Deep Waters, page 5
“You two navigate the Inside Passage all the time,” Brendan said. “You’ll do fine offshore. If Taggart didn’t believe you or the boat were up for it, he wouldn’t go.”
I hadn’t spent much time in big seas on our boat, and I told Brendan getting into Lituya scared me.
“You’ll figure out how to cross that bar safely, and he’ll make sure you and the boat are prepared. He’s one of the best expedition planners I’ve run into. Has he told you about the time a ball of string saved his life?”
“Mmm . . . no.”
“This was twenty-some years ago, when he and I met during that research to figure out where bowheads spend the winter. We were flying a whale survey over the Bering Sea when we spotted this large concentration of walruses on the ice. Jim and I were keen to observe them since there was so little known about their winter mating season.
“The next day, the helicopter dropped us off on the ice, twenty-five miles from the icebreaker and about two from the walruses, far enough so the landing wouldn’t spook them. There were three of us: a young Yupik ice guide named Ray, Taggart, and me.
“We took a compass bearing and headed toward them. We were on this gigantic plate of solid ice covered with snow.” He gazed across the campus and spread his arms as if he could see the white expanse to the horizon. “We’d totally misjudged the height of the pressure ridges between floes. Imagine the wind moving all these slabs around, like plate tectonics, but sped up and on a smaller scale. They’re smashing together, subducting and buckling over each other, creating these giant creaking ridges. When you’re crossing the ice—the snow squeaking—you don’t get a sense they’re moving unless you’re near an edge.”
I asked what the weather was like, and he said, “Bluebird skies with twenty-knot winds coming down the Bering Strait—mid-February. But we were dressed for it. Big parkas, insulated bunny boots. It was tough going, but hiking like that, we were plenty warm. Eventually, we came to a place where the slab we were on and the one we needed to get to were separated by a hundred feet of water. Farther down, there was a section with a jumble of car-sized ice chunks between the two slabs that formed a sort of bridge. Ray, who’s a small guy, scrambled across. When he leaped to the other side, the ice chunks rocked a bit. He signaled for me to follow. It was an up-and-down climb, hands and feet. Near the top, I handed my pack down to Ray and told Jim to give me his. Taggart heaved it to me. Once I made it to the other side, Jim started climbing hand over hand. Halfway across, we heard a loud crack! Ray and I watched the whole smashed-up bridge break free. All of a sudden, Taggart was drifting away, not connected to either pan. He was headed down this black-water space between the two plates.”
“Did he jump?”
“No way. The open water was V-shaped with the bigger space downwind. He was headed toward Russia. I remember thinking,” Brendan said, “What the hell do we do now? The helicopter wasn’t due for four hours, and the days were short. That’s when Taggart shouts, ‘Top right pocket of my pack! Open the zippered pouch.’ I fumbled for the pack, tugged at the zipper. Inside, there’s this grapefruit-sized ball of parachute cord, tightly wound. Taggart directs me to secure an end and throw him the other.” Brendan mimicked an overhand toss. “Meanwhile, the gap’s grown. Taggart catches the ball, wraps the cord around this stump of ice.”
“Ray and I pulled, but the cord cut into our hands, so we attached it to the middle of this six-foot metal ice probe I had, then pulled like a couple of yoked-up oxen. It was hard and slow. The line got all stretchy, humming. We pulled and pulled, coaxing the floe against the wind. Finally, he jumped across—after freeing his precious cord.”
“What a story. What did you do then?”
“Boy, I don’t remember. Maybe some back-thumping.” Brendan smiled. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t kiss him.”
We laughed, but I felt shaky.
“Taggart and I were intent on finding those walruses, so we kept moving that direction. At the time it didn’t seem like a big deal. It wasn’t until much later the full impact hit. That scene’s risen up in more than one sleepless night. Damn, we were five hundred miles from the US, a hundred from Russia. No way to reach the pilots or the ship. Taggart was on a slow boat to Siberia.” He shook his head. “He’ll make sure you’re prepared. Who the hell else would’ve had two hundred feet of parachute cord stashed in their pack?”
