Sunday, December 6
Don arrived barely in time for us to leave together with Steve.
I had to get to the theatre in time for "call" for the matinee
performance. I was actually in the bedroom, working on a revision
of the lyrics to "The Silver Bell" when he arrived, so I didn't
greet him at the door as I usually do.
The concert went well, though it was lightly attended. Then the
three of us went to the cast party, which was in a San Jose
neighborhood not far from where Tom and I used to live.
On the way there, Don told us about a problem he had been having
with headaches.
"I think I might be developing migraines," he said. He sounded
worried.
"Have you had them before?" I asked.
"No," he said, "but last Thursday, I developed the most painful
headache. I had to go home."
"Where were you?"
He chuckled. "At Eros," he said, meaning the sex club near the
Castro. "Maybe it was divine punishment."
"Did you do anything worth punishing?" I asked lasciviously.
He laughed again. "No, the headache was too much. So I got
in my Exploder and drove home. But a funny thing happened.
I got lost on Mount Tam."
"What?" I asked. "How? You can't get lost on that road. It
only goes one place."
"That's what I figured. I figured sooner or later I'd get to
where I was going and I'd recognize the place. But it was the
weirdest feeling."
We didn't say anything more about it as it was time for me to
give Steve directions to the party.
I left Steve and Don pretty much to themselves during the party.
I wanted to socialize and schmooze with the guys. But I got to
feeling a little guilty about neglecting them, especially Don,
who had seen almost nothing of me except my appearances on stage
since coming down here. It takes such an effort and so much
planning for us to have any time together it seemed wasteful of
me to be chatting on the sofa with my fellow chorines when Don
was sitting across the room.
I went over and joined him, and shortly afterwards he and Steve
and I left for home.
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Monday, December 7
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Tuesday, December 8
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Wednesday, December 9
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Thursday, December 10
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Friday, December 11
I took off work early today to see a movie. It was a
pleasant way to start what promised to be a lovely weekend.
Tomorrow morning, I would go to the FrontRunners Saturday Morning
Fun Run (I would be among the walkers, not the runners), then I'd
head up to The City for some window shopping. But best of all,
Don and I had agreed to spend a long weekend together.
Don's stay the previous weekend had been short: he had come down
for the Sunday afternoon concert of the Silicon Valley Gay Men's
Chorus. My housemate Steve drove us to the concert venue, but
once there, I saw little of Don. I was backstage or on stage most
of the time. Afterwards, I was busy schmoozing at the cast party,
so we didn't interact much there, either. By the time we got to
my house, there was time for some quick (but delightful) sex, then
we both fell asleep. He left early Monday morning before I had
gotten out of bed. He was off to do research at Stanford's Lane
Library.
This weekend would be different. We'd meet under the marquee of
the Castro Theatre at 4:00 PM. From there, we'd go to a Christmas
party put on by my former boss Mark (as opposed to my current boss
Mark). It was the first of several holiday festivities we planned
on attending that weekend: the Mostly Annual Cookie Frenzy at Wade
and Brent's, the Body Electric Holiday Soiree, plus a ballet
(perhaps The Hard Nut in Oakland) or a concert.
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Saturday, December 12
Call from Shankari. Why had she waited until Sat
morning?
I called the hospital immediately. Their general switchboard
patched me in to the ICU nurse's station. I asked about Don and
how he was doing.
The nurse was unwilling to give me any information at first.
Instead, she said, "You people are going to have to pick a
spokesperson and direct all your questions to him. I can't be
answering all of your questions."
The rudeness of this answer took me aback. It was the hospital
policy that transferred me to the nurses' station in the first
place. Now she was complaining that I wanted to know what was
going on with my loved one? "That's your problem, not mine," I
said. "I just want to know where he is."
Grudgingly, she told me. I hung up, grabbed a couple of shirts
and shorts, stuffed them into an overnight bag, then rapped on Steve's
bedroom door. He awoke with a grunt.
"Steve," I said. "I have to go up to Santa Rosa. Don's had a
stroke."
"What? That's awful!" he said.
"He's in Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. I'm going up there to be
with him. I don't know when I'll be back."
As I drove up to Santa Rosa a thousand questions piled in on
me. Don was 46, in great shape, no sign of high blood pressure
or heart disease. How could he have had a stroke? And was it
a stroke or a hemorrhage? What's the difference, anyway? How
bad was it, really? Would he be alive when I got there?
I don't remember finding the hospital, but I arrived there around
10:30 AM, making record time driving up from Mountain View. The
receptionist desk told me to go up to the Intensive Care Unit
waiting room. From there, I could phone the nurse's station inside
the unit and ask to see Don.
There was no one in waiting room when I arrived. I thought this
was odd. I thought Shankari had said she would be there. I
called in to the nurse, and she said I could come in and stand
outside the room (there were large sliding glass doors I could see
through).
I see him. He looks small and naked. The right side of his
head is shaved and has staples in it. A hose extends from the
middle of the shaved area, above his right temple.
