Never Give Up: My Struggle to Become a Doctor

By Noble L. Thompson, Jr., M.D.

This is gripping story of never giving up, never accepting that you can’t, and never believing that you won’t fulfill your destiny.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 17, 2015
• ISBN: 9780989689243

Book preview

grandmother

1

SUMMONED TO WATCH MY FATHER DIE

THE SHRILL CLAMOR of the telephone fractured the serenity of my morning shower. The ringing went on and on. After the third set of unanswered rings, despite the soothing warmth of cascading water, my churning gut whispered to my still half-asleep brain, Something’s wrong! Thirty-two years of practicing medicine had taught that persistent callers rarely bring good news.

Towel trailing, I rushed to answer. Surprised that it was my brother on the line, I asked, Charles, you don’t usually call so early on a Sunday morning. What’s up?

When he hesitated, I sensed that he was about to tell me something he knew I did not want to hear. After a few seconds of silence, he blurted, It’s dad. He’s on life support in the ICU at Crozer-Chester. He’s dying.

Why are you calling me? You know how I feel about him.

Fumbling, Charles continued, The family has accepted that it‘s time to disconnect his breathing machine. In a couple of hours, they’re planning to gather at the bedside for one last visit. I really would like to have you there.

Still dripping from the shower, I stood silently clenching my jaw. With good reason, I despised my father and, over the years, had avoided him as much as possible. Why would I want to be with him as he lay dying?

As I stood gripping the wet telephone, emotions I thought I had buried surged. I could still feel the sting of my father’s open hand against my young cheek and the glob of his spit dripping down my face.

It hadn’t always been that way. As a young child, like most boys, I idolized my dad and imitated everything he did. I wanted to be just like him. My father could fix anything. He could spin a yarn, too.

One day when Dad, several mechanic friends, and I were in the family’s garage on Second Street in Chester, my father told about the time in 1942 when he was in his Navy uniform on a bus in San Francisco.

"Three redneck dudes jumped in my face, and one of them called me a nigger. Then, another said, ‘Coon, we respect your uniform but not the piece of shit in it. I’m going to put my foot on your throat and kick your black ass.’"

With the pitch in his voice rising, my five-foot-seven-inch dad continued, "I leaped to my feet. Just as quickly, five other colored G.I.s sitting several rows behind me jumped up, too. With clenched fists, they rushed to my side.

"The terrified driver nearly crashed the bus. Bug-eyed and drop-jawed, he slammed on the brakes. Almost before the bus had come to a complete stop, he threw open the door and flew down the steps.

With eyes blazing, I jammed my right hand deep into my pocket. Those skinny-assed white bastards must have thought I had a gun or something because they ran like hell. One of them was so scared that, as he took off down the street, he left a trail of pee. The other passengers on the bus whooped and applauded.

When Dad finished his story, the garage workers had tears in their eyes as they slapped their thighs and gave high-fives. One exclaimed, Noble, you sure showed them dudes. I bet they didn’t mess with nobody else.

I loved that tale. I wanted to grow up and be just like my dad.

Corralling anybody I could find, I practiced telling his stories. With my chest puffed out, I bragged to my friends, My father was in the Navy on the Mona Loa ammunition ship in the Pacific. The Japs tried to blow him to bits, but he was too smart. They didn’t even get close. He never got a scratch.

As I talked, my friends’ eyes widened. They couldn’t get enough of the yarns about Dad. I loved those tales too, but my father never seemed to care about either my stories or me. Everything and everybody else always seemed to come first with him. It was almost as though he was ashamed of me.

Why? What was wrong with me? What had I done?

I loved my brother but told him, I want no part of being in that ICU. I’m surprised that you would even ask.

Although Charles and I grew up together, he is five years younger. As a child, he couldn’t understand Father’s alcohol-driven abuse of our reed-thin little slip of a mother. As Charles grew older, he began to realize but never seemed to share my bitterness. He couldn’t see how vulnerable our young mother was.

