Brother, I'm Dying

  “You can’t fake vomit,” Pratt shot back. “This man is very sick and his medication shouldn’t have been taken away from him.”

  The medications were indeed taken away, replied the medic, in accordance with the facility’s regulations, and others were substituted for them.

  The medic and the nurse then moved my uncle from the asylum office to a wheelchair in the hallway.

  When Maxo arrived, he ran over to his father and seeing him slumped over in the wheelchair and leaning over the side, began to cry. Except for the occasional flutter of his eyelids, it seemed to Maxo that his father was unconscious. The first thing Maxo wanted to do was clean the vomit from his face. Though his father was in distress, he knew that underneath the sticky heave and chunks of still undigested food, this very proud man would feel humiliated by his appearance.

  “He wouldn’t be like this if you hadn’t taken away his medication,” Maxo said, sobbing.

  “He’s faking,” repeated the medic. “He keeps looking at me.”

  The medic then turned to Pratt and told him that based on his many years of experience at Krome, he could easily make such determinations.

  “Please just let me clean him,” Maxo sobbed.

  The medic told him that he’d been called only to help his father communicate with them. “If you can’t help, then we’ll send you back.”

  “He can’t speak without his voice box,” Maxo said. Covered in vomit, the voice box was no longer operable.

  During that discussion, it seemed to Maxo that his father’s eyes were fluttering a bit more. Maybe he could hear them. Maybe he was getting better, coming out of whatever had overcome him.

  “Papa,” Maxo pleaded, “please try to move. Maybe they’ll let you go.”

  My uncle opened his eyes and looked up at Maxo. He raised his hands from his lap, but they fell limply back to his knees. It seemed to Maxo that he was trying to mouth, “M pa kapab.” I can’t.

  My uncle’s eyes remained open, but they seemed cloudy and dazed, set on something way beyond Maxo, the guards, the medic, John Pratt and all the others around him.

  “He’s not cooperating,” the medic said. For a moment Maxo wasn’t sure whether the medic was talking about him or his father.

  “His eyes are open and he’s not unconscious,” added the medic. “I still think he’s faking, but we’ll take him to the clinic.”

  A stretcher was brought and my uncle placed on it.

  Pratt asked Officer Castro if they could continue the credible fear interview at the clinic.

  No, he was told. That was against the rules.

  I was on the phone with the medical transport service that was taking my father to Columbia Presbyterian when John Pratt called to tell me that my uncle had become ill. I was expecting good news, great news even. Before Pratt could even speak, I wanted to say, “Where do I go? How do I get him?”

  “Your uncle became ill during the credible fear interview.” Pratt’s solid voice was shaken. There was even a hint of horror in it.

  “They’ve taken him to the clinic at Krome,” he said. “I’m in the lobby, waiting to see if we can continue the interview in a while. Mr. Kurzban is making calls to the Miami district office to see if your uncle can receive a humanitarian parole.”

  Later that morning, in the Krome medical unit, my uncle’s condition worsened and according to Krome records, he was transported to Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital with shackles on his feet. That same morning was the first time in nine weeks that my father had been out of his house. It was a crisp autumn day in New York and most of the leaves had already fallen off the trees. Speeding down the Prospect Expressway toward Manhattan, my father felt every stop and turn, every painful jolt and bounce of the ride in his bones. Still, between coughing spells, he told my mother and Bob, “At least I’m outside.”

  Being outside was all my father got out of the visit. The lung specialist who saw him made him take off his shirt, listened to his labored breathing, and asked him if he had a DNR.

  “What’s a DNR?” my father asked Bob in Creole.

  “It’s a piece of paper that says if you die, you don’t want to be brought back to life and kept alive by machines,” Bob explained.

  “No,” my father told the doctor. “I don’t want to be kept alive by machines. There’s already been enough suffering.”

