AUGUST 12, 2023 – (Cont.) The next morning, after several ski runs with Cory and Uncle Bruce, the two of them stopped at the summit house for a break. Cliff and I kept skiing. On the first chairlift ride up together, Cliff asked drollfully, “Eric, how long has Uncle Bruce worn that toupee of his?”
“Hah!” I said, expelling a cloud of warm breath into the crisp mountain air. “As long as I can remember. Not always, but for a very long time.”
“Well, he’s always worn it as long as I’ve known him, which is going on 12 years, and I’ve always had this curiosity about what he would look like without it. In fact, I’ve even asked him, ‘Hey, Bruce, why do you wear a toupee? I’ll bet you don’t look half bad without it.’ But he doesn’t want to talk about it. ‘With your money, Bruce,’ I’ve told him, ‘you could get a really nice lookin’ one,’ but he just says, ‘Nope! What I have is just fine!’ I think he’s really self-conscious about the fact he’s bald.”
The next day on our first ride up the mountain, right after Cliff and I were whisked off the loading platform by a chair on the main lift, I burst out laughing. “Cliff, you’re gonna love this one!” I said.
“What?”
“Remember yesterday you were asking about what Uncle Bruce looked like without his toupee?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, last night, I damned near found out. I almost woke you up.”
“What happened?”
“In the middle of the night, Uncle Bruce got up and went into the bathroom. He turned on the light in there but he didn’t close the door. I woke up, and from my bed, I could see his shadow against the wall by the entryway. And then, watching the shadow, I saw him remove the toupee.”
Cliff threw his head back and laughed. “Did you jump out of bed to see him? See what he looked like?”
“No, I just lay there watching the silhouette of his bald head. I couldn’t tell what he was doing to it or to the toupee. He was shaking something on it. Talcum powder maybe, who knows.”
“That’s as close as anyone’s going to get to seeing the uncovered head of Uncle Bruce.” We laughed together.
However much Cliff and I laughed about Uncle Bruce, that evening I got to see just how much Cliff cared about him. The emergency came after dinner. Uncle Bruce and Cory had repaired to our room—Uncle Bruce to lie down and Cory to watch sit-com reruns on television—while Cliff and I sat down in the lounge. A while later, Cory ran in to tell us that Uncle Bruce needed help right away. We went straight away to the room and found Uncle Bruce in some distress over his heart. Cliff immediately knelt down beside Uncle Bruce’s bed. “Give me your wrist,” Cliff said, taking immediate command. As he checked the patient’s pulse, he asked, “What symptoms are you feeling, Bruce?”
“I’m feeling pain up here in my chest,” said Uncle Bruce, moving his left hand over his heart, “and my heartbeat is highly irregular.”
“We’re calling an ambulance,” said Cliff. The patient was my uncle, not Cliff’s; my relative, not Cliff’s, but Cliff’s reactions were so sharp and clear, so exactly right, that I felt nothing but admiration for his focus on Uncle Bruce’s immediate welfare. As time moved on over the next 10 years, it would be but one small example of just how much Cliff really cared for Uncle Bruce.
During the half hour it took the ambulance from Whitefish to arrive, Cliff asked Uncle Bruce for a list of medications he was on. “They’re gonna be asking that, so we may as well be prepared. Cory, can you get some paper and a pen? Probably over in the desk drawer.” Cory dutifully followed Cliff’s direction. I stood by, worried that we had over-done things, concerned that maybe this trip to Montana was simply too much for our dear, lonely Uncle Bruce. In the tension, I wondered what lay ahead for Uncle Bruce. I wanted desperately to see him restored to perfect health, which, until this crisis, is what I thought he enjoyed. I felt terribly guilty about having made fun of his toupee. After all, I thought, this was the “man who had invented skiing,” who had introduced me to one of my passions in life.
When the ambulance arrived and the paramedics scrambled into our room, it was Cliff who acted not so much as the stricken man’s nephew, as his very own son, imparting vital information about Uncle Bruce, his symptoms, and so on. To myself, I said, “Thank God for Cliff.”
There was no question. Cliff would accompany Uncle Bruce in the ambulance to down to Whitefish and the hospital emergency room. “I’ll call you as soon as we know something,” were Cliff’s parting words, as he hopped into the back of the ambulance and scrambled to the front. “Hang in there, Uncle Bruce,” I said, squeezing his hand as the paramedics positioned the gurney for loading into the vehicle. His eyes met mine, and he nodded an acknowledgment. Already, the paramedics had strapped on oxygen mask onto his face. I was worried sick.
Time passed slowly. It was an age before any of us had a cell phone, and I could only pace around the room, down the hallway, through the lounge by the lodge entrance, out the door into the cold night air and back again. Nearly an hour and half passed before the call came in. “Sir?” the desk clerk said to me, as I passed through the entryway of the lodge for about the tenth time. “A call for you.”
“Oh, great. I’ll take it back in the room.” I rushed down the hallway and entered our room, just as the phone began to ring. “Hello?”
“Eric, what’s happenin’?”
“Cliff! How’s Uncle Bruce?”
“I think he’s going to be okay. They’re going to keep him here overnight for observation, but they say it’s probably just the irregular heartbeat kicking in, and he’s got medication for that.”
“What about the chest pains?”
“I don’t know. They think maybe just some heartburn, indigestion, you know. They’ve checked everything out, and they said he’s gonna be okay, but that he should see his doctor when he gets home.”
“Do we need to get him home right away?” I asked.
“No, he’s probably gonna want to take it easy for awhile, but they didn’t say anything about going home early.”
“How’s his attitude?”
“He’s fine, actually. I think he was worried, but he’s been flirting with the nurses and you know, being his jolly old self. He’s charmed the socks off the entire staff. They think he’s a riot. I think he’s gonna be fine, Eric. It was a big scare, but he’s gonna be fine.”
It would be a full 10 years before he needed heart surgery, and it had nothing to do with Uncle Bruce’s arrhythmia. (Cont.)
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
