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The Schuyler Fortune IV: Raspberry-5
From time to time, Loren thought about the future of the family as well. He knew that if Eric died or was declared incompetent, that he, Loren, would become beneficiary of the Schuyler trust if still alive. He also remembered Michael's will that specified that the oldest grandchild inherit after Eric and Loren were both deceased.
That would be my son Joseph, he thought. It would be a good idea to take some formal time with both of his boys, Joseph and James, to talk to them about the possibilities ahead, just like his grandmother Carol had during Loren and Eric's senior year in church high school.
Loren was proud of both of his sons. Selene kept them on an even track much of the time, disciplined them fairly, loved them enormously and they knew it. They, like their father and uncle, were tight and trusted each other, had a little competition going but more a bond and were each other's best friend and confidante. They were intelligent, liked school, their tutors rated their learning skills highly. Joseph loved art and James was good at writing.
Their younger cousin Mateo was creative. They loved to visit their grandparents in London, Robert and Linda. They spent a good deal of time with Robert learning to draw and use watercolors. Mateo was pretty quiet and nobody but himself knew his favorite subject, painting. Their other cousin, Paulo was a math savant. Loren thought he was a Marcus clone in that respect.
Carol Schuyler awoke at 2:00 a.m. Her mind was a little foggy. She knew she was in her bedroom or thought she knew. She brushed the hair out of the right side of her face with her right hand, unaware of her left hand, her whole left side for that matter.
She sensed something wasn't right because she couldn't move properly. She tried to feel her mouth with her tongue. Her right hand moved because she willed it to and found something that it could feel, but whatever it was wasn't feeling her right hand. Her brain told her the left hand that she was feeling was just a lump of something.
Carol didn't have a headache. She could see. She tried to talk. Garbled sound came out that scared her badly. She tried again with the same result. She couldn't lift her head. She could breathe OK; at least she wasn't short of breath.
"Isn't this an adventure," she thought to herself.
She lay for a time, not knowing how long.
The telephone rang. She automatically tried to answer it. She could not.
Carol didn't know the time although she thought that morning had come and gone a lot since she had been in this bed, which now had rails around it. A nurse was standing beside the bed, taking the blood pressure in her right arm. Her mind was clearer now and she was afraid. Very afraid.
The nurse looked over at her, apparently saw something she hadn't before and spoke to Carol, "Good morning. Tap twice here on the bed rail if you are thirsty?"
Carol moved her right arm to the rail and tapped twice on it. "Yes."
"Oh, good," said the nurse, "that's a good sign. I'll call the doctor and it sounds like you are back awake inside there."
"Uohm wha hah?"
"What happened? Let the doctor fill you in on the details. I'm your nurse for this shift, Karen."
Later, she didn't have a way to track how long, but way later, a man walked into her room in a white coat that she saw out of the periphery of one eye.
"Hello, Mrs. Schuyler, I'm Dr. Kerry. Karen tells me you may have awakened. Great news! Mrs. Schuyler, you are starting to recover. You had a stroke at home and the maid found you and called 911. You are in the University of Oregon Medical Center in Portland, Oregon. Your helicopter brought you with some paramedics since you were stable."
"The MRI determined that you had a small clot move to your brain, perhaps associated with atrial fibrillation, a common heart rhythm disturbance at your age."
"The emergency department gave you a clot-buster drug and you didn't respond right away, but that's ok, we'll just keep up on another similar medication to dissolve the clot. Your whole family has been in and out, worried about you."
"You've been here for three weeks now. I'll examine you now if that's OK. You may flunk this first exam. That's OK too. I expect an F the first time around."
"Eric, your grandson and his husband, Brent are in the cafeteria downstairs and should be back up in a few minutes. Your family is fine and worried some as I said."
"I got to review your chart and your medical history that Mrs. Blossom Jones gave to me when she arrived. She said she took care of you for years in a coma and I have to say she is one of the best, most professional nurses I have ever met. She is a wonderful person."
"Your daughter, Barbara Darnell has been in and out and I think she and her crew will be back tomorrow. Hi from everybody and that's the social report. Let's get down to business."
She liked Dr. Kerry. He seemed human and kind. She had tensed up when he said the `stroke' word, a problem she never wanted to hear applied to her, then relaxed as he spoke to her.
She flunked the exam according to him because she `forgot' she had a left side.
Her strength was diminished on her right side, which he told her was difficult to assess for a few reasons, and she had no conscious control of her left leg or left arm. She smiled crookedly with a droop in her smile on the left and couldn't clench her teeth really well.
