Death in the Polka Dot Shoes (19 page)

“Vinnie,” I said, “I feel so close to Martha, certainly like family. She is, of course. But I never felt this close to her when Jimmy was alive. But now I do. I have to take care of her Vinnie, to get her through this. I don't know if she's going to die. I don't know anything really. I suspect we're just starting down a long road together.”

“How's she holding up?” Vinnie asked.

“I can't tell. Too early,” I said. “It will take her a while. But I'm sure she has already thought about dying, and about the welfare of Mindy. Beyond that, I don't know.”

“How can I help?”

“Vinnie, the first issue for me is the boat. Martha doesn't have much time, so we have to start now to find a doctor, a hospital, and a place for Mindy. I would like to just put the boat on hold, shut down the law practice, and deal with this problem. Would you like to run the
Martha Claire
yourself? I'll take ten percent for expenses. You can hire your own mate. Just run it like you own it.”

“How long?” he asked.

“That's the hard part. I don't know. But let's figure two months at least.”

Our first hospital was in Philadelphia, a large teaching hospital with a celebrated neurosurgery department. It was recommended by one of the partners in my old law firm. I discovered that as people found out about Martha's condition, everyone seemed to have a recommendation, perhaps a family experience, perhaps the name of a doctor they had read about or seen on television. We couldn't figure out how to judge these things. In addition, if one doctor was recommended, another doctor would say he's a quack. There seemed to be significant jealousies and competition between doctors and between hospitals. So we made our own rules: we wouldn't consider anyone who didn't have three positive recommendations; work in a teaching hospital which meant they did a lot of operations; and be located near affordable hotels where I could stay, or Martha could recover if rehabilitation was necessary.

The first hospital was modern and seemed quite efficient. We soon came to realize that the quickest way to judge a hospital was by their computer system. The best gave us a personalized plastic card with an identification number. If we visit the hospital a hundred times, all we had to do was show the card. As one nurse said, “You only check in once a lifetime here.” The most remarkable aspect of this system is that not every hospital has it. We immediately crossed those off our list.

In Philadelphia, we were assigned a young neurosurgeon who had studied at the Ward Institute and specialized in meningioma. This made Martha feel some comfort.

“I like the feel of this hospital,” she said. “And at least the doctor was trained someplace we have heard of, someplace that Dr. Noon has recommended.”

The doctor walked directly to us, shook hands, and introduced himself. He took the MRI's from Martha and invited us to follow him into a nearby conference room. He was young with a smooth southern draw, wore horn-rimmed glasses, and was thin enough for his clothes to hang straight with sharply defined creases. I couldn't get over the fact that we were choosing a strange man, in a very short time, in a strange place, who would either save or lose Martha's life. What if the very best surgeon was ugly, or cold, or arrogant or any of a hundred other things causing us to reject him? What if the doctor is warm and wonderful, but a terrible surgeon? We had already heard about several of these. There didn't seem to be any way to ascertain competence, so we decided to consider recommendations, education and compatibility. It all seemed like a crap shoot anyway.

It was beginning to be a ritual for the doctors to stick the MRIs onto a backlight and start their analysis. Remarkably, every doctor was different. The Philadelphia doctor was meticulous, moving from frame to frame, showing the size and location of the tumor. We had learned to wait patiently for the part where remedies were discussed.

“Martha,” the doctor said sympathetically, “this is very difficult. This tumor is so large, that I expect the top half could be hardened, with some nerves inside the solidified area. The bottom half may be more liquid because it's newer growth. I don't believe there is any way we can remove the entire tumor… without threatening your life.”

We were silent. The doctor stopped, letting it all sink in before starting again.

“We might be able to put a shunt in your head and drain some of the spinal fluid off the brain. That would relieve the pressure and the immediate danger.”

He stopped again. But Martha interjected, “How would that solve the problem? Would I just live with a drain in my head?”

“For a while,” the doctor said. “But I think we could do a skull-based surgery that might allow us to remove the lower half of the tumor, the soft part. Then if it's growing slowly enough, you could live with the other part remaining in place.”

The reality was setting in that no one thought an operation could take this tumor out. But Martha pursued it. “What are the risks?”

Now the doctor stopped. He paced back and forth behind the long conference table, looking at the MRIs from different angles, as if he might notice a crevice that would allow a different conclusion.

“I would say this,” he began. “If we assume an operation to remove just the soft part, there might be a twenty percent chance of facial paralysis, some droop in the right side of your face. Probably a fifteen percent chance of hearing loss. And probably a five percent chance of death.”

That stopped us cold. I was on the verge of running through a laundry list of physical repercussions, asking for the odds on paralysis of the arms, or legs, or ability to talk. But the odds on death rendered all that moot. To me that meant a greater than five percent chance that anything could happen, and probably all involved wheelchairs and permanent disability. I looked at Martha and she was coming to the same conclusion. I felt the tears coming, welling up behind my eyes, driven by some emotional force in my body beyond control. I didn't know how to turn it off, until I looked at Martha. She was without expression. That's when I realized for the first time that she was far stronger than me.

