Shot in the Heart - Mikal Gilmore [176]
Frank and I tried repeatedly to get her to see a doctor, but it was no use. My mother did not like or trust doctors, and, more to the point, my mother was not a person you could make do anything she did not want to do. In that way, we were all her sons.
So my mother kept taking the aspirin. It was her only defense against the pain. What we didn’t know was, she was taking massive amounts of it—sometimes as much as a bottle a day. All that medicine played hell with her stomach, and on the day she had thrown up in front of Frank, it was because a hole had been eating its way through her on the inside, and it chose that time to make its perforation complete. Had Frank not been there, she likely would have died in her own blood on the dirty kitchen floor.
Now, in the hospital, she was in and out of consciousness a lot, and the doctors were nearly certain they would have to operate to save her. They wanted the consent of a relative. Frank was reluctant to give the consent, since the operation would necessitate a blood transfusion—a practice that ran contrary to Frank’s beliefs as a Jehovah’s Witness. I called my mother’s doctor and told him I would take responsibility for the decision. If there was any need to operate, they should do so. They should do whatever was necessary to save her life.
Two days after my mother’s arrival at the hospital, the doctors operated. Her stomach was so ruined, they had to remove over half of it and sew the rest up into a small bag. She would have trouble eating; she would have to live according to a certain diet, and if she didn’t follow the diet, she would risk reopening the perforation.
The first time I visited my mother in the hospital, she was still in an unconscious state. She had tubes running in and out of her, and she looked dead. I fully expected her to die, even with the surgery. Later, when she was out of the hospital and back home, it was hard for me to relate to her for a while. I had prepared myself for her to be dead—I felt I had already gone through the emotions of grieving for her. Somehow, it didn’t seem real that she was still alive. I was glad she was, but I also dreaded the idea that I would have to go through her death all over again someday. Once seemed more than enough.
MY MOTHER’S PHYSICAL COLLAPSE BROUGHT A NEW URGENCY to Gary’s situation. He wrote several letters to the Oregon corrections administrators, petitioning a return to Oregon. His mother had almost died, he explained, and he was afraid that if he couldn’t get back home soon, he would never again see her alive. He wanted to put his life in order, he said. He wanted to win a parole and help take care of his mother.
This put Oregon in a difficult position. The prison’s legal rationale for keeping Gary at Marion was tenuous at best, and now there was a moral matter. Whatever any of the officers or administrators thought of Gary, they did not question the depth of love between him and his mother. Warden Cupp, though, still opposed bringing Gary back. In a letter to the State Corrections Division, Cupp wrote: “The return of Gary Gilmore to Oregon State Penitentiary at the present time is, in my opinion, a calculated risk which contains the elements of unpredictability and portent of danger. I would prefer to avoid the risk. According to the information given to me … the Parole Board delegation is to interview Gary this month. We may have some indication for a future move when the evaluation of the Parole Board is presented.” The Corrections Division wrote back, telling Cupp that this time he might have no choice. Gary was doing well at Marion, and his mother