A Widow’s Story: A Memoir. Joyce Carol Oates

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СКАЧАТЬ behaving intelligently—“shrewdly” and “reasonably”—she is taking him to a teeming petri dish of lethal bacteria where within a week he will succumb to a virulent staph infection—a “hospital” infection acquired in the course of his treatment for pneumonia.

      Even as she is fantasizing that he will be home for dinner she is assuring that he will never return home. How unwitting, all Widows-to-Be who imagine that they are doing the right thing, in innocence and ignorance!

       Chapter 4 “Pneumonia”

      This is unexpected!

      The first response of the afflicted man—“I’ve never had pneumonia before.”

      The first response of the wife—“Pneumonia! We should have known.”

      Naively thinking This is a relief. Not a stroke, not an embolism, not a cardiac condition—nothing life-threatening.

      Quickly Ray is checked into the ER. Quickly assigned a cubicle—Cubicle 1. Now he is partly disrobed, now he is officially a patient. The essence of that word has to be patience. For the experience of the patient, like that of the patient’s wife, is to wait.

      How long we must wait, how many hours isn’t clear in my memory. For while Ray is being examined—interviewed—his blood taken—re-examined—re-interviewed—another sample of his blood taken—I am sometimes close by his side and sometimes I am not.

      The minutiae of our lives! Telephone calls, errands, appointments. None of these is of the slightest significance to others and but fleetingly to us yet they constitute such a portion of our lives, it might be argued that our lives are a concatenation of minutiae interrupted at unpredictable times by significant events.

      If I’d known that my husband had less than a week to live—how would I behave in these circumstances? Is it better not to know? Life can’t be lived at a fever-pitch of intensity. Even anxiety burns out. For now after the urgency of the drive into Princeton it has come to seem in the ER—in the cubicle assigned to “Raymond Smith”—that time has so slowed, it might be running backward. Waiting, and waiting—for test results—for a doctor-specialist—for a real doctor, with authority—until at last the diagnosis is announced—“Pneumonia.”

      Pneumonia! The mystery is solved. The solution is a good one. Pneumonia is both commonplace and treatable—isn’t it?

      Though we’re both disappointed—Ray won’t be discharged today after all. He’ll be transferred into the general hospital where it’s expected he will stay “at least overnight.”

      Of this, I seem to hear just overnight.

      If I have occasion to speak with friends I will tell them Ray is in the Medical Center with pneumonia—overnight.

      Or, with an air of incredulity, as if this were entirely out of my husband’s character—You’ll never guess where Ray is! In the Medical Center—with pneumonia—overnight.

      Why the diagnosis of pneumonia is so surprising to us, I have no idea. In retrospect it doesn’t seem surprising at all. Ray reacts by questioning the medical workers about pneumonia—asking them about themselves—speaking in such a way to suggest that he isn’t fearful, and has infinite trust in them. Like many another hospital patients wishing to be thought a good sport, a nice guy, fun! he jokes with nurses and attendants; through his stay in the Princeton Medical Center he will be well liked, a real gentleman, sweet, fun!—as if this will save him.

      So much of our behavior—our “personalities”—is so constructed. The survival of the individual, in the service of the species.

      Our great American philosopher William James has said—We have as many personalities as there are people who know us.

      To which I would add We have no personalities unless there are people who know us. Unless there are people we hope to convince that we deserve to exist.

      “I love you! I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

      Yet what relief—at mid-afternoon—to leave the ER at last—to escape the indescribable but unmistakable disinfectant smell of the medical center if only to step outside into a cold cheerless February day!

      I feel so sorry for Ray, trapped inside. My poor husband stricken with pneumonia—obliged to stay overnight in the hospital.

      A multitude of tasks await me—telephone calls, errands—at home I sort Ray’s mail to bring to him that evening—Ray tries to answer Ontario Review mail as soon as he can, he has a dread of mail piling up on his desk—as a Catholic schoolboy in Milwaukee he’d been inculcated with an exaggerated sense of responsibility to what might be defined loosely as the world—repeatedly I call the medical center—again, and again—until early evening—to learn if Ray has been yet transferred to the general hospital and always the answer is No. No! Not yet.

      At about 6:30 P.M. as I am about to leave for the medical center, bringing things for Ray—bathrobe, toiletries, books—at his end of our living room coffee table are the books he is currently reading or wants to read—as well as manuscripts submitted to the magazine and the press, a burgeoning stack of these with self-addressed stamped envelopes for return—the phone rings and I hurry to answer it assuming that it’s the medical center, telling me the number of the room Ray has been moved to—at first I can’t comprehend what I am being told Your husband’s heartbeat has accelerated—we haven’t been able to stabilize it—in the event that his heart stops do you want extraordinary measures to be used to keep him alive?—

      I am so stunned that I can’t reply, the stranger at the other end of the line repeats his astonishing words—I hear myself stammering Yes! Yes of course!—gripped by disbelief, panic—stammering Yes anything you can do! Save him! I will be right there—for this is the first unmistakable sign of horror, of helplessness—impending doom—blindly I’m fumbling to replace the phone receiver, on our kitchen wall-phone—a sickening sense of vertigo overcomes me—the strength drains out of my legs, my knees buckle and I fall at a slant, through the doorway into the dining room and against the table a few feet away—the sensation is eerie—as if liquid were rushing out of a container—the edge of the table strikes against my legs just above my knees, for in my fall I have knocked the table askew—heavily, gracelessly I have fallen onto the hardwood floor—I can’t believe that this is happening to me, as I can’t believe what is happening to my husband; behind me the lightweight plastic receiver is swinging on its elastic band just beyond my grasp as I lie sprawled on the floor trying to control my panicked breathing, instructing myself You will be all right. You are not going to faint. You will be all right. You have to leave now, to see Ray. He is waiting for you. In another minute—you will be all right!

      Yet: my brain is extinguished, like a flame blown out. My legs—my thighs—are throbbing with pain and it’s this pain that wakes me—how much time has passed, I can’t gauge—a few seconds perhaps—I am able to breathe again—I am too weak to move but in another moment, my strength will return—I am sure that this is so—sprawled on the dining room floor stunned as if a horse had kicked me and the realization comes to me

      I must have fainted after all. So this is what fainting is!

      Six o’clock in the evening of February 11, 2008. The Siege—not yet identified, not yet named, nor even suspected—has begun.

      Strangely, the Widow-to-Be will forget this telephone call. Or rather, she will forget its specific СКАЧАТЬ