Everything She Ever Wanted (53 page)

minister.
 
The pastor and parishioners from the Westside Christian

Church often visited her parents and kept her informed of their

progress.
 
That way, she at least knew how they were.

She hurried to the hospital and visited her father.
 
Then she went to

her parents' home and found the doors padlocked.
 
When she asked

Margureitte-Radcliffe about the locks, she was told that her father

didn't want anyone inside-not even Jean.
 
Pat was handling all of Paw's

business matters.

jean was hurt to think that her parents would put a relative stranger

above her.
 
She had warned her father that he might be sorry for

putting his trust in other people, but he paid little attention to

her.

Now it was clear that both of her parents had somehow become totally

involved with Tom's wife and her parents.

Paw was a tough old bird, and Dr. Jones released him from the hospital

on February 113, four weeks after he was admitted.
 
He wanted to get

out so he could take Nona home again.
 
Paw was given a mild antianxiety

sedative, Vistaril, after the heart attack.
 
He used it only

occasionally.
 
But he knew he wasn't as strong as he had been, and it

was a good thing to have Tom's wife to spell him.

Pat wasn't well, and she reminded him of that often, so it impressed

him even more to see her with her cane, trying to help them, smiling

through her own pain.

jean Boggs was effectively shut out of her parents'life; Tom's letters

and Pat's continual warnings about jean had apparently convinced them

that she was greedy and that she didn't care about them at all.

Besides, they had Pat now.

When Nona was hospitalized with pneumonia in March, Jean went to see

her mother and found a note on the door barring all visitors except

"granddaughter [Pat] and Mr. Allanson."
 
jean was hurt, and she was

worried.
 
She had a sense of impending disaster, but nothing she could

really prove.
 
She asked her pastor to help her get through to her

parents, and she complained to Dr.
 
Jones.

Jones was well aware that there was dissension between jean and her

parents.
 
"I didn't make it my business to find out why," he said

later.
 
All Dr. Jones really knew was that Paw had insisted on several

occasions that the doctor was not to old to call Pat Allancall jean

Boggs in an emergency.
 
"I was t son."
 
jean was not needed on

Washington Road, although she kept trying to be with her parents.
 
She

visited them on Mother's Day in May 1976 and took a gift.
 
Nona barely

glanced at it and sniffed, "I already have one of those."
 
jean tried

to smile and said, "Well, now you have two."

At the time, she noted how well her father looked, how alert he was; he

was fully aware of current affairs.
 
He was the same ornery, closed-in

man she had always known, but it was not Paw who was shutting Jean out

so completely.
 
It was her mother.
 
Nona plainly didn't want her

there.

Theirs was a family in which estrangements were not uncommon, and

although Jean was still hurt, she still hoped and expected to make

things right with her parents.
 
Jean knew very little about her

parents'financial affairs, but she suspected that Pat and Tom might be

eating into their capital with their constant need for money for

lawyers, writs, and appeals.

There wasn't a thing Jean could do about it.

In the spring of 1976, Pat was out on Washington Road almost daily with

Nona and Paw; Debbie, her five-year-old daughter, Dawn, and Boppo and

Papa were often there too.
 
It was as if the elderly couple had had a

"family transplant"-just as Tom himself had had two and a half years

before.
 
As refined and ladylike as she was, Margureitte Radcliffe

seemed such a warm, selfless woman.
 
She bustled around Paw and Nona's

home, doing the things Pat couldn't do because she was on crutches.

And Pat.
 
Well, Pat was family.

On Thursday, June 10, 1976, Dr. Jones received a call from Pat.
 
She

was concerned because her husband's grandfather was vomiting almost

every evening-not a great deal, but she just wanted to be sure it

wasn't something serious.
 
Jones prescribed a mild antinausea

medication and had it delivered to the house.

The next morning, Pat called and said Paw was no longer vomiting, but

she was still worried.
 
"He hasn't been eating properly," she told

Jones's receptionist.
 
"And I guess I'd better tell you.
 
He's been

drinking a lot of homemade whiskey.
 
Both of them have been mixing up

their pills, putting them in different bottles and squirreling them

away.
 
You know how forgetful old people can get."
 
The two women

agreed that old people certainly could be like that, and that it could

also be dangerous.

