“How long
has he been stalking me?”
Ginger
shuddered with the thought that she may have been oblivious to his presence for
years. On the other hand, if one has a
benevolent stalker, maybe it is best to be unaware. Is there such a thing as a benevolent
stalker? She shook her head in defiance
as she sat there in the chemo parlor. If
she was going to indulge her imagination, it should be in visualizing those
drops of chemo killing the cancer cells.
She would convince herself that the stalker was a fantasy.
In fact,
Ginger’s stalker had been present and biding his time since the beginning when Ginger’s
head emerged covered with red fuzz that promised to be curls. She cried before she was fully born, and as
they appeared, all four extremities began to flail vigorously. The doctor pronounced her “a force to be
reckoned with.” Keeping up with this
child, who approached life exuberantly and brought much amusement and joy to
her parents, was a daily challenge. Her
parents were much too busy with Ginger’s antics to notice the stalker’s presence,
but as she grew, Ginger herself gradually became aware of him.
He was
there on the day when she was two and rode her little car off the porch and
down the front steps managing to hang on for the bumpy ride. He watched her pitch over the handle bars and
hit her head on the concrete sidewalk, but she did not see him. He hid behind the large maple tree and sighed
with relief when she began to cry. He
saw her father scoop her up. He knew it
wasn’t his time to touch her.
On the
day of her grandfather’s funeral, she rode from the church to the cemetery in
one of the undertaker’s limousines. She had
never been in a heavy car with great suspension before and was impressed with
how smoothly and quietly the car moved.
It gave her a strange and eerie feeling, but there was something else
going on which she struggled to understand.
None of the family members in the vehicle spoke. In that silence, Ginger felt weightless and
encompassed by a strange presence. Suspended
in sadness and loss, something or someone tugged at her heart. She was ten years old, and this was perhaps
her first conscious but vague awareness of him.
As Ginger
grew into her teen years, she excelled in her classes and volunteered in the
community. She was always busy racing
from one activity to another. She was far
ahead of her time in her enjoyment of physical activity. In that era, girls nearly always wore skirts,
and no equality of opportunity existed regarding sports. So, Ginger’s peers thought her strange,
because she enjoyed running and biking. She
was exhilarated by the feeling of the breeze rushing past her as she pedaled or
jogged.
The
multiple bee stings she got while riding her bike back from a visit to her grandmother’s
house did not slow her down until the intense itching started and her tongue
began to swell. She had not known she
was allergic to bee stings. She stumbled
in the door of her home, and her parents rushed her to the emergency room. As
she lay on the stretcher, people and objects began to dim and spin. She recognized the feeling of
weightlessness. She thought she might
drift out of her body, and she felt a presence brush against her arm and her
face. She was being lured toward a
cloudy figure, but she insisted that she was too busy to follow him. As soon as the epinephrine kicked in, her
heart raced, and the cold gray cloud slipped silently away.
Ginger
did not give much thought to these incidents assuming they were the product of
her active imagination. At that point in
her life, the notion of a stalker never entered her mind. She graduated from high school and then from
college and married her college sweetheart.
Ten years
later, she was a young mother driving home at night in the dark of a winter
evening. The roads were slippery, and
she was driving cautiously, but the on-coming truck wasn’t. She saw the headlights coming straight at
her. She screamed, “No….not yet.” Those were the only words she got out audibly
before the crash, but in her mind she had added, “My kids need me!”
Milliseconds
before the impact she jerked the wheel to the right and plowed into a
snowbank. The truck smashed into the
back driver’s side of the car, but she escaped without injury. Ginger stood next to her car and shook in the
freezing air. As she waited for the
police and tow truck, she watched a shapeless gray shadow slither off through
the trees. She realized that it was not
only the freezing air causing her to shiver. She was beginning to think that
the shadowy presence was not her imagination.
Later, she felt foolish to think she had seen something in the trees and
never mentioned it to anyone.
When
Ginger was in her fifties, the doctor saw a spot on her routine mammogram. A biopsy was quickly ordered, and when the results
came back the next week, she was told the mass was malignant. She went home and cried. The gray specter sat next to her on the sofa
in her living room and slipped his arm around her. Her children were grown, but her husband
still needed her, and she had no grandchildren yet. She certainly wanted to live to see
them. She was still working; still
active in community organizations. She
had hobbies to pursue. She was finishing
a quilt to enter in a competition and another one to donate for a silent
auction. She was much too busy to
die. She told Mr. Grim that she had
every intention of fighting off his seduction.
She had no time for such foolishness.
She was enamored with life and would not be unfaithful to it.
When her
husband arrived home and she shared her sad news, he thought that her diagnosis
was the reason she clung to him so tightly.
He never knew about the “other man” pursuing her. Ginger could not verbalize her concern about
the strange presence. She felt that
speaking about him out loud would make him more of a reality, and she preferred
to believe he was a foolish fantasy.
