Requiem for the Bone Man (11 page)

It had been a hectic day for the both of them and they had ordered takeout to give themselves more time to rest. They also wanted to go over their dream of adopting needy children.

“What’s the matter, honey?”

“My stomach hurts, I feel nauseated, and I want to throw up. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was pregnant.”

She had undergone a hysterectomy for severely bleeding fibroids five years before. But pregnancy didn’t cause penetrating, drilling pain from front to back anyway, and other conditions such as an ulcer also didn’t fit.

Galen called a friend in the radiology department and they headed over to the unit that evening for magnetic resonance imaging. The hammering noise of the rotating MRI unit vibrated through him as he and the radiologist stared at the screen. The computer program was piecing together cross sections into composite images as it electronically sectioned off portions of Cathy’s abdomen. The micro-universe of proton spins painted its picture of inevitability.

“There, Bob.”

The radiologist pointed to a swelling in the C-shaped pancreatic head. He looked at Galen, who had gone pale. The shadow doctor remembered his friend’s past experience.

Galen turned without speaking and went to help Cathy out of the scanner.

He took Cathy to the best oncologists he knew. The answer was the same: pancreatic cancer already metastasized. They both knew what that meant. They also knew the treatment protocols were devastating by themselves.

“Tony, I just don’t want to prolong it. I know what happens. I worked the oncology wing for sixteen years. Promise me you won’t let me suffer.”

He couldn’t say anything. He held her and nodded his head.

He couldn’t control her vomiting. He had tried decadron IVs to reduce the swelling in her brain. She wore a wig now. They had tried an experimental drug that seemed to give some respite, but the effect was only temporary. The morphine oral suspension controlled the pain, but it made her act confused as well.

He sat by her bed and stroked her hand. Her face was drawn, pale. Her weight was less than it had been in her early teens. Sunken eyes looked up at him.

“Tony, you look so serious.”

She was drifting in and out of consciousness. The skull was upon her.

“Let me worry about that, Cathy. You just rest up. I’m going to try something different for the nausea. There’s some new experimental anti-nausea stuff I’ve gotten for you.”

“No one could ask for a better doctor than you, Tony.”

She tried to sit up, but he held her back.

“Let me raise the bed for you.”

He kissed her forehead.

“No, Tony, don’t stop me. Leni wants me to come with her.”

...

He sat in the darkened room.

Ravel’s “Pavane” played over and over.

He got up, turned it off, and walked outside.

They both loved flowers, Leni and Cathy.

This would be their memorial, the flowers he would plant year after year.

It was late spring now, the season of resurrection. It was time for him to get ready for the summer flowers. He walked through his garden, planning where each floral pattern would go.

Two butterflies, lavender-hued, flew side by side with him.

“Come on, Bob, be serious!”

“So what’s wrong with Murgatroyd or Theofilos if it’s a boy?”

She had felt the nausea and first thought it was the flu. Then the early-morning vomiting began. Her cycle was two weeks past due. Her mother smiled when she complained about the queasiness, then she placed her hands on Nancy’s abdomen and floored her when she spoke in her heavy German accent.

“
Meine Tochter, sie tragen neues leben.
”

My daughter, you are carrying new life.

That evening, when Edison had arrived home from his job in New York City, she waited until after dinner, sitting next to him as he sprawled on the couch to unwind.

“Bob, let’s repaint the spare bedroom. We’re going to have a guest pretty soon.”

“Great, just what I don’t need right now. Which side of the family is going to drive us nuts this time?”

“Neither.”

“Well, who is it?’

“I don’t know the name yet.”

“What do you mean, you don’t …?”

He stopped.

“Yes, Daddy,” she had said, smiling with a face as rosy as her shimmering hair.

And she remembered him falling back on the couch, his mind obviously racing. Robert Edison, able to map out complex circuitry in his head and design unheard-of stuff from scratch, didn’t have the slightest idea what to do about a baby—his and Nancy’s baby.

What do you feed it, cheese and crackers?

Where do you go to get a crib?

Nancy, like all women, possessed an ability exclusive to her sex: She could read his thoughts. At least that’s how it seemed to him, as she stroked the back of his neck and whispered:

“Don’t worry, honey, we’ll work it all out.”

They had been trying for five years and it finally had happened. They had talked many times about adoption, fertility studies—the works. But even on two salaries, and good ones at that, the costs were beyond their means. So they had kept on waiting for those telltale signs.

She didn’t mind the extra weight—not yet—as she found herself staring daily at the window displays of the baby shop as she walked from her car to her job at the bank. She kept thinking: pink or blue? And she daydreamed about times when, as the baby grew, she would sit at home after work and bow on her violin the old German folk songs her mother had sung to her as a child.

She was pleased but not surprised when Bob became ever more solicitous of her health, reminding her of what she should eat, drink, and do. But she had to draw the line when he suggested that he wanted her to stop working

“Bob, I’m only three months along!”

