Straight Life - Art Pepper [278]
We went straight home from D.C. on May 30th. On the morning of June 9th Art told me he had a headache. He never had headaches. He asked me if I thought his face looked weird. The left side of his mouth was drooping. I told him we had to go to the hospital. He refused to go. I said we'd better go see his doctor.
We were on a health plan, courtesy of the Musicians' Union. We belonged to Kaiser Permanente, an HMO. His doctor looked him over, and she said he'd better go to the hospital. Art said he didn't want to go. He told her that he was supposed to play in Carnegie Hall in two weeks with Phil Woods. He said, "People die in hospitals." She laughed. She said not everybody does. She wanted to call an ambulance, but Art refused it. I said I'd drive him. It wasn't far.
Art sat beside me as I drove and calmly told me that he loved me. He said if this was "it" he wanted me to know that he was grateful for all I'd done. I told him that this wasn't it. He said that I'd made it possible for him to do the book, the documentary, the ballad album, all the music. If this was it he was satisfied, and he wanted me to know that. He was quiet for a while. Then he said, proudly, "I'm leaving you well provided for." Finally he said, "No matter what happens, promise me there won't be any surgery. I can't take any more of that. Don't let them cut me." I promised.
We were put into a cubicle in the emergency area. Art jumped up on the examining table and told me he was starving. He asked me to buy him a candy bar. I left, found one for him, and returned to find him sniffing a line of coke. He said, jokingly, "I want to be high when I die." I took the coke away from him. Suddenly he cried out. He said he couldn't see out of his left eye and he couldn't move his left side.
I called a doctor who made him lie down and started questioning him. He confessed to the doctor, a kindly, grey haired man, that yesterday he'd acquired a needle from a friend and last night he'd shot some coke. I hadn't known. He asked the doctor if that could have caused this. The doctor told him maybe. By this time Art's headache was giving him terrible pain, and he begged for a painkiller. The doctor said not yet.
The doctor left. Art said to me, "You have no idea how scared I am." I told Art, I told myself, "They can fix it. These days they can do all kinds of things. They'll fix it. Remember my father's heart. He's an old man, but they fixed his heart." Art said, "Oh, man, I don't want to hear about your father." He despised my father. It seemed like a good sign to me that he could remember to hate my father. I said, "I was just saying they can fix it. I don't care about my father (I didn't)." I told him that I loved him more than anyone in the whole world (I did). I kissed and stroked him and called him every outlandish pet name we'd ever invented. He relaxed. He said, "That's what I need. I need love." He passed out.
He was C.A.T. scanned. There was a bleed in his brain. He had to be rushed to another Kaiser hospital to be seen and possibly operated on by a neurologist. I told the doctor that I'd promised Art there'd be no cutting. The doctor told me there was a chance that Art could be restored to normal health. I let an ambulance take us to the other hospital where, after horrible hassles, a supercilious neurologist tried to tell me, standing over Art's body, what the scan showed. I made him follow me out of the room. He said, "He's unconscious. He can't hear." He told me that without surgery Art would die. He told me that with surgery he might die, too, given the state of his liver and his run-down condition. He said surgery could also save him, but, as a direct result of the surgery, he probably wouldn't be able to move his left side, speak, or see. I understood that I'd be able to keep my promise. I told him surgery was out. I asked, "If Art stayed in this hospital would you be his doctor?" He said that he would. I asked if we could return to the other hospital. He said we could. I asked if Art could have a painkiller now. He said he'd send some Demerol.