Chapter Two
2005
Therefore, I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.
-Mark 11:24
August 1, 2005
The closing shift at the bank is generally quiet, with only the drive-through open for the last hour of the workday, and it was a familiar routine. Just before closing, at 5:45 p.m., my husband pulls up unexpectedly on his motorcycle asking if he can come inside the bank. It's a bit of a break from protocol, but I am the manager and don't see the harm, so I meet him around the front and let him inside. He's grinning and hands me a big, beautifully wrapped box.
"Open it," he says with a huge smile and devilish playfulness.
The motorcycle was an impulsive birthday gift for him a week prior. It was used and cost only $700. It was something he had wanted for a long time. With three kids, a mortgage, and little savings, even at that price it was an indulgent purchase. And now, here he was, surprising me, riding up on that bike like a schoolboy picking up his girl for a stolen night away.
Inside the box was a new dress, and strappy, very sexy, high heels. No occasion. Not my birthday, no anniversary, nothing to celebrate other than each other.
He encourages me to change from my bank manager work clothes into the sexy outfit that he picked out for me. He's ensured the kids were taken care of and made a dinner reservation for the two of us.
Mark is a romantic, but in a more subtle way normally. This felt so special. So unexpected. Clearly this husband of mine was on a mission to have a romantic, special evening.
"Why tonight? What did you buy?" I ask, half-jokingly.
"No reason," he says. "I can't explain it, except to say all day I felt compelled to make tonight special, just for us. I ignored it, several times-tried to disregard it and focus on work-and then I thought, why not?"
"Compelled?"
Grinning ear to ear with a Cheshire cat look of satisfaction, he confirms, "Exactly. Compelled. A nagging that we had to take this time for us. We need to be together tonight."
The next morning, I take the day off to take our daughter, Lilly, shopping for school clothes, which has the potential to be stressful due to her independent nature. She has a head full of her own ideas and fashion sense, but it is also fun and part of a tradition that began for me with my Aunt Dot, who had taken my sisters and me school clothes shopping every August since I could remember. Those trips were always a mixture of negotiation, money management, strong personalities, and preconceived ideas of needs and wants. Trying on clothes followed by lunch, sometimes in a fancy place like Hess's Patio, was something I looked forward to as a child and now relish as a mom.
My cellphone starts buzzing with life as soon as we step outside the mall doors. I must not have had a signal while in the mall, and it is clear someone is trying desperately to get ahold of me.
My mother-in-law, Emma, is a hearty, hardworking, kind woman who epitomizes the Pennsylvania Dutch work ethic. She grew up on a dairy farm; owned and operated a fully functioning farm, butchering business, and retail meat shop; and raised six children. When I call her back, she sounds off, yet I can't put my finger on it right away. In her stoic voice, she explains that Mark had been cleaning the lower barn with the skid loader and hit his head on a barn beam. Dell, my father-in-law, had been with him and is driving him to the hospital to get checked out. I wonder if it's anxiety I hear in her voice but dismiss it. Her manner is normally straightforward, and I decide that if something was really wrong, she'd just say so. I am about a half hour from home and ask if I can drop Lilly off to her at the farm, since it is on the way, before heading over to the hospital.
As I pull into the emergency room parking lot, I can see Dell standing outside the emergency room doors. Mark is right behind him. Both are still in their bright yellow, rubber work boots and farm work clothes. Dell looks anxious to me. Pacing, even.
Mark had left his truck-driving job at a dairy cooperative to work full time on his parents' farm shortly after Lilly was born so that he could be her primary caretaker while I worked at the local bank. His parents had successfully raised and educated all their six children from the farm, and he had been working there for seven years.
I replayed my brief interaction with Emma again in my head. Her manner felt odd to me. Possibly she was more concerned than her words portrayed. She said that Mark was walking and talking but complained that his neck felt strange. He wanted to have an X-ray to be sure it was okay. I wasn't terribly alarmed, but seeing the look on his dad's face at the emergency room doors, I was suddenly more nervous and couldn't figure out why they hadn't yet gone into the hospital. I had to have been behind them by at least an hour.