But quickly it became eight months, and she began to feel as conspicuous as she looked.

“Bob, I think I need to see Dr. Ross today. I don’t feel right.”

She grew lightheaded as she stood up and started to go into the kitchen. Then she felt the sudden wetness and panicked.

It can’t be my water yet!

She went into the bathroom and examined herself and saw the red liquid running down her thighs.

“Bob!” she cried out as she found herself swaying and falling.

“Mr. Edison, we have to operate on Nancy right away.”

June Ross was a skilled obstetrician, and she knew she had to convey the urgency of the situation without panicking the young man standing in front of her. But even she felt panic, that haunting fear all doctors face when confronted by the possibility of inescapable loss.

“The baby’s placenta is separating from where it attaches to Nancy’s womb. I’m sure you already know that the placenta is the blood, food, and oxygen connection for the baby. Normally it connects along a particular part of the uterine wall. But sometimes it’s too low, and as the baby grows it causes a pulling along the cord. When this happens it tears blood vessels and causes the bleeding your wife saw today. We have to get in there to help the baby. I know it’s early, but it’s imperative. We need to do an emergency Caesarean section to get the baby out.”

She couldn’t tell him there was a high chance he would lose both his wife and child, and that if Nancy survived she wouldn’t be able to have any more children. Someday, if the research she had been following produced its intended results, doctors would be able to spot such problems much earlier. The new ultrasound techniques were just coming into use. For now, she could only give him hope.

That was all she had as well.

“Okay, Jack, go slow on the induction,” June told the anesthesiologist. “Her pressure is already low. Increase colloid fluid input. She’s already had two units of whole and four units of packed cells.”

As the gowned and masked and capped team stood over her, Nancy felt increasingly detached—almost floating. It was just like that one time she had taken a couple of drinks at college. And her mind drifted away as the room darkened around her.

“She’s under,” the anesthesiologist said.

June prayed as she made the first incision.

...

“Nancy, I, uh, well, uh…”

He’s going to do it. I was right! Mother didn’t think so, but I knew it!

He was shaking like a tuning fork and his eyes were clouding up.

Oh, please, don’t cry, Bob, don’t cry!

“Nancy…”

He paused to steady himself, putting his hands on those long red tresses of hers that always held him spellbound. He swallowed.

“Nancy, will you marry me?”

He stood there like an expectant puppy, too afraid to ask anything more for fear of being swatted. His mind raced.

I’ll just jump in the lake and drown myself if she says no.

“Well, yeah, I guess so, okay,” she heard herself saying, almost like an observer standing apart.

She saw his eyes widen as he tried to take in her response.

Dear God, tell me I didn’t say it that way!

It hit her: She was just as flustered as he was.

Think, girl! You can do better than that! Try again! He really loves you!

She looked up at this almost six foot tall scrawny man/boy, put her arms around him and started over.

“Yes, Bob Edison, I’ll marry you!”

She had uttered those words nearly two years after their first apparently inauspicious meeting. She had planned a nice day on the lake canoeing with her old college roommate who had just arrived in town.

She spotted the geeky kid, looking like a muscle-less Popeye, approaching the canoe she and Betty had planned to share. Slender, acne scars, glasses—just what she didn’t need today.

Wait a minute, he looks familiar. Where have I seen him before?

She tried to shoo him away, gently at first then more insistently. But he was clueless! The more aggressive she got, the more he persisted. The club had assigned him to this canoe for the race, he kept repeating.

She apologized to her friend and, almost snarling, climbed into the canoe as Geek face joined her quickly.

I think I’ll teach him a little lesson in canoeing.

She forked her paddle into the water and began a rapid and powerful stroking action that threatened to unbalance the vessel. But surprise! They were moving swiftly, faster and faster, ahead of the others as the unexpected annoyance proved to be as adept as she was.

Maybe it won’t be so bad after all. I just wish he would stop staring at my hair.

So it began.

There were more canoe trips, more competitions they won as a team. And slowly he began to talk! Yes, he was one of those odd people who played with gadgets and never stopped taking things apart and putting them back together. He was a technical engineer for Ma Bell and lived and breathed electronics. But slowly his shell was cracking, and he turned out to be a really nice guy.

They began to meet for meals and she soon realized that this one-hundred-twenty-pound beanpole could eat more than six normal people. He was bottomless!

There was that day at the bank where she worked as a teller when she saw and then heard a florist’s messenger bound into the lobby carrying a huge bouquet of red flowers and, horror of horrors, begin to call out her name!

Customers and coworkers started to laugh as the messenger spotted her scarlet-red face and immediately headed toward her, and then they clapped as he completed his delivery.

