What a day yesterday was. Starting with Friday night, actually. It's so much, I don't want to wait until tomorrow while I am at work to write about it. I won't have the bandwidth, I don't think.
Bill has died. And in truly sharp contrast to Mom's death last year, when she died of something that would have occurred regardless of the state of the world, Bill's death was not just entirely, but
easily preventable: he died of COVID-19, unvaccinated.
This time around, I am far less sad than I am just infuriated. Largely at my fucking brother, to be honest with you. I'm not going to say that Bill had no agency or that he was a much bigger idiot, but I do think my brother has a lot more capacity for understanding nuance than Bill did. And Christopher was the one who was staunchly against getting the vaccine, for reasons that continue to elude me—aside from Dad telling me once that Christopher had referenced "
microchipping" while they were speaking on the phone, one of the more insanely ridiculous conspiracy theories about the vaccines. In any case, had Christopher spent a long time talking to Bill about the minuscule risks and the vast benefits of vaccination—just as he had last year about how Mom would have wanted to be taken off life support—he almost certainly could have convinced Bill to get vaccinated.
Christopher had that power, and he made the conscious choice not to use it. Not one person in that house has been vaccinated, and guess what? It's a near certainty at this point that every one of them is infected.
Apparently, Tristen was the first to test positive. It should be noted that the infection could have come from someone else—it could have come from anywhere—but, the fact remains that Tristen was the first known to be positive. Both Bill and Christopher (who
shares a bedroom with Tristen) then started showing symptoms, and health care workers they contacted told them it was a good guess they all had it so there was no urgent need for the rest of them to get tested, but they should all quarantine together, so that's what they did. This included Braeden, the youngest, who I was surprised to learn had been staying with Christopher without Christian, who was still with Katina in Spokane. I guess sometimes in the summer Christian and Braeden stay for a week in Wallace without the other there.
Side note: during a phone call with Nikki on Friday night (in the midst of several phone calls and particularly texts and Facebook Messenger messages), she told Shobhit and me that Katina had also tested positive for COVID. I don't remember when, but it sounded like that happened earlier. As Shobhit noted, if that were the case, it's just as possible that both Christian and Braeden caught it and were the ones who brought it home to Bill, Christopher and Tristen. I don't know for certain whether Christian and Braeden have been vaccinated, but I doubt it. It's possible one of the homeless shelters Katina has stayed in with them required it, but that doesn't seem especially likely. I think it's even less likely that Katina has been vaccinated (an assumption I am making only because she is a known idiot), in which case the kids could have carried it to Wallace whether they were vaccinated or not.
All I know from the start of all this is this: the first notice I got of anything was a message from Braeden, over Facebook Messenger, at 8:38 p.m., which I first assumed was Tristen but later realized had actually been from Braeden (the youngest, who is 15):
Grandpa is went to the hospital so pray for him
At first, I didn't really worry that much. Mom had been in and out of the hospital for several years before her death, and Bill, while it hadn't been quite as frequent, had been as well. I wasn't immediately thinking about the likelihood that it was COVID, and just responded with,
What happened? Why is he in the hospital?
I heard from Tristen before this, but by 9:03 Braeden responded with,
Like every time he would like moan when he tried to talk. Had I not already heard from Tristen that Bill had been hospitalized with COVID before I finally saw that message, Braeden's follow-up there may have still lacked clarity but it would have indicated some real seriousness to the situation. For a hot second I actually wondered if it had been a stroke, as had happened with Mom.
It wasn't until Tristen tried to call me at about a quarter after 9 that I even realized I had been messaging with Braeden and not him. (Tristen's Facebook account identifies him as Tristen and Braeden's is titled "Deadshot McQuilkin" for some reason, but I almost never get messages from Braeden which was what made it easy to make the mistake; I knew it was a nephew. My brother has too many children.) Tristen had tried to call me but I wasn't paying attention to my phone as Shobhit and I had been watching the season five finale of
The Expanse. I saw a message on Facebook from Tristen asking me to call him and giving me his phone number, and I called him at 9:39.
When Tristen answered that call, he was outside the hospital in Kellogg, Idaho—the town that is 10 miles west of Wallace—and both Bill and Christopher were inside; Tristen was outside in the car, as he obviously could not go inside as someone COVID positive. But, both Bill and Christopher were, although to widely varying degrees of urgency.
