Journals of Eleanor Druse, The (Digital Picture Book) by Eleanor Druse
Authors: Eleanor Druse
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examination.
I had no doubt that if I had confided in Metzger and shared the details of my near-death experience, he would have defined me as an epileptic in the grip of seizures. My head hurt and the sore parts of me were ready to believe in anything that might explain what had happened to me that December night at Kingdom Hospital. All my life I had waited for an angel, a vision, a journey out of myself, a visitation so bracing that I would gasp with delight at a world full of wonders and see with my new eyes naked what my faith had told me for decades: that the spiritual realm, though invisible, is inseparable from the material world, and that life circulates like blood through them both. No here. No hereafter. Only a great unity! And Sally Druse right there in the thick of it!
What if these seizures could explain all the extraordinary things that I had ever experienced? Not only Madeline’s infested corpse, but the transcendence and prayerful joy that was mine in the deep reveries of meditation? What then? What if the vast inscape of my entire spiritual life derived from a lesion?
Patients and staff streamed by me in the busy hallways of Boston General. Sick and well. Busy and indolent. I looked into the eyes of everyone who walked by me, wondering what aberrations of brain chemistry and organic syndromes made them who they were. Did that awful sturgeon Stegman have a pomposity lesion somewhere in there? And if so, would he agree to go under the knife to have it removed and have his personality repaired? Did neurosurgeons propose cutting into Barbra Streisand’s or Rush Limbaugh’s head because of the crazy shit they say?
When I returned from my jaunt, the room was quiet, and I resolved then and there to meet my mysterious roommate, who apparently was so ill that she could neither hear nor respond to my voice, and who needed two nurses to bathe her.
I sat on the edge of my bed and faced the curtain between us. The morning sunrise slanted in through the windows and made the flowers Bobby had brought me even lovelier in the new light.
“Mrs. Conlan? My name is Sally Druse. I’m your new roommate and I’d like to come over and see you, if it’s a convenient time.”
Nobody answered, even though, after half a minute or so, I heard a soft groan, followed by gurgling, then metal rattling again, as if Mrs. Conlan had grabbed the bedrail and shaken it hard.
I’m the neighborly sort, so I got out of my bed and went to the foot of hers, where I could see an opening in the draperies. The linen curtain made a pale scrim and diffused the harsh light of the sun into a nimbus that lit the interior with an otherworldly light.
On the bed a gaunt, ghastly human figure lay supine, with pillows wedged here and there on either side of her, without which I had the impression she would shrivel into a sideways fetal position and perish. She appeared youthful—thirty or so—but with a lifetime’s worth of suffering etched into the lineaments of her grimacing face. Her neck was extended and arched, almost as if she were trying to see something above the head of her bed. She appeared wide awake, but her eyeballs had rolled back into her hollow, dark sockets, where gravity alone controlled their listless movements. Likewise her mouth had fallen open and seemed permanently ajar, her chin shuddering with each breath. Her hands were curled up in front of her like the talons of a dead bird, with splints fastened at each wrist, to keep the lingers from curling into themselves. As I watched, she began working her mouth as if she were chewing without ever swallowing. She was appallingly thin, a human leftover from nature’s repast, her miserable figure lit by a morning radiance that was too harsh for my ancient eyes and my tender heart.
I spotted the source of the rattling: Her hands were tethered to the steel bedrails, and every so often, her arms jerked spastically and yanked the railings against the bed frame.
“My poor Mrs.
I had no doubt that if I had confided in Metzger and shared the details of my near-death experience, he would have defined me as an epileptic in the grip of seizures. My head hurt and the sore parts of me were ready to believe in anything that might explain what had happened to me that December night at Kingdom Hospital. All my life I had waited for an angel, a vision, a journey out of myself, a visitation so bracing that I would gasp with delight at a world full of wonders and see with my new eyes naked what my faith had told me for decades: that the spiritual realm, though invisible, is inseparable from the material world, and that life circulates like blood through them both. No here. No hereafter. Only a great unity! And Sally Druse right there in the thick of it!
What if these seizures could explain all the extraordinary things that I had ever experienced? Not only Madeline’s infested corpse, but the transcendence and prayerful joy that was mine in the deep reveries of meditation? What then? What if the vast inscape of my entire spiritual life derived from a lesion?
Patients and staff streamed by me in the busy hallways of Boston General. Sick and well. Busy and indolent. I looked into the eyes of everyone who walked by me, wondering what aberrations of brain chemistry and organic syndromes made them who they were. Did that awful sturgeon Stegman have a pomposity lesion somewhere in there? And if so, would he agree to go under the knife to have it removed and have his personality repaired? Did neurosurgeons propose cutting into Barbra Streisand’s or Rush Limbaugh’s head because of the crazy shit they say?
When I returned from my jaunt, the room was quiet, and I resolved then and there to meet my mysterious roommate, who apparently was so ill that she could neither hear nor respond to my voice, and who needed two nurses to bathe her.
I sat on the edge of my bed and faced the curtain between us. The morning sunrise slanted in through the windows and made the flowers Bobby had brought me even lovelier in the new light.
“Mrs. Conlan? My name is Sally Druse. I’m your new roommate and I’d like to come over and see you, if it’s a convenient time.”
Nobody answered, even though, after half a minute or so, I heard a soft groan, followed by gurgling, then metal rattling again, as if Mrs. Conlan had grabbed the bedrail and shaken it hard.
I’m the neighborly sort, so I got out of my bed and went to the foot of hers, where I could see an opening in the draperies. The linen curtain made a pale scrim and diffused the harsh light of the sun into a nimbus that lit the interior with an otherworldly light.
On the bed a gaunt, ghastly human figure lay supine, with pillows wedged here and there on either side of her, without which I had the impression she would shrivel into a sideways fetal position and perish. She appeared youthful—thirty or so—but with a lifetime’s worth of suffering etched into the lineaments of her grimacing face. Her neck was extended and arched, almost as if she were trying to see something above the head of her bed. She appeared wide awake, but her eyeballs had rolled back into her hollow, dark sockets, where gravity alone controlled their listless movements. Likewise her mouth had fallen open and seemed permanently ajar, her chin shuddering with each breath. Her hands were curled up in front of her like the talons of a dead bird, with splints fastened at each wrist, to keep the lingers from curling into themselves. As I watched, she began working her mouth as if she were chewing without ever swallowing. She was appallingly thin, a human leftover from nature’s repast, her miserable figure lit by a morning radiance that was too harsh for my ancient eyes and my tender heart.
I spotted the source of the rattling: Her hands were tethered to the steel bedrails, and every so often, her arms jerked spastically and yanked the railings against the bed frame.
“My poor Mrs.
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