Her pupils were OK, no nystagmus now, and there was some limitation of the eyeball movements to the left, but minimal. He told her that her vital signs were normal at the moment other than occasional stretches of atrial fibrillation for five to ten minutes once a day. He would leave that problem up to the cardiologists to manage.
She had been on something called TPN or total parenteral nutrition that he said consisted of the components of food like amino acids from protein, fatty acids from fat and carbohydrates like dextrose along with minerals such as potassium, sodium, chloride, zinc, and a soup of other stuff. They would take her off of that when she could swallow really well, and they would start with tiny sips of water that day while she was helped to a sitting position in the hospital bed.
He warned her not to get out of bed for fear of falling right now. He told her that physical therapy would be bothering her a lot and she was ordered to cooperate or else.
She would be squeezing rubber balls and picking up buttons and sorting them and getting clothespins from a basket and clipping them on to a piece of fabric and other exercises at her own speed to retrain her brain to use the right hand and as soon as the left hand and left leg checked back in, they'd get treated too.
Carol thought again how kind and unpretentious the doctor was and appreciated his calm explanations. She had the feeling that he was a good man.
He left after writing some orders in a chart.
Eric and Brent walked in after a while and the nurse told them that Grandma Carol was awake, and the doctor had talked to her. She suggested that their conversation with her include questions that she could answer with "yes" and "no" by tapping her right hand on the rail two times for yes and once for no.
"If Grandma Carol gets tired, let's just sit with her. She will know you are here when she checks if you sit on her right side since we will have her on her back or right side for a few hours looking toward her right side. Then we'll turn her to the other side and you can switch sides if you like. How's that?"
Eric hugged his grandmother and tried the `brave front' act, but a tear slipped down his cheek anyway and then both eyes leaked for a while and he couldn't see real well so he just shut his eyes real tight and his chest felt tight and he was consumed by a sudden fear and grief for a moment or two until his Brent touched his back and rubbed it a bit which brought him back to this side again.
He turned to Brent and he produced a Kleenex to wipe his eyes. Eric put on a smile, actually forced himself to smile and turned to his grandmother.
"Hey. You back?"
Two taps.
"You scared me."
No tap, just a touch on his hand briefly, light as a feather.
"I'm so glad you got here safe," he said. "This place has world-class neurological care."
Two taps.
"How's the food?"
A brief swat to his hand.
"Everybody said to say they love you and hope you get better soon."
Two faint taps, eyes falling closed, and she slept.
Carol awoke during the night for something, felt around a little, felt a twitch somewhere on the left side of the bed from something, ignored it, felt a catheter between her legs. She supposed that was to drain urine.
She didn't feel a full bladder sensation. She was a little warm but not too uncomfortable. She was able to push a blanket down just a little and poked her right arm out.
She wasn't bored exactly. She began to realize however that this was going to be a process. Carol looked forward to the work only because she wanted to get past it and hoped that she would be able to start getting better.
She didn't know, could not have known, never knew that a giant clot in her abdomen, in her vena cava, had formed and was moving up toward her chest.
She sensed that something was very wrong, could not call out, became very short of breath from the block of blood flow to her lungs, experienced a deep chest pain lasting only a few minutes, lost all thought and began to die.
A code was called. The crack CPR team with an in-house team of surgeons made the diagnosis quickly; she was placed on a ventilator after intubation with a tube into her trachea to breathe for her.
An EEG showed random brain activity only. Her heart was still beating, now erratically.
Eric and Brent were snoozing lightly in a family lounge down the hall, stirred a little when they heard announcements and feet running down the hall, but the nearly soundproof room muffled all of that and they slept until the door opened a crack, some hall light spilled in and a soft voice summoned them to a nightmare.
The emergency room doctor who led the team and the chief in-house surgeon told them about Carol's sudden turn for the worse and the frantic efforts to save her.
Eric stood there, stunned, silent, slightly drowsy, super-awake, trembling, cold, afraid, angry somehow, then pulled himself together and asked what the next step was.
"There's no way to soften this bad news, Eric. Your Grandmother is dead. Her heart is beating. A machine is forcing her to breathe. Her brain shows no sign of organized activity now. We call that `brain death'.
"Every family at this point talks to each other and makes a decision to perhaps just wait and see for a while or to stop the ventilator and let a natural death happen."
"I can tell you there is nothing more we can do for her at this point. Very few patients in your Grandmother's condition continue to have heart activity or breathing activity for any real length of time, but some have continued for a relatively long time."
"Brain damage has occurred from what we can see on the EEG."
"Some families like to continue the ventilator for enough time to get together and say goodbye. Some choose to just continue it indefinitely. Some choose to stop the ventilator and hope for the best."
Eric thought for a moment.