As I turned up the tree-lined block back toward Virginia Mason, I found it hard to align the quick-thinking, agile Jim in Brendan’s Arctic story with the man trapped in the hospital bed.
Later, Brendan hugged each of us and left to catch his plane. Jim, Glen, and I sat in silence as his absence reverberated in the dim room. I reached over to smooth Jim’s hair as he stared at the ceiling. I reassured myself he would again be that competent, ambitious explorer who plans for unimagined contingencies. “You’re going to make it, hon,” I said, confused by the clash between my words and an impulse to cry.
7
PERFECT STORM
The speech therapist offered Jim a bowl of purée the color of manila file folders. He gave it a quirky look, then raised a spoonful. When he choked on it, I jumped up, alarmed.
Glen looked up from his reading.
Jim cleared his throat as she patted his back. “You okay?”
He nodded, face red.
She told us his difficulty swallowing—dysphagia—was most likely due to damage of the vagus nerve controlling one side of his vocal cord. “Your barium swallow test will tell us what specific therapy you need.”
On the way back from dinner, Glen and I took the steps two by two. Making my heart pound from physical exertion felt good.
I skidded the curtain aside, and Jim’s eyes flickered open. “Hey, welcome back. What did you have?”
“Chicken fajitas.” Glen tapped his hands on the blanket by his dad’s thigh in a syncopated rhythm. “Spicy—the way you like.”
He squinted with envy. “Sounds good.”
Soon doctors, Neilsen and Cortez, entered, and Dr. Neilsen announced they had a diagnosis.
I stood and rested a hand on Jim’s arm. Glen came to my side.
“Your situation’s so rare, we reached out to other neurologists and combed the literature.” She ran her fingers through cropped hair. Although her eyes looked tired, she was energized. “You’ve experienced a dissection of your vertebral artery.”
“No kidding?” Jim said, alert.
“Dissection?” I asked. I associated the term with biology labs and the strong smell of formalin. Had something cut his artery?
She told us the word in this case referred to a blood vessel delaminating on the inside. Our two vertebral arteries transport about 20 percent of the blood to the brain. Hand on the back of her neck, she added, “Where they exit that bony channel at the top of the spinal cord, they make an S-turn into the skull.”
“So his stroke wasn’t from a clot?” I was confused.
“That’s right. The inner wall of Jim’s left artery peeled away from the outer layers—imagine the layers of an onion. This created a pouch of tissue that filled with blood and blocked the flow.”
Jim shook his head slowly.
“But why?” I asked.
“The combination of sanding and painting the skylight with his neck hyperextended”—she tilted her head back and moved her chin up and down, demonstrating—“most likely triggered the dissection. The vertebral arteries are a bit larger than the diameter of a pencil lead, and they’re not designed for repetitive bending.”
Her words transfixed me.
The doctors thought perhaps the severe coughing fit at dinner was related and speculated that bending his neck again when he was on the ladder the next morning might have triggered the ultimate blockage.
Jim listened, beads of sweat on his forehead.
“I’ve never heard of a stroke being caused like that.” I squeezed Glen’s shoulder.
“Brainstem strokes like this are rare,” Dr. Cortez said, “but they’re the most common type in young people—usually under forty. We had a patient here a couple of months ago hit with a lateral medullary stroke—a plumber working in a cupboard under a sink.” The doctor bent to the side and moved his hand and head like he was tugging on a big wrench in a tight space. “Blood pools up behind the delaminated section, blocking the flow, which deprives brain tissue downstream of oxygen.”
“Geez Louise,” Jim said.
“But what other factors are there?” I asked. “Not all plumbers get a brainstem stroke.”
“That’s true. There’s not much published, so we don’t know what makes certain people susceptible.”
The news made me dizzy.
“I-I assumed I’d had a clot,” Jim muttered.
