The Longest Night of My Life
I stripped and balled up my old suit. The much-maligned grey flannel was destined for the trash. Good riddance to it. I turned the shower water on as hot as I could stand it and got under the spray.
I was happy to have reconciled with Walt. I was glad our fight was over. He and I didn’t butt heads very often, but when we did, our battles were usually serious. I looked at my wedding band through the falling water and soap suds. I was surprised that I’d taken it off. I was tempted to regret my action, but I didn’t because it may have been that one which shocked my husband into being reasonable.
I wondered if Owen and Walt had battled, or if they’d just talked. I’d witnessed more than one epic disagreement between the two men. Both were excellent chefs, and both had very definite ideas about how best to run Walt’s Special. Owen promised that he wouldn’t change a thing about the restaurant, but I hoped he would. Walt’s Special had been open for twenty years. It was due for an update, both to its atmosphere and its menu. Times were changing. The restaurant had to keep up or die.
No matter what he did, I knew that Owen would handle the future of the restaurant with care and deference to the past. He was a good man and one we could trust. The fact that he was married to my niece was a bonus because it kept the business in the family. Owen’s purchase of a half-interest was the best possible outcome of a lousy situation. I was thrilled that Walt agreed to it. With the crisis settled, we could move onto the next task, that of finding Doc.
Thoughts of Doc reminded me of the day he and I met. That night, the night of November 11th, became the longest night of my life. As I showered, my memory filled with images from it.
* * * *
I left Walt in the care of the hospital and went back across the street for the papers which would prove that the man I referred to as my husband was legally my adopted father. When I reached the street door, I realized I’d forgotten to lock it. I also realized I was still barefoot. I’d been back and forth across Broad Street twice with no shoes on. There was blood on the sidewalk. The bottoms of my feet were worn to hamburger, but I barely felt any pain.
I didn’t want to track blood through the apartment. I went into the bottom of the stairwell and shut the door behind me. Once I was alone, I pulled my pajama pants down far enough to wrap the legs over my feet, then I climbed the stairs to the apartment.
I got the papers from the bedroom and did a quick cleanup of my feet in the bathtub. I pulled my pajama pants up and put an old pair of shoes on to protect my tattered soles. I was on my way out of the bedroom when I noticed a drinking glass on the floor by the door. It was the glass from the water I’d brought with the aspirin for Walt to take. I picked it up and held it in my hand.
I threw the glass across the room. It struck the wall on Walt’s side of the bed and shattered onto the floor. I filled my lungs to scream, but I erupted in tears instead. I begged the Lord to look after my husband. “Please, don’t take him away from me.” I grabbed a handkerchief from a drawer to dry my tears and hurried from the room.
Doc was waiting when I got back to the hospital. “The tests confirm he had a heart attack.”
My little bit of self-control failed. “OH MY GOD!”
“He’ll live. It looks like he’s going to pull through.”
“He’ll be alright?”
Doc shook his head. “I said there’s a good chance he’ll live. He had a massive heart attack. They don’t know if he’ll need surgery. They’re running more tests now. No matter what, his life will never be the same.”
“What does that mean?”
“It could mean a lot of things. We’ll have to wait and see. On the positive side, we did everything right. We gave him aspirin and got help right away. Philadelphia has some of the best medicine in the country. This hospital is one of the best in the world. They’ll do everything they can.”
I was about to ask a million questions and then a million more when a woman in a navy-blue jacket and black skirt touched my arm. “Sir, are you Mister Stack’s family?”
I handed my adoption papers over. “He’s my father.”
Confusion clouded the woman’s motherly features. She inspected the papers until she got the gist of what they said. “I see.”
“Is that alright?”
“We get this kind of thing more than you’d think. The papers are in order. The hospital’s position is that the morals of the arrangement do not matter to us, only the legality. Come along with me. We’ve got some paperwork to complete.”
I followed the woman to her desk and answered her questions while she filled out the paperwork for Walt’s admission. We were almost finished when the attending physician came out with an update. I ran to the waiting room and brought Doc back to listen to what he had to say.
The doctor introduced himself as Doctor Maurer. He shifted a metal clipboard from his right hand to his left and shook my hand. He planked his clipboard onto the receptionist’s desk and slid a hip on top of it to perch while he spoke. He tamped an unfiltered cigarette on a plain chrome lighter and lit up.
“Myocardial infarction, commonly known as a heart attack. We don’t think surgery will be necessary. We’re going to keep him for several days to make sure. We’ve got him sedated because of the pain. That will pass in time. The best thing for him now is rest. He needs lots of rest. Under no circumstances should he be subjected to stress or excitement of any kind. He seems to be in excellent shape for his age, so I don’t think we’ll see any complications. I’ll make my report available to his general practitioner. Who does he see?”