"I'm the head of our large extended family and will make the final decision. But I would like to meet with my family first. Most are flying in private jets from near New York and Colorado and California."
"Money is not a consideration for us fortunately. My first decision is to ask you to continue what you are doing for my Grandmother while I assemble the family."
No problem. I'll write the orders and wait to hear from you."
"Please let us know if we can make this easier for you. It can't be easy, I'm thinking. Here is my card and my number. Dr. Kerry will be notified tonight. He will be here in a few hours. Do you have his telephone number?"
"Yes, thank you."
Rainier. Sweet Pea. Raspberry. Those Gulfstream 650ER jets, instantly activated, pilots, crews, the Schuyler trust night operating team coordinating flights, notifying families to be ready and where, all night and into the morning came flights, tears, horror, loss, denial, prayer, loneliness, comforting food and an international airport tower very aware now of extra traffic and an unusual flurry of arrivals at PDX.
Barbara and her family, in again from Hillsboro after a shocked Secret Service agent had knocked on her door early in the morning with the news, the family up once more, sleepy numb teens pulling on their clothes, needing reminders to tie their shoes. A Schuyler helicopter to a roof close to the Benson Hotel, a suite and conference room waiting there.
Processions of taxis to the Benson Hotel, rooms there and a family conference at noon. Eric, Barbara and Loren sat on chairs in a packed conference room with the entire family including Jerry and Olive.
Eric talked to them and thanked them for coming so quickly. He assumed that they knew the details. No one had questions.
He opened the meeting with prayer for his Grandmother, prayer for his family, gave thanks to God for her wonderful, loving life and pleaded with God for the strength and wisdom for the family to come to a good decision now for her since she could not.
A quiet family. Few questions. Eric explaining the options. He announced that the decision was his to make as head of the family, but he wanted everyone on board to say that they at least understood and had a chance to agree or disagree before his decision.
Blossom Jones stood up. As a nurse and the `other' grandmother, what she had to say meant a lot to everyone there.
"Many of us here, not all, believe that we will see her again. We will be with her, hopefully, for all time in heaven. Her life, and I knew her very well, demonstrated the qualities of those persons that will be happy in heaven and although I don't speak for my Lord, I believe, I know I will see her again."
"I believe she should rest and sleep now. Her work here is done. She would be miserable if she could not tend her family and her roses and knit some. She will never do any of those again and I hope, Eric, you will decide to allow her to sleep."
There were murmurs of approval.
"What say you, then?" Eric stood and faced the family quietly, serious, straining to hear their thoughts.
"Unless there is strenuous objection with evidence to back it or some reason we need to consider that hasn't been considered..."
No voice was heard. The family felt heard and loved and led. They felt involved. They grieved together but not at the same rate or stage. Each person agreed that Carol would hate to be unable to be with her family or roses or knit some as Blossom had pointed out.
Eric paused for a moment longer, tears threatening to overwhelm.
"After this meeting is over, most of you will want to say goodbye to Grandma. The hospital is prepared for all of you, but not all together at once in the room, so let us take the limos waiting just outside the lobby to the hospital family waiting room and the doctors and nurses will take us in groups of your choosing to see her unless you don't want to."
"When you have all said goodbye, those of us that want to stay in the room while the ventilator is turned off can do that and again, those who don't can go back to the family waiting room."
"If the cardiac death is prolonged, feel free to take a taxi or limousine back to the Benson. I would like to eat a meal with you there at suppertime."
"After supper, Rainier, Sweet Pea and Raspberry will take us back home. There are two extra rented jets available to minimize the back and forth jet traffic in addition to those three aircraft if needed for more space, more luggage or additional destinations. Talk to the travel office if you need to talk to them about additional destinations or food preferences for your trip by six p.m. so provisions can be loaded before departure. We will hear Grandma Carol's will at the Schuyler Museum in Manhattan in about two weeks and we'll notify everyone."
"Supper is scheduled at a tentative time of six p.m. All five jets are on stand-by at PDX now and they will be fueled, stocked and crews ready at 8 p.m."
"Memorial services will be at the Riverside Church in Manhattan and you will all receive invitations and be notified as soon as possible." Then he broke down in tears and Brent led him to a limousine taking them to the hospital on the hills above Portland.
The family visited Carol and said their goodbyes. A few stayed for the ventilator part. Her heart stopped five minutes after the ventilator was turned off. She was pronounced dead by Dr. Kerry at that time.
Eric and Loren stayed for a moment longer.
Each of them, without consulting the other or talking about it, tapped her hand twice with their hand, turned to face each other, gave each other a hug and walked away hand-in-hand, feeling like little boys with no sidewalk to sleep on.