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

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      Joyce

      To Leigh Bienen

      Ray is recovering—slowly—from a severe pneumonia that began as a bad cold . . .

      Much love to both,

      Joyce

      February 14, 2008.

      To Gloria Vanderbilt

      Ray’s condition improves—worsens—improves—worsens—I have almost given up having responses to it. But the doctors say that over all he is definitely improving—it’s just that the pneumonia is so virulent, through most of one lung.

      (I know little of infectious diseases, but am learning rapidly.)

      Love

      Joyce

       Chapter 7 E. coli

      February 13, 2008. The bacterial infection in Ray’s right lung has been identified: E. coli.

      “E. coli! But isn’t that associated with . . .”

      “Gastro-intestinal infections? Not always.”

      So we learn from Dr. I_ . Again we’re astonished, naively—there is something naive about astonishment in such circumstances—for like most people we’d thought that the dread E. coli bacteria is associated exclusively with gastro-intestinal infections: sewage leaking into water supplies—fecal matter in food—insufficiently cooked food—hamburger raw at the core—contaminated lettuce, spinach—the stern admonition above sinks in restaurant restrooms Restaurant employees must wash their hands before returning to work.

      But no, we were mistaken. Even as, invisibly, a colony of rapacious E. coli bacteria is struggling to prevail in Ray’s right lung with the intention of swarming into his left lung and from there into his bloodstream to claim him, their warm-breathing host, totally—as totally as a predator-beast like a lion, an alligator, would wish to devour him—so we are learning, we are being forced to learn, that many—most?—of our assumptions about medical issues are inadequate, like the notions of children.

      It’s liquidy-voiced Dr. I_—or another of Dr. I_’s white-coated colleagues—(for in his scant six days in the Telemetry Unit of the Princeton Medical Center Ray will be examined or at least looked at by a considerable number of specialists as itemized by the hospital bill his widow will receive weeks later)—who explain to us that E. coli infections, far from being limited to the stomach, can also occur in the urinary tract and in the lungs. Escherichia coli are found everywhere, the doctor tells us—in the environment, in water—“In the interior of your mouth.”

      Most of the time—we’re assured—our immune systems fight these invasions. But sometimes . . .

      Patients with E. coli pneumonia usually present with fever, shortness of breath, increased respiratory rate, increased respiratory secretions, and “crackles” upon auscultation.

      (Why do medical people say “present” in this context? Do you find it as annoying as I do? As if one “presents” symptoms in some sort of garish exhibition—Patient Ray Smith presents fever, shortness of breath, increased respiratory rate . . .)

      Now the exact strain of bacteria has been identified, a more precise antibiotic is being used, mixed with IV fluids dripping into Ray’s arm. This is a relief! This is good news. Impossible not to think of the antibiotic treatment as a kind of war—warfare—as in a medieval allegory of Good and Evil: our side is “good” and the other side is “evil.” Impossible not to think of the current war—wars—our country is waging in Iraq and Afghanistan in these crude theological terms.

      As Spinoza observed All creatures yearn to persist in their being.

      In nature there is no “good”—no “evil.” Only just life warring against life. Life consuming life. But human life, we want to believe, is more valuable than other forms of life—certainly, such primitive life-forms as bacteria.

      Exhausted from my vigil—this vigil that has hardly begun!—I slip into a kind of waking sleep at Ray’s bedside as he dozes fitfully inside the oxygen mask and in my dream there are no recognizable figures only just primitive bacterial forms, a feverish swilling and rushing, a sensation of menace, unease—those hallucinatory patterns of wriggling light obscuring vision that are said to be symptomatic of migraine, though I’ve never had migraine headaches. My mouth has gone dry, sour. My mouth feels like the interior of a stranger’s mouth and is loathsome to me. The jeering thought comes to me You must have been infected too. But you have been spared this time.

      Waking I’m not sure at first where I am. The sensation of unease has followed me. And there in the hospital bed—my husband?—some sort of disfiguring helmet, or mask, obscuring his face that has always seemed to me so handsome, so youthful, so good . . .

      Something of the derangement of Widowhood is beginning here. For in dreams our future selves are being prepared. In denial that her husband is seriously ill the Widow-to-Be will not, when she returns home that evening, research E. coli on the Internet. Not for nearly eighteen months after her husband’s death will she look up this common bacterial strain to discover the blunt statement she’d instinctively feared at the time and could not have risked discovering: pneumonia due to Escherichia coli has a reported mortality rate of up to 70 percent.

       Chapter 8 Hospital Vigil(s)

      There are two categories of hospital vigils.

      The vigil with the happy ending, and the other.

      Embarked upon the hospital vigil as in a small canoe on a churning white-water river you can have no clear idea which vigil you are embarked upon—the vigil with the happy ending, or the other—until it has come to an end.

      Until the patient has been discharged from the hospital and brought safely home. Or not discharged, and never brought home.

       Chapter 9 Jasmine

      February 14, 2008. Today in room 541 there is Jasmine—dark-skinned, Haitian, lives with relatives in Trenton and hates the “nasty” New Jersey winter—a nurse’s aide assigned to Raymond Smith who will bathe the patient behind a screen, change bedclothes and adjust his bed, assist him walking into the bathroom, chattering all the while at him, now at me—Mz. Smith h’lo? Mz. Smith howya doing?—voice high-pitched as the cry of a tropical bird. Initially Jasmine is a cheery presence in the room—like the flowers several friends have sent, in vases on Ray’s bedside table—she’s warm, friendly, eager to please—eager to be liked—eager to be very well liked—a squat sturdy young woman with cornrowed hair, fleshy cheeks and shiny dark eyes behind thick-lensed red plastic glasses—but as the minutes pass and Jasmine continues to chatter at us, and to bustle about the room, sighing, laughing, muttering to herself—her presence becomes a distraction, an irritant.

      Propped up in bed, breathing now through a nasal inhaler, Ray is gamely trying to sort through some of the mail he’s asked me to bring him—here are financial statements, letters from Ontario Review writers, poetry and short story submissions—at his bedside I am trying to prepare my next-day’s fiction workshop at Princeton University—still Jasmine СКАЧАТЬ