White sister

Chapter 61

I got back to Los Angeles on Thursday morning and went straight to the UCLA hospital to continue the vigil with Chooch. Nothing changed over the weekend, and by Monday Luther wanted us all to meet.

"I'm not saying that things can't change," he said. "But usually, within three or four days, we see some reflex, some movement something. I've tried to wean her off the life support system, but the minute I do, she stops breathing."

We were in the ICU waiting room. Chooch and I tried to absorb what he was saying.

"She's not coming back?" I finally asked.

"I told you at the beginning, that these things are impossible to fully predict. Right now this looks pretty grim. I think you and Chooch need to start evaluating options."

"I'm not unplugging her," I said defiantly.

"In that case, you need to find some kind of extended care facility. I hear this one's pretty good." He took out a pad and pen and wrote down a name. Then he handed it to me.

"Bright Horizons?" I was incredulous. "Who are they kidding?"

"Most extended care facilities have names like that. Bright Horizons, Eternal Hope, Happy Endings."

I folded the paper and looked over at Chooch. His face was drained of color. We left Luther and went down to the cafeteria where we sat with mugs of coffee on the table between us, but we couldn't drink them on sour stomachs.

"What do we do, Dad?" he asked.

"I don't know. I can't let her go. I just can't. I'll put her in one of those hospices and I'll keep her alive and I'll…"

Then the tears started coming and Chooch put his arm around me. In moments, his own tears were mixed with mine.

I tried several times to reach Alexa's brother, Buddy. He and I had never gotten along and I dreaded making the call. But I couldn't reach him. His office said he was on a vacation trip up the Amazon River and would call when he returned at the end of the month.

The following week, I sat with Alexa's attorney, a pretty, pale-skinned woman with bird-like movements and honey-brown hair. I'd never met her before. Her name was Lydia Cunningham and her law firm was on the twenty-fifth floor of a Century City high-rise. We sat in a book-lined conference room and she studied Alexa's last will and testament while I looked out the windows at the glass towers all around us, wondering if I would be able to get through this meeting full of questions about what to do with Alexa's jewelry, her stock portfolio, her faltering life.

"It's right here," Lydia said, thumbing through the thick document. "I thought I remembered putting that in. We drew this up six years ago."

Six years ago, Alexa and I hadn't met yet. It seemed like a lifetime.

"Her heroic measures codicil states that if for any reason she becomes vegetative, she doesn't want life support or any other heroic means of prolonging a hopeless existence."

"But what if in a little while she…?" I couldn't finish. I just turned to look out the window again. Could they force this on me? I wondered. "I was going to move her to an extended care facility," I said looking back at Lydia. "I mean, she could wake up. Miracles happen." I was desperate.

"That's right, and none of us knows what the future will bring. But you don't want this to turn into a Terri Schiavo situation. Alexa's wishes are clearly stated here. I'm bound as her attorney to turn this over to her doctors and the insurance company."

"And we can't keep her alive?" I pleaded.

"Is she really alive?" Lydia said. She kept her voice soft, but even so, the words tore holes in me. "Shane, you could fight this in court, but it will cost you a fortune and you'll lose. Her wishes are clearly stated here and eventually will prevail."

I heard back from Buddy. He listened while I explained Alexa's desperate condition. He sounded sad, but said he had just received a huge promotion and was now heading regional sales. He wouldn't be able to come to L. A. until things changed for Alexa one way or the other, which was a polite way of saying he'd come to her funeral. He managed to weigh in on the heroic measures debate before hanging up. He didn't think we should keep her on life support. I, on the other hand, didn't think he should stay in Philadelphia. We ended up the conversation, not feeling very good about each other.

I moved Alexa to Bright Horizons and started looking for an attorney to fight the provision in her will. The facility was in Santa Monica and it was expensive, almost two hundred fifty dollars a day, which, because of her heroic measures codicil was not going to be covered by insurance. I'd have to write the checks myself. But if I had to sell the house in Venice to support this, I'd do it. At least for as long as I could afford it. After the house was gone, I'd figure out something else.

Bright Horizons was an old one-story building on Lincoln Boulevard, five blocks from the ocean. It was clean, but it wasn't bright and there were no horizons. The place had a death-row vibe, a no-man's-land where its residents hovered between disparate states of existence.

Alexa's room was small, with one window that looked out onto a small, empty patio. I bought a flowering fig tree and donated it to the courtyard. I had it placed right outside her window, so she would have something to look at. I knew it was silly because she was in a coma, but it didn't matter because it made me feel better.

The room was equipped with portable life support machines, which were very small, considering the huge task they were being expected to perform. They sat atop tables or were attached to the rolling bed where Alexa lay. She looked small and thin under the sheets, her black hair growing in tangles out of a shrinking death mask.

I would brush her hair and then sit for hours looking at her, trying to see the woman she had once been. But Alexa had already begun to transform. The most beautiful person I'd ever known was lost somewhere, wandering vacantly inside her own head. I would hold her hand, feel her mechanically induced pulse, and wonder, despite all this equipment keeping her alive: Was she even in there? Or was I clinging to a fantasy while I ignored her own stated wishes? Was this to be my final act of love to keep her trapped inside a dead vessel, so that I could nourish some faint selfish hope of my own?

I began slowly to contemplate the monstrous act of unplugging her and letting her go.

