By Myself and Then Some (47 page)

We returned home Sunday night – Bogie had business to clear up with Morgan Maree. There was so much to do I had no time for
emotions. I wasn’t really afraid – I didn’t realize what there might be to be afraid of. Bogie was sweet and loving as always – perhaps a little quieter. As I think of it now, he seemed a little remote, as though surrounded by cellophane, a material not very strong but strong enough to protect him. Wednesday, early in the afternoon, the limousine came to pick us up. Bogie kissed and hugged the children and Harvey. The night before we’d all stayed very close together – not a prelude to tragedy, just close and good. It was the twenty-ninth day of February 1956. As we headed toward the hospital, Bogie very shyly and quietly took my hand and said, ‘Funny, I’ve never spent much time with doctors. Now I’ll probably spend the rest of my life with them.’ A small smile. I smiled back at him and said, ‘No, you won’t – they wouldn’t dare.’ We had to keep our humor – that was the essence of us as individuals and as a pair.

Bogie’s room was good-sized, but a hospital room is a hospital room – no way to make it look like anything else. We also had a small adjoining room for me when I wanted to stay overnight, for the phone, etc. Not knowing what was really going to happen, plans were out of the question.

I remember they had to shave Bogie’s chest to prepare him for surgery. We ate almost nothing. Who could have an appetite? Dr Jones came by to tell Bogie not to worry and to make clear what to expect. He and Dr Brandsma had decided he would have to remove his esophagus and shift the stomach around so they could attach it to the tab that was left. They would go in through the chest, necessitating the J operation and removal of a rib. Also cut the vega nerve, which controlled digestion, so that when he was able to eat again he would notice that food dumped quickly into his stomach; until he got used to it, it might make him feel a bit nauseated. With all the explanation, all the care, it was still just words. Words I had never heard before – wished I wasn’t hearing then. Impossible to comprehend such things until they have taken place. Both doctors were calm and reassuring and kept telling us how lucky we were to have caught the cancer so early in that not easily detectable spot. What they did not tell me until much later is that this was one of the worst possible places to have cancer, because it moves so quickly to the nearby lymph nodes, and after that they have no way of knowing where it may travel.

Surgery was to take place at seven the following morning. Bogie and
I were left alone. We were both quiet – there was not much to say, really, but again there were no dramatics, no Bogie saying, ‘If anything should go wrong,’ no instructions. That there was no choice we knew, but didn’t suspect it was the beginning of the end. All I knew was that for the next three weeks the center of my life would be in this drab, impersonal room. I sat on the bed – Bogie was on, not in, it – I took his hand. It was awkward, almost. He must have been frightened. There was no discussion of the seriousness of it – he felt he’d have a few bad days and then be okay. I told him I’d be with him, not to worry about anything. As if that were possible. After a while he said, ‘Well, I guess I better get some sleep, take these pills the nurse left.’ ‘Right, darling. I’ll go home, see the children, and I’ll be here before you go to surgery.’

We kissed good night. ‘See you in the morning. If you need anything – if you forgot anything – I’ll bring it tomorrow.’ ‘Night, Baby.’ ‘Night, Baby.’ And home I went. So strange leaving him behind in the hospital. But I had to see my babies, that would make me feel better. When I got home I went in to Steve and told him not to worry – ‘Daddy is fine. I’ll call you from the hospital tomorrow’ – and we hugged each other tightly. I tiptoed into Leslie’s room, kissed her. She was peacefully asleep in her hand-me-down crib. I went downstairs to the kitchen – told Jay I’d be rising at six to get to the hospital, that Mr Bogart was fine. So on March 1 I got up at dawn, had a last cup of coffee, and headed downtown. The press had been told that Bogie was entering the hospital because of a swelling in his esophagus of an inflammatory nature – nothing about cancer, very played down. I’d spoken with Mother, Nunnally, the Nivs, Spence, Jaffe, Swifty, Maree, said they could reach me at the hospital late in the day. I’d told Mother I would call her – she was very worried.

