Once they were on the way, I checked on Liisi, who had fallen asleep in my closet exhausted from her stomach flu and lack of sleep. Once I had both girls settled and Skye watching over her little sister, I drove as quickly as I could to be with Don at Cedars. When I got to the ER he was already looking and feeling much better. His color was pink and his nail beds and lips were a normal color. After trying several combinations of oxygen masks and different levels of oxygen, the ER doctor placed a Bi-Pap mask on him, giving him a steady, pressurized level of oxygen to maintain his level in the range they wanted and he needed.
“This Bi-Pap just bought Don a bed in ICU,” said the attending physician. I was grateful, knowing he’d get highly personal care there.
“You should go to rehearsal now,” Don said, “I’m fine.”
I put my hand on my hip, rolled my neck, and said in my best southern black-girl attitude, “Have you lost your mind? I am not going anywhere!”
Under the Bi-Pap, he smiled.
I was four rehearsals away from opening in a five-show run of the musical Once on This Island at the UCLA Freud Theatre and had just started accepting a few out of town gigs again. The week before, I’d gone to Omaha to sing as the special surprise guest at a private birthday celebration. Don was my greatest fan; he was always so proud of my work and wanted me to be performing. And here he was on a bed in the ER with pressurized air being forced into his lungs, worrying that I would miss a day’s rehearsal. It was so Donnie.
When I called the director and explained why I wouldn’t be there he said, “Take as much time as you need, we understand; this is your husband.”
The ER nurses stabilized Don—they got his vital signs within a normal range so he was able to breathe without working as hard, and his color was good—in about forty-five minutes, which was about the time I arrived. Everyone was moving with urgency and intention. I was impressed with their highly effective teamwork and felt good that Don was at Cedars and in such capable hands. Since his medical records were already there, he had been spared having to give his history from scratch—and the last thing you want to do when you can’t breathe is talk.
Though the oxygen helped, it still was not clear what was causing Don’s pulmonary distress. Even though the Bi-Pap restored his oxygenation to a somewhat normal level, in order to discover what had caused this incident the attending physician ordered a CAT scan. We waited and waited, but they were so busy that by late afternoon it wasn’t done. Around three o’clock they finally had a bed for Don and I was told they would take him for a scan on the way there and it would take about an hour and a half to get him settled. I decided to run home and check on the girls, though I’d been giving them updates on and off. While driving home, the head doctor from the ICU called to give me the names of the doctors who were going to be in charge of Don’s care and reassured me they were some of the best lung specialists in the country.
Once I arrived home Don called—speaking right through his Bi-Pap mask— asking me to wait until after eight to come back to the hospital. The nurses would be changing shifts, he explained, and I wouldn’t be able to get into the ICU until then.
Through his mask he said hello to “Bug and Buglet,” his pet names for the girls. They were happy to hear his voice. Skye had been sitting beside her father that morning, comforting him when the paramedics arrived. Liisi had been asleep and blessedly missed seeing her father struggling for air.
Earlier, I’d called Don’s closest friends to let them know he was back at Cedars, and when I returned that night Paul Pape and our pastor, Dr. Larry Keene, were in the ICU room with him, the three of them having a lively time, laughing and talking as if they were sitting around our living room.
After they left, Don and I hung out in that clean, square little ICU room with only the heart monitor going and one IV line in place, just in case meds needed to be administered quickly. He was awake very tired, though still talking away. He was not considered critical anymore but he was not out of the woods yet.
“I guess this is where I will spend my birthday,” Don said matter-of-factly. His birthday was four days away.
The year 2008 had been a year of hospitalizations for Don, most of them short, including two others during the summer. I knew he was beginning to get frustrated. He wanted the steroids to work so he could get back to his life. I reminded him about those short stays and told him this would be a short one, too. And I believed it. Then we talked about how we’d be going to Dubai soon—Dubai being Don’s next dream destination.
***
We both loved travel—it was our gift to ourselves—and we felt blessed to be able to give our girls the perspective of seeing other cultures. Don was a history buff, insatiably curious, and with a computer, a microphone, and an internet connection, he could travel and record spots at the same time. “Might as well pay for the trip!” he’d say as the girls and I went off on a short outing while he stayed in the hotel room or stateroom to record a series of spots.
In July 2007 we went to Spain on a cruise, and then to Scotland. There we’d stayed in an eight hundred-year-old castle on magnificently manicured, sprawling grounds. At each historic structure, Don would bend down to touch the lowest stone; “The one first laid by the hand of a man.”
In 2005, we traveled to Italy and Greece. In the sweltering heat, Don knelt to touch the lowest stone of the Parthenon. He was in heaven on this trip at the temple of Olympian Zeus; the Vatican in Rome; the David in Florence; the ruins of Pompeii; and the canals and glass blowing in Venice. It was a dream trip for us all, and we took it in with gusto, thrilled that the girls were able to see these amazing places. Our childhoods had been nothing like this. I’d glance over at him on that trip and see his face lit with little-boy delight.
Though we talked about our travel plans, by ten thirty Don was urging me to go home. He’d been in the hospital since ten that morning, and he was concerned the girls were alone. I didn’t want to leave him. He’d asked the nurse earlier if he could have something for sleep. He was exhausted, having slept only a few hours the past six nights. The nurse explained that a sedative might compromise his breathing. He was going to have to try to sleep without medication. I worried that he would not have an easy night. Before I left I leaned over and nuzzled his cheek, lifted his oxygen mask, and kissed him on the mouth, and we said I love you’s. I got up reluctantly.
Then, just before leaving the room I paused at the glass door, looked back at my husband, raised my hand and we spoke our affirmation.
“I see you well,” I said.
Don responded, “I see me well.”
CHAPTER 3 - HIS EYE IS ON THE SPARROW
“His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.”
—Hymn
It always blesses me to sing, and for as long as I can remember there was singing all around me. My father was a local gospel soloist and president of the church choir. As a toddler, the youngest of the four Whitaker children, I would sit on my Uncle Leroy’s green linoleum floor in a house just across the backyard from ours in Shreveport, Louisiana, looking up at my handsome, six foot three daddy, Green Whitaker, practicing with his group, The Spiritual Jubilee, seven men who seemed tall as giants to me. They sang without instruments, just the patting of the foot and the rhythmic slapping of the hip to keep time. The harmony was five-part, with my dad usually singing the top notes in a contra tenor voice, and the other men filling in the tones to the bass notes. It was infectious,
