Escape. Part 22

I was devastated. Exhausted, depleted, and wrecked, I had no longer any reservoirs of strength to draw on. I had to keep going. But each day felt progressively worse as it blurred into the next. I did not dare imagine Harrison's future. The present was terrifying enough.

Time after time the ambulance sped us to the hospital in St. George with sirens screaming. The doctors and nurses there fought like h.e.l.l to keep Harrison alive. Their determination and valor made me realize how much more compa.s.sion there was for me in the outside world than there was within my own home.

I knew my future in the FLDS was over. Because of my "rebellion" I had produced a disabled child, disgraced my husband, and brought shame to my family. No one in Merril's family cared about my welfare except Cathleen.

Cathleen had become my rock. Despite Warren's ban on our ever speaking to each other-or maybe because of it-our friends.h.i.+p solidified in ways that gave me courage and strength. We had coffee together every morning and talked about the day ahead. If I went flying to the hospital with Harrison, she looked out for my children and saw that their laundry was done, their rooms tidy, and they were fed.

Barbara and Tammy hated this. They would try to get Cathleen in trouble with Merril whenever they could. But Cathleen tried not to let it get to her. She had a full-time job at the grocery store in the community. She did not turn her paychecks over to Merril. Cathleen had carved out a niche of both obedience and defiance.

Harrison's doctor, Dr. Smith, decided that something more had to be done for him. She felt his spasms might be a long-term condition and that he needed to have a G-b.u.t.ton surgically implanted in his stomach as well as a procedure called fundoplication.

The G-b.u.t.ton would go directly into Harrison's stomach, instead of the temporary nasogastric tube that went through his nose. A fundoplication prevents vomiting because the upper part of the stomach is wrapped around the esophagus and secured in such a way that it works like a valve to prevent the stomach contents from coming up through the esophagus. This was a huge help to Harrison because he stopped getting pneumonia from all the vomiting and he no longer needed to have the nasogastric tube inserted every day.

The doctors at Phoenix Children's had seen only one other patient like Harrison. That child was still having spasms after three years. Some kids with spinal neuroblastoma stopped having spasms immediately after the tumor was removed. For others, the spasms lasted for years until they finally subsided. I couldn't bear the thought of that happening to him.

I hated that he needed more surgery, but he had to have relief from the constant vomiting. He was always on the brink of starvation because he couldn't get enough nutrition to grow. The emergency trips to St. George were becoming more frequent. Harrison had almost died several times and I couldn't keep pressing our luck. He had to eat, he had to stop vomiting, and he had to be able to breathe. It was hard to imagine his condition getting any worse. Surgery was our only option.

I began making arrangements for his surgery in the spring of 2001. Harrison was almost two and had been having spasms for nearly a year. When I started vomiting that April, I thought it might be the flu. But I didn't have any other symptoms and after a few days I bought a pregnancy kit. I knew what the result would be. I'd missed my last Depo-Provera shot because I was so consumed with Harrison's care.

The test was positive. I was pregnant for the eighth time. If this became another life-threatening pregnancy, it could kill Harrison. No one in Merril's family would help with Harrison's care. We could all die: me, my unborn baby, and my sick son.

Merril's daughter Audrey had moved back to our FLDS community a year before. Dear, sweet Audrey, who had taken me on those long bike rides out to the reservoir when I first married Merril and tried to teach me about the family's dynamics, now became a real ally.

Audrey had worked in the ER at University Hospital in Salt Lake City. She was well trained in critical care and knew that Harrison's condition was a medical problem, not a punishment for my sins.

Audrey herself had fallen ill when she was living in Salt Lake City. As soon as she was diagnosed and treated, she stabilized. Audrey did well.

But Merril's family had shunned her after she got sick. Her illness was seen as a sign that she had disgraced her father by not being in harmony with the husband she never wanted to marry. Even though she eventually married the man the prophet had ordered her to, she was seen as someone who'd been in resistance to Uncle Roy's will. Audrey had also never kowtowed to Barbara, for which she also paid a price.

Harrison had been getting his IV therapy through home health visits. It was always a challenge because of his spasms. I asked Audrey if she might be able to do this. His screaming was bad enough without the additional trauma of being stuck like a pincus.h.i.+on when he needed his IVs.

The first time Audrey examined him she shook her head. "Carolyn, nearly all his veins are blown. It's because he's needed a lot of IVs but also because they've missed his veins so many times. You can't allow anyone to stick him several times. He won't have any IV access left at all."

Audrey, in her calm and determined way, managed to place the IV line on her first try. From then on, whenever there was an emergency or whenever Harrison needed an IV, Audrey was the person I called.

She was the one I confided in first when I found out I was pregnant.

"I don't know what I'm going to do," I said. "If I get into trouble with this one, we're doomed."

Audrey tried to rea.s.sure me and promised she would do whatever it took to help me keep Harrison alive. She said she'd be there around the clock if it came to that. I knew she meant it.