I was used to that hour of the morning when the city was quiet, but it was quieter than ever that morning, and I felt very alone. I reached Bogie’s room as they were preparing to take him in to surgery. In a hospital gown, tightly tucked into the sheets, nurses everywhere – it all became very real and frightening. I hated to see him there. The last pill had left him very groggy, but he knew me – smiled. I smiled back, leaned over and kissed him. I walked down the corridor with him as far as they would let me go and then went back to his room to wait. I don’t remember how I got through that day – hundreds of cups of coffee, hundreds of cigarettes. Called home and spoke to Steve and Leslie,
called Mother later in the morning. Dr Brandsma was the first one – obviously, as he wasn’t the surgeon – to come in and see me. He said that all was going well, that Bogie would be on the table a few hours more. Wasn’t there something I had to do, somewhere I had to go? Only here, I said. The phone kept ringing. How many times I said the same things over and over – but better than having no one to say anything to. With each passing hour I became more and more aware of the value of our friends.

Dr Flynn came in. The operation was going very well. He had watched Dr Jones perform the J. The esophagus had been removed, two lymph nodes had been removed, tissue samples were going to pathology. They would have to open the abdomen to get at the stomach – two operations at once. God! First they said he’d be down at one – then they said at two. Why was it taking so long? Finally, at about five or five-thirty Dr Jones came down in his green surgical gown. Bogie was in the recovery room. All had gone well – he’d be down in about an hour. Dr Jones had been on his feet since seven that morning; Bogie had been on the table for nine and a half hours. How could a body take that much? I was told they had removed the malignancy, and that I should try to get some rest, I’d need my strength when Bogie was recuperating. They’d give me a very mild sleeping pill, the mildest there was, as I was unused to them. But I wouldn’t sleep or even go out for something to eat – not until I saw Bogie safely in his room. Of course I had planned to spend the night in the adjoining room – the next few nights. More phone calls – Mother, Huston from somewhere in Europe, Swifty, Niven, Spence, Frank, the Jaffes, Nunnally, the Gershwins. What could they do? Did I want to come over – to have dinner – anything, anytime – no notice – we’ll be here. Everyone sweet, thoughtful, understanding. I called home to tell Steve that all was well, but I’d be staying with Daddy tonight.

The room was dark – it was dark outside. I’d been sitting in the adjoining room with one light on. Corridors quiet, but with all the whispering and tiptoeing that goes on in hospitals. Suddenly the sound of wheels – the door opening – nurses – bottles hanging from everywhere, tubes – Bogie with that terrible black thing in his mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue – lying on his side – his left arm and hand, hanging through the raised side of the bed, swollen to four times their normal size. My God, I was so frightened. He looked so
unlike Bogie – still mercifully unconscious. Why so swollen? Because he’d been in that position for so many hours, it would be back to normal in a day or two. At least he was there – I could see him – he was breathing. Bogie had come through – his body had undergone a great deal in those nine and a half hours, but his heart was strong.

‘Go out for a bowl of soup or something,’ said the doctors, ‘he won’t come to for hours.’ ‘But I have to be here when he does.’ ‘Don’t worry, you will be, you’re safe for a long while.’ So I went out with Morgan.

But I couldn’t stay away for long – too frightened that he’d wake up and not find me there. I was out of focus anyway – tense, exhausted, afraid to see him again looking like that, yet having to be with him. Why hadn’t anyone prepared me for that sight? They were used to it, it was part of their business. I went back, crept down the dimly lit corridor. The nurse said he was still asleep. I tiptoed in and really looked at him again. Poor baby – all those tubes, those bottles – what was the body under the blanket like? It would all be better in the daylight, wouldn’t it? There was so much I didn’t know. The night nurse told me to go to sleep – she’d call me when he woke up. It was only nine-thirty.

I didn’t take the Seconal and I didn’t really sleep – I wanted to be ready if I heard voices next door. Sometime during the night I heard something – shot out of bed, opened the connecting door – the nurse was at Bogie’s side. He was still out. He’d come to for a moment and lapsed back into sleep. ‘Is he all right?’ She told me to try and relax – the next couple of days he’d be more asleep than awake, and if I dashed in every time I heard a sound, I’d fall apart. She knew exactly what to do, what to expect. I knew nothing. I was at her mercy – afraid to get too close, afraid to touch Bogie for fear I’d do something wrong. Standing in that darkened room, looking at my husband in that bed. He was enclosed in another world, protected not by me, but by those raised bedsides, with those bottles and tubes sustaining life, the nurse (two that first night) trying to make him comfortable, checking his pulse, blood pressure, God knows what – writing things down on his chart hanging at the foot of the bed …