  Let the Stars Fall

  My uncle’s medical records indicate that he arrived in the emergency room at Jackson Memorial Hospital around 1:00 p.m. with an intravenous drip in progress from Krome. He was evaluated by a nurse practitioner at 1:10 p.m., his pulse (80), temperature (97.0), blood pressure (169/78) checked and noted. At 2:00 p.m., he signed, in an apparently firm hand, a patient consent form stating, “I [he did not fill in his name in the blank spot] consent to undergo all necessary tests, medication, treatments and other procedures in the course of the study, diagnosis and treatment of my illness(es) by the medical staff and other agents and/or employees of the Public Health Trust/Jackson Memorial Hospital (PHT/JMH) and the University of Miami School of Medicine, including medical students.”

  At 3:24 p.m., blood and urine samples were taken. His urine analysis showed some blood and a high level of glucose. His CBC, or complete blood count test, displayed a higher than normal number of white blood cells, which hinted at a possible infection. The test also showed elevated bilirubin or abnormal gallbladder and liver functions.

  At 4:00 p.m., during a more thorough evaluation by the nurse practitioner, he complained of acute abdominal pain, nausea and loss of appetite. A new IV was administered. Chest X-rays and abdominal films were taken. Pneumonia and intestinal obstruction were ruled out.

  At 5 p.m., he was transferred to the hospital’s prison area, Ward D. His Ward D admission note, which was also prepared by a registered nurse, remarks, “No acute distress, ambulatory. To IV hydrate and reevaluate. Patient closely observed.”

  Once in Ward D, where no lawyers or family members are allowed to visit, and where prisoners are restrained to prevent escapes, to protect the staff, the guards and the prisoners from one another, his feet were probably shackled once more, just as, according to Krome records, they’d been during the ambulance ride. He was given another IV at 10:00 p.m., at which time it was noted by the nurse on duty that he was “resting quietly.” He was to be further observed and followed up, she added.

  His vital signs were checked again at midnight, then at 1:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m. the next day, when his temperature was 96 degrees, his heart rate a dangerous 114 beats per minute and his blood pressure 159/80. At 9:00 a.m. he was given another IV and 5 mg of Vasotec to help lower his blood pressure. By 11:00 a.m., his heart rate had decreased to 102 beats per minute, still distressingly high for an eighty-one-year-old man with his symptoms.

  The records indicate that he was seen for the first time by a physician at 1:00 p.m., exactly twenty-four hours after he’d been brought to the emergency room. The physician, Dr. Hernandez, noted his test results, namely his high white cell count, his elevated liver enzymes and his persistent abdominal pain. He then ordered an abdominal ultrasound, which was performed at 4:56 p.m. The ultrasound showed intra-abdominal fluid around my uncle’s liver and sludge, or thickened bile, in his gallbladder. Before the test was administered, my uncle was given another patient consent form to sign. He signed it less comprehensibly than the first, next to a stamped hospital declaration of “PATIENT UNABLE TO SIGN.”

  At 7:00 p.m., after more than twenty hours of no food and sugarless IV fluids, my uncle was sweating profusely and complained of weakness. He was found to be hypoglycemic, with a lower than normal blood sugar level of 42 mg/dl. The doctor on duty prescribed a 5 percent dextrose drip and twenty minutes later, my uncle’s blood glucose stabilized at 121 mg/dl. It was then noted that he was awake and alert and his mental response “appropriate.”

  At 7:55 p.m., his heart rate rose again, this time to 110 beats per minute. An electrocardiogram (EKG) was performed at 8:16 p.m. Th
e next note on the chart shows that he was found pulseless and unresponsive by an immigration guard at 8:30 p.m. There is no detailed account of “the code” or the sixteen minutes between the time he was found unresponsive and the time he was pronounced dead, at 8:46 p.m. Only a quick scribble that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and advanced cardiac life support (ACLS) “continued for 11 mins.”

  Aside from the time he had throat cancer, my uncle nearly died on one other occasion. It was the summer of 1975, and I was six years old. He was stricken with malaria. Fever, chills, nausea and diarrhea had sent him to his doctor, who’d hospitalized him.

