“I’m always passing by the hospice. It’s small, but we’re lucky to have it, so far from the city.” Why did Holly feel that she had to make conversation? Becoming a better listener was on her planning board. Right after doing one hundred crunches a day and training for a marathon.
“They do limited respite care now. A dedicated room was funded this year. Before that they merely coordinated efforts to help people stay at home as long as possible. Usually I ask a neighbour to stay at the house with her, but she was away, and yesterday I had to go to the mainland on urgent business. Then the nine p.m. ferry was cancelled due to engine trouble, so I got home around midnight.” A groan of a sigh expressed Marilyn’s frustration.
People loved to complain about the rising costs of the ferries along with the shrinking service, but an island with a bridge wasn’t a real island. Holly nodded as she drove swiftly but prudently on the winding road, knowing that a logging truck was around every corner. Becoming another statistic wouldn’t help. “I’m sorry to hear about your partner. What...happened?”
Marilyn leaned back in the seat, taking deep breaths to calm herself, one hand on her breastbone as she loosened the scarf. A small blue vein pulsed at the fragile skin of her throat. “Nothing that we haven’t been expecting. She’s had multiple sclerosis for a few years. It came on late, and it came on fast.”
“Isn’t that unusual? I thought it struck people by their twenties.” Holly recalled a girl in her zoology class who had managed with arm crutches, a real hero who didn’t suffer fools gladly.
“Canada has one of the highest rates in the world, and British Columbia leads the provinces. It may have something to do with lack of sunshine and Vitamin D. Women are twice as likely to contract it, so are people with northern European backgrounds. As for age, most cases begin between twenty and forty. And some have a more benign condition with little progress in symptoms.” She spoke with a resigned authority.
“Haven’t there been any medical advances in recent years?” Holly slowed to let the car ahead pull into the post office.
“It’s ironic, but that discovery about a vascular connection may have some merit. Even so, the provincial government won’t pay for some of the latest drugs. Nothing helped Shannon, not even a treatment we got in Seattle. She was in acute pain from the spasticity. It was heart-breaking.” Marilyn pinched the bridge of her aquiline nose until the skin was white. “Listen to me going on, but it was all so crazy. You get desperate.”
“The island is famous for alternative therapies. You must have tried them all,” Holly said sympathetically. Canada’s pot laws didn’t punish discreet personal use, and the boost to the provincial economy from B.C. bud was legendary. But many saw cannabis as a gateway drug.
“Bee venom. Medical marijuana. Replacing mercury fillings. Each time the disappointment increased. Then a heart condition developed as one of the side effects. To think that I was so naïve as a child that I believed people could have only one health problem at a time.” Marilyn shook her head in self-rebuke.
“That must have been hard for you. Could she walk?”
Marilyn’s hands clasped each other in her lap, taut with tension. “That was the worst part. Shannon was a great hiker. We did all the island trails, from Tofino, throughout Strathcona, even up north and across in the Olympics. Then five years ago the unsteadiness started. Bothersome vision problems. She bluffed for awhile, tried to pretend that nothing was wrong. But the myelin connections weren’t working. Then her job...” She paused for a moment as if to muster the will to continue. From a pocket she pulled a tissue and dabbed at her nose.
“What did she do?” There Holly was using the past tense. Dehumanizing the sick.
“She worked as a nurse in the O.R. at the General. That requires not only consummate training and skill but considerable stamina. Those who can do it are worth platinum for the profession. Every surgeon asked for her. Double shifts were common, and not for the money. But it was no use, not even a desk job was feasible. The Valium for seizures made her so groggy, too.”
“Medical personnel are godlike to me. I can’t imagine the stress. The highs must be wonderful, but the lows...you can’t save everyone.” Neither can the police, she thought, but we try, one little corner of the world at a time.
They slowed for the first traffic light as West Coast Road became Sooke Road at the town limits. At the hub of the small village of six thousand were Wiskers and Waggs Pet Store, the Stone Pipe Restaurant, a Petro-Canada and a convenience store. They passed competing strip malls before turning right heading for a small building shared by a pizza business and the hospice, an odd couple made odder by the bloom-filled boat advertising a florist. From east down the highway, flanked by evergreen hills on one side and the sweeping harbour on the other, shrieked the Doppler sound of an ambulance. Marilyn was twisting her scarf into a rag. Holly could hear it ripping like the tears in the woman’s heart.
Raucous crows dueled for the prize of a McDonald’s bag. Wrappers and cups spilled onto the gravel. The crafty birds seemed oblivious to the presence of cars, hopping out of reach at the last second. Down the highway berm on a quad rode a figure in workclothes, carrying a stick with a pick on the end.
The car had barely stopped when Marilyn snapped off her belt, jumped out and ran the few steps to the hospice, yanking the door open. The ambulance arrived and backed in. A man and a woman hustled a gurney with dispatch. Holly held the door for them, seeing a bright and cozy sitting room with a desk to the side. Bateman prints on the walls. A vase of carnations. A shadowed hallway led to the back of the building.
Holly could hear crying from the interior. “Shannon, darling. I’m so sorry. I thought that...” Marilyn said. This part of duty Holly dreaded, forced to take a ringside seat at an inevitable tragedy. It was her role to be supportive but not intrude, get the information required, make sure there was support and move on to the next crisis.
“Please, ma’am,” came an official reply from the crew. “Allow us. We’ll take her now.” Then there was a “Damn!”
“Defib! Stat!” The female ET charged back into the hall and ran to the vehicle. She retrieved a cumbersome machine on wheels and hustled it up the wheelchair ramp.
From inside, yells and thumps ensued, along with a few swear words. A cry rent the air, a dreadful keening alive enough to have strength to die. Then all was silent. Along with the woman at the desk, Holly lowered her head in respect. Had Marilyn arrived only in time to say goodbye?
Despite the early hour, a small crowd was gathering, and someone had the temerity to peek into the front window. Constitutional walkers strolled the quiet streets, fueled in the summer by hoards of tourists stopping at Serious Coffee, McDonald’s and A&W. With no movie theatres or other commercial entertainment other than a par-three golf course, there was little to do but enjoy the temperate weather and watch the boats and comical seals in Canada’s southernmost harbour. Holly went out to supervise, waving off a young boy with a practiced gesture. “We have an emergency here. Please stand back and give the ETs room to work. That means you, son. Now hustle.”
Then the door opened, and the gurney rolled by like a deliberately slow funeral cortege. The body was covered with a light blue blanket, except for an exposed hand with a simple gold ring. Marilyn walked alongside, holding the hand, pacing herself. Her eyes met those of the ETs, and she nodded as the gurney stopped. Her finger touched its soulmate’s index twin in the briefest contact, the final movement in a dance from a bygone era but one in which the energy of life could no longer pass. Then she blinked, moved back, and the team closed the van doors with a gentle push. With no sirens or reason for haste, the vehicle tracked down the road toward Victoria.
Marilyn’s head was bowed, a lonely character on an empty stage. “She just let go. The spark flickered out. I don’t know how she kept going the last few months. Sheer will, I guess.”
“I’m