THE SENTENCE

By Charles Deemer

 

 

When faced with two explanations for the same event, common sense prefers the least surprising and upsetting alternative -- this, Nurse Bradshaw’s maxim, let her dismiss the notion that Mr. Parker had spoken. Her ears had betrayed her. She was leaving the room with the patient's lunch tray, food fussed at but little consumed, when she I heard, or rather she thought she heard, the patient say, "I don't think I-- …" He stopped, or rather her thinking she heard his voice stopped, and Nurse Bradshaw turned to the bed to find Mr. Parker lying still, eyes closed, arms folded over his chest. Nurse  Bradshaw was disturbed to think that she had imagined a voice but she would have been more upset to learn that Mr. Parker had spoken because the patient had not spoken a word to anyone in six weeks, not since his stroke and resulting brain damage. She herself had seen the stoppages on the X-rays and small wonder he was unable to speak, he was lucky to be alive with so little blood reaching the brain. The evidence on the negatives was precise and concrete, and Nurse Bradshaw trusted this more than her ears. Yet no sooner had she convinced herself that the patient was asleep than her eyes joined the conspiracy of ears, and she was watching the patient’s lips move as once again she heard the voice, soft and remarkably gentle: "I don’t think I’ve done anything worthwhile with my life." 

"Mr. Parker?" 

The patient’s eyes remained closed; he might be sleeping after all. Talking in his sleep then? Nurse Bradshaw trusted her senses now; this or she was a basket case. She rushed out of the room to find the doctor. 

 

Mrs. Parker received a phone call as she was doing her nails prior to visiting hours at the hospital. When the phone began to ring, Helen permitted herself the slightest gesture of annoyance, a barely audible sigh; then she put down the nail brush and, her wet fingers extended like the prongs of a rake, walked across the room to the telephone. She expected it to be one of the neighbors, whose concern and attention had been her strength in the beginning but lately had become debilitating. But it was the doctor, who told her that George could talk, that he had spoken.  Only a single sentence, mind you, but he had spoken nonetheless. 

"What did he say?" Helen asked. There was a pause, and she wondered if perhaps this had been a silly thing to ask and went on to something else. "Then I’ll be able to talk to him tonight." 

“Well, no. I don’t know. He only spoke once." 

"I don't understand," 

She pictured the black obstacle on the X-rays, plugging a vessel that led to George’s brain. The operation was supposed to have cleared the blockage but George came out of surgery worse than ever. He could at least talk before the operation; talk to gripe and complain about something, from the care he was getting to the weather outside, but at least he talked. 

"Frankly, I don't understand either," said the doctor. "But the fact that he said anything at all leads me to believe the problem isn’t just a blood clot. The clot exists, I think, and this would impede blood flow to the brain and probably affect his speech once we get him talking again, giving talking a try." 

"Are you telling me he isn’t trying?" 

"Perhaps. I think there may be psychological components to the problem." 

The doctor went on to tell her that she should not bring high hopes to the hospital, likely she would notice no change in her husband’s condition. But the fact that he had spoken at al1, even just a sentence, was encouraging. The doctor did feel that this was progress.

After hanging up, Helen finished her nails. It didn't make sense to her that George would speak no more than a sentence. She’d never known him to do this in his life. On the contrary, once talking, he was impossible to shut up. 

 

Before leaving for the hospital, Helen phoned her oldest son in Minneapolis. She told him the news, 

"Hey, that's great!" Donald said. He was thirty-eight, an engineer. Helen had never been sure exactly what Donald did as an engineer; she probably wouldn’t understand, which was why her son had never told her.

"The doctor sounded optimistic," she said. 

"Well, I should think so." 

"I’ll know more after I see George myself tonight." 

They compared the weather in Minneapolis and Oregon, and Helen asked about her grandchildren. Donald told her to keep him up to date on new developments. 

 

Nothing had changed. Helen sat in a chair next to the bed, reading the evening newspaper to him. George's eyes were closed, his arms outside the blankets and stretched parallel to his body. She had told him she knew the good news that he had talked. It was true, wasn't it? Usually George answered her questions by shaking his head one way or the other, but to this question he closed his eyes and he kept them closed, perhaps falling asleep. Still Helen kept reading the newspaper aloud, just in case he was awake and listening.

Later she spoke to the doctor. He made a startling suggestion: that George be moved out of his private room and into a ward. He said the other patients would be good for him and would provide an environment conducive to speech. 

