After watching Michael suffer day after day, Margaret asked the doctor to try something other than anesthetics to help Michael sleep. Maybe hypnosis would help. The suggestion brought a sneer to his handsome, professional face, but he went into Michael’s room and came out with a smile. With a laugh, he announced that Michael’s pulse was still strong as an ox. The only thing keeping her awake was hysteria.
Margaret was incensed. How dare he laugh at her friend’s suffering and dismiss it so easily. The doctor’s face drew pinched. He snapped that he would order a new painkiller and a transfusion for his patient. Margaret walked past him into Michael’s room and closed the door.
Michael was hunched over in a chair. Her breathing was labored, and in the corners of her mouth there was blood. Margaret knew it was time for Michael to stop fighting. She took Michael’s hands into her own and told her not to be afraid to die. Her mother and son, all the people she loved the most, were already there. Life here was just a promise, just a beginning. Somewhere there was the completeness, the continuation of what started here. Michael grew calmer and quiet. This was what she needed. She lapsed into rest.
Margaret held her hand through the transfusion. Afterward, the doctor ordered that Michael was to receive no more visitors. She was not to contact anyone except through him. Michael was too weak to protest loudly but scrawled a note to Margaret. The doctor snatched it away before Margaret could read it and declared that she was to do as he said—“or else.”
Margaret knew what the “or else” was. Two weeks before, a psychiatrist had told Michael that there was a ward for people who cracked. These treatments were torture enough. Margaret didn’t want Michael to lose the special care of her private nurse or the kindly head nurse she had befriended.
Margaret returned to the hospital that afternoon with a small bouquet of primroses—Michael’s favorite flower. She sat in the hall outside Michael’s door until nightfall. Before leaving, she gave the bouquet to a nurse to put by Michael’s bed.
At one o’clock in the morning, Michael called Margaret, begging her to come to the hospital. Michael believed these were her last two days on earth and wanted Margaret by her side. Margaret rose and started to dress, then thought about the threat Michael’s doctor had made the day before and paused. She didn’t want to offend the doctor further for fear of what he might do to Michael, so she called the nurse on duty to ask permission to come. The nurse refused.
By sunrise, though, Michael’s private nurse called and told her to come as quickly as she could. The doctor couldn’t be reached and had left no standing order for any painkillers. Michael was in agony.
When Margaret arrived, she saw the primroses by Michael’s bed. The sick woman summoned her strength and declared that from now on her friends were to take orders from her, not her doctor. The head nurse agreed and promised to take responsibility for letting Michael’s friends into her room. The nurse also found another doctor who agreed to give Michael morphine to ease her pain.
She was soon calm. She asked to see her son, Leonard Thomas. Margaret knew Leonard refused to come visit his mother but didn’t want Michael to know. She said Leonard had a cold and the doctor was keeping him away. It seemed the kindest thing to do.
*
The next day, Margaret maintained a vigil outside Michael’s hospital room. She heard Michael crying for her, begging Margaret to be with her, but the doctor forbade it. She had promised Michael she would hold her hand as she faced her last moments, and this last act by the doctor was sadistic, not compassionate. Michael should have someone by her side who loved her.
Margaret stood by the door, listening to Michael’s calls grow faint. Before long, a nurse stepped outside the room and said Margaret could go in. Michael had died.
Margaret longed to lift Michael out of the bed and hold her in her arms, but nurses still bustled about the room. They brusquely came between her and Michael, like adults keeping children at bay, then suddenly, they were through. They told Margaret she could wait until the doctor returned and swept out of the room. Michael was no longer their patient. She was someone else’s responsibility now.
Margaret stepped to the bedside and closed Michael’s eyes. She kissed them quietly, tenderly. She took Michael’s hand in hers and felt it curve into her own. Michael’s hand answered her touch, and Margaret knew that the nurses had been wrong; death had not yet come.
Margaret took the pearls from Michael’s neck to give to Michael’s son, as she had requested. She draped the strand around her own neck and then crossed the room to retrieve Michael’s large gray robe she always slept under. In some maternal way, she wanted to keep Michael warm. She removed the towel that propped Michael’s head up at an odd angle and held Michael’s head close to her own. Margaret wondered what thoughts Michael had at these last moments. What part of her consciousness would live on after she died?
These last few days, Margaret and Michael talked about what happened to the soul after death. Margaret still held to some of the tenets of the Theosophical Society and was inspired to write a book for Michael, The Dark Wood of the Golden Birds. In it, beautiful birds disappear each night into the forest. People who try to follow them never return, until the day when a boy has to enter the woods to save a friend. He comes back but is forever changed by the beautiful world he saw on the other side of the forest. Michael was going into the forest, on a journey that would leave Margaret behind. Having been witness to the séances and readings by mediums for so many years, Margaret believed that some souls could come back and communicate from the other side. She hoped this book would be a guide for Michael to do the same. It was a vanity project, too obscure to sell very well, but Ursula and Leonard helped their grieving friend with the book. Leonard illustrated the book quickly, and Ursula rushed it to press so Margaret could give a copy to Michael before she died.
In addition to talks about life after death, Margaret and Michael talked about Margaret’s life alone to come. For the first time, Margaret confessed to Michael that when they first met she kept a diary about their days together. Even then, she had hoped to write about a life they would share. She promised to finish that book and to read from Michael’s collection of poetry each morning. Michael’s memory and spirit would be with Margaret always because she loved her most of all. Their bond was unrefined, Margaret thought, and stronger than love. They got lost in each other. Separation from each other was no longer possible. Michael would take a part of Margaret with her, but part of her would live on in Margaret.
Michael’s death was noted in papers around the world. Numerous obituaries described her as the former Mrs. John Barrymore and as a poet. They reported that her son Leonard Thomas had been at her side when she passed.
Twenty
1951
When I fly away which way is best
North, East, South or West?
North, East, South, West