Karen was atypical in that she had few of the normal afflictions of the comatose: pneumonias, bowel obstructions from lack of fiber, urinary tract infections, blood clots in the legs, seizures, ruptured stomach, skin breakdowns, and skin infections from lack of blood circulation.
With Karen there was no "plug to pull," as the common expression goes. There were only degrees of heroics through which the family would be willing to go through in order to hang on to life. An example of this might be antibiotics to help with pneumonia. George wanted full heroics, but Lois refused to have an opinion on the issue. Many parents of coma patients divorce after years of anguish, self-recrimination, lawyers, social workers, family meetings, doctors, nurses, and bills. George and Lois remained together.
"Comas are rare phenomena," Linus told me once. "They're a byproduct of modern living, with almost no known coma patients existing prior to World War Two. People simply died. Comas are as modern as polyester, jet travel, and microchips."In the years since the incident, Karen had withered and shrunk to skin and bones, and her body appeared more like a yellow leather hide stretched over bone drums. To an outsider, Karen could seem awfully gruesome. Her hair had thinned and had begun graying by age twenty-three. She was breathing without a respirator and her almost inaudible air intake was the only evidence of life-force. Sturdy splints and rods were in place to keep her body from contracting fetally into itself, yet the one medical oddity about her case was that instead of "going fetal," as her leg braces anticipated, she remained supple and relaxed. Not a few research doctors and students from UBC had come to study Karen in her permanently relaxed state.
In the spring of 1981, Hamilton showed up at my apartment with a cut lip, a black eye, and a seething disposition. "That douche bag Klaus whacked me with a tripod. Pam can keep him." I asked who Klaus was: "Pammie's new beefy plaything." The next day Pam phoned me to say good-bye; she was moving to New York with Klaus. "He's not a very talented photographer, Rick, but he is sweet." For the next decade, I only saw Pam on magazine covers and heard from her via breathy little phone calls from exalted places: "Hi Rick. I'm in a 63 flying over Juneau (crackle crackle). Oh bugger, I just spilled the coke box in my lap. Oliver, what time does the hunt start? No that was the jacket in Madrid. Hi Richard where were we?"
Hamilton spent a few years with a surveying crew in the wilds of northern BC, thus beginning his romance with dynamite blasting, a natural extension of a pyromaniacal bent that began in the first grade with black ants, barbecue starter, Hamburger Helper boxes, and a large magnifying glass. By 1985, he earned his geology degree and his blaster's ticket, and for years thereafter he was clam-happy, roaming the province, felling mountains and hammering cliffs into gravel.
Linus became an electrical engineer, which surprised nobody. After graduation, he worked for two years at an engineering firm down-town. We saw him rarely. His life seemed dull. An adult too early.
Virtuous Wendy studied emergency medicine at UBC. Such is thelife of the med student that we saw Wendy only when she came up for air throughout the decade, underslept, vague, with cherry-stained eyeballs, rumple-clothed, and a preoccupied, crow-footed face. At lunch with her one day, Hamilton and I learned the rigors of medicine thirty-six-hour days, gorgon floor nurses, and flesh-eating bacteria lying in wait around every corner. "God, I feel like a carton of time-expired milk all the time. But I love the work."
Hamilton pulled a bottle of Visine from his pocket and told Wendy to lean back. "There," he said, dribbling it into each eye, "I don't like to see you looking so beat. Your eyes feel better?"
"Yes. Thanks, Ham."
"Keep the bottle. I bought it for you. Want to go for a walk on the beach at Ambleside?"
"I'd love to, Ham, but I'm on night shift. Have to be there in fifteen minutes."
Me, I had to go work at the Vancouver Stock Exchangelucrative, but so dull that words to describe it escape me.
Megan, she knew from the start that I was her father, but knowledge of Karen was another issue. There was no right or wrong decision in this matter. Our final decision not to tell her about Karen was tough on us. Should we have told her Karen was dead? A lie. Should we have said she's on a long holiday? Dumb. Should we have told her that Karen's ill? "The only problem there," my dad said, "is that she'll want to see her, of course. To a young child, the sight of Karen, love her as much as we do, might be more than shockingcruel even."
In the end, we figured that by age seven Megan would be adequately mature to see Karen. In the interim we told Megan Karen was sick, that it would be some while before we could go visit. Megan asked the inevitable questions soon: "What was Mom like, Dad? You know, my real Mom." This distinction, while natural, made Lois's toes curl under each time Megan used it. "Is Mom dead?" "Is my mom pretty?" "Does Mom like horses?" "If Mom came to visit, could she help me clean my room?"In 1986, Megan started school with unfettered glee. She bounced out of bed each morning and hurled herself through the kitchen door before Lois had the chance to dole out either a lecture or a berating. No extracurricular activity was too time consuming; no school project or music lesson too long.
And Megan had indeed started out in life resembling me in a Bumhead wigher hair grew straight as rain and that was just fine but fate took pity on her. As her baby fat melted away, Karen's infinitely prettier features emerged from within. We all mentally exhaled a relieved "whew!"
Occasionally, I'd pick Megan up at school to drive her home: Ding dong, hello, Lois "You know, Richard, I just don't understand why she enjoys school so much. She has a lovely house here with stacks of toys, plus I have worthwhile activities planned for almost all of her waking hours, so she has no reason to go gallivanting up to your house. No offense, but your house has nothing in it for a baby. Not one single thing. I had coffee up there last week and it was the most I could do to locate even a bouncing balland then it turns out to be Charlie's [our golden lab]. I'm going to have to be much more strict from now on. Or figure out a much more elaborate containment system. Come inside, Megan. We have flash cards to do. Goodbye Richard, and please, cut your hair, because I know shorter hair is now in style and you're a father now." Door closed; muffled yaps; Megan squalling as French language flash cards are produced. Poor baby.
Shortly after enrolling in first grade, Megan's classmateshaving heard it from their parents who heard it at the Super-Valu who heard it from whereverthese vicious little oiks told Megan, then six, that her mother was a "vegetable." As little brutes will do, they howled grocery lists at her across the gravel playing field: "Lettuce. Corn. Green beans, carrotsMegan's mother is a carrot." And so forth. On the day of the 1987 stock crash, just moments after it sank in that I'd lost most of my assets, Megan's school principal phoned my office around noonLois was out, so he called me. He said that Megan was in "a state."I drove from downtown to fetch my daughter and then we cruised aimlessly around the neighborhood, the crisply changing leaves that hinted of wine amid the lengthening shadows of fall. The radio was off. "What's up Sweetie Pie?"
"Dad, everyone's saying my real mother's a carrot."
"Well she's not a carrot. That's impossible."
"Lettuce?"
"Megan! Of course she's not lettucenor any other vegetable. Your mother is not a vegetable, Megan."
"Then why does everybody call her a carrot?"
"Because kids are cruel, Megan. They say stupid untrue things and have no idea what they're really saying."