Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [328]
When Amos arrived that afternoon, he was shocked to see how ravaged Roosevelt looked. He bathed him with extreme care and coaxed him into a fresh pair of pajamas. “By George,” Roosevelt said gratefully, “you never hurt me a bit.” Amos turned his armchair so he could sit looking out over Oyster Bay, then put him to bed and monitored him through the night.
Roosevelt was in too much discomfort to sleep well, but when Dr. Faller stopped by on Sunday morning, he seemed somewhat better. He stayed in his room all day, dictating two or three letters to Edith, and correcting the typescript of his Metropolitan article. She was touched by his exceptionally gentle mood, and whenever she passed the sofa she could not help kissing him and stroking his short, little-boy’s hair. “As it got dusk,” she wrote Ted later, “he watched the dancing flames and spoke of the happiness of being home, and made little plans for me. I think he had made up his mind he would have to suffer for some time & with his high courage had adjusted himself to bear it.”
They were still together when, at around ten o’clock, he asked her to help him sit up. He said he felt as if his lungs or heart were about to give in. “I know it is not going to happen, but it is such a strange feeling.” She gave him a sniff of sal volatile and sent at once for Dr. Faller, who found Roosevelt’s bronchi clear and his pulse beating steadily and calmly.
Leaving the nurse in charge, Edith accompanied Faller downstairs for a discreet conversation in the library. She said that her husband was insomniac, and asked permission to give him morphine. Faller assented, saying that he himself would rest easier if he knew the Colonel was comfortable.
Edith watched while the nurse administered the shot shortly before midnight. James Amos took over, and the two women retired to their bedrooms. Roosevelt lay on the sofa for a while, saying little. Amos noticed a look of great weariness on his face.
“James, don’t you think I might go to bed now?” He had to be half-lifted onto the mattress, then asked to be turned on his side. For a while he lay staring at the fire.
Then he said, “James, will you please put out the light?”
A SMALL LAMP on the dresser filled the room with a dim yellow glow. Amos switched it off and sat where he could see Roosevelt, or at least hear him breathing in the darkness. It was a calm, moonless night, and the big house was still. Edith came in at twelve-thirty to check on her husband. She found him sleeping peacefully, and did not kiss him for fear of waking him. When she visited again at two o’clock, he was still asleep. Amos had moved closer to what was left of the fire.
About an hour later the valet was startled by a new note in Roosevelt’s respiration—“roughling” was the only word he could think of. He touched his master’s forehead. It felt dry and warm. Then Roosevelt began to breathe irregularly, with intermittent periods of silence. Each time he started again, his respiration sounded weaker. Eventually Amos had to lean close to hear any sound at all.
AT FOUR O’CLOCK, Edith woke to find the nurse standing over her. She hurried through and called, “Theodore, darling!” But there was no response from the sleigh bed.
* Tight, smooth, climbing turns that reverse direction by 180 degrees.
EPILOGUE
In Memoriam T.R.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT’S DEATH CERTIFICATE, signed by Dr. Faller, declared that he had succumbed at 4:15 A.M. on Monday, 6 January 1919, to an embolism of the lung, with multiple arthritis as a contributory factor. In a simultaneous press statement, Faller and two consulting physicians hedged slightly, saying that the blood clot might have gone to the brain. They revealed for the first time that their patient had been struck by a near-fatal pulmonary embolism some three weeks earlier. Neither of these detachments, they felt, necessarily related to the inflammatory rheumatism that had troubled him for some twenty years. They did not seem to know that in early childhood Roosevelt had shown many symptoms of rheumatic heart