Last Dance, Last Chance

sending me flowers and cards saying he loved me. I didn’t worry about him cheating on me, and we were both looking forward to summer when our new baby would be born.”
    The prospect of a new baby proved to her that life went on after all, even though she still grieved for her father. After her second cesarean—this one an emergency procedure—Debbie’s baby emerged on June 5. It was a girl, just as the ultrasound had shown. But the atmosphere in the delivery room was strangely stilted, and the newborn was whisked away for what they told her was “testing and stabilization.”
    Her name was Christina Marie—just as they had planned—but there was no joy in her birth. Her head was enlarged and misshapen. “She had a brain tumor that had been growing for months before she was born,” Debbie said sadly.
    Christina had no significant brain function, and neonatologists agreed that she couldn’t survive without being on a life-support system that would breathe for her. Even then, barring a miracle, the baby girl would never move beyond a vegetative state.
    Debbie and Anthony made the heartbreaking decision to give their permission to take Christina off the life support system. They arranged for a simple burial service.
    “I was still in the hospital,” Debbie said. “Anthony, Lena, and my mother went to the cemetery to bury my baby. There was no funeral. I didn’t even get to go to her burial.”
    Before Debbie could recover from the surgical birth and the grief over the baby she never saw, Anthony left Buffalo. He had been accepted into another residency program, this time at Georgetown University Medical School in Washington, D.C. He told Debbie that she and Ralph should stay behind with his parents until he found suitable housing for them.
    It was necessary for him to go—he couldn’t be board-certified in any specialty until he completed a residency program. Both Debbie and Anthony had struggled for too many years to give up on Anthony’s dreams now. But it was such a lonely time for Debbie, and she grieved for her father and her lost baby girl on her own.
    Anthony’s third year of residency began on July 1,1988. He found a town house to rent in Alexandria, Virginia, and Debbie and Ralph joined him in late July.
    “The neighborhood wasn’t what I’d expected,” Debbie said. “It was nice, but everyone was older, and no one had kids. We moved later to Wheaton, Maryland, and that was better.”
    Anthony became critical of Debbie’s appearance. She was never thin enough or pretty enough for him. She recalled, “He would ask me, ‘Have you looked at yourself in the mirror? Do you think I want to be with someone who looks like that?’”
    So Debbie began to diet and tried harder to please him, but her self-confidence drained away every time Anthony let her know that she wasn’t quite good enough for him. In truth, she was still a very attractive young woman, but she saw herself through Anthony’s critical eyes.
    Anthony had switched his speciality to otolaryngology, which dealt with diseases of the ear, nose, and throat. It would take two more years of training for him to be certified. Anthony wrote in his continuing journal that he was doing rotations in plastic cosmetic surgery and had become fascinated with facial reconstructive surgery.
    “These were the areas that interested me the most,” Anthony wrote. “I always believed this was the logical extension of my prior engineering school, and the many summers I spent working on construction. It was the perfect match of intellect and artistry.”
    If Anthony could help people with this combination of specialties, Debbie would be proud. She prayed that this program would be smooth. In two years, they could move home to Buffalo for good, and Anthony could open a practice that would provide them a good living but, more important, would be beneficial to his patients, giving them hope and a new life.
    But Anthony ran into more problems. Later, he blamed his troubles at Georgetown University on the fact that he lost his mentor, the one senior physician he felt understood his potential. Dr. Louis Gilbrath * was as important an influence on him, he said, as his own father was. But Dr. Gilbrath had coronary artery disease, which required bypass surgery. The surgery was only partially successful, and Anthony’s idol and teacher was forced to retire early.
    Despite this explanation, it was more than losing Dr. Gilbrath that marred Anthony’s years