As it turns out, they were in and out of the emergency room already. The doctor had advised the X-ray revealed that Mark had not broken his neck. He should expect to be sore for a few days, so the doctor gave him a scrip for pain and they were ready to go home with orders to rest the remainder of the day. It strikes me that Mark looks like a ragdoll with an untethered neck. He struggles to hold his head upright, looks very pale, and is in obvious pain.
He sleeps in the recliner that night, unable to get comfortable in bed and not wanting to disturb me.
The next morning, Mark is still not himself and decides to stay at home from work to continue to rest. I stop up at the farm, where his parents are eating breakfast, to give them a quick update and let them know Mark wasn't coming up to work, before heading into work myself.
It is such a non-event. Stopping at the farm to see his parents is part of my morning routine. I pick up their banking to take with me to work nearly every day. Emma's kitchen table is always brimming with delicious food, and breakfast is often a traditional farm breakfast of eggs, toast, fried potatoes, and some sort of fried meat. She, on the other hand, religiously eats Cheerios with skim milk. Nevertheless, she makes a big, hot breakfast every morning for the men. The smells of her kitchen are warm and comforting. Normally Mark would have been working already for a few hours, sitting with them at the table for a breakfast break.
Emma's kitchen table is a family gathering place where laughter, delicious food, and countless hours of discussions around local genealogy and infamous family stories take place. The "locals," the farm families who have lived in this rural part of Pennsylvania for generations, are, in fact, often related to each other. The enduring unwinding of who is and was related to whom and how was a never-ending accompaniment to the delightful meals.
I explain to his parents that Mark was staying home today as he is still not feeling right. They listen and Dell, with a thoughtful intention that makes me pause, says that maybe Mark should get another opinion. My initial instinct is to rush off to work, like I normally would, but something about the way Dell quietly advises taking him to our family doctor gives me pause to reconsider.
I decide to head home to take another day off work myself. Even though his office is closed for the day, Fred, our family doctor, answers the phone and says to bring him right over. This small-town perk, a family doctor who answers his phone on his day off himself, no answering service or voicemail even, is hard to explain unless you have lived in your own small town with a "Doc Fred."
A quick neurological exam, very similar to what most people think of when they think of a DUI stop, and Fred is telling us that Mark needs an MRI just to make sure that he has nothing broken. He calls an imaging center, and we are headed for an MRI within minutes.
As we wait for the MRI results, we decide to quickly drive to a nearby Wendy's for a late lunch. We have just sat down to eat when the phone rings, and the MRI office manager is asking us to come right back. She's rather insistent, so we pack up our food and drive the five minutes back to their office.
Mark walks into the bathroom and the office manager hands me a landline phone with Doc Fred on the other end.
"Pam-where's Mark right now?"
"Hi, Fred, he's in the bathroom. Do you need to talk to him?"
"No. Listen to me carefully." He pauses rather ominously. "He has a broken neck. It's his C2. He needs to get to the hospital right now." I am trying to process what he said. "He's not throwing up, is he?"
Still trying to process what I think I just heard, I tepidly reply, "I don't think so, but we just ate lunch." I am trying to process where C2 is in the neck, and my brain goes to Christopher Reeves, Superman, and his broken neck. I am immediately afraid.
Doc Fred's energy is rapid fire, urgent, and specific. "Okay. He needs to get to the hospital. Do you want us to call an ambulance to take him or would you rather drive him there yourself?"
I am still trying to absorb what I am being told. "Um . . . I can take him. It'll be faster, I think, than waiting for an ambulance."
With some hesitation and then resignation, Fred proceeds with a steely instruction: "Okay, but listen to me. You must drive carefully. No bumps, avoid potholes, no short stops. Drive careful. I am going to call ahead and let them know you're coming,...