“The most common cause of lateral medullary syndrome is painting ceilings.” Dr. Neilsen acted as if she were holding a long handle, leaning her head back as her arms rolled paint onto a high surface. She described how a younger man at a meeting around a table triggered a vertebral dissection when he turned his head abruptly to yell at a colleague.
“No kidding?” A spark of Jim’s usual curiosity returned.
“I read about a young woman,” Dr. Cortez added, “with long hair who had one while getting her hair permed.”
“How in the world would that happen?” I asked.
“As the beautician unwound the rollers, the upward tugging and releasing bent her client’s neck up and down, triggering a dissection of the artery wall.”
I shook my head. “Unbelievable.”
“The good news,” Dr. Neilsen said, “is you don’t have any inherent susceptibility to stroke or blood clots. Our biggest concern now is swallowing. You’re fit, and your cognitive skills weren’t impaired. Plus, you’ve got the right attitude to get the most out of rehab. This was a freak accident—a perfect storm of circumstances.”
“Adelle,” I whispered. “It’s Beth.”
I sat on the bathroom floor of our hotel room, knees bent, back supported by the white porcelain tub. It was eleven p.m., thirty-nine hours since the stroke. Even through a folded bath mat, the floor tiles were cold. At once wired and exhausted, I’d finally called Jim’s sister. Glen was asleep. The coiled cord from the bedside phone was stretched under the closed door. Receiver held tight, I imagined the telephone in Idaho ringing on her nightstand. I hugged my knees.
“Oh, hi. How are you?” Cheerful and warm, she was a night owl. I’d never called this late.
“Adelle. It’s Jim—” My voice cracked.
“What is it?”
Even though he was the family black sheep, his three sisters adored him. After his first year in college, he let his parents know he was not a Mormon. The rift had rattled the close-knit family, but they never disowned him as some do.
I met Adelle the summer Jim and I were getting back together a year after we’d met. Adelle and her husband, Jay Dee, had rented an RV and were driving it down California’s Highway One with three of their five children. The evening before he was to join them, Jim called his sister and said, “Oh, by the way, is it okay if I bring a friend?”
“So . . . is this a male or female friend?” Adelle asked.
A year earlier, Jim and his wife of thirteen years had separated. Both accomplished scientists, I had known them in grad school but didn’t instigate their breakup.
Before Jim and I met up with his sister’s family—active Mormons—in San Francisco, I worried she’d be critical of her recently divorced brother’s new girlfriend, a Midwestern biologist with marginal religious roots.
Instead, Adelle and Jay Dee welcomed me aboard. Within minutes, I bonded with their two teenage daughters and eleven-year-old son. We laughed and played cards, as good-natured Jay Dee piloted the ship-like RV along the two-lane coastal road. At Point Reyes National Seashore we hiked down a steep dune and watched Jim’s nephew dart in and out of ice-cold, pounding waves. Jim, an energetic and engaged uncle, rolled his pant legs up and stood by, dashing in to rescue his nephew whenever he tumbled. That day, watching him interact with family, I fell another notch in love with Jim Taggart.
I pressed the phone hard against my ear. “He-he’s had a stroke—”
“Oh my goodness,” Adelle said. “How is that possible?”
“It’s a rare type of stroke. We’re here in Seattle, at Virginia Mason hospital.”
“I can’t believe it. Not Jim.”
Trembling, I pulled a large white towel off the rack and wrapped it around my shoulders.
At one in the morning, I finished telling Adelle what had happened. She agreed to call his two other sisters.
“You have to get some sleep,” she said. “Take care of yourself and Glen. We love you.”
That day, I’d read that 12 percent of lateral medullary stroke patients died within a few days. I did not mention this.
8
TAMP THE FLAMES
I splashed cold water on my face and dressed. Before leaving, I scrawled a note for Glen, envious of his full-bore sleep.
In the lobby, I twisted a spigot and watched feeble coffee drizzle into a paper cup. I sat in a wingback chair by the hotel phone and called Brendan. “Thank you for offering to send some of our things from home.”