“Goldberg.”
“Saul Goldberg?” Doctor Maurer shook his head incredulously and blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling. He stubbed his barely-smoked cigarette out in a plastic tray on the receptionist’s desk. “I think not. Unless you feel very strongly about Doctor Goldberg, I recommend you transfer Mister Stack’s care to another physician. We can give you the name of someone else.” He drew the receptionist into the discussion. “Miss Coopersmith, please provide Mister Stack’s family members with the name of one of our preferred general practitioners.”
The doctor’s words confirmed my worst fears about the incompetence of old Doc Goldberg. “I knew it! I’ll kill that old bastard!”
Doctor Maurer tried to talk me out of my rage. “Please, I don’t want to send you out of here with murderous intent for venerable old Doctor Goldberg. He’s plenty good enough for head colds and skin infections. The odds are that nothing could have prevented what happened here tonight. As we age, plaque builds up in our arteries. We all have it. Sometimes a piece of it breaks loose and lodges someplace it shouldn’t. If I had to guess, that’s what happened here. I presume Mister Stack showed no signs of trouble until tonight, yes?”
I corrected the doctor. “He’s been having chest pain for weeks. He saw Goldberg for it twice. The doctor said it was indigestion.”
Doctor Maurer scowled darkly. “Are you telling me that a sixty-six-year-old man presented with sudden and chronic chest pain and Doctor Goldberg gave him an envelope of bicarb and sent him on his way?”
“Yes.”
The doctor rubbed his temples with the first two fingers of both of his hands. He breathed a deep frustrated sigh. “Doctor Goldberg’s misdiagnosis notwithstanding, I still say there is nothing which would have prevented what happened here tonight. Had Mister Stack been under the care of a competent physician, he could have had his heart attack in a hospital setting, but I don’t think that would have impacted the outcome. You got him here in minutes. You also gave him a large dose of aspirin. Under whose advice did you do that?”
I tilted my head toward Doc who explained his expertise. “I was a resident at Methodist before I volunteered for Vietnam.”
Doctor Maurer praised him. “You’ve done well, young man. Aspirin is a controversial treatment. It’s one I happen to believe in. That large dose immediately after Mister Stack’s attack went a long way toward limiting the damage to the heart. I’m going to recommend he take one aspirin daily from now on. The research isn’t complete on that regimen, but the early studies are promising.” The doctor explained for my benefit. “Aspirin thins the blood. It helps to minimize damage from clots. It could prevent this from happening again.”
I interrupted because I needed to know what was going to happen. “Will he be alright, Doctor?” Fresh tears ran down my face. I sniffed and dabbed at them with my handkerchief, but I couldn’t stop them from coming.
He questioned my relationship with Walt. “You’re his brother?”
The receptionist mercifully intervened so I wouldn’t have to explain. “This is Mister Edwards. He is Mister Stack’s adopted son.”
The doctor stared for a long moment. Judgement clouded his strong features. He obviously disapproved of relationships between men, but he didn’t voice his opinion either way. He set about answering what I asked.
“He’s got a very good chance of living, but his heart will never be the same. A part of the muscle had died. He’ll be in a great deal of pain while that piece of the muscle turns to scar tissue. Once the transformation is complete, his heart won’t hurt, but he’ll be forced to be more careful. Scar tissue doesn’t work like muscle. His heart will be less efficient than it used to be. From now on, he’ll have to avoid strain and stress. He’ll need to take the elevator instead of the stairs. He shouldn’t be sedentary. Exercise will be good for him, but gentle exercise. Walking, no running. Flat terrane, no hills.”
“Can he work?”
“What is his occupation?”
“He’s Walt of Walt’s Special.” I pointed through the hospital, vaguely in the direction of the restaurant.
Doctor Maurer knew exactly who he was. “He’s THAT Walt? I thought he looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I love Walt’s Special. I eat there every chance I get. The atmosphere is so lovely. It helps me wind down after a busy shift.”
“Walt calls it an oasis of gentility.”
The doctor took another cigarette from a pack in his front pocket. He lit up, blew the smoke out, and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mister Edwards, but the stress of running a business would kill him. We will do our best to give him back as much function as is possible, but our ability to help in these cases is limited. Most of his recovery will be due to his own resilience. Only time will tell how much function he’ll have. I know you want me to have definite answers, but as advanced as we are, when the events are as serious as these, we are forced to leave a great deal in God’s hands.”
I started to cry again. I couldn’t help it. “Can I see him?”