She was only seventeen when I was born and twenty-two when Charles came along. As the older son, I did my best to save her from those beatings. My brother never had to step in between my parents when Dad, reeking of alcohol, used Mom as a punching bag.

Since Dad was rarely emotionally there for either of us, I tried to fill the role as father for my little brother. Even now, Charles readily admits I was more of a parent to him than our dad ever was. When my brother married, I instructed him, Be good to your kids. Spend time with them. Let them know that you love them. Never abandon them. Don’t be like our father.

So, I asked Charles that morning on the telephone, You know everything that went on between Father and me. Why are you asking me to be at his deathbed?

Because you were always there for me. I need you at that bedside with me.

As I heard those words, I need you, my mind raced back to the beach at the Jersey shore, the scene of one of the few positive memories I have of my dad. He had driven Mother, Charles, and me to Wildwood-by-the-Sea for the day. I was nine and Charles was four. We were splashing about in the surf. Charles was young and couldn’t swim so Father kept him close.

Suddenly, my little brother squealed. Almost knocking Dad over, he leapt on his chest. At first, we were puzzled. Then we saw it. A big ol’ yucky green crab clinging ferociously to Charles’ big toe.

Charles screamed, Daddy, save me! With that, the mean ol’ crab let go and fell back into the sea.

Father tried to reassure Charles. The crab’s gone now. You’re safe.

It didn’t work. Charles refused to leave Dad’s arms, so he and I carried my brother back to the beach. I wanted to go back and splash in the ocean, but Charles would hear none of it.

Please, June. My family always called me ‘June,’ short for Junior. Don’t go back in the water. The crab might get you. Stay here with me!

With a scowl, I sat on the beach to protect him from that mean ol’ crab.

Mother dried her little boy’s eyes, and Father promised to buy ice cream if he would stop crying. With that, my brother flashed a smile.

Dad flagged down the white-clad Good Humor man and bought each of us a treat, chocolate ice cream in crunchy sugar cones. In the August heat, the yummy confections dripped sticky goo on our fingers. We didn’t care. Charles and I licked the cones and our hands as fast as we could, racing to see who could finish first. That day, I loved my father.

On the phone, Charles persisted, Dad’s dying. This will be our last chance to say goodbye.

With each word, the muscles in my body tightened. I knew I couldn’t continue this conversation.

Charles, I’ll call you back.

As I considered my brother’s request, my breathing deepened as I tried to imagine who might be at our father’s bedside. There were the four of us from the first marriage, seven children from his current marriage, and at least two others from extra-marital affairs. Probably, there were more.

I knew that my third brother, Reginald, whom we call Ray, would be there. Of the four of us, he was closest to our father. He also was quiet about everything.

Whenever my family talked about how he always hid his feelings, we usually went back to the electric blanket story. When Ray was in college, he asked Mother for an electric blanket. She said, No! Years later, she discovered that Ray was still miffed because he didn’t get his electric blanket. He had always believed that Mom didn’t care that his toes were frozen blue in his frigid dormitory room.

When he finally told Mom how he felt, she was shocked. Boy, I didn’t buy you that blanket because I was terrified of those things. I was afraid you might get electrocuted!

Recently, I asked Ray how he had become so close to our father. He told me that he had forged a relationship with him by spending as much time as he could at the garage. Our father was always tearing down engines from old jalopies or rebuilding second-hand transmissions. Ray hung out with him and soaked up that auto mechanic stuff like a sponge.

Perhaps I should have spent more time in the grease pit with Dad and less time on the piano bench.

Once when I was seven, I actually did try to help Dad fix a car. He was lying on his back beneath the chassis, and I was sitting on a box beside him. He asked me to get a wrench from the workbench. I found the tool, but it was greasy. With my nose turned up and my pinkie extended, I held the wrench between my thumb and forefinger as though I were carrying a dead rat by the tip of its tail. Then, as fast as I could, I dropped it at my father’s feet.

