Sunday, December 13
I awoke to Annie rapping on the window of
my car. "Don't worry," she said, "everything's all right, but
we're going to have a meeting later and I thought you might want
to get breakfast first."
I ate in the Cafeteria again, then went upstairs. There was
an informal meeting in progress, more or less run by Jnani.
She was discussing the hospital's concerns about overwhelming
Don with visitors. Some kind of visiting schedule would have
to be worked out. There also had to be some kind of protocol.
If there were already in the room, then whoever wanted to
visit would have to wait. There shouldn't be more than two people
in the room at once. And we had to check in with the nurses'
station first; we couldn't just waltz into Don's room.
Many of Don's friends are doctors and nurses. They understood
that the ICU can be a busy place, and that when action is called
for, there must be a clear path. So we all agreed to check with
whomever was in the waiting room to see if the room was clear,
then check with the nurses to see if the ICU was clear.
Then Jnani started talking about Don's medical power of attorney.
She said that Don's father had legal power of attorney since Don
didn't have a power-of-attorney form on file as far as anyone
knew. She had spoken to Don's father, who had agreed to handing
Don's medical concerns over to her and to Dr. Rachel Remen, Don's
former employer at Commonweal.
I was stunned. I had introduced myself to these people yesterday
as Don's partner? What did they think that meant? How could they
have chosen someone to make Don's medical decisions without at
least talking to me?
While I was still reeling from this coup (which everyone else
accepted as a matter of fact), I heard Jnani talking about what
kinds of decisions she and Rachel might have to make. She was
saying, "I just know if V couldn't ride his bike, he'd rather be
dead."
My jaw dropped. I got up and started pacing the room. Jnani was
on the phone, trying to get ahold of Maha (whoever that was).
I wanted to talk to her about how insulted I was about the whole
medical power-of-attorney thing and how I was damned certain no
one was going to pull the plug on Don just because he couldn't
ride a bike. I was trying to calm down, first, though. If
Jnani did have Don's power of attorney, she could easily tell
the hospital not to admit me to the ICU, and then I couldn't be
with him at all.
Jnani got off the phone, unsuccessful in her attempt to reach
Maha, but immediately started dialing again. I walked over to
the phone while she was still dialing and held down the hook.
"We need to talk," I told her.
"I guess we do," she said and followed me out of the room.
We went to the end of the hall. I didn't want the people in
the waiting room to hear what I was going to say, especially
since I wasn't sure I could keep my voice down while I said it.
"How dare you?" I said.
"What? What are you upset about?" she asked.
"How dare you start talking about pulling the plug on Don while
I'm right there in front of you?" I was barely keeping my voice
down. "Would you have done that in front of his wife?"
"I'm sorry. But I know it's true. He loves to ride."
She wasn't getting the point at all. "And what makes you his
power of attorney? Why didn't you ask me?"
"It needed to be done," she said. "I didn't know where you were."
"I was right there, in the goddamned parking lot!"
"I'm sorry you're upset. We didn't do it to upset you. Tell me
what's bothering you."
This kind Esalen-group-therapy-speak makes me sick. I barely held
onto my temper.
"I don't know how long you've known Don," I said. "You and all
the people in there who've known him for years - fifteen years,
twenty years. You've got it all over me on years. But I'll tell
you one thing. I know him, too, and I know him in ways you'll
never know him, so don't you start talking about pulling
the plug on him! Don't you ever say that in front of me
again!"
Jnani started crying. That made me angrier. She got out a
kleenex. "I know you know him in ways I don't," she said, "and
you don't know how jealous that makes me, how much I've wanted
that, what you've got."
This was too much. I rolled my eyes and gave up. She just
couldn't see it as a violation of the relationship between Don
and me. She could only see it in terms of her relationship
with Don. I tried another tack.
"I know you're all trying your best, that we all want the same
thing. But I'm afraid that, in trying to keep the community of
Don Vivekan Flint alive, we may lose Don Vivekan Flint himself.
We're doing all this stuff to keep this image of him going, and
nothing that recognizes him, all of him." Nothing, I meant, that
recognized me as a permanent part of his life.
But the women in Don's circle - and, at that point, it seemed to
be composed almost entirely of women - couldn't see me that way.
He was a yogi to them, a teacher, almost a saint. Later, I would
discover that more than one of them had been him to be her lover,
and that for one of them, he had been.
I was an uncomfortable fact before them, a contradiction of that
image of saint-as-lover, lover-as-saint. Gay sex is not sacred
sex, and my claims on Don were mere carnality, not like the
spiritual claim they could stake. From the beginning, I felt they
treated me as an outsider, and gradually they moved from ignoring
my relationship with Don, to regarding it with suspicion, and
finally to dismissing it. Their behavior is an object lesson in
how loving people with the best of intentions can be thoughtlessly
cruel. Bigotry doesn't need hatred or even intention to be
wounding. All it takes is ignorance and habit.
My blow-up with Jnani had all this behind it. Now, it was losing
steam. She said she was glad I had told her how I felt. I was
not. I felt angry that I had had to get angry for her to even think of
listening to me. And I had the sinking feeling that it was all
futile: that what had gotten through to her was that I had certain
strong feelings, not that there was a basic, new fact she needed
to learn.
