Stop Time

I worried that Bob would be alone when the doctor called him with the test results. I called the doctor to ask her to wait until I got to him before she called. It was too late.

"Doctor, I don't want my brother to hear the results when he is alone."
"I've spoken to your brother."
"Was it positive?"
"It was. Yes."
"Do you think it is full blown?" I asked.
"I do. Yes."
"How did he take it?"
"I think you should go to him," she said.

I hung up the phone and immediately went to my mother's house.
She was standing in the kitchen as I walked through the door.
“Mother, I have some very bad news.”
“What?” She asked.
“Bob has AIDS.”
I wasn’t sure if she knew what that meant.
“Mom, you know there’s no cure for AIDS. This is a death sentence.”
And so, we drove to Laguna to be with him. It was the beginning of the end.
It was April 22, 1994.

Friday April 23, 1994
I was alarmed the next morning when I called him.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
With a weak, cracking voice he said, “Oh not too well this morning.”

I jumped in my old gray Ford van and drove from Anaheim to Laguna. What if he couldn’t get to the phone to punch in the gate code, I worried. I worried the whole way down the freeway - the 5, the 22, the 55, PCH. The blue green ocean taunted me as I turned at Main Beach. This paradise, this artist’s colony had turned upside down. I now walked in the shadows along the underbelly of Laguna Beach where the sun doesn’t shine.
I got to his gate and punched the code. The phone rang. I waited. It would be the beginning of my waiting. A broken, barely audible voice answered, “Yes?”
“Bob. It’s Amy. I’m at the gate.”
It opened.
I angled my van into one of the tiny condominium parking spaces made for compact cars. Every turn of the wheel a frustration delaying me. I looked up to his window. Oh My God, I thought, who is that frail old man in the brown and white bathrobe? Panic registered in my every move – fumbling to take the keys from the ignition, to grab my purse, to jump out of the car, hurry, hurry, hurry.
I skipped every other stair as I ran up to the second floor. There he was, standing at that window, his back to me. The air was stale. A yellow sunflower grinned at me from its vase on the dining room table. I’d brought it over to him the previous week – an attempt at cheer while we waited for the diagnosis.
I slowly moved toward my brother. At fifty-three years old he looked older than Dad had when he’d died at sixty-four. He turned toward me. His mouth stretched into a long straight line of resignation. It was 10:00 a.m. Our appointment with the AIDS specialist was at 5:00 p.m. My plan had been to bring him to our mother’s house in Anaheim to rest until the appointment. Simple I had thought. It would take me four hours to get him out the door.

He wanted to rest. I took his elbow. The skin under his arm felt soft. Slowly, ever so slowly, his feet shuffled along the floor. Why couldn’t he pick them up, I wondered. Later, I’d learn it was the HIV in his central nervous system. We moved to the couch. He almost toppled trying to sit. My heart ricocheted. Later he would sway at the top of the stairs but that wouldn’t be for a couple of hours.

While he rested, I busied myself with chores. Cleaned up the kitchen, emptied the trash, put water in the vase, put the laundry in a bag to take to Mom’s (where it would stay).
Upstairs I changed the sheets on his bed as if he’d need them.
I checked on him. “Ready to go?” I asked. He wanted to shower. Slowly, ever so slowly, we inched our way a few steps. He had to rest. Shuffle. Stop. Shuffle. Stop. To the bottom of the stairs. He panted. Rest. I brought a chair to him. We’d come five feet.
Another hour.

“O.K.,” I said with the fake enthusiasm of a coach to a hopeless athlete, “Let’s try again.”
Up the stairs. Step. Rest. Step. Rest. I held his elbow in my hand. His feet were purple. I later learned it was the Kaposi Sarcoma. We stood on the landing while he struggled to catch his breath.

What has happened to my brother?

Finally I got him to his room. He flopped onto the bed. He needed to rest. I paced. A controlled panic set in.

I waited. I checked. “O.K. Bob, ready to try your shower?” I asked.
I helped him get up from the bed. Should I help him undress I wondered. No. I can’t do that. Undress my brother.
The bathroom door closed. I listened. If the water ran straight I’d go in. Relieved, I heard the unsteady rhythm of a splashing shower. I stood at the door of the bathroom: what if he falls? How will he get dressed? The shower stopped. Could he get out? How would those spindly, unsteady legs hold him up while he dried off? I waited and listened. The door knob turned. I jumped and ran out of his room. Down a few stairs. I waited. Then I walked back to his door. There he was in that brown and white terry bathrobe, sitting on the edge of his bed. The shower had worn him out. Vacuumed the oxygen right out of him.

I sat next to him. Brother and sister. Shit, I thought. Shit.
“What time is it?” he asked.
I looked at the clock. It was 1:30 p.m.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
I told him. “The AIDS doctor.”
Silence.
Like a doddering old man, he asked me again as if for the first time, “what time is it?”
I looked at the clock.
Time had stopped.
We were on our own time now.
“1:30,” I said.
We repeated this conversation a dozen times.

He dressed and we began the descent down three flights of stairs. Step by step slowly resting, waiting, breathing - we reached the bottom.
I watched him shuffle through the door, my old man brother in baggy pants, and I knew he’d never be back. I hadn’t known that when I’d arrived four hours earlier. I turned to look back at the room. My stomach in a knot, the air still, the sunflower grinning. I picked up the bag of laundry and closed the door.

“Where are we going?” he asked me. “The AIDS doctor,” I said.
“What time is it?”
“2:00 p.m.” I said.
The CD on my stereo played the song “Wilkomen” from the musical “Cabaret.”
“That’s Joel Grey”, he said.
“Yes, Bob,” I responded. “It’s Joel Grey.”

(Aria- A Sister's Journey With AIDS to be continued in next post The AIDS Doctor)