When Dr. Jones took a look at the Allansons' charts, he was troubled

by Pat's comments about Paw Allanson and pills.
 
It was totally out of

character.
 
The old man fought taking pills.
 
Jones had to be firm with

him to get him to take his heart medication consistently.
 
He called

Pat.

"Wlat is Mr.
 
Allanson drinking?"
 
Jones asked.

"White lightning-over rock candy," Pat replied.

'rMite lightning over rock candy?"
 
the doctor asked, amazed.

Mr. Allanson had never been a drinker.
 
He had certainly plunged in

with a vengeance.

"He's into it again," Pat whispered, and Dr. Jones could hear

frustration in her voice.
 
He could not go over and snatch a drink

patient's hand, but he urged Pat to keep an eye on out of his Paw and

to watch that no medications were combined with the whiskey.

On Saturday morning, Pat was back on the phone to Dr.
 
Jones.

She said she and her parents had gone to Paw and Nona's home in

response to a desperate call from Nona.
 
No one answered their knocks

on the front door.
 
"We went around to the back of the house," Pat

said.
 
"We could see Paw in the back window, without a stitch of

clothes on.
 
He was just babbling and not making any sense, and he

wouldn't open the door for us to get in.
 
My father had to crawl

through a window to get in."

Pat felt that Paw had simply been hitting the white lightning again.

He wasn't sick; he was just drunk as a skunk.
 
Dr. Jones weighed

putting him in the hospital, but Saturday was a difficult r psychiatric

problems.
 
day for admitting patients with alcohol o He asked Pat if

Paw was eating, and she assured him that she had been able to get him

to eat a little, and that he was taking fluids well.

"Well," Dr. Jones said, "if someone can be there with him, to see that

the medications and the alcohol are out of his reach, he should be

feeling better in a matter of a couple of hours."

Pat said that she and her family would be glad to watch Paw and Nona.

She would personally search the house and get all the pills and put

them up high.
 
She would keep Paw away from the white lightning.

"Just let him rest.
 
Give him as much fluid as he'll take," Dr. Jones

advised.
 
"I'll call you back later and see how he's doing.

Dr. Jones did call back that Saturday afternoon and Pat said that Paw

was doing better.
 
He had had a nap, and something more to eat, and he

was taking fluids well.
 
She promised to stay all night with the old

couple.
 
If either one's condition weakened, she would call the doctor

at once.

At nine that evening-despite his vow to keep out of the Allanson family

feuds-Dr. Jones took it upon.
 
himself to call Jean Boggs.
 
He told

her that her father had had too much to drink and was sleeping it

off.

jean was baffled.
 
"No, that's not right," she exclaimed.
 
"My daddy

does not drink."
 
She offered to go over to her parents' house,

suggesting that Pat was some how behind this peculiar situation.
 
Dr.

Jones didn't think that was a good idea at all.
 
If Paw was sleeping

peacefully, he didn't need a confrontation between his daughter and his

"adopted" granddaughter-inlaw.

On Sunday morning, Dr. Jones and his family were preparing for church

around nine-thirty when the phone rang.

It was Pat.
 
"I went in to wake up Paw, and he seems to be

unconscious," she said.
 
"I can't get him to wake up."

Dr.
 
Jones told her he would be right over.

"It took me about ten minutes to get there," he later recalled.
 
Pat

let him in.

"I went to his bedroom and found him in bed, deeply comatose."
 
No one

was in the room with Paw, which struck Dr. Jones as odd when he saw

how desperately ill the patient was.

The old man was in such a deep coma that nothing his doctor did brought

him out of it-not shouting, shaking, or even pinching.
 
Paw had

secretions bubbling in the back of his throat and he was lying on his

back.
 
Dr. Jones was afraid he would aspirate the mucus into his

lungs, and he struggled to turn his heavy patient on his side.

Dr. Jones turned to ask Pat to call an ambulance to get Paw to the

hospital.
 
He had to do it himself; Pat was not in easy summoning

distance.
 
To the doctor's amazement, he found her in the bathroom

giving a sponge bath to Nona.
 
"It just seemed to be business as

usual," he said.
 
"While a man was lying in such bad shape in the other