Nikki later put it pretty succinctly when she said "Tristen does not have very good communication skills." Getting concrete information out of that kid (now 21) is like pulling teeth. He couldn't even tell me what the name was of the hospital he was sitting outside of, and I had to Google to be reminded, as this was the first place Mom had gone last year, it was Shoshone Medical Center. And at that point, all Tristen could tell me was this: Bill had to be taken to the hospital in an ambulance Friday evening (this still being the same evening, two nights ago). They all already knew Tristen had been positive so there was no reason not to deduce that's what was wrong with Bill. Christopher had gone in to be looked at too, though, because apparently he was having dizzy spells every time he stood up. They had called to ask if he should come in as well for that reason, and I guess they suggested he should.
I never did get any specifics about Christopher's own examination or what the doctor might have told him about what was going on with him; I only know he eventually went home Friday night so he clearly wasn't so bad off that he needed to stay in the hospital. After some conjecture on Shobhit's and my part, I finally messaged Tristen to ask who had actually driven to the hospital as we were under the impression that Tristen still did not have his driver's license. Tristen informed us he has his permit, and so Christopher thankfully did not drive in that condition, and Tristen chauffeured him there and back.
I did eventually get on the phone with Christopher, though, and ultimately I had two phone calls with him on Friday evening, one at 9:45 and 10:19. These were two very different phone calls, the first being when Tristen suggested I call him on his cell since he was just waiting to see a doctor, and that was when I learned from Christopher that Bill's condition was quite bad. But, someone came out to speak to him while we were on the phone, and Christopher said, "Matthew can I call you back?" and I said of course.
In the meantime, I texted Nikki just to be sure she was in the loop, and she called me back to say "I don't know what I don't know" but as I had her on speakerphone so Shobhit could hear, we figured out that we were both as up to date as the other—well, except that it was during this conversation I learned that Katina had also tested positive at some point. Oh, and that Nikki, TJ and Cheyanna had visited Wallace not long before and may have been exposed. And guess what? We knew this last month during our Father's Day visit: TJ is vaccinated but Nikki is not, Nikki's hesitancy being because she is pregnant, even though it is not hard to find hard evidence that vaccines pose no threat to pregnant women. COVID almost certainly would, though. I didn't ask again on Friday whether Nikki had come around on vaccination for herself yet; this was a month later but for all I know she may have. I sure hope she does after this, for fuck's sake. It was disappointing to hear that about her, as in most things she is by far the person in that family with the most common sense. It was a surprise to me to find this to be an exception.
Anyway, Christopher called me back at 10:19, and that was when things took a turn, in terms of Bill. Christopher wanted to know, because the hospital had asked him—it was this bad already—if I had any idea whether Bill wanted to be put on life support, as he had no known documentation of his wishes. (I believe this is one thing Christopher actually did try to discuss with Bill, but Bill refused to talk about it. So, by default this burden falls to Christopher . . . and to me. Thanks, Bill, you selfish fuck!) I knew what was likely (that he would not want it) but felt very uncomfortable being "the decider." But then I had an idea: I bet Shelley, their good friend and former PSR worker who now lives in Whidbey Island, would know. I didn't have her phone number but I told Christopher I would try and get a hold of her and call him back.
I send Shelley a message on Facebook Messenger but there was no immediate response. I looked up her "info" page on Facebook and holy shit, thank the gods, she had her phone number there! I was actually trying to call her but she was already calling me back, evidently having seen her message to please call me as it was urgent and about Bill; I left my number.
And Shelley felt very confident about this, said without hesitation, that Bill would not want to be on life support. So, I called Christopher back, but there was no answer and so I left a voicemail telling him what Shelley had told me. I also sent him a text, at 10:32, and shortly afterward finally went to sleep. I never did have any more phone calls with Christopher after that, and only communicated thereafter within a Facebook Messenger group Christopher created called "Bill Updates."
Beore that happened, though, while I was still in bed yesterday morning, I took the initiative to call Shoshone Medical Center to see what information I could get from the source. The lady who answered, her name was Michelle, was very nice and although she had only just started her shift she kind of went out of her way to be as helpful as she could. She did hesitate to share some things at first, not knowing if I qualified as someone she could share personal details with, but when I said "Well I can just move on to my brother—" she then went ahead and gave me pretty detailed stuff about Bill. Between that call and a follow-up call I made where she was the same woman who answered, after I also called Danielle who is a nurse and could give me more specific questions to ask, Michelle was very forthcoming.