Then came the clincher—that July day in 1965 when he asked her if she would like to accompany him on a trip to the Great Lakes. They would drive up through New York, cross into Canada at Buffalo, head northwest across Ontario, skirting the lakes then drop back down through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to Mackinac Island. He had picked out a bed and breakfast there where they could enjoy the simultaneous beauty of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

That unforgettable day, when she heard him speak those fateful words, they had been sitting together holding hands watching the sunset.

“Nancy, will you marry me?”

The words still echoed in her head, because it was the beginning of forever for them.

Nancy stared out into the early dawn light from their room at the B&B. She normally didn’t get up this early—especially after last night! She grinned at the thought. But something was nudging her, making her get up from that wonderfully comfortable bed before sunrise.

“Bob,” she called out, “are they having any reenactment ceremonies at the fort this morning?”

She looked over at her husband-to-be, pajamas drawn up and scrawny bare legs sticking out of the blankets.

Edison shook his head sleepily. He wasn’t a morning person, barely moving from his spoon-shaped position, facing her pillow and holding it like a favorite stuffed toy.

“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Let’s ask when we go down for breakfast … later.”

She continued to stare out the window. A soldier stood on the lawn—Civil-War-era uniform with sergeant’s stripes on the shoulders, handlebar mustache, and grizzled red-gray beard—and seemed to be staring right back at her.

Nancy watched as he slowly raised his left arm and waved, not in greeting, but as a call to follow. Then he turned and headed down one of the forest paths.

“I think I’ll take an early breakfast, Bob.”

She heard only snoring in reply.

Good, she thought. Sandy’s on duty for the breakfast shift. The young college boy had come down from Nova Scotia to earn school money and was the best and most friendly of the hotel staff.

“Good morning, Sandy.”

“Good morning, Mrs. Edison.”

She flushed.

Not quite yet, but it did have a nice sound to it.

“Does the fort have a reenactment ceremony today?”

“No, ma’am, why do you ask?”

“I saw a soldier out in the courtyard this morning. He was dressed in a Civil-War uniform and he waved at me before heading down one of the paths.”

The boy looked at her intensely.

“Did he have a beard and were there sergeant’s stripes on his uniform, ma’am?”

“Yes, do you know him?”

“Ah! You saw old Angus, Angus Urquhart of the clan Urquhart, as he would say.”

“So, he’s an actor working at the fort?”

“No, ma’am, he’s a ghost.”

“Bob, Bob, get up, now!”

She was shaking his exposed right shoulder. No luck. So she started to tickle the bottoms of his size twelve feet and called his name with her face right at his ear. His whole body jerked and he sat upright on the edge of the bed, his eyes still closed.

“Okay, no need to shout. What’s the problem?”

“No problem, just … well, I saw a ghost this morning.”

Edison opened one eye. He knew she didn’t drink.

“Remember when I told you about the soldier outside?”

“No.”

She sighed and shook her head. He still wasn’t wide awake.

“All right, tell me about it,” he said as he stretched back out on the bed, pointy-toed feet shivering without the comfort of the warm blanket.

“I was looking out the window at dawn and saw him standing out there. He waved his arm as if he wanted me to follow him. I asked Sandy, the waiter at breakfast, about him. He said it was old Angus, the Fort Mackinac ghost.”

Edison processed the thought.

“Are you sure the boy wasn’t just kidding you?”

“No, Bob, he was serious. He said others have seen the ghost over the past seventy years, including Mark Twain when he stayed at the Grand Hotel in 1905.”

He was becoming more and more awake.

If old Sam Clemens had seen him, then maybe…

“Sandy said that Angus, Angus Urquhart of the clan Urquhart, was one of the last soldiers stationed here at the fort before they were shipped elsewhere in 1895. He was a Scotsman who had immigrated to the U.S. and made the army his home. He had no family, just the army, and had risen to the rank of sergeant. By all accounts he was a good soldier. The only trouble he caused was with some of the remaining Indians. He apparently liked to take his bagpipes and march around playing them in an area they considered their spirit ground. They were furious at his apparent desecration of their sacred area.”

Now Edison was getting hungry, a powerful incentive for him to get up and get dressed.

“So how come he’s a ghost? I mean, sure, if he was at least middle aged in 1895, he wouldn’t be around now in 1965.”

“Sandy said that a few months before leaving for the mainland, his company was sent on bivouac in the forest. When they returned, Angus wasn’t with them. They searched for him but never found any traces. There was no reason for him to desert, and no way could he have done so without being noticed. He just disappeared. He’s still listed on the rolls as missing in action.”

“So what can we do about it?”

Nancy grinned.

“I think a nice romantic walk in the woods would be a good idea!”

Edison munched on some extra biscuits he had snatched up after hurriedly scoffing down part of what he had hoped would be an immense breakfast. Nancy was leading him toward the path where she had last seen the soldier.

“Do you know where we’re supposed to be going?” he muttered.

“I saw him go down this way. I bet we’ll know shortly if he’s a real ghost!” she replied.