  I hadn’t seen him in several days when Tante Denise brought Nick, Bob and me to the hospital to visit him. When we walked into his small private room, he was curled in a fetal position, and though he was wrapped in several blankets, was shivering. His face was ashen and gray and his eyes the color of corn.

  “The children are here,” Tante Denise had told him.

  He seemed not to see us. Grunting, he closed his eyes as if to protect them from the ache coursing through the rest of his body. When he opened his eyes again, he glared at us as if wondering what we were doing there.

  “I brought the children,” Tante Denise said again. “You asked for them.”

  He looked at each one of us carefully, then said, “Ti moun, children.”

  “Wi,” we answered, a weak chorus of five-and six-year-olds.

  Looking at Nick, my uncle said, “Maxo, I’ll be sad to die without seeing you again.” Then turning to Bob, he said, “Isn’t that right, Mira?”

  He called me Ino, the name of his dead sister.

  “Ino knows I’m right,” he said. Then closing his eyes once more, he added, “Kite zetwal yo tonbe.” Let the stars fall.

  His words evoked a loud wail from Tante Denise, who grabbed us by the hands and pulled us away from the bed.

  “He’s gone,” she wailed. “My husband’s dying. He’s only speaking to people who aren’t here.”

  The fact that my uncle had asked the stars to fall was also not lost on Tante Denise, who believed, and had groomed us to accept, that each time a star fell out of the sky, it meant someone had died.

  I wasn’t looking at the sky when my uncle died at Jackson Memorial Hospital, but maybe somewhere a star did fall down for him.

  Thinking, as Pratt had been told, that my uncle was only being tested and observed, I spent the day waiting for his discharge and release. But late in the afternoon, I had a terrible feeling and began to frantically call the hospital until I reached a nurse in Ward D, the hospital’s prison ward.

  My uncle was resting, she said, but she couldn’t allow me to speak to him since any contact with the prisoners, either by phone or in person, had to be arranged through their jailers, in my uncle’s case, through Krome. While Pratt pleaded with the higher-ups at Krome to let us visit, I pleaded with the nurse to let me speak to my uncle. But neither one of us got anywhere, not even after my uncle died.

  When a close friend of Maxo’s, whom Maxo had used his one allowable phone call from Krome to tell, telephoned to break the news to me, I called Ward D again to ask if indeed it was true that a Haitian man named Joseph Dantica had just died there. The man who answered curtly told me, “Call Krome.” And when I did telephone Krome—thinking I should have an official answer before calling my relatives—I was told by another stranger that I should try back in the morning.

  By then it was nearly midnight.

  “Don’t tell your family now,” my husband said, rocking me as I sobbed in his arms. “At least let them get this good night sleep.”

  We spent most of the night awake, cradling along with my large belly this horrendous news that those who most loved my uncle were not yet aware of. Some, like my father, were probably still praying for his release and recovery. Others, like his sisters in Haiti, were surely worrying, dreading perhaps, yet never expecting this particularly heartbreaking ending.

  Waiting for daybreak, we reorganized the room in which my uncle was to have stayed, removing the paintings from the walls and stripping the bed of the sheets he was supposed to have slept on. As we slid the bed from one side of the room to the other, I worried for my father. Would he survive the shock? Placing a new set of curtains on the windows, after my husband had collapsed into bed, I worried for my daughter too. How would this stress, my sleeping so little, my lifting and lowering things and stooping in and out of closets in the middle of such a painful night affect her?

  The next morning, my first call was to Karl, who conferenced the rest of the calls with me. We called Uncle Franck, who moaned loudly over the phone, then my mother, who, as always, was the most composed.

  It was best that she, Bob and Karl tell my father in person, she said.

  My father was in bed, weakened but tranquil after yet another sleepless night, when they told him. For a moment he was absolutely still, then he pushed his head back and looked up at the ceiling and then again at my mother and brothers. He didn’t say anything at all. Perhaps he was numb, in shock. He didn’t appear surprised either, my mother said. It was, she said, as if he already knew.