Surgery and chemotherapy followed. Everyone who knew Ginger marveled at her
strength and resolve. She embraced the
pain of living through the experience, because she refused to embrace her
stalker. She repeatedly ignored his
whispers and shook her red curls in defiance.
As she sat in the chemo parlor and visualized her body and the chemo
fighting the cancer cells together, she also visualized herself running away
from Mr. Grim until he faded into non-existence.
When she
was seventy-four, Ginger’s husband died slowly of cancer. Many times as she cared for him, she felt as
though the stalker was wrapping his arms around both of them. As much as she loved her husband, she did not
want to run away with him. She
recognized his need to be relieved of pain and be whole again, but she still
felt well and did not wish to go on the journey with him. There were days when she was exhausted caring
for him and felt as though a hand was wrapped around her ankle trying to pull
her into the grave along with him.
Only
about a year after her husband passed, Ginger sat on the kitchen floor in a
heap trying to reach the phone. The pain
in her left chest, jaw and arm, along with nausea, had caused her to be so weak,
that her legs buckled under her when she was just steps away from making the
911 call. She could barely catch her
breath and felt perspiration on her brow.
She was
alone in the house, since her husband’s death.
Her children and those precious grandchildren lived miles away. No one would miss her until she didn’t show
up for her routine hair appointment. She
had refused to go gray and still had her flaming red tresses….although they
were now artificially created. Would her
hairdresser Sally suspect there was a problem, or would she just think Ginger had
forgotten the appointment? With her busy
schedule, she had, on a few occasions, missed an appointment and later called
with profuse apology. There was a retired teachers’ luncheon she was supposed
to attend at noon, but would anyone miss her there and think to check on her?
She could
see him standing in the doorway…..the gray specter seemed more formed than when
she had seen him on previous occasions.
He was less cloud-like and more human in shape. He still wasn’t the least bit attractive.
For the
first time in her experience, he spoke.
“You really should have signed up for one of those emergency call
systems,” he said in a soft mellow tone.
Her children had encouraged her to do so, but she had felt she was too
young and vigorous to get a device for “old people.”
Ginger
growled at her stalker. “I am still too
busy for you! Go away and leave me
alone!”
He shrugged
and nodded toward her cordless phone.
The base unit was out of her reach on the table, but it was plugged into
an electrical outlet near the floor. She
managed to reach the cord, and jerk it hard enough that the handset shot off
the table and fell within her reach. She
dialed 911 and a soothing voice assured her that help was on the way.
Her
impertinent companion hopped in the back of the ambulance with her. The EMTs didn’t seem to see him. He followed her into the Emergency Room and right
up to the bed in the Coronary Care Unit.
He tried to hold her hand, but her mind remained strong, and she
repeated within herself, “Go away! Go
away! GO AWAY!”
The pain
medication gave her some disturbing dreams.
The gray human shape floated in and out of strange scenes. Someone was throwing a dark blanket over her
face, but she startled and awakened in time to toss it aside. A gray fog crept under the bed and rose up
around her. She forced her eyes open,
and it was gone….just a nightmare.
Later,
she noticed tendrils from a gray mass like wisps of smoke creeping up the sides
of a bed within her view. Eventually the
patient was enveloped and was soon carried off on a stretcher covered with a
sheet and encompassed by the ashen fog.
After
spending a few days in CCU, she was moved on to the PCU. Then, since she really wasn’t quite strong
enough to go home to an empty house, a couple of weeks in a skilled nursing
facility to start some cardiac rehab seemed to be in order. She had no specific evidence that he had
followed her, but after she arrived in the rehab facility, she did see him
occasionally. He was now in the shape of
a muscular young man, and he roamed the halls passing her door dressed in slate
colored scrubs. She wondered which patients
he was courting and felt sorry for them.
He seemed to be avoiding her and did not even glance into her room. Apparently there were others more in need of
his attention.
Every
day, Ginger went to physical therapy and tried to build up her strength. About three weeks after the heart attack, she
was on the treadmill feeling pretty good about her increasing speed and
stamina. She was talking cheerfully with
a therapy aide, when without warning, her right side suddenly refused to
cooperate. The aide caught her and
lowered her to the floor as she slumped.
Ginger said, “Hep…hep…..whas wrawn?”
She was
lifted to a stretcher and hurried through the tunnel connecting the rehab
building to the main hospital. She found
herself in the Emergency Room again. The
orderly dressed in gray scrubs stood in the corner shaking his head. She was annoyed by his presence there and
yelled, “NO!” over and over again.
As
doctors and nurses tended to her, she heard the word “stroke,” but she didn’t
understand what they were talking about.
She did not know that her speech was slurred, and that she was saying
nonsense words. She kept calling for her
daughter “Oodie” thinking she was saying “Judy.” She was sure Oodie would understand her, and
these other people were just fools.
She was
hustled off for a CAT scan and MRI. When
she returned to the ER room, Judy was there.
Ginger was greatly relieved to see her and tried to explain to Judy that
her legs had just become weak on the treadmill.