“Not tonight. As I said, he’s sedated. I recommend you go home and get some rest. We’ll let the sedation pass off in the morning and he’ll wake up. You may see him then.”
I begged not to be made to leave. “Please, may I stay here? I won’t be in anyone’s way. I can’t go home until I know he’s alright.”
Miss Coopersmith came to my rescue. “You may stay in the waiting room. If anyone tries to put you out, you tell them to see me. I just started my shift. I’ll be here until morning.”
I thanked her and thanked the doctor. I got up and wiped my tears away. I thanked them again and started to go toward the waiting room. Miss Coopersmith called after me. “Mister Edwards, your legs.” She pointed to the blood stains on the back of my pajama pants.
I explained about being barefoot in the street. Instead of sending me to the waiting room, she sent me to see a nurse who bathed and disinfected my feet. The nurse also gave me a tetanus shot for good measure. Once the nurse was satisfied, she bandaged my feet and sent me to the waiting room in a wheelchair. Doc was waiting for me.
“I don’t understand.” I announced once the orderly parked my wheelchair and set the brakes. “Doctor Maurer talked about plaque and dead muscle. What does all that mean?”
“A heart attack is when something, a piece of plaque, a blood clot, whatever, blocks an artery which provides blood to the heart muscle. The lack of blood flow causes the muscle to starve. That’s where the pain comes from.”
I interrupted. “Can’t they clear the blockage?”
He tilted his head noncommittally. “Technically they can’t clear the blockage, but they can bypass it, like a highway detour. The risks are enormous, so the surgery is only done under special circumstances. In Walt’s case, I agree with the course of action Doctor Maurer has chosen.”
I accepted his opinion and asked another question. “Would it have been different if Doctor Goldberg hadn’t fucked up?”
He fished a cigarette out of his pocket and played with it between his hands. He closed his right hand around the white part which contained the tobacco and used the brown filter to gesture like he was pointing to a chalkboard. “If Walt had been diagnosed with angina, which is what he really had instead of indigestion, the end result would have likely been the same, but the lead up would have been much harder for everyone, including him.
“Angina is the narrowing of the arteries which serve the heart. The primary symptom is chest pain which results from the reduction of blood flow to the heart muscle. The common course of treatment is to put the patient on blood thinners. The idea being, if the blood is thinner, more of it can flow through the narrow arteries. The patient is also given nitroglycerin pills for acute attacks. The nitro temporarily dilates the blood vessels to allow more blood to reach the muscle. The trouble is, none of this is a cure. Typically, it only delays the inevitable.”
The words sounded plain enough, but they didn’t make sense. I had to admit my ignorance a second time. “I don’t understand.”
He stuck his cigarette in his mouth and talked around it while he searched his pockets for a match. “Honestly, the treatments for angina are lousy. Blood thinners have all kinds of risks. The patient has to be carefully monitored while he takes them. Even a small mistake in dosage can have catastrophic results. The patient usually complains he has no energy and feels lethargic all the time. The nitro tablets are no good either. They relieve angina symptoms, but they’ll give you one hell of a headache. The whole time the patient is on this course of treatment, he walks around on eggshells because he knows there’s a heart attack just waiting to claim him.”
He found a match and lit his cigarette. He drew the smoke in and talked it from his chest. “I hate incompetence. I hate that Doctor Goldberg told Walt that his angina was heartburn. When you and he were talking about it during dinner, the only reason I didn’t say anything was because he promised to go to the clinic tomorrow.”
The memory of something Doc said popped into my brain. I interrupted him again to mention it. “That’s why you said you were afraid of this when Walt was having his attack.”
He blew a plume of smoke out to the side and nodded. “Absolutely. He had all the classic signs of a coming heart attack. A man in his middle sixties presents with chronic and recurring chest pain. He treats with bicarbonate of soda to no avail. The doctor would have to be an idiot to call it indigestion instead of angina.”
Rage swelled inside me for old Doctor Goldberg. “I’ll kill him.”
Doc smoked some more of his cigarette and held it up toward me. “Let me finish. What I was trying to say is that even though I hate incompetence, and Doctor Goldberg should lose his license over this, he may have done Walt a favor. This way, he doesn’t have to endure months or years of treatment while he lives with the guillotine blade of a looming heart attack over his head. He had the attack. According to Doctor Maurer, it looks like he’ll survive. Once he recovers, he can see how much function is left to him. I don’t like why it happened, but this way is cleaner and likely better for both you and Walt.”
