Steve Jobs

membrane that surrounds internal organs. In addition, there were tumors throughout the liver, which meant it was likely that the cancer had migrated elsewhere as well. It had apparently mutated and grown quickly. They took samples and did more genetic mapping.
    A few days later they needed to perform another procedure. Jobs insisted against all advice they not pump out his stomach, and when they sedated him, he aspirated some of the contents into his lungs and developed pneumonia. At that point they thought he might die. As he described it later:
I almost died because in this routine procedure they blew it. Laurene was there and they flew my children in, because they did not think I would make it through the night. Reed was looking at colleges with one of Laurene’s brothers. We had a private plane pick him up nearDartmouth and tell them what was going on. A plane also picked up the girls. They thought it might be the last chance they had to see me conscious. But I made it.
     
    Powell took charge of overseeing the treatment, staying in the hospital room all day and watching each of the monitors vigilantly. “Laurene was a beautiful tiger protecting him,” recalled Jony Ive, who came as soon as Jobs could receive visitors. Her mother and three brothers came down at various times to keep her company. Jobs’s sister Mona Simpson also hovered protectively. She and George Riley were the only people Jobs would allow to fill in for Powell at his bedside. “Laurene’s family helped us take care of the kids—her mom and brothers were great,” Jobs later said. “I was very fragile and not cooperative. But an experience like that binds you together in a deep way.”
    Powell came every day at 7 a.m. and gathered the relevant data, which she put on a spreadsheet. “It was very complicated because there were a lot of different things going on,” she recalled. When James Eason and his team of doctors arrived at 9 a.m., she would have a meeting with them to coordinate all aspects of Jobs’s treatment. At 9 p.m., before she left, she would prepare a report on how each of the vital signs and other measurements were trending, along with a set of questions she wanted answered the next day. “It allowed me to engage my brain and stay focused,” she recalled.
    Eason did what no one at Stanford had fully done: take charge of all aspects of the medical care. Since he ran the facility, he could coordinate the transplant recovery, cancer tests, pain treatments, nutrition, rehabilitation, and nursing. He would even stop at the convenience store to get the energy drinks Jobs liked.
    Two of the nurses were from tiny towns in Mississippi, and they became Jobs’s favorites. They were solid family women and not intimidated by him. Eason arranged for them to be assigned only to Jobs. “To manage Steve, you have to be persistent,” recalled Tim Cook. “Eason managed Steve and forced him to do things that no one else could, things that were good for him that may not have been pleasant.”
    Despite all the coddling, Jobs at times almost went crazy. He chafed at not being in control, and he sometimes hallucinated or becameangry. Even when he was barely conscious, his strong personality came through. At one point the pulmonologist tried to put a mask over his face when he was deeply sedated. Jobs ripped it off and mumbled that he hated the design and refused to wear it. Though barely able to speak, he ordered them to bring five different options for the mask and he would pick a design he liked. The doctors looked at Powell, puzzled. She was finally able to distract him so they could put on the mask. He also hated the oxygen monitor they put on his finger. He told them it was ugly and too complex. He suggested ways it could be designed more simply. “He was very attuned to every nuance of the environment and objects around him, and that drained him,” Powell recalled.
    One day, when he was still floating in and out of consciousness, Powell’s close friend Kathryn Smith came to visit. Her relationship with Jobs had not always been the best, but Powell insisted that she come by the bedside. He motioned her over, signaled for a pad and pen, and wrote, “I want my iPhone.” Smith took it off the dresser and brought it to him. Taking her hand, he showed her the “swipe to open” function and made her play with the menus.
    Jobs’s relationship with Lisa Brennan-Jobs, his daughter with Chrisann, had frayed. She had graduated from