his voice that gave Don a real sense of what vocal power could do. At thirteen, Don’s voice changed in the middle of a sentence. He didn’t go through the awkward voice cracking phase most pubescent boys experience. It just suddenly dropped.
One evening as he was helping his mother do the dishes, Rubie remarked that Don was unusually silent and asked why he wasn’t talking. “What is it you want me to say, Mother?” Don replied in his new baritone voice. With that he was sent to his room for being sassy.
This deep booming voice coming from a five-foot-tall frame had some decided advantages. He could sound like anyone’s dad calling from the office to get a student out of class. He could call in sick for the student who wanted to ditch school. In eighth grade, Don became wildly popular with this new talent—and something else happened. He could suddenly get girls. The ability to convince through the power of his voice and the ability to attract women—these gifts were Don’s by the age of thirteen, two attributes that would come in very handy as an adult.
After years of practice using his voice to woo women, Don and I met. Don appeared to be quite the playboy, a man as far from the ideal as anyone from my good-girl church-going background could have been. But as we grew in love together, the playboy fell away, and the man stepped forth to meet me. And we learned that even coming from such different backgrounds we had much in common, including the gift of our voices that had sent us on our paths into the world and each other’s lives. We were soul mates, without a doubt. Race hardly entered into it, except in the beginning when I wondered what an older, rich white guy like Don, who could have any woman (and often did), would want from a five- foot-ten-inch country girl like me.
In the beginning I held the line, and our friendship came first. And by the time Don started saying, “I like the concept of you,” I found myself—against my better judgment—falling in love. It was a romantic and challenging two years before we married. By the time we did, we knew we had found our home in each other.
For our wedding in 1988 the photographer asked us to give him a big batch of childhood photographs so he could create a montage that would be shown at the reception. We had a pile of pictures from our early years ready to go and Don thought out loud, “How is he going to tell us apart?”
“Don, really?” I said. “I’m black.”
“Oh—oh, right.” And we collapsed in laughter and love.
***
I thought of our two decades of marriage, our work and family, and our challenges and joys, as I drove to the hospital to see Don on his second day he was there. Yet even under these conditions I was looking forward to the hours I would spend with him. There was no moment with Don that I did not look forward to. I knew myself to be blessed, despite these awful circumstances and the terror we faced on this late August day.
I had just picked up my usual chai soy latte at Starbucks and was back in the car, about fifteen minutes away from Cedars, when my phone rang and an unfamiliar voice said, “Hello, this is Dr. Heather Jones. Is this Anita LaFontaine?”
I recognized the name of the lung specialist I had been told about the day before. “Yes, this is she. What’s going on?”
“Are you driving?” she asked. “I want you to be safe.” Her voice was warm and full of concern.
I knew a bomb was about to be dropped.
“I can pull over,” I said, though I had no intention of stopping.
“At about six this morning your husband got really sick. We’ve had to intubate and sedate him. I need your permission to give him blood. He isn’t able to consent.”
My heart started racing, the thump-thumps so strong it felt like it was going to explode out of my body, but the nurse in me answered automatically. “You can type and cross-match him. How many units?”
“I think for now, just one.”
I told her I would be at the hospital shortly. I called my best friend, Adam and our pastor and told them Don was very sick, then drove into the parking structure, my mind racing. I headed toward the ICU without a clue as to the enormity of what I was walking into.
Dr. Heather Jones had been so calm when we spoke on the phone about giving Don blood. When I left him the previous night we were talking and planning for Dubai, but suddenly Don’s condition was critical. I was buzzed into the ICU and walked down the hallway with its curtain-covered glass-fronted rooms, some with patients in them, some empty.
As I approached the fifth room I could see Don, but I couldn’t believe what my eyes were showing me. It looked like he was surrounded by octopi, there were so many IV lines going into his body.
He was on a ventilator, and from his terrible stillness it was clear he was heavily sedated, in a deep, deep sleep. There was a tube in his mouth, his limbs were at odd angles that reminded me eerily of a yoga position—the suvasuna—legs at forty-five degrees, arms at thirty. Around him were doctors and nurses, a flurry of activity. I stepped into the room and Dr. Heather Jones, longhaired and blonde who looked like she could be one of my girlfriends, was at the head of the bed getting ready to perform some kind of procedure. White sterile paper covered Don’s neck and shoulder. She looked up and gave me a smile and gently said, “Do you mind waiting outside. We’re still working on him.” I felt like all the wind had been sucked out of me. My legs went weak, but I did what I was asked. They were trying to save Don’s life.
This is not happening. This is not real, I thought. It must be some mistake. I left the room, stood a few minutes then found myself walking back down the hall past the nurses’ station through the electronic doors. In the waiting area I saw my friend Adam coming toward me and I fell into his arms. Deep, gut-wrenching cries came through me from a place inside myself I did not know. I felt as though my voice was caught in this guttural sound. A primal, animal instinct to make some noise in mourning even when no words were possible in me. In this moment I saw my voice starting to fail.
CHAPTER 4 - TIGHTROPE
“Whether you’re high or low you gotta tip on the tightrope/I can’t complain
about it, I gotta keep my balance and just keep dancing on it.”
—Janelle Monet
Don’s condition remained critical. Having been on the other side of this unfolding drama as a nurse, what I saw with my professional eye looked quite ominous. After I gathered myself, I asked Adam to make some calls on my behalf and I phoned my sister Kathy, who had only just left the Wednesday before. When I tried to speak, only sobs came out. She simply said, “I’m on my way.”
I called our bonus daughter Christine who had been busy planning her wedding to Riley’s father; she was stunned by the news and began making her plans to come.
Each time I had to repeat to someone that Don was in critical condition and on a respirator, it became harder and harder to say. I couldn’t believe it myself. Might I awake from this fitful dream at any moment to find it to be nothing more than a terrible nightmare? I wondered.
Only when I was finally able to walk into his room, after they placed a large needle near the base of his neck called a CVP line, and saw the constant care needed did I realize we had not only opened, but we were inside, Pandora’s box. Once allowed back into his room, I was able to fully assess the gravity of the situation though there was still a shock factor. Many things were going on and there was a lot to take in as I looked at my gravely