Within hours after we returned to Parkers, we heard from the Ward Institute. The doctor said they had received our MRIs and had studied them very closely. He wasted no time in going through their analysis and it was reassuring at least to hear their view of the problem was nearly identical to that of Dr. Noon and the Philadelphia hospital: a total operation couldn't be done. But the Institute did offer two operations, a first to remove the bottom half of the tumor, and if that worked without undue damage to the brain and its nerve system, go back in two weeks for a second operation to remove the other half. The doctor wasn't very optimistic for the second operation, but he said it was possible. He gave us the same odds on serious damage and death.

I found this “odds” business very strange. It's one thing to come to terms with death, but quite another to calculate the impact of blindness, or a drooping face, or hearing loss in one ear. In many ways a five percent chance of death is much easier. It's all or nothing. At least it was in my mind. I suppose you could live and beat the five percent odds, but still be blind or deaf. But once you get home, the doctor isn't there to ask about all the possibilities of the numbers. I wondered, for example, the odds of surviving the operation, going blind in one eye, and then the tumor returns in a few weeks to start the whole process again. What would be the odds of that? So I just assumed that death met death, and life met life, good and full and long lasting. But I knew that wasn't true. Nothing is ever that clear cut. And I should discuss it with Martha, but I decided to let her raise the issue. And I wondered how she could ever sleep through the night, with all these consequences running through her head. Strangely she never raised the issue. But the next morning she called to say, quite bluntly, “Let's go see Nablani.”

Chapter Fourteen

Dave “Chumbucket” Roberts walked down the pier of the Palm Tree townhouse complex, stopping at slip number eleven where his 36-foot fishing boat had been berthed for over two months. Chum had followed his instructions to the letter, removing the windshield and radar attached to the fly bridge, dropping canvas over the stern so it hid the varnished transom that might be identifiable to a passing yacht or police boat, and removing the outriggers that carried the fishing lines for deep sea fishing. He did all that while moving the boat from North Carolina to Florida, and when he pulled into the slip, the boat looked for all the world like its Captain: unused, unemployed, and disheveled.

Chum's new neighbors at the Palm Tree may have wondered where he came from, but they never doubted Chum's story. He was bringing the boat down from New Jersey to be refurbished by the new owner of unit eleven, probably in the spring. Only one person had even asked who he was: the lady in unit ten who parked her Cadillac in the adjoining driveway. She introduced herself one morning as Chum was walking down to his favorite restaurant on the Intracoastal Waterway, just a few hundred yards from his townhouse.

“Hi,” she called to him, as she opened the door of the car. “I'm your neighbor, Betty Ramos, can I give you a ride?”

“I'm Chum,” he said, walking around the hood of the car, and offering his hand. “Chum Roberts.”

“That your real name?”

“Actually, it's Dave,” he said. “Chum is a nickname. It's what they call the dead fish and other bait that fishermen throw out to attract the big fish.”

“Are you a dead fish?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “but I used to be a first mate. My job was to throw the chum overboard behind the boat as we trolled across the Bay. Somebody called me Chum and it stuck.”

“Welcome to New Smyrna, Florida,” she said. “You don't bother us, we don't bother you. That's our motto.”

“That's not on a bumper sticker, is it?” he asked.

“No,” Betty said, a bit sheepishly, “but even the chamber of commerce calls us a laid back community. I work in the school system, and we're glad to have you.”

Chum told her thanks and moved on down the sidewalk. He wanted the community to know he was friendly, but he didn't want them to know too much. The thing that scared him the most was the internet. Before computers, a person could find some small town and hide forever with a raft of made up facts and history. No more. One tiny piece of the wrong information, and people would look you up on
dot.com
web sites of every kind, from phone directories to satellite phones. It was damn hard to hide anymore.

Chum had been picked for this job anonymously, and he didn't know yet quite what had happened. He had just returned home from a daily fishing trip with three Washington business men. He ran his fishing boat out of Pilgrim's Harbor and was making pretty good money when the call came from a voice that began the conversation this way:

“Chum, this is an old acquaintance from your days growing up in Calvert County, Maryland. You won't remember me, but I knew you remotely when you first dropped out of high school and worked as first mate on the
Scatback
. I want to hire you for a fishing trip.”

Chum was stunned. He let the phone dangle from his hand as he considered the options: an old friend from South County; maybe a Captain he had recently met in Newport News, but who would have a job to offer?

“Who is this?” he asked.

“I can't tell you Chum,” he said, “but listen to my offer.”

“Is this legal?” Chum asked. That wasn't necessarily the first question he usually asked. Indeed, Chum had spent enough time in reform school, and in the backseat of police cars, to be too sensitive about the law. Legality always had a rather broad definition for him, ever since the days when he would steal lumber from new home builders and sell it to customers coming out of the hardware store. Chum got caught a lot, but few people pressed charges, usually because it was just one piece of lumber, like a 4x8 piece of plywood or maybe a couple of two by fours. But talking back to teachers, or picking fights in class, had gotten him kicked out of school on several occasions and made him well known to the county police.