ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife
Book One, Part Two, Chapter 18: The Death Sentence
Why did Ernie, reading The Secret Garden when a young boy, so identify with Colin Craven?
It’s not so hard to understand. When Ernie was fourteen, he complained of a sore throat. “Lots of kids are out of school right now with strep throat,” he told his mother. “Maybe that’s what I have.”
Mary Lee looked for a good doctor. Her brother Dewitt, purchasing agent for the Brown Hotel — owned by the city’s most famous millionaire — offered a name. “Take him to Doc Hill,” he said. “He’s the personal physician of the boss and the doctor-on-call for the hotel. If Doc Hill’s good enough for J. Graham Brown and for our hotel guests, he’s good enough for Ernie.”
Mary Lee took Ernie to Dr. Hill. In his memoir, Ernie writes of this.
After the x-ray examination, the doctor, a ruby-faced man, asked me to run in place for a minute. Then he listened to my heart. He moved the cold disc of the stethoscope all over my chest and then my back. I could hear his stomach rumbling. When he finished, he told me to put my undershirt and shirt back on and to wait in the adjoining room while he conferred with my mother.
Through the wall, I could hear the doctor’s booming voice and my mother’s almost inaudible responses. What I heard paralyzed me with fear. First, there was to be an operation. Then I was to be confined to bed for at least a year. He doubted that I’d live beyond my thirtieth birthday.
I began to cry, but I dried my tears before Mother came for me. Gently, she told me I was to have my tonsils removed. My bad cold had turned into strep throat that had, in turn, infected my tonsils, she explained. My heart had been weakened by the infection, she said, sparing me the doctor’s full verdict.
Ernie titled this chapter The Death Sentence.
He didn’t tell his parents he’d overheard the doctor’s verdict. He told no one his heart would fail him. Instead, he sought ways to forget this brutal truth. And he determined, if he was to live no more than thirty years, to move fast and to make a difference.
