October Stillness

October Stillness

Noel Laflin

                    October 2000                            

 

           

I get a queasy feeling as the calendar flips from September to October each autumn.  It has only been for the last few years that I have felt this way.  Prior to that I had always looked forward to the wonderfully spooky month.  Halloween loomed in the air, leaves changed color and the nights cooled down; lovely memories of a lovely month.  That all changed for me in mid October of 1995 when Jeremy died. 

His untimely demise actually began ten months earlier; at least this is when I first noticed the changes taking place with his body mass.  Meeting him for breakfast one day, after not having seen him for a month, gave me quite a shock as I realized just how thin he had become.  Clothes were hanging on the boy.  The skin on his face looked tight.  His arms had become bony

During the eight years that he and I had been together no one could ever say that either of us was anything but lean.  We were blessed with good genes and youth.  We never watched what we ate, always ate plenty and still never gained a pound.  The young man that I saw before me now, however, was dangerously thin.  I hoped that the concern I felt twisting in my gut was not evident in my smile when we embraced that morning.

As it turned out we were also meeting friends whom we had not seen in some time. It was a good get-together.  After breakfast, Jeremy was the first to cut out and leave.  My two friends and I sat for a bit longer.  I don’t remember who first brought up the subject, but Jeremy’s appearance was obviously on all of our minds.  These two had not seen him for a number of months. One tentatively broached the subject.  I do remember telling her that I was as shocked as she.  It had only been a matter of weeks since I had last seen him.  I had a really bad feeling about it.  This was December, 1994.

In early January of the New Year Jeremy and I saw the doctor together.  I was still the interpreter, a role I thought I had relinquished when we broke up.  I made an exception this time, however, as Jeremy had asked me to please meet with him and the physician both, in order to get the conversation right in his mind.

The young man was frightened, he signed.  His appetite was slipping and his bowels were always loose, he continued.  He felt pains across his back. The list of ailments grew longer - I interpreted slowly and as accurately as I could.  I told our doctor everything.  After the examination, out of eyesight of Jeremy, the doctor told me he was very concerned.  Both Jeremy and I had been under his care for the past three years.  Although I was healthy, Jeremy was suddenly wasting away.  Somehow, our doctor stressed, he needed to keep the weight on. T-Cell counts were slipping.  Jeremy had suddenly dropped below the one- hundred-point level.  This was not good.  As I signed all of this to Jeremy later outside, I could see the fear coming over him.  It’s only temporary, I tried to assure him; he saw through me.  We both drove away depressed.

Within the month, Jeremy was hospitalized for a gall stone attack.  They went in and removed both his gall bladder as well as the appendix.  Years of AZT, DDI and DDC may have led to the internal damage.  I kept waiting for my own ailments, but blessedly, none were happening.  My cell count was still in the three- hundred range; not great, but three times higher than Jeremy’s rapidly dwindling cells.  I was feeling guilty.  I lied and told him that my count was much lower than it really was.  I don’t think he believed me.

I reassured him that his numbers would rise again as we had both gone through slumps before.  But his count soon dropped to forty.  When I told him the latest figures, he cried.  I hugged him tightly, stroked his hair and kissed the back of his neck.  With my fingers I kept spelling “It’s OK, honey.  It’s OK.”

Once cleared by doctor to go home, Jeremy was frightened that the hospital staff would prevent him from leaving if they had any inkling of just how badly he really felt.   That afternoon, just before final discharge, Jeremy barely made it to the bathroom and vomited lunch.  He made me promise him that I would not tell the nurse.  He just wanted to go home.  I said nothing as we hustled out.

I helped Jeremy move into an apartment in Long Beach.  He would now be living alone, but he was closer to his brother, nephew, doctor and me. It was an old but charming apartment in the center of Long Beach’s Gay Ghetto.  Aside from staying in touch by fax and TDD (Teletype Device for the Deaf) I made frequent visits.  He grew steadily worse.

Diarrhea and severe cramping were a daily occurrence. We barely made it back to his place on more than one occasion before he threw up a meal.  Infections were racking his body.  He lost more weight.  He took to wearing bulky sweaters, regardless of weather, to hide his shrinking body mass.  His hair was thinning somewhat.  He looked much older than his thirty-three years.  We were losing him.

I was at work one early October morning when he reached me through the TDD relay operator on the phone.  He was very ill, he said.  Could I take him back to the hospital?  I knew he was in great pain if he was willing to face that again.  I arrived within the hour, picked him up and carried him to my truck.  We made the drive to Newport Beach in silence.  He shivered in the seat next to me.  I draped a blanket over him.  My thoughts were growing ever darker as we drove.

Emergency personnel took one look at Jeremy and admitted him immediately.  The next two weeks were hell.  His heart even stopped one night, but they revived him. He never knew of this.

On the morning of the sixteenth I relieved Jeremy’s brother, who had been with him most of the night.  Over Jeremy’s objections a catheter had been inserted.  He felt greatly humiliated.  I agreed with him.  The boy had only had hours to live.  Why did they do that?

A technician wheeled in a portable ultra sound machine.  I stood at the foot of the bed while Jeremy slowly signed a question my way.  He wanted to know what was going on. While signing to him what was being viewed on the screen, I watched his forehead crinkle, like a sudden thought had struck him.  His head tilted slightly on the pillow, but his eyes remained open.  The technician finished up her exam and left the room.  I moved next to Jeremy and took his wrist in my hands.  I felt for a pulse.  It was fading, barely detectable.

As I held his hand and stroked his hair, I whispered to the lad, “Let go.” There was no more need for signs.  I felt he could hear me for the first time. I silently prayed that no one would come in.  It was lunchtime and the hall was bustling with food carts.  I kept an eye on the closed door.  No one came.  Minutes passed.  I slowly closed the lids over his hazel-blue eyes, and kissed him very gently, repeatedly.  He was gone. 

Stepping back from the bed, it appeared as if Jeremy was sleeping.  He looked like a young boy.  The years had melted away.  I waited a full twenty minutes before I slowly went in search of a nurse.  They were not bringing him back this time, I swore to myself.  Enough, I whispered.  Enough.

The nurse confirmed my diagnosis.  I then lost control.  While sobbing uncontrollably, this stranger took me in her arms and held me.  She told me I had done the right thing by not getting her sooner.  She knew why I had waited.  I think she even stroked my hair. 

It was a warm October day outside.  It no longer felt like Halloween loomed in the air.  There were no trees, let alone leaves to change color in the sterile hospital parking lot.  There was just the long drive home and tough phone calls to make.