is horror. Ruby’s dentures have been removed and this makes her face look like a sunken death mask. Her black wig is also gone, leaving a thin snowy frizz atop her head. Her eyes are closed, her respiration labored. She looks like a dying woman photographed in some plague-stricken African village.
“Is she conscious?”
“She was until a minute, ago,” Dad replies. “She’s in and out now. Mostly out. In her condition, it’s a blessing.”
One of Ruby’s hands is undamaged, and I move around the table and take it, squeezing softly. “Did Mom talk to her?”
“A little. Ruby had a panic attack and Peggy calmed her down.”
The thought of Ruby in terror makes it difficult for me to breathe. As I look down at her, her lips tremble, then move with purpose. She’s trying to speak. But what comes from behind the mask is only a ragged passage of air. I lean closer and speak into her ear.
“Ruby? It’s Penn, Ruby. I hear you.”
At last the rasps form words. “… fine blessing. You … give a fine blessing, Dr. Cage. You go on … go on, now.”
A chill races over my neck and arms. “Dad? I think she wants you to say something religious.”
“She’s obtunded, son. She doesn’t really know what she’s saying.”
“She knows. She wants you to say something over her.”
My father looks around at the ring of expectant faces. “Jesus. I don’t remember much.”
“Anything. It doesn’t matter.”
He takes Ruby’s hand and leans over her.
“Ruby, this is Dr. Cage. Tom, by God, though you refused to call me that for thirty-five years.” He chuckles softly. “You’re the only one in the world who could get me reciting from the Bible. Haven’t done it since I was a boy.”
Ruby’s lips move again, but no sound emerges.
“The Lord is my shepherd,” Dad says quietly. “I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me … he—” Dad stops and picks up further on. “Yea, though I walk through the shadow of … through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thy …” He looks over at me. “Damn it, what’s the rest of it?”
I lean down beside Ruby’s ear and continue for him. “Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest my head with oil. My cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Ruby has stopped trying to speak. Her face is placid.
Dad lays a hand on my shoulder. “Well, between us we managed it. She’s got two atheists praying over her. Pretty pathetic, I guess.”
“It was good enough.”
Looking around, I notice expressions of shock and awe on the faces of the assembled doctors and nurses. “What’s the matter?”
“They’ve never seen me do anything like that before.”
“She’s trying to speak,” says a nurse.
Ruby’s jaw is quivering with effort, her wrinkled, toothless mouth opening and closing behind the mask like that of a landed fish. Dad and I lean over her and strain to hear. At first there is only a lisping sound. Then three words coalesce from the shapeless sounds.
“Thank you … Tom.”
Ruby’s eyes flutter open, revealing big brown irises full of awareness. She seems to see not only us but beyond us. I suppose this is the look of faith.
“Lord Jesus,” she says, as clearly as if she were talking to me across the breakfast table. “Ruby going home today. Home to glory.”
Seconds later her eyes close, and the monitors that were so muted before begin clanging alarms.
“She’s coding,” Dad says.
“Crash cart!” cries one of the other doctors.
A hurricane of activity erupts around us, everyone rushing to his appointed task.
“Cardiac arrest,” Dad says in a calm voice.
“Tom?” says Dr. Carelli, a lean dark man in his late forties. “Clear, Tom.”
Dad holds up his right hand. “Everyone listen to me. This case is DNR.”
The alarms go on ringing with relentless insistence.
“Do you know that for a fact?” asks Carelli, standing anxiously over the cart with a laryngoscope in his hand. “Tom, you know the rules.”
“This woman is eighty years old, she’s got third-degree burns over sixty percent of her body, and a broken hip.”
“Tom, for a DNR we need it on paper.”
“She also has carcinoma of the lung,” Dad says softly. “No one knows that but me. There’s nothing on paper, but she’s discussed it with me on several occasions. No extraordinary measures. Do not resuscitate. Turn off those alarms.”
The whole apparatus of technology stands poised on the edge of action, and my father has ordered it to stand down.
“Tom, are you sure?” asks Carelli.
“I take full responsibility. Turn off those goddamned alarms.”
One by one the alarms go off. Dad looks at me, his eyes weary. “Go on out, Penn. Check on Annie and your mother. You don’t want to see this.”
“Not until she’s gone.”
He nods slowly. “All right.” He turns to the assembled staff. “Thanks for the effort, everybody. We’d like to be alone with her.”
I squeeze Ruby’s good hand, kiss her forehead, and wait for the end. Looking at this ravaged shell of a woman, I find it hard to believe that she was the towering figure who saved me from that German shepherd. But she was. She is. As the last nurse files out, the drumbeat of rotor blades descends over the hospital, announcing the helicopter that will return to Jackson without its scheduled passenger.
Ruby Flowers is leaving Natchez by another route.
Our family has gathered in the small chapel provided by the hospital for patients and their families. It’s a small, dim room, with electric candles, two pews, an altar, and some “new” Bibles full of undistinguished prose. I’m not a believer myself, but in time of death you can do a lot worse than the King James Bible for comfort.
My mother is praying quietly at the altar. Dad sits beside me in the front pew, with Annie on his lap. This is the first time we have been together in anything like a church since Sarah’s funeral. My older sister
