managing everyone, and I can’t listen to you freaking out.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. I felt terrible. Joel was her son. What mother wouldn’t react to hearing this kind of news about their child? I tried to breathe, to calm myself.

“I’m sorry, Nancy. This has been going on a long time. I just . . . I need a break,” I cried. I tried to breathe as we wept together on the phone.

After a while, I said, “I miss Joel.”

“I know you do, honey. So do I.”

I knew people were concerned for me and Sophie, but I was in survival mode, attempting to manage everyone and everything. Still, I saw how tragic this was for Nancy and Hal. Hal, somehow, remained positive. For Nancy, seeing Joel like this was intolerable. I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t matter if your child is five months, five years, or fifty years old. They are still your child. To see them suffer in any way, especially in a coma in the ICU of a hospital, is beyond devastating. I wanted to offer everyone my comfort; they wanted to offer me theirs. It felt overwhelming.

I got into bed that night heavy with grief. Sophie was already asleep in what was becoming her side of the bed—formerly Joel’s. I thought of Joel and all that he had endured.

We were coming up on Joel’s third week in the hospital. Almost twenty-one days. They say it takes twenty-one days to start or break a habit.

The habit that seemed to be taking shape was a life without Joel.

I cried myself to sleep in the same clothes I had been wearing all day.

Jillian met me at the hospital the next day. The same young doctor who looked like he was just dressing for the part a week earlier stood in front of me. Jillian had her notepad ready as she did whenever the doctors came in with news. She clutched a tissue to her nose and was seated next to Joel while I stood across from the doctor expectantly. He was extremely somber and had difficulty saying what he came in to tell me.

“So, the cultures came back . . .” He shuffled his foot.

“OK, good!” I said, hopeful.

Joel had been tested for a wide variety of viruses at the first hospital. They all came back negative. Because his symptoms persisted, many of the same tests, along with tests for different diseases and viruses, were given and repeated every few days to determine which antibodies, if any, were present in the cultures. This was the moment we had all been waiting for.

Jillian turned to face him; we both perked up. He looked around and settled his gaze at his feet.

The doctor struggled. “He, um . . . They came back positive for West Nile virus.”