When Dad finished his repairs, he looked me squarely in the eyes, Son, I want you to get as much education as you can because you’re not going to make a living getting your hands dirty.

I took him at his word and studied hard.

There was another reason why Ray didn’t share my animosity toward our father. Though our parents’ marriage was unraveling, he was too young to understand. Mother, resigned to the breakup after years of her husband’s infidelity, had simply given up trying to hold the marriage together. Her main concern had become keeping a roof over our heads. Father never helped financially, so Mom held three jobs to pay the bills.

I once asked Ray, Weren’t you aware that Dad repeatedly beat our mother?

He answered, At the time, our parents problems didn’t seem so bad to me, but I was just a kid.

Since the marriage was essentially over, Ray was spared the ugliness that punctuated my relationship with Father.

Robert, my youngest brother, was a different story. When he was an adolescent, our parents were already divorced. Initially, Robert adored our father, but Dad lied to him. He told my little brother, Your mother was the cause of the divorce. At first, Robert believed him and resented our mother. In time, my brother learned the truth and began to loathe our father. He never forgave Dad for that lie. I didn’t expect to see Robert at the bedside.

I knew the seven children from my father’s second marriage. They would likely be there. But there also were two illegitimate daughters I hadn’t met. I hoped I wouldn’t have to be reminded of my father’s infidelity by meeting his out-of-wedlock daughters in the ICU.

One of them was a nurse at a local hospital. The other, I’m told, lives somewhere in the South. She was the result of my father seducing the teenage sister of one of my high school classmates. I never heard the details. I think my family had tried to shield my brothers and me.

Mother cried when she heard about the first pregnancy. She sobbed, heartbroken, when she learned about the second. I was afraid the news that night would kill her.

The evening she found out, I was on the couch in our living room watching TV with my friend, Butch Evans. Mother was upstairs screaming at my father.

How could you do this to your family? How could you hurt me like this?

Butch asked, What’s going on?

I didn’t know why Mother was crying but suspected that my father, as usual, had done something hurtful. I hastily made up a lie to get Butch out of the house.

Um, we just got some bad news. One of our relatives in Virginia died unexpectedly. Perhaps, you should go home.

In the ICU, I suspected that there also would be a few relatives and well-meaning friends who remembered what a fine guy my father had been. Outsiders loved my dad. Those who only knew him casually thought he was terrific. Father was a chameleon. He could change to accommodate any situation as effortlessly as an actor before the footlights. But his true colors, dark and opaque, were reserved for Mother and me. I never understood why.

None of this brought me comfort as I searched for a reason to be at my father’s deathbed.

I considered asking my mother if she wanted to come with me but decided against it. I knew what her response would be. She had said many times, While your father and I were married, only the certainty that I’d spend the rest of my life in prison prevented me from killing him. A change of heart wasn’t likely.

As I struggled with whether or not to go to the hospital, I became increasingly anxious. Growing up in 1940s Chester, church was a major part of my upbringing. Sunday School. Vacation Bible school. At least two services every Sunday. And, occasionally, a mid-week prayer meeting. Doing onto others as you would have others do unto you and practicing forgiveness had been deeply ingrained.

I knew that at some point I would have to at least try to forgive my father, but that was a bitter pill for a later day. Now, as he lay dying, that day had come.

Angry with my father for failing me, with brother Charles for begging me to join him in the ICU, and with those childhood church teachings for insisting that I forgive and forget, I anguished, what am I going to do?

Against my better judgment, I called Charles back.

Okay. I’ll meet you at the hospital, but I’m only going for you, not for him. I couldn’t care less that he’s dying.

Annoyed with myself for agreeing to go, I bristled as I dressed and drove the 13 miles to Crozer-Chester Medical Center, where I planned to say a hurried goodbye.

Arriving at the medical center, I parked in the garage and entered the building. In more than 30 years as a practicing physician, going to the hospital had been routine. I had walked with confidence and authority through what seemed like thousands of miles of hospital corridors. This day was an exception. I felt as shaky as a freshman medical student his first day on the wards.