His right temple. Thank God, I say to myself, his
right side. Not his left. His language centers will still be
intact. But then I have a sudden panic. Is Don right-handed
or left-handed? I should know, damnit!
I look again. There are tubes everywhere. He's on a ventilator,
which is doing the breathing for him. There's a tube in his nose
that I guess is feeding him. There are multiple IV's in his
hands and arms. His torso is elevated and exposed: he's not
wearing a hospital gown. The bed sheet is tucked in around his
waist.
I go over to the nurse and apologize for being so abrupt with her
on the phone.
"Are you a relative?" she asks.
"I'm his..." and I sputter to a stop. I try again. "The State
of California does not recognize our relationship," I said at
last. "We've been seeing each other for about two years."
The nurse nods and turns away. There seems to be nothing else
to do or say until they can let me in the room itself, so I return
to the waiting room.
Why am I the only one here?
It is 11:30 and it occurs to me that I am suddenly very hungry.
I go down to the cafeteria and pick my way through unremembered
food.
When I return, there are more people in the waiting room and
introductions begin. I meet Jnani and eventually Sara and Leah.
I don't know who these people are, but they say Don has spoken of
me to them. They say I just missed someone named Rachel and
someone named Michael Rafferty. Jnani says it's a good thing
"Raff" didn't take the emergency call last night. Apparently,
Rafferty is on the Bolinas volunteer emergency response team, and
the women in the room think it would have been too much for him to
have to help "V."
"V?" I ask.
"Vivekan," Jnani says. "We call him V for short."
Conversations spring up among the women, many of whom apparently
haven't seen each other in a long time. Someone announces that
Annie is on her way.
"Who's Annie?" I ask.
"You'll recognize her when she comes in," Jnani says. "She has
long, wild blond hair." This is how I would describe Jnani
herself, so it's not much help. "She's... well, she's quite a
character. She and V are very close," she tells me. I have
never heard of her.
It is so strange to hear all these people call Don "V" and
"Vivekan." I had noticed that Don signed his poetry "Vivekan Don
Flint," so I had asked him about this name. He said it had been
given to him during his yoga training, and that it meant
"discernment." He didn't much care for his given name, "Don was
just a name my parents pulled out of the air," he said. "It
doesn't mean anything to them or to me. I like my middle name,
Edward, better, because it's the name of my uncle, so it has some
connection."
I understood about names. I myself had trouble accepting "Louis,"
which I always thought had too many vowels. I much preferred
"Lou." I asked if he preferred to be called Vivekan. He said that
since I met him as "Don," I could continue calling him that. I
noticed at the time he said "could," not "should," as if it were a
matter of my preference, not his.
Now I was faced with a whole community of people whose very name
for the man I cared for differed from my own. It was
disconcerting. Was "Vivekan" a different person from "Don"? In
conversations in the ICU waiting room, the name came up like a
wall. All these people were on one side of it; I was on the other.
Everytime I was introduced to someone, I felt I had to justify
why I was there. I wasn't one of his Greenpeace buddies who had
parachuted into the Canadian nuclear power plant with him twenty
years ago. I wasn't someone who had lived with him on the ashram
in Virginia fifteen years ago. I hadn't traveled in India with
him. I wasn't a member of his men's group, or his bike club,
or one of his yoga students.
I wasn't just a trick he'd picked up yesterday, either. I knew I
had significance in his life as he had in mine. But how could I
convey that to this seemingly close-knit web of intimates? I've
always disliked the trendiness of "significant other," and we
couldn't be called domestic partners since we lived fifty miles
apart. Saying "the State of California doesn't recognize our
relationship" might get me into the ICU when only family was
allowed, but it was hardly satisfactory in the long run. So
sometime that afternoon, I hit upon calling myself Don's
"partner." That seemed to work.
In the afternoon, Don stirred a bit and seemed to rise to
consciousness. Once, as nurses were rearranging him on the bed,
he seemed to become fully conscious. His eyes locked on mine. "I
love you," I said. His eyes widened slightly and he nodded his
head vigorously. The tubes waggeled with him.
Evening fell quickly and darkly as we were moving towards the
winter solstice and a new moon. It soon became obvious that most
of the people in the waiting room were friends of "Vivekan," and
that most of them intended to watch through the night. Jnani and
Annie prepared to sleep in the Intensive Care Unit waiting room.
This was against hospital policy, but they were abetted by Matt
Zwerling, a doctor at Santa Rosa and another "friend of V," who
brought in cushions and blankets. As they bedded down around
midnight, Annie said she would come and get me if there was any
important change.
I went down to the parking lot and crawled into the back of my
Caravan. It was loaded, as it usually is, with my camping gear.
I had a thermal sleeping bag, a heavy sarape, an inflatable
pillow, and a thick foam mattress. Unfortunately, the car was not
configured for me to stretch out, so I curled up in a fetal
position, pulling a stocking cap over my head to conserve warmth.
It was quite cold outside, but I was exhausted and fell asleep
soon enough.
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