Judy didn’t seem to comprehend.
She looked at Ginger sadly and made a circular motion around her mouth, as
though mixing something. She said, “Mom,
your words are all mixed up.”
The
enormity of what had happened hit Ginger, and she began to scream. A sedative was hastily given to alleviate
her agitation.
Later she
awakened to some lucid thoughts. Her
right side felt numb and was immobile.
She tried to move the fingers on her right hand without any
success. She reached over and picked up
her right hand with her left one. She released
her grip and watched her right hand fall to the bed. She slid the toes of her left foot under the
back of her right ankle and tried to lift it.
She struggled and the right foot dropped to the bed.
Ginger
tried to recite the alphabet and count to ten.
What she said made perfect sense to her, but the gray clad orderly
standing in the corner shook his head and smiled. She took note that he had a pleasant enough
face, and that his expression was indeed a sympathetic smile and not a mocking
smirk. She realized that she had never
seen him as hostile to her. His presence
had at times scared her, but he had never seemed to frighten her intentionally.
After a
few day in the hospital, Ginger was returned to the rehab facility. As days, weeks and months passed, she made no
progress in speech therapy. She did not
regain the use of her right hand or leg in spite of therapy. Sometimes she cried in frustration at the
betrayal of her body.
It was
bad enough that she could no longer control her right arm and leg, but the
worst of it was that she no longer had control of her bladder and bowels. A catheter kept her from lying in a puddle of
her own urine. She tried to call the
staff when she needed the bedpan or commode for a bowel movement, but they did
not always arrive on time. Soiling
herself and having someone else wipe her backside was a huge indignity for
Ginger.
No one
thought about her hair. They brushed it
and braided it so that it did not become matted, but no one thought about the
color. She could not bear to look at
herself in the mirror as the gray roots grew longer and the red locks began to
disappear.
Ginger
saw the orderly in the gray scrubs pass her door nearly every day, but he
didn’t come in to talk to her. She
considered calling out to him, but she wasn’t sure how to address him….perhaps,
Mr. Grim? She had come to think of him
that way, but she wasn’t sure that was actually a name to which he would
answer.
Ginger
had great difficulty feeding herself.
Picking up a utensil with her left hand, getting food on it, and having
it successfully reach her mouth was usually an exercise in futility. Aides would come in to feed her, but the food
was often cold before they got around to her.
She lost her appetite and lost weight.
Poor nutrition effected the health of her skin, and loss of weight meant
she was not as well padded. Poor
staffing of the facility resulted in her position not being changed frequently
enough. Eventually with all these
factors conspiring, Ginger developed painful bed sores.
In her
misery, she started to call out, “Pleash, pleash, Missergim.”
The staff
discussed what she could possibly mean, but no one thought of Mr. Grim. Certainly, they were aware that he lurked
around in the corridors, but they could not see him and did not know him by
that name.
Ginger
tried to think it all through in her mind.
She had always been too busy for him.
Was he now too busy for her? Were
there others who went with him cheerfully the first time he appeared? That didn’t seem likely. The desire to survive seems to be innate and
powerful.
She saw
him pass occasionally. Each time he
seemed more handsome, his physique more toned.
She tried to call to him, but he didn’t answer.
Her
children “Oodie” and Jim came to visit her each week. Sometimes the grandchildren came with them,
but teenagers are involved in lots of activities, so she did not see them
often. Neither Judy nor Jim knew what
“Missergim” meant. They were grieved
when their mother seemed agitated, but could not figure out how to help her,
other than asking the staff to give her a sedative to calm her down.
Ginger
could not speak coherently, but she could still think. To pass the time, she wrote a poem in her
mind:
Mr. Grim all dressed in gray,
Won’t you please, come my way?
Oh, how I greatly long,
To be wrapped in arms so strong,
With my head upon your chest,
Gently carried to my rest.
I may have spurned you yesterday,
And pushed you far away,
But now I am ready,
Please come without delay.
She
repeated her poem every day. Eventually
she began to sing it in her mind. She
had never written a song before and was quite pleased with herself. After several days, she began to hear a full
orchestra playing soaring music to her words.
She awoke
one night and heard her song playing.
Mr. Grim was sitting at the foot of her bed.
“Hello,”
he said most tenderly.
Ginger
managed a “Hi.”
“Ginger, I’ve
been wondering,” he continued, “if you have some time in your schedule for me.”
“Yes, oh,
yes. I have no pressing engagements,”
she said very clearly.
“I
thought not.”
He took
her by the hand and lifted her to her feet.
Her right side did not fail her.
She stood strong, feeling young again.
Mr. Grim
placed his arms around her. “Would you
care to dance?”
Ginger
put her head on Mr. Grim’s shoulder. As
her long red hair cascaded across his chest, she realized his scrubs were now glittering
with specks of silver.
She
glanced back toward the bed where a wizened, gray-haired shell of a person lay
motionless.
Then Ginger
and Mr. Grim waltzed away together.
