vomiting, red-faced, and gushing sweat. Stomach pain twisted me into
the curled posture of a shrimp in the boiling oil of a deep fryer.
My life was put at risk because of the delay caused by the need for
extraordinary preparations at Mercy Hospital. The surgeon was not, of
course, amenable to the idea of cutting open my abdomen and conducting
the procedure in a dark-or even dimly lightedoperating room. Yet
protracted exposure to the bright lights of the surgery was certain to
result in a severe burn to any skin not protected from the glare,
risking melanoma but also inhibiting the healing of the incision.
Covering everything below the point of incision-from my groin to my
toes-was easy: a triple layer of cotton sheeting pinned to prevent it
from slipping aside. Additional sheeting was used to improvise complex
tenting over my head and upper body, designed to protect me from the
light but also to allow the anesthesiologist to slip under from time to
time, with a penlight, to take my blood pressure and my temperature, to
adjust the gas mask, and to ensure that the electrodes from the
electrocardiograph remained securely in place on my chest and wrists to
permit continued monitoring of my heart. Their standard procedure
required that my abdomen be draped except for a window of exposed skin
at the site of the surgery, but in my case this rectangular window had
to be reduced to the narrowest possible slit. With selfretaining
refractors to keep the incision open and judicial use of tape to shield
the skin to the very lip of the cut, they dared to slice me. My guts
could take all the light that my doctors wanted to pour into them-but
by the time they got that far, my appendix had burst. In spite of a
meticulous cleanup, peritonitis ensued; an abscess developed and was
swiftly followed by septic shock, requiring a second surgical procedure
two days later.
After I recovered from septic shock and was no longer in danger of
imminent death, I lived for months with the expectation that what I had
endured might trigger one of the neurological problems related to XP.
Generally these conditions develop after a burn or following long-term
cumulative exposure to light-or for reasons not understood-but
sometimes they apparently can be engendered by severe physical trauma
or shock.
Tremors of the head or the hands. Hearing loss. Slurred speech. Even
mental impairment.
I waited for the first signs of a progressive, irreversible
neurological disorder-but they never came.
William Dean Howells, the great poet, wrote that death is at the bottom
of everyone’s cup. But there is still some sweet tea in mine.
And apricot brandy.
After taking another thick sip from her cordial glass, Angela said,
“All I ever wanted was to be a nurse, but look at me now.”
She wanted me to ask, and so I did: “What do You mean?”
Gazing at captive flames through a curve of ruby glass, she said,
“Nursing is about life. I’m about death now.”
I didn’t know what she meant, but I waited.
“I’ve done terrible things,” she said.
“I’m sure You haven’t.”
“I’ve seen others do terrible things, and I haven’t tried to stop
them.
The guilt’s the same.”
“Could You have stopped them if You’d tried?”
She thought about that awhile. “No,” she said, but she looked no less
troubled.
“No one can carry the whole world on her shoulders.”
“Some of us better try,” she said.
I gave her time. The brandy was fine.
She said, “If I’m going to tell You, it has to be now. I don’t have
much time. I’m becoming.”
“Becoming?”
“I feel it. I don’t know who I’ll be a month from now, or six
months.
Someone I won’t like to be. Someone who terrifies me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know.”
“How can I help?” I asked.
“No one can help. Not You. Not me. Not God.” Having shifted her
gaze from the votive candles to the golden liquid in her glass, she
spoke quietly but fiercely: “We’re screwing it up, Chris, like we
always do, but this is bigger than we’ve ever screwed up before.
Because of pride, arrogance, envy . . . we’re losing it, all of it.