Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas (2 page)

I had just come off a twenty-four-hour rotation and I was tired beyond anything you can imagine. I was out walking my trusted and faithful golden retriever, Gustavus, a.k.a. Gus.

I suppose I should give you a little snapshot of myself back then. I had long blond hair, stood about five foot five, not exactly beautiful but nice enough to look at, a friendly smile most of the time, for most of the human race. Not too caught up in appearances.

It was a late Friday afternoon, and I remember that the weather was so nice, the air was sweet and as clear as crystal. It was the kind of day that I live for.

I can see it all as if it just happened.

Gus had sprinted off to harass and chase a poor, defenseless city duck that had wandered away from the safety of the pond. We were in the Boston Public Garden, by the swan boats. This was our usual walk, especially if Michael, my boyfriend, was working, as he was that night.

Gus had broken from his lead, and I ran after him. He is a gifted retriever, who lives to retrieve anything: balls, Frisbees, paper wrappers, soap bubbles, reflections on the windows of my apartment.

As I ran after Gus, I was suddenly struck by the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. Jesus, what is this?

It was so intense that I fell to my hands and knees.

Then it got worse. Razor-sharp knives were shooting up and down my arm, across my back, and into my jaw. I gasped. I couldn't catch my breath. I couldn't focus on anything in the Public Garden. Everything was a blur. I couldn't actually be sure of what was happening to me, but something told me heart.

What was wrong with me?

I wanted to cry out for help, but even a few words were beyond me. The tree-laden Garden was spinning like a whirligig. Concerned people began crowding around, then hovering over me.

Gus had come skulking back. I heard him barking over my head. Then he was licking my cheek, but I barely felt his tongue.

I was flat on my back, holding my chest.

Heart? My God. I am only thirty-five years old.

“Get an ambulance,” someone cried. “She's in trouble. I think she's dying.”

I am not! I wanted to shout. I can't be dying.

My breathing was becoming shallower and I was fading to black, to nothingness. Oh, God, I thought. Stay alive, breathe, keep conscious, Suzanne.

That's when I remember reaching out for a stone that was near me in the dirt. Hang on to this stone, I thought, hang on tight. I believed it was the only thing that would keep me attached to the earth at that scary moment. I wanted to call out for Michael, but I knew it wouldn't help.

Suddenly I realized what was happening to me. I must have passed out for several minutes. When I came to, I was being lifted into an ambulance. Tears streamed down my face. My body was soaked with sweat.

The EMT woman kept saying, “You're gonna be fine. You're all right, ma'am.” But I knew I wasn't.

I looked at her with whatever strength I could muster and whispered, “Don't let me die.”

All the while I was holding the small stone tightly in my hand. The last thing I recall is an oxygen mask being slipped over my face, a deathly weakness spreading through my body, and the stone finally dropping from my hand.

So, Nicky,

I was only thirty-five when I had the heart attack in Boston. The following day I had a coronary bypass at Mass. General. It put me out of action, out of circulation for almost two months, and it was during my recuperation that I had time to think, really think, maybe for the first time in my life.

I thoroughly, painfully examined my life in Boston, just how hectic it had become, with rounds, research, overtime, overwork, and double shifts. I thought about how I'd been feeling just before this awful thing happened. I also dealt with my own denial. My grandmother had died of heart failure. My family had a history of heart disease. And still I hadn't been as careful as I should have been.

It was while I was recuperating that a doctor friend told me the story of the five balls. You should never forget this one, Nicky. This is terribly important.

It goes like this.

Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you're keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls--family, health, friends, integrity--are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginnings of balance in your life.

Nicky, I finally understood.

Nick--

As you can probably tell, this is all pre-Daddy, pre-Matt.

Let me tell you about Dr. Michael Bernstein.

I met Michael in 1996 at the wedding reception for John Kennedy and Carolyn Bessette on Cumberland Island, Georgia. I must admit that both of us had led pretty charmed lives up until then. My parents had died when I was two, but I was fortunate enough to have been raised with great love and patience by my grandparents in Cornwall, New York. I went to Lawrenceville Academy in New Jersey, then Duke, and finally Harvard Medical School.

I felt incredibly lucky to be at each of the three schools, and I couldn't have gotten a better education--except that nowhere did I learn the lesson of the five balls.

Michael also went to Harvard Medical School, but he had graduated four years before I got there. We didn't meet until the Kennedy wedding. I was a guest of Carolyn's; Michael was a guest of John's. The wedding itself was magical, full of hope and promise. Maybe that was part of what drew Michael and me together.

What kept us together for the next four years was a little more complicated. Part of it was pure physical attraction, and at some point I want to talk to you about that--but not now. Michael was--is--tall and dashing, with a radiant smile. We had a lot of mutual interests. I loved his stories, always so droll, laconic, biting; I loved to listen to him play the piano and sing anything from Sinatra to Sting. Also, we were both workaholics--me at Mass. General, Michael at Children's Hospital in Boston.

But none of these things are what love is really about, Nicholas. Trust me on that.

About four weeks after my heart attack, I woke up one morning at eight o'clock. The apartment where we lived was quiet, and I luxuriated in the peacefulness for a few moments. It seemed to have a healing quality. Finally I got up and went to the kitchen to make myself breakfast before I went off to rehab.

I jumped back when I heard a noise, the scratch of a chair leg against the floor. Nervously, I went to see who was out there.

It was Michael. I was surprised to see him still home, as he was almost always out of the house by seven. He was sitting at the small pine table in the breakfast nook.