Helen found this suggestion startling for two reasons: the doctor would be helping the hospital lose money, which she thought was unusual since George had often explained to her how civilian hospitals depend on large profits; and George, could he speak, would refuse to be put in a common ward. He had instructed her many times in the past that if he ever had to go to the hospital, for Christ’s sake make sure he got a private room. Since there were no military hospitals in the area, this was the best that could be done. They could afford the best. 

Helen told the doctor that she wanted George kept right where he was. They would wait a little longer and see what developed. George would be speaking paragraphs soon. 

 

At home she wept. Anything could set her off, as long as it was something, something concrete and definite. Once she had bawled because she found a picture on the wall slightly askew; because Abigail decided not to marry Hubert on an afternoon television serial; because the neighbors phoned or dropped by too often, inquiring about George; or because they didn’t call often enough; because the mailman brought no letter from Allen, her other son.

She had written Allen three times since George’s stroke but could never be sure that she had his current address. At thirty-two Allen was unemployed and perpetually on the move. He wrote poetry and lived with one woman after another, each of whom must have supported him because Allen had never held a steady job that Helen ever learned about. Not that she thought her son wasn't a talented poet; she always enjoyed whatever manuscript or publication he might send along. But she also thought it was only proper that, as an adult, he support himself until a big publisher discovered him. And it was far from proper to change women every year or two, always on the move, to St. Louis or Los Angeles or Chicago or New York or Dallas or New Orleans or San Francisco -- how was his own mother to keep track of him? Allen had not been home to Oregon in four years, and then he had arrived with a beard and hair to his shoulders. He had not written in six months. Not even to send a poem. 

After finding George the same, Helen returned home to weep, crying because Allen had not written. Had he even received her letters? Did he know how close his father had come to dying? 

She picked up the telephone and dialed Donald’s number in Minneapolis but hung up after one ring and began to cry again. 

 

For the first time in a decade, all responsibilities were hers. The rent, the bills, the Naval health insurance, the car maintenance, the leaky faucet, the lawn, the quality of the television picture -- George had taken care of everything. A month before the stroke, he had bought a new Mazda, and now she had to learn the gears, learn how to use the clutch, just to get to the supermarket for groceries. She began to accept offers to shop with neighbors. The Mazda stayed in the garage, as shiny and virginal as it had been on the lot. 

George had made the Navy his career, and in the past she had been used to relying on herself, a certain independence part of being a Navy wife. Now the checkbook wouldn’t balance. She paid Standard Oil twice and was given a credit notice that confused her -- did she have to go out and purchase gasoline before some deadline, which would mean having to drive the Mazda? She wrote another letter to Allen, this time to his next-to-last address, printing PLEASE FORWARD in large capitals across the bottom of the envelope. She expected Donald to phone but he didn't. 

 

Two weeks after George had spoken, the doctor again suggested that he be moved into a ward. “We might as well have him in solitary confinement in prison as in a private room," Helen was told. "Physically he’s holding his own but we have to get his social adrenalin flowing, get him sociable again." 

She went along as they wheeled him into a ward. There were five other patients in the room, and several greeted George, whose eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. George said nothing. Nurse Bradshaw explained to the other patients that their new roommate had suffered slight brain damage and couldn't always talk. This wasn’t true, Helen noted, and she wondered why the nurse would lie. What kind of care was her husband getting? Couldn't always talk? – couldn’t ever talk, except for a single sentence, once, and Helen began to doubt that this had even happened. They had only a nurse's word. 

 

She began to cry as soon as Donald picked up the phone. 

"Mother? Is something the matter?” 

She sobbed two thousand miles to Minneapolis. 

“Is Dad okay? What happened?” 

Helen brought herself under control. She told Donald that George had been moved into a ward with five other patients.

“Being with the enlisted men will be good for him," said Donald. He sounded relieved. "Was there anything else?”

She hung up. Suddenly, without conscious forethought, she dropped the receiver, killing the voice of her own son. She stared curiously at the dead telephone, as if the instrument had had its own will and had killed itself. When the phone began to ring, she did not answer it but went to bed. Donald tried again and then she fell asleep. 

 

She did not like visiting George in a public ward. The other patients inhibited her and she caught herself talking to him less, reading to him less. But George had improved enough to read for himself, or at least she came one evening to find a stack of magazines and paperbacks on the table beside the bed. George's eyes were closed and he did not respond to her few questions. She sensed that the others in the ward were watching her, listening, snooping. For the first time she left the hospital before visiting hours ended. 