Sometime during the next two days the routine began to alter. The shades were raised – Bogie was awake – we held each other’s hands – he was rolled to an almost sitting position. Dr Jones came in to check on him two, three, four times daily – Brandsma and Flynn twice at least
– interns – more nurses bringing whatever they had to bring. The second morning the suction machine was rolled in, its purpose to clear the lungs of mucus so pneumonia wouldn’t set in. When it came in I went out. Bogie hated that machine. The second time he used it I heard him pleading, ‘Please – no more.’ For him to say those words it must have been horribly painful. He had a high threshold of pain, wasn’t one to complain. I went into his room and asked the nurse to stop. Why did he have to go through that – hadn’t he been through enough? She was tough – said, ‘He’s lucky to have this machine. Before it existed, patients used to die after surgery. This is saving him from lung congestion, pneumonia – he has to have it.’ She was a good nurse, I suppose. But not simpatico.

Sometime during that period I got home, saw my children, changed my clothes, brought a nightgown and robe to the hospital. I don’t know what I did then. I was on the telephone constantly, it seems – friends from all over calling. Mike Romanoff and Dave Chasen offering to send food in so we could avoid the hospital fare. Flowers, fruit, letters pouring into the hospital. I would show them and read them to Bogie. He was stunned that so many people in our business cared, even people he hardly knew – Fred Astaire, Duke Wayne. He couldn’t get over it, that so many took the trouble to write, call.

Finally the suction machine disappeared for good. Bogie was feeling much better, looking much better, though still bandaged heavily and being checked regularly. Hand and arm did return to normal. His cough had not disappeared, though it had diminished. One evening I was sitting with him – it was early, about a week after surgery, his wounds had been healing well – and he started to cough. As I got up to ask him if he wanted some water, I suddenly saw blood coming through his abdominal bandage. Absolutely terrified, I put my hands on the bandage, trying to hold everything together – and keep calm, not let Bogie see how panicked I felt. Thank God, at that moment an intern walked in and saw me there – I must have had a ghastly expression on my face, something shouting
Help!
The nurse called over the speaker – I heard the word
‘STAT,’
which means on the double – emergency. Bogie was taken upstairs immediately. John Jones was luckily present. Bogie had coughed his stitches loose – his abdominal incision was healing on the outside better than on the inside, and a couple of the well-known racking Bogart coughs were all it took to
open him up again. I was utterly destroyed. I’d done the right thing through luck – I don’t know how, I’ve never been any good at the sight of blood – it just happened that way.

Bogie was quickly in and out of surgery for the repair job and there were no more dramas like that.

I was constantly bending the doctors’ ears, asking endless questions: ‘How long before he really feels well? Did you really get it all? When will he be able to work?’ On and on. The pathology report had shown a malignancy in one of the lymph nodes that had been removed, and the consensus was that X-ray treatments. would be necessary. Not as soon as he returned home, but within a few weeks. It was a preventive measure; they had got all there was, but this was added insurance. They wouldn’t say anything to Bogie just yet. They had grown fond of him and they admired him. He did everything he was told – never complained. He had books to read, an occasional visitor. He wanted to get well – he wanted to go to work. He’d lost weight after surgery, but he would put it on again after he got home.

Our friends were marvelous. I will never forget how Swifty Lazar, who was profoundly frightened of illness and hospitals, insisted on coming to pick me up one evening after Bogie was asleep. It is as clear a picture as though it were happening now – I stepped out of Bogie’s room into the dim corridor and as I quietly walked to the end of it, I could see Swifty standing hat in hand – green of complexion from apprehension – waiting there, looking even smaller than his five-feet-four. He had made the superhuman effort – done something he’d never done before and, in the name of friendship, had come through. The great lesson that you learn at such a time is whom you can count on and whom you can’t. Who your friends really are. I remember all too well who didn’t come through.

John Huston came to town and wanted to see Bogie. We arranged a surprise – Bogie would be in the john and I would get Huston, who was waiting outside. By this time Bogie was strong enough to deal with it. The nurse saw that Bogie stayed in the loo. I brought John in from the corridor. He got into Bogie’s room and when Bogie emerged, John was lying under the sheet in his bed. It was funny – John’s machine-gun laugh, Bogie’s understated one. Two really good old friends so glad to see one another. Later I walked John to the elevator and told him as much as I knew. He was in America for only a few days. ‘Bogie’s going
to be all right, honey – he’ll be fine, just fine – we’ll make
The Man Who Would Be King
yet.’