“You almost gave me a heart attack,” I said, making what I thought was a pretty decent joke.

Michael didn't laugh. He patted the chair next to him at the table.

Then, with the calmness and self-reverence I was used to from him, he told me the three main reasons why he was leaving me: he said he couldn't talk or relate to me the way he could with his male friends; he didn't think that I could have a baby now, because of my heart attack; he had fallen for someone else already.

I ran out of the kitchen, and then out of the house. That morning the pain I felt was even worse than the heart attack. Nothing was right with my life; I had gotten it all wrong so far. Everything!!!

I did love being a doctor, but I was trying to do it in a large, somewhat bureaucratic, big-city hospital, which just wasn't right for me.

I was working so hard--because there was nothing else of value in my life. I earned about $120,000 a year, but I was spending it on dinners in town, getaway weekends, clothes that I didn't need or even like that much.

I had wanted children all my life, yet here I was without a significant other, without a child, without a plan, and no prospects to change any of it.

Here's what I did, little boy.

I began to live the lesson of the five balls.

I left my job at Mass. General. I left Boston. I left my murderous schedule and commitments behind. I moved to the one place in the world where I had always been happy. I went there, truly, to mend a broken heart.

I was turning endlessly around and around like a hamster on a wheel in a tiny cage. My life was stretched to the limit, and something was bound to give. Unfortunately, it had been my heart.

This wasn't a small change, Nicky; I had decided to change everything.

Nicky,

I arrived on the island of Martha's Vineyard like an awkward tourist, lugging the baggage of my past, not knowing what to do with it yet. I would spend the first couple of months filling cupboards with wholesome, farm-fresh foods, throwing out old magazines that had followed me to my new home, and I would also settle into a new job.

From the time I was five until I was seventeen, I had spent summers with my grandparents on Martha's Vineyard. My grandfather was an architect, as my father had been as well, and he could work from his home. My grandmother Isabelle was a homemaker, and she was gifted at making our living space the most comfortable and loving place I could begin to imagine.

I loved being back on the Vineyard, loved everything about it. Gus and I often went to the beach in the early evening, and we sat out there until the light of day was gone. We played ball, or sometimes with a Frisbee for the first hour or so. Then we huddled together on a blanket until the sun went down.

I had negotiated for the practice of a general practitioner who was moving to Illinois. We were switching lives in some ways. He was going to Chicago just when I was exiting city life. My office was one of five doctors' offices in a white clapboard house in Vineyard Haven. The house was more than a hundred years old and had four beautiful antique rockers on the front porch. I even had a rocker at the desk where I worked.

Country doctor resonated with a wonderful sound for me, like recess bells of an old country school. I was inspired to hang out a shingle that said as much: SUZANNE BEDFORD--COUNTRY DOCTOR--IN.

I began to see a few patients in my second month on Martha's Vineyard.

Emily Howe, seventy, part-time librarian, honored member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, hard, steadfast, and against everything that had occurred since about 1900. Diagnosis: bronchitis; Prognosis: good.

Dorris Lathem, ninety-three, had already outlived three husbands, eleven dogs, and a house fire. Healthy as a horse. Diagnosis: old gal; Prognosis: will live forever.

Earl Chapman, Presbyterian minister. General Outlook--always his own. Diagnosis: acute diarrhea; Prognosis: possible recurrence of what the Lord might call getting even.

My first patient list read like a who's who of a William Carlos Williams poem. I imagined Dr. Williams walking the streets of the Vineyard on his appointed rounds, an icy wind blowing from the distant hills, milk frozen on every landing, the famous wheelbarrow soldered into the winter mud. There he'd be, making a late-afternoon call on the boy who fell off his sled and broke an arm along with his pride.

This was for me. I was experiencing a fantasy that was a million miles away when I lived in Boston.

But, in fact, it was just down Route 3 and across the water.

I felt I had come home.

Nicholas,

I had no idea that the love of my life was here--just waiting for me. If I had, I would have run straight into Daddy's arms. In a heartbeat.

When I first arrived on Martha's Vineyard, I was unsure about everything, but especially where to settle. I drove around looking for something that said “home,” “you'll be okay here,” “look no further.”

There are so many parts of our island that are beautiful, and even though I knew it in some ways, it sang out differently to me this time.

Everything was different because I felt different. Up Island was always special to me, because this is where I had spent so many glorious summers. It lay like a child's picture book of farms and fences, dirt roads, and cliffs. Down Island was a whirl of widow's walks, gazebos, lighthouses, and harbors.

It was a turn-of-the-century boathouse that finally stole my heart. And still does. This truly was home.

It needed to be fixed up, but it was winterized, and I loved it at first sight, first smell, first touch. Old beams--which had once supported stored boats--crisscrossed the ceiling. Upstairs I eventually put in corner portholes to let the sun come in in hoops of light. The walls had to be painted robin's-egg blue because the whole downstairs opened to a view of the sea. Big barnlike doors slid port and starboard to bring everything that was once outside, inside.

Can you imagine, Nicky, living practically right on the beach, like that? Every part of me, body and soul, knew I'd made the right decision. Even my sensible side was in agreement. I now lived between Vineyard Haven and Oak Bluffs. Sometimes I'd be working out of my home or making house calls, but the rest of the time I'd be at Martha's Vineyard Hospital or the Vineyard Walk-In Medical Center in Vineyard Haven. I was also doing some cardiology rehab at the Medical Center.