As I made my way to the ICU, I was acutely aware of every sound. The blare of the public address system barking, Code Blue in Cardiac Care, Code Blue in Cardiac Care, and the clack of my heels on highly polished floors seemed magnified.

At the information booth in the main lobby, I encountered an obese middle-aged receptionist with unbecoming red-framed eyeglasses and a storm of blonde hair. After I managed to get her attention, she stared blankly at me. At Bryn Mawr Hospital where I was on staff, the person behind the desk would have greeted me with a respectful, Good morning, doctor. This woman at Crozer-Chester didn’t know me and appeared to care even less.

Withdrawing her nose from a romance novel, she shot me a look of annoyance at the interruption. While attempting to conceal her open bag of chips with the sleeve of her ample blue smock, she gave me directions to Intensive Care. As I was leaving, she peered over the rim of her glasses and wished me an emotionless, Have a nice day.

Seething, I thought, I am not having a nice day and seriously doubt that my day is about to improve.

Across the lobby, I saw a family laughing gaily. The cluster of "It’s a Boy" balloons they held explained their happiness as they hurried to greet the new arrival. I also passed several grim-faced visitors who appeared to be at the hospital for the same reason I was.

When I arrived at the ICU, I hesitated. After a deep breath, I pressed the aluminum wall plate for admittance. As the ponderous steel doors swung open, my knees buckled. Keeping my eyes straight ahead to see as little about me as possible, I made my way to the nursing station and inquired about my father.

Hardly looking up from her stack of hospital charts, the ward clerk answered, He’s in Room 12. After a half-hearted Thank you, I walked past several glass cubicles. I tried to ignore the despair on the faces of families inside. The presence of death was everywhere.

Room 12. As I stood at that threshold, I remembered one of the last things my father said to me before being claimed by declining health and dementia.

Son, before I die, I want you to get to know my children from my second marriage.

I didn’t say so, but I actually did know most of them, though not well. There was no malice in my heart against my half brothers and sisters. My anger was directed toward my father, not his children. None had treated me badly. Still, I had no desire to be close to them.

At the door of the hospital room, I wanted to turn and run. I asked myself, Why am I here? Why did I allow Charles to talk me into this?

Once inside, I found the room stark and unwelcoming. Floors, ceiling, walls, and bedding were all antiseptic white.

As a radiologist specializing in diseases of the brain and spine, I was more comfortable with X-ray films and conference rooms than the ICU. Still, over the years, I had spent my share of time in Intensive Care. But today, in my heightened emotional state, the pungent odor of alcohol and iodine swiped my nose while fluorescent tubes, glaring harshly, revealed much more than I wanted to see.

I spotted Delois, my father’s second wife. She stood across the room in front of the window that illuminated her modest, ankle-length dress. Despite the anguish in her eyes, she offered me a brave smile. I was thankful for that. It made me feel less of an outsider. I went over to her and gave her a respectful hug.

Years earlier, Delois, recently married to my father, had been kind to our family during my youngest brother Robert’s high school years. I was away at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia completing my training in Radiology. Charles and Ray were married and out of the house. Robert was living at our family’s new home in Upper Chichester with Mother and Grandmother.

The distance from the new residence to Chester High School was a twenty-minute drive on the Interstate. There was no bus service. Mother drove Robert to school each morning. Delois lived near Chester High and allowed him to stay at her home, after school, until Mother picked him up on her way home from work. Our family was grateful for the kindness.

In my father’s ICU room, there were perhaps 20 other people gathered in small clusters against the walls. Some were moist-eyed. Others showed little emotion. No one spoke.

As I made my way around the room, I wondered what each of them was thinking about me. Were they surprised that I had showed up? Were they angry because, as the eldest, I had never taken the time to get to know them? Did they hate me because they thought I was rich and had kept all the money for myself?

Having never been in the presence of all of my half-siblings at one time, I did my best.