  Brother, I’ll See You Soon

  Though we had been concentrating most of our efforts on getting my uncle released before tackling what we expected to be Maxo’s much more challenging case, Maxo was freed from Krome to bury his father. While calling some of my uncle’s friends in Port-au-Prince to make funeral arrangements, he was told not to bring the body back to Haiti. News of my uncle’s detention and death had already spread in Bel Air and the gangs had rejoiced, all the while vowing to do to my uncle in death what they’d been unable to in life, behead him.

  “They don’t want him back in Haiti,” Man Jou shouted loudly over the phone. “Neither alive nor dead.”

  At the same time, Maxo was reluctant to bury his father here in the United States, where in the end he had been so brutally rejected. He also felt bound by his father’s wish to have his remains in the family mausoleum, next to Tante Denise’s.

  Cremation was to me the obvious choice.

  “When things are calmer,” I told Maxo, “we can all go back and bury his ashes on his own soil with Tante Denise.”

  My uncle’s religious beliefs wouldn’t allow it, Maxo said.

  “In the final day of judgment,” he added, “when the dead rise out of their tombs, we want his body there.”

  In the final day of judgment, will my uncle care from whence he’d rise?

  Uncle Joseph’s most haunting childhood memory, and the only one he ever described to me in detail, was of the year 1933, when he was ten years old. The U.S. occupation of Haiti was nearing its final days. Fearing that he might at last be captured by the Americans to work in the labor camps formed to build bridges and roads, my grandfather, Granpè Nozial, ordered him never to go down the mountain, away from Beauséjour. Uncle Joseph wasn’t even to accompany his mother, Granmè Lorvana, to the marketplace, so that he might never lay eyes on occupying marines or they him.

  When he left home to fight, Granpè Nozial never told my uncle and his sisters, Tante Ino and Tante Tina, where he was going. (The other siblings, including my father, were not born yet.) Granmè Lorvana told them, however, that their father was fighting somewhere, in another part of the country. She also told them that the Americans had the power to change themselves into the legendary three-legged horse Galipòt, who, as he trotted on his three legs, made the same sound as the marching, booted soldiers. Galipòt was also known to mistake children for his fourth leg, chase them down and take them away.

  Still, my uncle and his sisters were never to let on that they knew anything about their father’s whereabouts. If they were ever asked by an adult where Granpè Nozial was, they were supposed to say that he had died, bewildering that adult and sending him/her directly to Granmè Lorvana to question her. But when Granpè Nozial returned from his trips, they were not to ask him any questions. Instead they were to act as though he’d never left, like he?
??d been with them all along. This is why they knew so little of Granpè Nozial’s activities during the U.S. occupation. This is why I know so little now.

  One day while Granpè Nozial was away and Tante Ino and Tante Tina became ill, Granmè Lorvana had no choice but to send my uncle to a marketplace down the mountain. As Uncle Joseph walked to the market, following the road that his mother had indicated, what he feared most was running into Granpè Nozial, who’d threatened him with all manner of bodily harm if he ever found him on the road leading out of Beauséjour.

  When my uncle finally reached the marketplace at midday, after hours and hours of walking, he saw a group of young white men in dark high boots and khakis at its bamboo-fenced entrance. There were perhaps six or seven of them, and they seemed to be kicking something on the ground. My uncle had never seen white men before, and their pink, pale skins gave some credence to his mother’s notion that white people had po lanvè, skins turned inside out, so that if they didn’t wear heavy clothing, you might always be looking at their insides.

  As my uncle approached the small circle of men and the larger crowd of vendors and shoppers watching with hands cradling their heads in shock, the white men seemed to him to be quite agitated. Were they laughing? Screaming in another language? They kept kicking the thing on the ground as though it were a soccer ball, bouncing it to one another with the rounded tips of their boots. Taking small careful steps to remain the same distance away as the other bystanders, my uncle finally saw what it was: a man’s head.

  The head was full of black peppercorn hair. Blood was dripping out of the severed neck, forming dusty dark red bubbles in the dirt. Suddenly my uncle realized why Granpè Nozial and Granmè Lorvana wanted him to stay home. Then, as now, the world outside Beauséjour was treacherous indeed.