She did confirm, in the first call, that it had been agreed on Friday night that Bill had a DNR (do not resuscitate); I got confirmation in the second call that it included DNI (do not intubate). She confirmed he was unconscious; I am assuming he had been since Friday. He was on a bipap, a type of ventilator to help with breathing, and his "tidal volume" was 465 at the most recent reading, his oxygen with that being 84%—that being very bad. I had already told Danielle about Michelle saying in the first call that he was "in the eighties" and Danielle was like, "Yeah. that's not good."
The other critical information Michelle relayed, in the second call yesterday morning, was that Bill was in the ER at Shoshone Medical Center, waiting for an ICU bed to open up. Under normal circumstances, as had been the case with Mom last year, he would have been transferred to Coeur d'Alene—but, there were no available ICU beds there. She told us they even checked for beds in Eastern Washington and Western Montana, and there were none available in any of the three states. Transmission rates among the unvaccinated are going through the roof right now, especially in Idaho, and I keep thinking about how, in retrospect, I should have known that my brother and his family getting infected was not so much a risk as it was an inevitability, with none of them vaccinated.
Something else occurred to me just now. I'm remembering one of the few phone calls I had with Mom between the first explosion of COVID cases last year and when she died of a stroke on July 1, 2020. I remembering it feeling kind of eerie how casually Mom referenced what would happen if she or Bill were to catch it: it would be the end of them. She said it very matter of factly. Turns out, she was absolutely correct.
Anyway. Another thing that came up yesterday morning was what other family Bill still has alive. Turns out he has a couple of siblings, a brother and a sister, which I was able to figure out on Facebook. Neither of them had phone numbers listed, but I did Google the brother and find a number I assumed to be correct, since the page also listed an email with "outlander" as the handle—and Mom and Bill always had "outlanders" in their email handle, which couldn't have been a coincidence. Nikki volunteered to attempt phone calls, which I appreciated. Christopher finally found the numbers at the house and shared them to the Bill Updates group yesterday afternoon, and Nikki got a hold of the sister, who told her both that the brother was very hard to get a hold of, and that there would be no one else to notify. It sounds to me like at this point Bill had more people on this side of the country who cared about this news, which was the biggest reason I posted last night to inform them.
Shobhit and I got into it a little yesterday morning, thinking I was getting too involved with contacting the siblings and making it easy for them to stake a claim on Mom and Bill's house and thus possibly force Christopher and Tristen to move out at some point. On the one hand, it was odd that Shobhit was suddenly getting so concerned about my brother's welfare. On the other hand, none of that changes the fact that family is family and Bill's siblings need to know, no matter how Shobhit or even Christopher feel about it. By the sounds of it, I'm not sure Christopher has much to worry about anyway. I remember asking him stuff in regards to this kind of thing when Shobhit and I visited last August, and Christopher, as I recall, said he eventually wanted to move away from the house, but I don't remember him having any concrete plan about it.
Yesterday afternoon I attended a Seattle Lesbian and Gay Chorus reunion event, and I can save details about that for tomorrow's post. Right after Christopher created the Bill Updates group, he messaged us all at 10:53 a.m. that
Bill is being sent to Holy Family by helicopter. By that he meant Providence Holy Family in Spokane. It was shortly after the SLGC event began at 1:30 that he updated us with,
Moving towards comfort and they said he could pass shortly. Damn, this was moving fast.
Tristen sent the update at 5:09 p.m.:
Just got the call that he passed
Shobhit was rather stuck on the helicopter ride to Spokane, where evidently an ICU patient died and freed up a bed. "Who pays for that?" he asked, no fewer than three times, and I shouted, "I don't know!" I mean, how the fuck would I know?
I actually messaged the group around 7:30 last night to get clarification, as it was still not clear to me whether Bill had made it to Spokane before he died. Christopher responded,
He made it to Holy Family. The transfer made things worse. So they moved to comfort till he passed there. So honestly, to Shobhit's point, whoever does pay for that, the helicopter right was both pointless and counterproductive. A total waste.
Ever since I
shared the news on Facebook yesterday evening, I've gotten a surprising large outpouring of support, even though I made it pretty clear in the post itself that Bill and I were never close. But, to me, he was kind of an extension of my mom, in essence the last one (not counting my brother and me), and now even that is gone. One could argue it diminishes Bill to remember him only as he related to Mom, but . . . oh well. That's just the way it is.
[posted 9:33 am]
