Fireflies - By David Morrell Page 0,6

Matt the day of his extensive surgery. Waking from sedation after being monitored in Intensive Care, not yet knowing that the cancer had not been fully removed, he’d been shown the guitar and, too weak to hold it, had managed a tearful grin of joy, his weak voice breaking. “Isn’t that beautiful?” David, about to die now forty years later, still heard those heart-choking words reverberate through the morphine swirl of his mind. His son had survived to play that guitar only four muscle-weary times, discouraged because his fingers no longer retained their skill.

In the eulogy, David hadn’t included the further agonies his son had endured. After the chaotic heartbeat, respiration, temperature, and blood pressure that were part of the septic shock, Matthew’s kidneys had failed. Dialysis had been required. Not the kind in which a machine is used to filter poisons from the blood. That type of dialysis couldn’t have prevented Matt’s failed kidneys from causing excess fluid to accumulate in his body. Choosing a different method of dialysis, a surgeon had desperately slit open Matt’s abdomen and inserted a tube through which liquid was poured, its special properties establishing a correction of blood chemistry by means of a process called osmosis. The liquid sucked not only poisons but excess fluid through Matt’s abdominal lining, and every hour that poisoned fluid was drained, replaced by a fresh solution. But the poisons and excess fluid had resisted treatment, not leaving his body quickly enough.

Then Matthew’s left lung had collapsed. Then his muscles had begun to contract from lying motionless for too many days. Donna and David had put on and taken off his socks and sneakers every hour to prevent his Achilles’ tendons from tightening. Finally dead bacteria from his septic shock had collected within his heart. A chunk of this debris had broken from within the heart and plugged a main artery. Death after eight days in Intensive Care had not been from cancer, but instead from a heart attack. Ironies. How they kick you in the teeth.

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So David thought as he came closer to death in Intensive Care. Even now, after forty years, he remembered the autopsy report that he and his wife had received.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Morrell:

On behalf of the physicians and staff at the University Hospital, I extend our sincere sympathy at the loss of your son. This letter is to inform you of the preliminary results of his autopsy.

1. History of Ewing’s sarcoma with no gross residual tumor identified. Detailed analysis reveals no evidence of malignancy. (David’s translation: The treatment worked. The cancer was cured.)

2. Status post bone marrow transplantation: successful. Healthy blood had begun to generate. (Translation: If Matthew hadn’t succumbed to septic shock, he’d have been home within a few days, on the way to complete recovery.)

3. Endocarditis, an inflammation of the lining of the heart, with abnormal tissue deposits on the valves of the heart. (Translation: Debris from the dead bacteria.)

4. Complete blockage of the left main coronary artery. (Translation: The effects of the treatment, not the disease, were what killed him.)

5. The lungs were heavy in weight and fluid, consistent with respiratory distress syndrome. (The oxygen pumped into Matt’s lungs to keep him breathing would eventually have poisoned his lungs.)

6. The kidneys were swollen. The outer layers were pale, consistent with damage due to septic shock. (If his heart hadn’t killed him, his kidneys might have.)

7. The bladder was inflamed and hemorrhagic. (How much can a poor kid withstand?)

8. Both the stomach and the esophagus had ulcers. (Why not? Everything else had gone to hell.)

9. A cerebral aneurysm was present in one of the vessels in the brain, an abnormal dilation of the blood vessel. He also had small areas of bleeding along the lining of the brain. (Sure, the consequence of the septic shock, and if the cancer hadn’t killed him and the heart attack hadn’t, maybe with Matthew’s bad luck, he’d have had a stroke.)

10. The liver was found to be enlarged. (Might as well throw that in. The chemotherapy was extreme, all right. After the removal of four ribs and a third of a lung, he wasn’t strong enough to bear any further stress.)

If you have any questions, please call [the letter concluded]. Sincerely …

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David did have one question. How can life be so cruel? But the question at bottom was philosophical and an inappropriate response to an autopsy that proved his point empirically. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Watch out for the boogeyman. Eat