Here Comes Trouble - Michael Moore [37]
By mid-November of 2001, the authorities had opened up more streets in Tribeca to traffic, and it was possible to drive right up the perimeter of the World Trade Center’s former location. The place was every bit the disaster area it had been for the past two months, and smoke could still be seen wafting its way up from the ruins.
I slowed down so they could get a better look. I glanced over at my mother, who was sitting in the front seat with me. There were tears in her eyes, and I would have to go back to the death of her sister to recall such a look of sadness on her face. It was like her facial muscles had just collapsed on their own. She looked down, and then away, and then back again at the destruction. This was not the New York of Ed Sullivan or the Rainbow Room or giving your regards to Broadway.
This was the future not promised, her world of tomorrow, and I was sorry for her to see it.
“Mike! Mike!”
I was sitting in the living room of our home in northern Michigan, planning which movie I was going to take the family to in the next half hour. The choice was between Men in Black II or Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. It was the Fourth of July weekend, 2002, and my sister Veronica had flown in from California with her kids to be with my wife and daughter and our parents. It was Saturday, early evening, and we had spent the day on the lake, taking the kids tubing, and giving Mom and Dad a spin on the boat. My mother hung on to her hat and laughed and admonished me to slow down as the kids on the inner tube shouted to go faster.
Afterward, before dinner, I sat with my mom in the Adirondack chairs on top of the small hill beside the lake. She rolled up her pants to get some sun on her legs and closed her eyes, and you could see it all felt good to her.
For the past three weeks I had taken off from work and come to Davison to hang out with them. I took them out for a wedding anniversary dinner, and we did driving tours of all their old haunts from their years of growing up in the Flint area. We visited the graves of all the ancestors, some with birthdates going back to the late 1700s. We planted flowers, we visited the free legal service provide by the UAW (they wanted to update their wills), and we went to a Tigers ball game in Detroit. It was, without a doubt, three of the best weeks I ever spent with them. Though my mother was fading in energy, she participated in everything. But I noticed her time in the bathroom seemed to be getting longer and longer. My dad complained about it, and I agreed we should take her to the doctor and get her checked out.
“Mike! Mike!!” It was my mother’s voice, but it wasn’t coming from inside the house where the rest of us were. It was coming from the back deck. I went out to see what she needed.
When I came out the door, it was clear she was very, very sick.
“I need to get to the bathroom—” She threw up at that moment, and what she threw up was pitch-black gunk. My dad, by then, had come outside to see what was the matter, and he and I helped her up and took her inside. My wife called the local hospital to see what they suggested.
“Pepto Bismol,” my wife said, relaying the message. This did not seem like a job for a pink liquid. My mother continued to throw up. “I think we should take her to the hospital,” I said. I did not want to call an ambulance as that would take a long time (the nearest one was at least eight miles away).
We walked her slowly out to my dad’s Ford, and my wife and sister made her comfortable in the back seat. I got behind the wheel and headed down our long driveway to the road. We lived deep in the middle of nowhere (in 2002, our road still wasn’t wired for cable TV).
As I reached the end of the driveway, I had a quick decision to make: Do I take her to the nearest hospital—or do I take her to the better hospital? The nearest hospital was in a small town twenty-three miles to the north. The better hospital, the best in northern Michigan, was in the opposite direction, forty-five miles away,