“No problem. A bunch of us up here would like to help.” His confident, deep voice made me feel as if he were right there again with me. “Just give the word, and we’re on it.”
I sat tall and read my list, acting like the composed person I needed to be. “Jim’s new cell phone and laptop—on the kitchen counter; red rain jacket in the front closet; a couple of—”
“Hold on,” Brendan said.
I paused, visualizing his slanted print on a yellow memo pad. “Five shirts from our closet—those short-sleeved, button-down, cotton ones.”
“Got it.”
“Three pairs of those cargo shorts he always wears. They’re in the bedroom dresser, third drawer. Seven boxers and pairs of socks, bottom drawer.”
I read off the list for Glen.
“We really appreciate this.” I filled in the silence as he wrote.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah.” I’d left myself off the list. I thought a moment. “Five shirts and three pairs of pants from the closet would be great.” My mind stalled, then slipped into autopilot, as if speaking faster might make the rest of my answer less embarrassing. “And . . . some underwear. Top left drawer. Same dresser as Jim’s.”
On no, I thought after hanging up. I had just asked my former boss to grab a handful of my bikini underwear and shove them into a duffel. Did I throw away that worn-out pair? Please let those not be on the top.
Spiral notebook held like a hymnal, I paged to the next list: respond to emails, find a library, check voicemail, add money to AT&T calling card. Using the lobby phone, I retrieved messages from our landline in Juneau. Word was spreading. Jim’s other two sisters, my six siblings, a cousin from Portland, and several colleagues had called. Dianne, Kim, and Brendan had also checked in. Our real estate agent left a message: Why weren’t we answering her calls?
The next recording hit me hardest. “Hey, Beth, it’s Bill.” Bill Brown was my friend, an economist whose office was next to mine at the university. Over the years he’d become part of my family—close friends with Jim and like an uncle to Glen. “I hope everything’s going as well as possible.” His voice sounded shaky like I felt. “If you could call me, I’d really appreciate it. Love you guys.”
I’d never heard Bill say that. I blinked away the urge to crumble into his telephonic embrace.
Back in our room, Glen dozed as if it were a sport and he the champion: head back, one arm flung out. I composed an email to let family and friends know what had happened. I copied ninety addresses from a spreadsheet, reformatted them in a Word document, pasted them into the email recipient box, and pressed SEND. The outgoing message stalled and churned. Fifteen minutes later, the taskbar nudged to 70 percent. Each glance at my watch increased my frustration. Moments later, the hotel’s wireless connection broke. No!
While Glen showered, I divided the addresses into three batches.
Ready to go, our nine-year-old stood next to me. “What’re you doing?”
“I’ve got to get this last batch out. The internet’s not cooperating.”
“Let’s go.”
“Give me one minute.” Hating my irritable tone, I gave up waiting and left the computer grinding. In the elevator, I remembered a website my student Rusty had mentioned—CaringBridge. It had been established to help people in a medical crisis.
On the walk to the hospital, Glen decided we should skip. “Wow. This feels good,” I said, once my arms and legs remembered the rhythm. The hopping stride seemed to knock pockets of stress out of my body.
Our antics reminded me of a study that found that even faking a smile reduced stress.
“We skipped here,” Glen told Jim when we burst into his room.
Confused, Jim tilted his head.
Glen pumped out two more high-stepping strides.
“Oh. N-nice.” His hiccups had returned. While the two of them talked, I timed the involuntary spasms: one every four seconds, more frequent than the day before.
Glen left to do homework, and I brought Jim a big cup of ice. He lifted a scoop of the slivers to his mouth. “Geez. I could use a drink of water.” He took a third spoonful. Then, he was choking—that same ragged cough. I pounded his back.
He raised a hand, fingers splayed, signaling I’m okay. But no air was going into his lungs; it was only coming out. I turned and ran down the hall. Not this. Not again.
