One Summer

10

Jack lay there for hours, until day evaporated to night. The clock ticked, and he didn’t move. His breathing was steady, buoyed by the machine that replenished his lungs, keeping him alive. Something was burning in his chest that he could not exactly identify or even precisely locate. His thoughts were focused on his last embrace with his daughter, her unspoken plea for him not to leave her. With the end of his life, with his last breath, the Armstrong children would be without parents. His finger had hovered over the nurse’s call button all day, ready to summon the doctor, to let it be over. But he never pushed it.

As the clock ticked, the burn in Jack’s chest continued to grow. It wasn’t painful; indeed, it warmed his throat, his arms, his legs, his feet, his hands. His eyes became teary and then dried; became teary and then dried again. Sobs came and went. And still his mind focused only on his daughter. That last embrace. That last silent plea.

The nurses came and went. He was fed with liquid, shot like a bullet into his body. The clock ticked, the air continued to pour into him. At precisely midnight Jack started feeling odd. His lungs were straining, as they had been when Jackie had pulled the line out of the converter at home.

This might be it, Jack thought, button or no button; not even the machines could keep him alive any longer. He had wondered what the moment would actually feel like. Wedged in a mass of burning metal in Iraq after being blown up in his Humvee, he had wondered that too: whether his last moments on earth would be thousands of miles away from Lizzie and his kids. What it would feel like. What would be waiting for him.

Who would not be scared? Terrified even? The last journey. The one everyone took alone. Without the comfort of a companion. And, unless one had faith, without the reassurance that something awaited him at the end.

He took another deep breath, and then another. His lungs were definitely weakening. He could not drive enough oxygen into them to sustain life. He reached up and fiddled with the line in his nose. That’s when he realized what the problem was. There was no airflow. He clicked on the bed light and turned to the wall. There was the problem; the line had come loose from the wall juncture. The pressure cuff had not come off, however, or he would’ve heard the air escaping into the room. He was about to press the call button but decided to see if he could push the line back in himself.

That’s when it struck him.

How long have I been breathing on my own?

He glanced at the vitals monitor. The alarm hadn’t gone off, though it should have. But as he gazed at the oxygen levels, he realized why the buzzer hadn’t sounded. His oxygen levels hadn’t dropped.

How was that possible?

He managed to push the line back in and took several deep breaths. Then he pulled the line out of his nose and breathed on his own for as long as he could. Ten minutes later, his lungs started to labor. Then he put the line back in.

What the hell is going on?

Over the next two hours, he kept pulling the line out and breathing on his own until he was up to fifteen minutes. His lungs normally felt like sacks of wet cement. Now they felt halfway normal.

At three a.m. he sat up in bed and then did the unthinkable. He released the side rail and swung around so his feet dangled over the sides of the bed. He inched forward until his toes touched the cold tile floor. Every part of him straining with the effort, little by little, Jack pushed himself up until most of his weight was supported by his legs. He could hold himself up for only a few seconds before collapsing back onto the sheets. Panting with the exertion, pain searing his weakened lungs, he repeated the movement twice more. Every muscle in his body was spasming from the strain.

Yet as the sweat cooled on his forehead, Jack smiled — for good reason.

He had just stood on his own power for the first time in months.

The next morning, after the hospice nurse had come through on her rounds, he edged to the side of the bed again, and his toes touched the floor. But then his hands slipped on the bedcovers and he crumpled to the floor. At first he panicked, his hand clawing for the call button, which was well out of reach. Then he calmed. The same methodical, practical nature that had carried him safely through Iraq and Afghanistan came back to him.

He grabbed the edge of the bed, tightened his grip, and pulled. His emaciated body slipped, slithered, and jerked until he was fully back on the bed. He lay there in quiet triumph, hard-earned sweat staining his hospice gown.

That night he half walked and half crawled to the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror for the first time in months. It was not a pretty sight. He looked eighty-four instead of thirty-four. A sense of hopelessness settled over him. He was fooling himself. But as he continued to gaze in the mirror, a familiar voice sounded in his head.

You can do this, Jack.

He looked around frantically, but he was all alone.

You can do this, honey.

It was Lizzie. It couldn’t be, of course, but it was.

He closed his eyes. “Can I?” he asked.

Yes, she said. You have to, Jack. For the children.

Jack crawled back to his bed and lay there. Had Lizzie really spoken to him? He didn’t know. Part of him knew it was impossible. But what was happening to him seemed impossible too. He closed his eyes, conjured her image in his mind, and smiled.

The next night he heard the squeak of the gurney. The patient next door to him would suffer no longer. The person was in a better place. Jack had seen the minister walk down the hallway, Bible in hand. A better place. But Jack was no longer thinking about dying. For the first time since his death sentence had been pronounced, Jack was focused on living.

The next night as the clock hit midnight, Jack lifted himself off the bed and slowly walked around the room, supporting himself by putting one hand against the wall. He felt stronger, his lungs operating somewhat normally. It was as though his body was healing itself minute by minute. He heard a rumbling in his belly and realized that he was hungry. And he didn’t want liquid pouring into a line. He wanted real food. Food that required teeth to consume.

Every so often he would smack his arm to make sure he wasn’t dreaming. At last he convinced himself it was real. No, it wasn’t just real.

This is a miracle.