Chooch applied for a medical red shirt from the USC football team, then dropped out of fall semester and came home.

Gunner took me to dinner. My compact courtroom brawler extended his condolences with sad eyes, then explained the deal he had made with the District Attorney. I could see him light up as he told the tale. He gloried in reliving how he had threatened Chase Beal with a media blitz and how he would prove that the city had used Alexa and me as scapegoats. The D. A. had dropped all charges against us in return for our not filing a civil suit. Gunner told me that he had finally kicked Chase Beat's skinny prep-school ass.

Meanwhile, Stacy Maluga recovered, and Alexa got weaker. Stacy had lost partial use of her right leg and she was being held in the Las Vegas jail charged with quadruple homicide. If convicted, she would most likely end up on death row.

Lionel Wright had returned to L. A. and was recovering at his WHITE: sister Bellagio Road estate. He wanted me to come and have lunch, and we picked a date for the following week.

Curtis Clark appeared on several entertainment news shows. In his retelling of the shootout in the desert, he'd been wearing a mask and a cape, and had almost single-handedly brought the evil Malu-gas to justice. He decided not to sign with Lionel Wright and announced he was joining the team at Sony Music. What a guy.

I followed the case in the newspaper and on TV. Occasionally Rafie or Tommy would call with updates. One afternoon Rafie told me that KZ was finally beginning to comprehend that he would be convicted of David Slade's murder and began negotiations with the L. A. prosecutors. Rafie said the D. A. was using Alexa's condition as a lever. If she was unplugged and died, KZ would feel the full weight of the law as an accomplice in a double police homicide. He finally took a kick down to one count of manslaughter and in return, put the hat on Stacy Maluga for David Slade's murder and Alexa's shooting. He confessed that after executing Slade, he and Stacy took Alexa to the house on Cypress and forced her to admit to the murder on our answering machine. Then Stacy shot her. It was pretty much what I figured.

Alexa had finally been cleared.

Of course by then she was in a death coma and it was no longer a news story. Reverend Vespars and Roxanne Sharp were off to more profitable racial injustices and weren't around to comment on the fact that they'd all been wrong and had destroyed her reputation with insinuation.

The days dragged on, but Alexa didn't get any better. I requested a leave of absence from the department and took daily trips out to Bright Horizons to sit by my wife's bed.

One day I came out of the house and got in my car for my daily trek to Santa Monica. Jonathan Bodine suddenly sat up scaring the hell out of me. He'd been sleeping in the backseat of my car.

"You can't just crash in other people's cars," I gasped.

"Crown Prince lays his head down in some shiny Jap coffin and you're getting all baked 'cause you ain't been asked first," he retorted. "This pile a junk's gonna end up in the Smithsonian. Everybody payin' money comin' t'see 'cause Prince Samik Mampuna gone an' slept here. Be like with Jesus, or Elvis or some such shit."

I needed to change the subject before I strangled him. "I suppose, as usual, you haven't eaten," I said.

"Yep. Always hungry. Don't get enough carbs. My insides is growlin' like a grizzly with its balls on fire."

Nice simile. "I'm going out to see Alexa," I told him. "There's a McDonald's down the street. You wanta come, I'll buy you lunch."

"Then let's get this bus rollin'. His Royal Highness needs a McFuckit," he said.

An hour later I was in Alexa's room. John Bodine was fed and standing beside me. He had McNugget particles still clinging to his beard as he looked down at her.

"Man, she be illin'."

"Don't breathe germs on her, John." I was becoming more and more worried about her catching something in her frail condition.

"Whata ya gonna do?" he finally asked.

"She doesn't want to be kept alive like this," I said. "I'm thinking about unplugging her."

"Ain't her choice. You don't get no vote, neither."

I told him about the codicil in Alexa's will, explaining that the court was going to unplug her if I didn't. He didn't seem to hear any of it.

"I told ya about my great-great-grandfather Chief Ossawanga. In the Bassaland he was a famous muthafucka. Chief O is up in the Big Guy's house. I tole ya, he's like some Last Ride kinda ticket-taker. He's the one you gotta see, you gonna get a place on the ark. He got the passenger list and such."

"John, this really isn't helping."

He pointed at Alexa and shouted, "This one here ain't supposed ta go, you dumb half-stepper! She ain't on the list. Can't you get nothin' through yer shit-fer-brains head?"

"John, I don't want to argue with you about this. It's a legal thing."

"Lawyers and doctors. When you gonna learn these posers ain't got no vision. They just got better cards in their wallets."

"John…"

"Your wife ain't ready, man. This here ain't up for discussion."

He was starting to get agitated and raised his voice. "I get all this straight from Chief O. All day long I gotta hear that old fart yammerin' at me from some cloud. Put up with his nonsense month after month, year after year. Ain't no way to shut him up 'less you do what he says. But you just a drives-too-fast-plow-a-muthafucka-down, asshole who don't never listen!"

Now he was screaming and his dusky complexion had turned bright red with anger. There was no doubt he was crazy. The question was, would he get violent? I tried to get him out of the room.

"Come on, John. Time to go." I took his skinny arm.

"Get your hands off a me!" he shouted and broke away. "She ain't ready! She ain't supposed to go! When you gonna start payin' attention?" Then he turned and ran down the hall.

I could hear him ranting all the way out of the building and into the street.