After shaking the hand of the last relative, I found a corner in the back of the room and stood beside Charles, who squeezed my hand as if to say, Thanks for coming, big brother.

I tried to ignore our comatose father, tethered to life support in the middle of the room. Standing against the back wall with my eyes closed, I recalled the first time I saw my dad. I was only two years old, but I remember the stormy night when he returned home from the war.

That evening, when the doorbell rang at 904 Tilghman Street, my mother raced to answer. Through the door stepped a handsome young man, snappy in Navy dress blues. Without bothering to remove his brimmed hat with the rain-splattered plastic cover, he quickly pulled my mother to him. But, the sight of a wide-eyed toddler clinging protectively to his mother’s skirt interrupted their passionate reunion. He scooped the puzzled child into his arms and held him close. Even through his rain-soaked coat, the returning hero must have felt the boy’s tiny heart fluttering like a frightened bird. Tenderly, my mother kissed me and whispered, Son, this is your father.

In the ICU, I saw no handsome young sailor. I saw only a dying old man with sunken eyes and wrinkled skin. He wore no smart dress blues or medals of valor. He received no hero’s welcome. There was only the unmistakable presence of death, patiently waiting.

Multiple wires ascended from his chest to a pair of TV monitors suspended from the ceiling. The machines resembled large gray vultures, hungry and glaring. The moving blips and squiggles, instead of sprinting as they normally do, barely managed to crawl across the monitors’ screens.

Unconscious, our father could neither eat nor drink. Two sets of intravenous tubing fed him. Precious drops of clear liquid from a bag connected to the back of his right hand provided his only source of nourishment. Earlier in the day, the doctor had turned off the IV in his other hand. That tube carried medications intended to maintain our father’s heart rate and blood pressure.

Now, only the ventilator held death at bay. Its continuous, rhythmical whoosh pumped oxygen into his lungs. Each stroke of the machine gently raised and lowered his chest, forestalling the inevitable.

Finally, all of the family members had assembled. It was time. Delois, my father’s second wife, approached the head of the bed and spoke tenderly to her husband. Remembering how painful my mother’s life had been, I raised an eyebrow as I overheard Delois’ endearing words. As she finished speaking, she kissed his forehead. Then Jameelah joined her.

She, the eldest daughter of the second marriage, adored our father and felt a surprising closeness to me. Jameelah lived several doors away from her parents and spent considerable time with them as our father’s health deteriorated. Though there were few feelings of kinship between my father’s second set of children and me, Jameelah considered me family.

Several years earlier, when I received the prestigious MaGee-Woodruff lifetime achievement award from Bryn Mawr Hospital, The Delaware County Daily Times ran an article about my accomplishment.

One of Jameelah’s friends asked, Did you see the article about Dr. Thompson?

Jameelah told me that she beamed, Yes, I saw it. Of course you know that he’s my brother. Her words went straight to my heart.

At the ICU bedside, with her voice breaking, Jameelah told our father, I’m not sure that I’ll be able to let you go. But, if you can’t stay here with us, I’ll try somehow to carry on without you. I’ll never forget you.

After Jameelah, from the eldest to the youngest, my half-siblings and other relatives said their final goodbyes. Everyone spoke except me. The eldest of our father’s children, I stood unmoved in the back of the room.

As the outpouring of grief from my half-siblings continued, I was determined to remain apart ignoring furtive glances that seemed to implore, Brother, when are you going to say goodbye to our father? I lowered my eyes and reminded myself that the only reason I was in that room was to support Charles. My father’s impending death held no sense of loss for me.

When everyone had said their tearful farewells, Delois called for the inhalation therapist. The young man asked us to leave the room while he tidied up. Once outside, I watched through the window as he turned off the ventilator. Its job was done. With latex-gloved hands, he undid the tape and slipped the breathing tube from my father’s throat. With an alcohol swab, he wiped away the spittle and telltale remnants of white adhesive tape from my father’s gray lips. Decades ago, these same lips cursed me as I tried to protect Mother from his brutality. Today, they were pale and still.

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