A few days later she ran into one of the snoopers in the hallway. He was hobbling on crutches and grinned as soon as he recognized her. He told Helen that her husband was improving remarkably, why he and George had had almost a five-minute conversation that afternoon. Helen had just left George, who was napping, and she wondered if the man were telling the truth. She decided to ask the doctor.

“Didn’t one of the nurses tell you? I assumed they had. The situation has definitely improved. He’ll play pinochle with the others, and now and then, in short spurts, talk up a storm. He gets words mixed up but we expected that. Be has slight aphasia.”

At home Helen looked up aphasia in the dictionary. For once she did not cry. Instead she became angry, furious, and threw a coffee cup against the kitchen wall, immediately surprised and shocked that she had done something this rash. She began to tremble, ashamed that she had lost control of herself. She quickly swept up the pieces and scrubbed the wall where the cup had struck.

 

Donald phoned her. He said he was flying out. Helen told him this wasn’t necessary because George was much better and was talking again. Not talking to her, of course, only to the cute nurses. She had tried to make this sound like a joke.

“I’m coming just the same. I’ll fly in Saturday and rent a car.” After a pause, Donald said, “You told Allen, of course.”

“Of course.”

“What’s he up to these days anyway? He working yet?”

“He still writes poetry.”

She said this sternly, reprimanding him for the critical tone of voice.

Donald said, “I’ll see you Saturday.”

 

She worried a great deal about George’s speaking with the other patients and the nurses but not to her. She came up with a medical explanation that eased her mind: the blood clot was like something plugging up a pipe, the blockage moving around so that sometimes the water flowed smoothly and sometimes it didn’t. Similarly, sometimes George could talk and sometimes he couldn’t. It was coincidental that whenever she visited, the pipes to his brain were clogged, making him silent. Her time would come, if only she were patient.

 

The morning’s mail brought a poem by Allen:

 

TO MY FATHER

 

I don’t know you

but I remember a photograph

you stand beside a motorcycle

cigarette in mouth

leather jacket

it must be 1931

you must be young

in a faded photograph

not yet a sailor, an officer

you even look reckless

I try to imagine you drunk

not yet so upset

at how I took out the garbage

at how I mowed the lawn

at how I wanted a motorcycle

at how I abandoned college

at how I escaped the Navy

not yet a critic

not yet a perfectionist

you must be young

not yet so proper

why I had to flee you

to say I love you

but I am not yet born

you stand beside a motorcycle

looking like Errol Flynn

you look reckless

you look content

before the wars

before the Navy, the career

you must be young

though it is to you, old

an old man dying

I say I love you

over a distance, again

the common distance

across the close blood

 

--Allen Parker

 

Helen did not understand. She wished Donald were here to explain the poem to her. Were parts of it as cruel as she thought?

 

Later the same day, George had a stroke. She received the news by phone after lunch and immediately took a taxi to the hospital.

George was in surgery. Helen sat in the waiting room, thumbing through magazines, smoking, moving out into the ball for a drink at the fountain, then into the waiting room to work on a jigsaw puzzle someone else had started. She was alone, for which she was thankful. 

They let her see him in the intensive care unit. When the doctor had told her that he was optimistic, she had broken down. She did not go into intensive care until she had regained her composure. George had never liked to see her cry.

He looked very pale. Black stitches held together an incision at the loose skin of his neck. His false teeth were out. He was still drugged, only half-awake. Nurses hovered everywhere, making Helen feel like an intruder. 

His eyes seemed to be out of focus, searching the space in front of him for something. Then their eyes met, and Helen saw and heard George make a clear effort to speak, “Ahhh—“ Nurse Bradshaw quickly intervened and told the patient not to try to talk, and another nurse took Helen's arm and led her away. 

 

What kind of marriage had they had? The question was asked over a straight shot of Scotch. Purchasing the pint bottle was something else Helen had not done herself since George's retirement. Hs selected the liquor. 

Soon they would celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary. For the first thirty of those years, George had been in the Navy, working his way up through the ranks to Commander. He had gone off to two wars. Even during times of peace he had gone to sea, leaving her for months at a stretch. Yet those years in the Navy had been the happiest of her life, despite his absences. She raised two sons, and when they left home she took up crocheting and upholstering to keep herself occupied while George was at sea. 