That fact was me, that I was a part of Don's life and inseparable
from it.
Before we returned to the waiting room, she said, "It would mean a
great deal to me if you would hug me."
This was such obvious an attempt to manipulate me into feeling
like we had "healed" the rift between us that I submitted to it. I
knew it would do nothing of the kind. It was a phatic formality,
the only way she knew of to get out of the encounter.
A little later that afternoon, I told the folks in the waiting
room I was going out "to decompress." I drove to the Luther
Burbank home and gardens and sat for a while on a bench made
from an old tree.
Jnani's comment about Don kept running through my head. How can
we possibly know what Don would want in this situation? He
certainly would not like being wrapped in all those tubes.
I looked around the garden, now significantly vested in its winter
dormancy. Something hanging from a twig nearby caught my eye.
Was it a crysalis or a dead leaf? Looked at from one angle, it
looked like one thing, from another, something else.
Was Don dead, or dying, or transforming?
I began forming a poem in my mind. It developed into "Christmas
with the Dead." That night, I copied it out on a piece of paper
and put it on the table beside Don's bed, nestled among the
pictures, small Shiva figurine, and other hopeful objects people
had brought into his room.
The next morning, it was gone.
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Monday, December 14
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See the Redbook
entry for this date.
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Tuesday, December 15
I was running out of clothes and getting tired of
sleeping in the lobby and my car. It was time to come home and
prepare for a "long haul." I would need at least a week's worth
of clothes and a better supply of toiletteries. Also, I needed to
arrange for a real place to stay. The YMCA, maybe? A local Elks
lodge? And I needed to tell Mark and Brad at Glyphic what was up
and how long it was likely to last.
Just before leaving Santa Rosa, I happen to look in my address
book and notice that Dennis and Michael live in Windsor, and that
their phone number is the same area code as Santa Rosa. How
close are they? Could I stay with them, I wonder? I leave them
a message on their answering machine, then head back for Mountain
View.
I had been trying to call Dr. Remen, and while I was home, she
finally called back.
I told her about the nurse's concern about HIV, and I told her I
thought it would be a good idea if Don got an antibody test. There
was still no information on what had caused Don's hemorrhage, and
I was beginning to think of the more exotic sources of brain
leisions. I had read about cases where otherwise healthy HIV
positive gay men were suddenly dying of strokes and hemorrhages.
I wanted to close off that possible source of the mystery.
"I think Don should be tested for HIV," I told her.
"Why do you think that?" Dr. Remen said.
I didn't want to violate Don's privacy by telling her about his
trips to The Steamworks, but I thought a good case could be made
without raising that issue. "You know, of course, about the
connection between HIV and brain hemorrhages," I said.
"Yes," she said. "But have you thought about the consequences,
about what it might mean if Don were HIV positive? It would
become part of his permanent medical records. It could affect his
insurance coverage. Have you thought of that?"
I got suddenly furious. It seemed a double insult. If we could
find the source of Don's hemorrhage and thereby maybe prevent a
recurrance, what the hell did it matter what it did to his
permanent medical records? And whom did this woman think she was
talking to, anyway? I'm a gay man who's lived through the AIDS
epidemic, seen my friends die of it, seen the financial and
emotional devastation first hand, fought with the State of
Colorado over the issues of reporting and discrimination. How
dare she lecture me about "consequences"?
I reined myself in. This was one of the women with "medical power
of attorney" over Don. I had to stay on her good side.
"Yes," I said tightly, "I've thought about it."
"And you still think he should be tested?"
"Yes."
She didn't say whether she would order the test or not. I tried
to get a commitment out of her, or at least some more information.
"You know, I can't be here to answer the phone all day," she
said.
That did it. I blew up.
"Then why the hell did you take on his power of attorney?!" I
yelled. "If all the information has to come through you, why
aren't you there?"
"You know," she started cooly, "if we can't be civil to one
another..."
I slammed down the phone. She was right. I couldn't be civil.
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Wednesday, December 16
I went in to work and explained the situation
to Mark and Brad. Mark was very understanding. "Take as much
time as you need," he said. That was a great relief.
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See the Redbook
entry for this date.
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Thursday, December 17
With fresh clothes and overnight supplies, I
headed back to Santa Rosa. When I walk into the ICU, there is
considerable news. Don is awake and talking! He speaks only a
few words at a time, and they are not always connected to what is
going on. He seems particularly concerned about his car keys and
his wallet. Everytime he asks, we tell him that they are okay.
(I learned later from Shankari that he had left both of them in
his car, and that the car itself had been parked half in a ditch
along the driveway to their house. Apparently, Don had felt badly
enough to try to drive himself to the hospital, but had given up
when he lost control of the car.)
During one of our brief conversations, I tell him Rachel has his
medical power-of-attorney. He winches, as if frowning or in pain.
Is this meaningful? When I mention it to Katherine, she says
that Don and Rachel haven't always been on the best of terms.
Again, I wonder who was served by naming Jnani and Rachel his
power-of-attorneys. Are these the people he'd really choose to
run his life?
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Friday, December 18
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Saturday, December 19
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See the Redbook
entry for this date.
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