I gnawed on Doc’s words like they were gristle from a cheap steak. I struggled to swallow my burning hatred for Doctor Goldberg. As much as I tried, the anger wouldn’t abate. I resolved to report the old bastard to the medical board as soon as I could, though I doubted it would do any good. The doctors on the board would protect their own. I could always kill him later if the board doesn’t take his license away. Even as I had the thought, I doubted it was in me to kill anyone. I didn’t even think I could beat him up. I’d been a soft civilian for too many years to consider hunting a man down and visiting violence upon him.
Doc changed the subject and forced me to squelch my anger. “Do you need me to call anyone?”
I let my eyes drift around the waiting room until they found an electric clock on the wall. It was well after midnight, almost one in the morning. I declined his kind offer.
“Don’t you have any family?”
“Sure I do…I mean, we do. We’re older people, so our family is older. I don’t want them coming out this late at night. There isn’t anything they can do for Walt. They’re better off in bed where they belong. I’ll telephone them in the morning. Hopefully, by then I’ll have seen him and I’ll have good news to share with my sisters and Georgie.”
He asked a question which he seemed to have been nursing for a while. “Why did you call Walt your father?”
“The state says that marriage is between a man and a woman. Queers can’t marry, so queer couples have no legal protection. Some smart queer, probably a lawyer, figured a way around the law. Instead of marrying, we adopt each other. The adoptions give us legal standing. If not for the adoption papers, the receptionist would have been forced to contact Walt’s next of kin to make decisions on his behalf. His next of kin is his sister who lives in Reading. They haven’t spoken in over a decade.”
“I didn’t realize.”
“I’ve known Walt for thirty-two years. He and I have been partners since 1944.” I held my left hand up to show my ring. “I’ve worn this ring to represent our monogamous union since 1947. Even with all that, the law says he and I are nothing to each other. I’m not permitted to be his husband. Because of the way the laws are written, my only choice is to be his son. Walt insisted we do the adoption as soon as he heard about it. That was in 1953. A lawyer I knew in the old days wound up back in my life. He told me about it. I thought Walt was crazy when he suggested it. Turns out he was right, like he always is.”
Doc and I sat in silence for a few minutes. I kicked my bandaged feet. The nurse who’d fixed me up had used way too much gauze like they always do. I looked like I was wearing white snow boots. I was tired. I felt like I’d been awake for days, but I knew I had no hope of being able to rest. I tried to think of anything that wasn’t my worry for my husband. I wondered about something Doc said. “Don’t you have any family? You said you were named after a bunch of folks. Are they all dead?”
He stubbed his cigarette out and answered bitterly. “No, not dead, but entombed all the same. Every last one of them lives in a mausoleum built of money. I don’t remember if I told you, but my legal name is Lowell Sherman Docherty the third. The Docherty family are old money. My grandparents still live amongst high society on the Main Line. My father would be up there too except for my mother. She was the first step down from the lofty perch of blue bloods.
“My parents met when my father was studying at Villanova University. He was reading law. My mother was a laundress who worked for the school. Back then, one of the perks of a Villanova education was that the students never had to worry about doing their own washing. My mother was gathering the laundry from the dorms one day. My father had skipped classes. He was holed up in his room, sleeping off a hangover. When my mother knocked for the wash, he opened the door in nothing but his white boxer shorts.”
The scene Doc described sounded funny, like something from a slapstick comedy film from the thirties. I pictured a young Cary Grant as Doc’s father and maybe Kathrine Hepburn as the laundress. “And the rest was history.”
“Hardly. My father was angry at being woken up. He decided to punish the laundress for her offense. He handed out his laundry bag, then shucked his boxers and tossed them on top. My mother is far from a shrinking violet. Her people were factory workers and quarry miners from nearby Gulph Mills. My mother lost her rather volatile temper. She shrieked at my father. When he covered his ears because of his hangover, she thought he was making fun of her for yelling. That set her off even more. She threw herself on the naked man and pummeled him with her fists.
“A man who my mother had been working with to gather the clothes had to pull them apart. My mother was immediately fired from a job she very much needed. Once my father recovered from his hangover and his wounded pride, he felt badly for costing the young woman her job. He sought her out and offered her money to make up for it. She refused because she had her pride. She said if he was so interested in making things right, she would allow him to take her out.”
“And the rest was history?”
He agreed. “And the rest was history. My mother introduced my father to fun, real fun, poor people fun. She brought him to working men’s taverns near the stone works, where factory men drank all around the clock and the whole place shook when demolition crews set off their explosives to blast rock from the quarry. She taught my father to drink beer instead of wine, and whiskey instead of scotch. She taught him to sing bawdy, tavern songs. He loved it.