George retired but quickly was bored at home and looked for civilian work. Nothing seemed to interest him. He went from one job to another: he sold cars; he sold brushes door to door; he supervised children who peddled Sunday papers; he ran a drill press on the graveyard shift. As he went from job to job, a new turbulence entered their lives, and Helen worked harder than ever to keep a neat ship at home. She began to understand that their marriage had depended on those periods of living apart. Long ago, after a fight, they had discussed the possibility of a divorce, discussing this from the rational distance George took from everything, and they agreed to stay together at least until the boys were grown. George went back to sea, and when he came home again, talk of divorce was forgotten. By the time he retired, the boys had grown into young men.

She wasn't losing her husband to another woman but to another world. Each night George would read the newspaper aloud and complain by asking questions. What was happening to America? What had happened to common logic and sense? Why fight a war unless you do everything necessary to win? Who had suddenly decided that kids knew more than their parents? Donald, whom Helen had raised, mailed George some brochures opposing the war in Vietnam. Politics became a forbidden topic on holidays. Allen, whom Helen had raised, left home for college in California and two months later wrote from New York. He mentioned a woman he was living with but did not mention having married her. What had happened to patriotism? What had happened to morality? To respect for elders and the police? George yelled at teenagers who crossed the street against the light. What had happened to obeying the law? What had the country fought its wars for? What was happening? Once, joking, he told Helen that he felt as if he had been sentenced to live out his remaining years on Mars. 

Helen let better minds than hers fret about the world; she missed only the sound and presence of children in the house. She knew this: George had too many questions and too few answers and often was unhappy. But at least it was clear to her that the changing world troubled him, not their marriage, and she never brought up the subject of divorce again, nor did he. What kind of marriage had they had? As good as either could hope for, and one which had lasted, one better than most. A little drunk, Helen took this consolation to bed. 

 

Donald arrived and together they drove to the hospital. Earlier, when she had shown him the poem, Donald commented that it wasn't exactly cruel but without a doubt it was indiscreet. Allen was not mentioned again. 

Nurse Bradshaw saw them in the elevator and told Helen that her husband had been talking a blue streak all morning. Stuttering and sometimes talking gibberish, but talking all the same. He was still in intensive care. 

They reported to the nurse at the desk, who buzzed into the unit to clear their visit. George was asleep, and the nurse told them to come back later. Helen said they would wait until he woke up. 

In the waiting room they sat together in front of an unfinished jigsaw puzzle. The front portion of a pirate ship on a raging sea had been completed; for an hour, silent, they worked on the puzzle and filled in the ship up to its skull-and-bones flag. A nurse entered to tell them they could visit the patient now, but only one at a time. Helen insisted that Donald go in first. 

He was back in the waiting room in five minutes. 

“He looks better than I expected. He gets his words mixed up but he can talk." 

Helen hurried into the intensive care unit. Nurse Bradshaw was cranking George’s bed, adjusting the sitting position. Helen approached her husband. 

"George?" 

“He’s very tired," said Nurse Bradshaw. “Only stay a few minutes.” She left them alone.

"Can you talk?" Helen asked, her voice choked. 

George nodded, yes.

"Then would you say something?" She took his hand. It was very 

cold.

George closed his eyes.

"George, would you speak to me, please?”

He weakly tried to pull his hand away but Helen would not release it. 

"Say something,” she said. She began to sob, embarrassed that she was making a spectacle of herself. George's eyes were closed but she knew he could hear her. She began to hate him for listening. 

Without warning George gasped, eyes suddenly wide and fearful, and the free hand went to his heart and clutched it. He was groaning, clearly in great pain, and Helen released his hand and watched it go to his heart. Then, with no more warning than the seizure, she was leaning forward over him, her fists hitting the hands over his heart, and she was crying openly and blindly striking his chest and arms and face with all the force she could gather, pummeling her husband until a nurse pulled her away and out of the unit.

Afterwards Nurse Bradshaw, who had been the second to get to the patient, disagreed with those nurses who thought Mrs. Parker’s attack had been vicious and may even have contributed to the patient's death. This, argued Nurse Bradshaw, would be very strange indeed and it was much more likely that when the patient had the stroke, Mrs. Parker attempted to massage the heart but, failing, suffered to watch her husband die before her eyes, in which case it was no wonder that the woman was upset. 

 

/end

Charles Deemer

cdeemer@yahoo.com