Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [259]
"She's not dead, you know," said her mother, "she's up at Utah Valley. I'll be right over to pick you up." Time passed for Kathryne in lost minutes, like she was in concussion. Then her mother was outside the store in the old Lincoln, the stinking Lincoln, their old family joke, picking her up. Next, they were in the emergency door of the hospital, and the lady at the desk was sending them to the second.
When she entered Nicole's room, Kathryne went through the horrors.
That dreadful machine was there once more. Not seven days ago, her father had had the same machine on him. Now he was dead and they were working on Nicole.
They gave Kathryne a little Valium, and a doctor came by.
He talked out of a tight little mouth and couldn't even give Nicole a 50-50 chance. "Could go either way," he said, then added, "We don't know if there was brain damage or not . . . question is if the machine can keep her lungs working . . . can't guarantee that either."
Sure wasn't offering hope. "I can't," he said, "guarantee anything until all medication is out of her system." There was a police officer sitting outside the door.
Kathryne would go to Nicole's room for fifteen minutes, then go out and sit in the hall, while they let her mother in. Then she'd go back. This went on all afternoon. Rikki had come back from Wyoming for her father's funeral, and was still here, and now he stayed in the Intensive Care Unit waiting room and kept journalists away. The reporters were all being held downstairs, but one girl snuck up to Intensive Care, and sat there all day with a knitting bag on the floor.
They never knew she was a reporter. After three hours, she said to Kathryne, "Are you Nicole's mother?" Kathryne just looked at her and paid no mind. The girl then said to Kathy Kampman, "Are you Nicole's family?" Kathy said, "Please don't bother us." But the girl asked, "Does Nicole have any brothers and sisters?" That was when Kathy got it. She said, "You're a TV reporter." She had noticed that whenever any of them started to talk, the girl would lean down to her knitting bag and turn on something. Kathryne went berserk. They got the girl right out.
At first, Charley wasn't going to come, but then, to Kathryne's surprise, he popped over around three in the afternoon while she was over to Nicole's apartment. The nurse said Mr. Baker had been there and went all to pieces when he saw Nicole, and left.
Later, Kathryne found out Charley had gone to Pleasant Grove and stayed there with Angel and Mike for the rest of the day and night.
Kathryne hung in. She couldn't remember eating anything. A little after midnight, she called some Elders she knew in the Church and they came over and prayed with Kathryne by Nicole's bed, anointing her head with oil, putting hands on her forehead. Prayed to God to bring her through. They could not do it in the name of the Church due to the fact she had tried to take her own life, but did ask the Lord to hear her on the basis of the faith of all the rest of the family.
About 4 A.M., Kathryne's mother took her home and she stayed up with Charley until ten when he took her back to the hospital. In all those hours, she had no rest. Kept calling the hospital to see if there was any change.
By the next day, so many reporters were downstairs that Kathryne was obliged to go in and out with a long, blond wig.
DESERET NEWS
Nashville, Tenn. (AP) Nov. 16-Country music star Johnny Cash says he tried to call Gary Gilmore at the Utah State Prison to urge him to "fight for his life" only minutes after the convicted murder was found unconscious, in an apparent suicide attempt.
"I don't know what I would have told a man who was planning to take his life," Cash said. "Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn't. But I would have tried to talk him out of