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Tami's Hair
Tami finally died after 18 days of coma, of prayers, of positive thinking and reality knowing, of guilt and despair and absolute disbelief. Eighteen days of looking like an angel asleep. Nineteen years old with no sign of injury—just a white turban where her beautiful, long blond hair had to be shaved for the surgery on the hematoma at the back of her head. It was on the left side, but the Doctors had mistakenly operated on the right side first, who knows if it was already too late? She was on a respirator that breathed for her, but even this had no impact on how beautiful she was. I remember the rhythm, six regular breaths, then a sigh, trying to imitate life. Six breaths, and a sigh. The respirators surrounding her bed in the intensive care ward on their own cycle. Six breaths, and a sigh.
I listened to this for 18 days, or nights. There was no sense of time. The nurses changed, Tami lay asleep in her white bed, the machine breathing for her, six breaths and a sigh. Listening for too long could either be slow torture waiting for that sigh, or it could hypnotize you with the steady rhythm.
"Think positive," everyone said. "No negative thoughts!" Bullshit. She was not coming back from wherever she had escaped. I sometimes thought of her around us, urging us to not be stupid, couldn't we see her body no longer meant anything? Six breaths and a sigh, this was how a machine kept itself alive, it had nothing to do with her. Other times I would think she is so far from us, we no longer mean anything to her, she no longer knows of us. A speck on her Journey, so far removed from these little humans, this little place. Just a short stop, so insignificant. This life-crushing event that would change us forever.
We can only guess until we die, but whether she is near or far, she is not here. I'm only nineteen, and God how I miss her. She is still alive (six breaths and a sigh), but she has been gone from the first day. My only girl friend, and she is gone.
Her friends, family and I try to reassure each other, this striking life force, she cannot possibly die. I could believe many other unbelievable things before I could believe this. We tell stories of things she has said, things we have done. Sometimes we laugh until we cry. We never, never speak in the past tense. Even if she needs years of therapy, we will be there for her, work with her, make her well again.
Days pass, and our assurances acquire a sense of desperation. People who have come from a long way go home, and most others have stopped coming by. There are purple circles under our eyes, and thinking becomes less rational. But hope is still there, fucking hope goes on. Even though I know she will die, it still tortures me. My God, thirteen days on a respirator, and it seems she looks more beautiful then ever. The nurses are much more nonchalant now, there are long periods of time when I am there alone, still trying to sleep in the waiting room on the plastic couch. Her mother is trying to take care of Tami's two brothers and find friends to take care of three year old Tiffany, but as the days pass, friends become less and less willing to offer unconditional help. If her mother is there, we do not tell funny stories anymore. We are so exhausted we hardly talk, but no one is sleeping except Tami. Six breaths and a sigh. I hear it even when I go home for a few hours, it robs me of sleep, and I grow resentful.
About the tenth night, I stood beside her and held her hand. It was late or early. I only know I was alone with the terribly sick, the machines, and the nurses. Tami's nurse was suctioning and wiping under her nose. Tami did not move, she did not respond to pain. Although I knew, I asked the nurse, if she had ever seen anyone hurt like this who recovered. Anything at all. She looked at me, and she could see I was not going to get hysterical. I just needed to hear the truth spoken out loud. Not the crap the daytime shift handed out, which was absolutely incomprehensible. They only told you what they thought you wanted to hear.
"No," she said, "When they are like this they don't come back."
When I asked her what was she wiping from Tami's nose, was it blood from the tubes, she told me with no bullshit that it was actually brains, that she'd hit her head so hard her brain tissue was leaking from her nose.
I was so grateful to that nurse. She gave me what I needed to hear, the truth, and it relieved me of that small bit of uncertainty that was always present, keeping me off balance. Maybe she wasn't as bad as I thought. Maybe by thinking these negative thoughts, I was actually harming her…
I stood by her bed and held her hand. It was about the fifteenth day, and I wanted to make a deal with God. I was tired and angry. All other life was suspended. I could tell no one, but I sometimes wished she would just die, so I could leave this fucking ICU. I knew I was going to do things I did not want to do. I would have to go to her funeral. I would have to grieve. I would have to watch her mother and family grieve. I would not be able to laugh again for a long time without feeling guilty. I knew this would go on for years--that my whole life had changed. I would be absolutely alone without her. All the years we had spent together would be memories only in my head. All our inside jokes would be remembered only by me, the things we saw, what we learned together, things we had done, good and bad times would not be understood or shared with any other person. I would say, "do you remember when…" to no one. Although I knew how selfish these thoughts were, I meant them. I felt I could not face the coming years. I could never be as close to anyone else, and would I even want to? This selfish pain was incredible. Then a clear arrow of bright pain would knife through me, and I would almost collapse at how much I loved her, and how I would miss her, just for being her. My Tami.
The reason she was here was because she had taken a Quaalude or two or three, and gotten drunk at a nightclub with her boyfriend. That always was the worst combination Tami ever used, she just went nuts, and into long blackouts with depression afterwards. Although we often mixed sometimes lethal combinations of drugs and alcohol, she usually avoided mixing those two, because she knew her reaction was so severe. She had opened the door and fell or jumped out of the boyfriend's square back VW during an argument with him. He was going about 40mph. It really didn't surprise me, her extreme action, because I had seen her put herself in terrible danger before. It was like an anger or pain hidden deep inside. She never talked about it. Sometimes she would strike out, blindly, hopelessly, at herself or whoever was near her. After the club that night, they had driven over to her house. Her mother could see she was in no condition to go anywhere, and they argued and physically fought on the front lawn. Finally, she screamed at her mother she was leaving, and got into Ricky's car. Ricky assured her mom he would just take her to his house and calm her down, and that was the last time Tami's mother ever saw her conscious. After she jumped, with no traffic on the road, Ricky picked her up, and drove her to the nearest hospital.
This is how I got to be standing by the railing of my best friend's bed, holding her hand and trying to make a deal with God. Days before this, while standing alone with her one night (visiting hours were not enforced because they knew she was not going to wake up), I realized I would begin to breath along with the machine. I don't know if this was a conscious thing or just something that just happened. It made me realize the machine was breathing for all of us. I would consciously break the rhythm, then eventually fall back into it. Six breaths and a sigh. I wanted to pray, or make a deal. "God, if you just open her eyes, and let her come back, I swear, on her life God, I will NEVER use drugs again."
I could not say that prayer. The problem was not that I did not believe He could do it, but I knew, in my deepest place, that I would not be able to keep my part of the bargain. I knew that even to bring my best friend back, as much as I loved her, I could not keep that promise. So I never said that prayer. I wanted to, and I believe only God and maybe Tami knows how that felt, not to be able to promise that. All I could pray is that God would take care of her and her family. Today, I believe that God understands.
A few weeks after she died we unpacked her things, which the hospital had taken off her. We put them into boxes--her jewelry, her clothes and shoes, all the paperwork. At the bottom of the box, there was a light blue plastic bag. There was no hospital identification on it at all, nothing that revealed its contents. Marian opened it, and I turned around when she said, "Oh my God." She was holding Tami's hair. The beautiful, long blond hair she was so proud of had been bagged up and returned with her other personal effects.
There was a balloon in the living room that Tami had blown up for Tiffany's party. Slowly but surely it deflated.
I like to think the last of Tami's breath had not been forced in and out by a machine.
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AUTHOR NOTES:
Biography not supplied.
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