“They eloped because my father knew his father would never approve of their union. As a result, my father was excommunicated from the family. He was banished to make his own way in the world. He moved over to Jersey, where on the strength of his name and family reputation, he joined a law firm and had a very successful career which continues to this day. My mother set up housekeeping in a grand old mansion in Merchantville where she learned to be the reserved wife of an attorney. Now she terrorizes the servants in private while she presents a dignified front to all the people who matter.”
I didn’t know where the story was leading, but I anticipated it was one of standard family disfunction. I butted in with what I expected the end would be. “So, your family is a little fucked up. Trust me, they all are.”
“It’s more than that. They’re not just a little fucked up. They’re unhappy people who want everyone to be unhappy with them. My mother thought she was escaping a life of drudgery when she married my father. The trouble is, the society ladies found out she came from nothing, and they never let her forget it. As proper as she tries to be, everyone knows it’s an act. The pretension makes her miserable, so she makes everyone else miserable in turn.
“My father is in a similar fix. He thinks the New Jersey upper crust are second-class to the Main Line gentry. Dad longs to be received by Philadelphia Society, but because of my mother, he’ll never be permitted there again. By joining their lives, they abandoned who they were, and they hate who they’ve become.”
He trailed off into silence and took another cigarette out. He lit it and dragged a chromium smoking stand nearer to his seat. He smoked and stared at the floor. I looked around the waiting room. The clock said it was after two. He and I had been talking for over an hour.
I thought about Walt. Doctor Maurer said he was sedated. They were monitoring him and running tests. I was still scared, mortally terrified over what might happen to my husband, but there was nothing I could do except wait. I played with my hands in my lap, but my fingers hurt, so I stopped. I almost asked Doc for a cigarette to help me pass the time, but I was afraid if I had one, I’d want to start smoking again. I couldn’t even take a walk because of my bandaged feet. I was stuck in the wheelchair with nothing to do.
Because I was scared and sad and bored, I asked Doc to tell more of his story. “What does that have to do with you?”
“What do you mean?” He asked at the end of a smokey exhale.
“I mean, your folks are miserable, but they’re still your folks. They didn’t disown you, did they? Can’t you talk to them? Wouldn’t they help you get yourself figured out?”
He stubbed his cigarette out in the tray on top of the smoking stand and pushed the little button to open the clamshell bottom so his butt would disappear into the lower half. “They love me, I suppose. They love me as much as it’s possible for them to love, but they don’t understand. Neither of them has ever done anything that didn’t serve their own interests. When I told them I enlisted in the army, my father’s first reaction was to call a congressman he knows to get me out of it.
“I didn’t want to get out. I wanted to serve. My whole life I’d been taught to be a taker. Even my training to be a physician was about taking. I never dreamed of being a healer. I wanted a big paycheck and every Tuesday at the country club. My enlistment was the first time I ever decided to give something back. I mean, the reason I signed up was because I wanted to escape. I was hurt and confused about my fiancé. The more I thought about it, though, the more I thought I could go to Vietnam and help people. That just shows you how fucking stupid I am.”
He seemed to be getting upset by my questions, so I stopped asking them. I offered some mild words of comfort. “The impulse to help is never stupid. Unfortunately, the results often make you feel that way, but the urge to try is never wrong.”
“Thanks.”
“Thank you for helping me tonight. Thank you for helping my husband. Thank you for saving his life. Thank you for keeping me company. I feel terrible sitting here like this. I’m scared, lonely, helpless. It’s probably the worst feeling of my life. Since I was a kid, I’ve always relied on my fists and my big mouth to get me out of trouble. It took everything I had not to smash that orderly in the face and follow Walt into the back earlier. It hurts me to have to swallow my anger. It hurts me to have to bow my head. It pisses me off to have to show those fucking adoption papers before they’ll talk to me.”
I held my hands out and tried to flex the fingers into fists. My left hand closed painfully. My right closed half-way and stopped. “I lived by my fists for a big chunk of my life. Now I can’t hardly carry a restaurant menu in my right hand without dropping it. I hate being old. I hate not being able to do…what I used to. I’m afraid of becoming a burden. I’m afraid of being useless. I’m afraid of finding myself alone.”
Doc didn’t say anything to my confession. There really wasn’t anything to say. He took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it with a paper match. The matchbook was from the diner where he and I ate lunch. I could barely believe it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since we met. We’d grown close very quickly, like soldiers in a war. In many ways, we were at war. Both of us were at war with our lives. I felt like he was a comrade in arms. I hoped he would see me that way.
We quieted as we sat together. He smoked and I just sat. We waited in relative silence for the rest of that long, lonely night. At dawn, he pushed my wheelchair outside so we could watch the winter sun rise. It was after ten that morning before they finally let me back to see Walt.
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