Smoke On The Water

I heard from Diane in Walter Reed Hospital in Washington D.C. on a Friday and she tells me she'll be released and able to come home the following Monday. I wait until Wednesday to call. No answer. Call again Thursday evening. No answer. Call Friday...no answer. Obviously she's still hospitalized somewhere. The following Tuesday I have to jump through several hoops to find out that she's still in Walter Reed and, with no phone in her room, unable to take or make calls.

I wait a few days and try to get hold of boyfriend Al, who made the trip with her. Call his son who gives me his cell phone number and tells me that Diane was the one who wanted Al to make the trip and they went to D.C. for a wedding of the son of a friend of Diane's. This was interesting since Diane didn't really have many friends, save the women of the Gatewood Girls, a loose social group of women who, like Diane, lived in the Gatewood neighborhood. My guess is Diane was invited to this wedding because 1. They thought she would never show, and 2. they had to invite her because it would have been socially rude to invite some of the girls and not all...As far as why Diane went, I have two more theories: 1. The wedding was held in the same church where President Bush occasionally attends when he wants to put on a show for his neo-con right wing Christian fan base and Diane thought perhaps he would be there and she could meet him, and/or 2. While meeting Bush, she could ask for a pardon or a federal bailout from all her debt...Either way, I'm guessing the mother of groom would have fallen over from shock when she came down that aisle and saw Diane grinning stupidly at her. Turns out it never happened as Diane went to the hospital about two hours after she got off the plane

On August 2 (a week before the sheriff's sale of her house) I get hold of Al in D.C. on his cell phone. Al seemed shocked that I called and was even more shocked when I told him I checked in on Diane once a week or so. Seems Diane had told him no one in her "family" ever checked up on her.

Turns out Diane had taken a turn for the worse and was not doing well at all. She's on a ventilator and not very coherent. Al also mentions Diane suffers from COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, caused by, you guessed it, smoking!) and had undergone chemotherapy to treat myelodysplasia (essentially pre-leukemia) a year or two ago. Two small little things Diane had failed to ever mention to me or anyone else save for Al....

I don't say anything to Al about Diane's situation and decide to wait until the day of the sheriff's sale to tell him about it, and that would only be if Diane was still out it. A week goes by and I call Al. There's no change in Diane's condition and she's not real coherent. Take a deep breath and tell Al all the sordid details, specifically about the foreclosure on Diane's house. His reaction, "How can that be?" I give him as many details as I can and I almost hear the man deflate as I go through the story. By now, he's been in D.C. three weeks and says he has to get back to town to take care of some of his own business and that we'll talk more next week.

The following Monday, I get a call from my cousin Mark, telling me an attorney had called him, saying he'd been visited by a guy named Al and did I know anything about Diane losing her house. I fill Mark in and realize that Al, not believing that Diane would have been dumb enough to mortgage her own home to the hilt and suddenly hearing about it from her fast-talking nephew, might have been thinking Diane had been taken by said nephew (your humble correspondent). Finally hear from Al a few days later (after he realizes I'm actually trying to bail Diane out I guess) and we start trying to figure out what to do next...