Harrison's surgery was scheduled for June. I had to make arrangements for the trip and also find a way to pay for it. Merril had forced me to go on Medicaid and would give me no extra help. Cathleen volunteered to drive me. She said she could pay for the trip with her own money. Barbara was infuriated at this idea, but Merril did not object.

Merril was relieved that I was no longer threatening to leave him. I had been s.e.xually compliant, even when I was completely wiped out by Harrison's screaming, spasms, and vomiting. When Merril came into my room in the middle of the night and flung himself on top of me I didn't have either the will or the energy to refuse. s.e.x was the price I had to pay to make him think I'd given up the idea of escape.

Harrison's surgery was a success-at least initially. His post-op recovery was more complicated than we antic.i.p.ated. Cathleen stayed with me in Phoenix, which was a relief. Merril didn't bother to come. He had no interest in Harrison.

We had been home for only a few days when Harrison's condition plummeted. He developed a high fever and needed larger doses of Versed to control the pain and spasms. The skin around his G-b.u.t.ton wasn't looking very good. I decided to give him a bath on our third day home from the hospital, hoping it would settle him before Cathleen came in for our morning coffee.

When I unzipped Harrison's pajamas I almost fainted. There was a gaping hole next to the G-b.u.t.ton that opened deep into his abdomen. I sank to the floor at the sight and put my hand to my mouth to keep from vomiting. The room was spinning. I felt as though I could not breathe. But I would not allow myself to pa.s.s out.

I pulled myself back up and there was Harrison, his huge, wondering eyes staring at me in his endearing way. He was such a beautiful boy. But he was in big trouble.

He was admitted again to the hospital in St. George. The surgeon in Phoenix had used microsutures that had ripped out because of Harrison's spasms. The wound had become infected and now would have to heal from the inside out. It needed to be packed and cleaned twice a day. But he healed so well he did not need corrective surgery.

Harrison was on a ma.s.sive regimen of antibiotics to treat his infection and prevent it from spreading. We came home after a few days and had a home health aide to help change the dressings. She taught me how to help her do it. The challenge with Harrison was his spasms. It took two of us to hold him so we could change the dressings to keep his wound clean. But I was vomiting too much to be of much help. I had morning, noon, and night sickness and was as sick as I'd ever been during a pregnancy.

Harrison gradually healed from his surgery. His oxygen levels began to stabilize, but he was still on a feeding pump and he still screamed most of the time unless I was doing something to comfort him. I felt a glimmer of optimism. Maybe we had been through the worst of it. His lungs were improving now that he was free of pneumonia. Maybe, just maybe, he could start to grow and develop again.

I tried to get him to eat food by mouth. It was a battle, but I had some small success. It had been almost a year since he first got sick, and hands down it had been the hardest year of my life.

One afternoon I was in the kitchen making some food for Harrison and trying not to throw up myself when Naomi suddenly appeared-Merril and Ruth's daughter who had been married off to Uncle Rulon when she was still a teenager and he was in his eighties.

Naomi, unlike her other sister wives, couldn't stop talking about what was going on in Uncle Rulon's house. Secrets were not her strong suit. At one point she started talking about her concern over the enormous birth control bills the prophet's wives were running up.

I could not believe what I was hearing. I was so shocked I dropped the blender I was was.h.i.+ng in the sink. I turned to Naomi and said, "The enormous what what?"

Naomi sighed, annoyed that I hadn't heard her the first time. "The enormous birth control bill," she said. "He has to spend so much money on birth control every month it is outrageous."

I was incredulous. "Why is Uncle Rulon purchasing birth control for his wives?"

"He has to because we all have endometriosis and it has to be treated with birth control." Naomi sounded smug.

Uncle Rulon by now had sixty wives. If only a fraction of them were on birth control, the bill would be huge. But I knew there was no way that so many could have endometriosis. It wasn't that common.

Warren Jeffs was the one who authorized all the money that was spent on Uncle Rulon's family. I had heard that his wives who had endometriosis were told to fast and pray. There had to be more to the story than Naomi knew or was telling.

My hunch was that Warren was paying for a cover-up. It was not kept quiet that at least one of Uncle Rulon's wives was having an affair with his son.

Maybe many more wives were fed up with being married to a man at least fifty years older than they were and had started playing around with younger guys-even if they were theoretically their stepsons.

What angered me was that Warren always held up his father's family as a paragon of virtue-the ideal we should all try to emulate. The thought that these sixty wives had access to birth control when I didn't made me feel sicker than I already was.

I had had three life-threatening pregnancies; this was my fourth. Girls who were married to the prophet were presumed to be living a celibate life since the prophet was an invalid in his nineties. But now Warren Jeffs was paying for their birth control? Something was seriously wrong. s.e.x in the FLDS was never for pleasure, only for procreation, and since there was no way Uncle Rulon could father any more children, his wives were not supposed to have s.e.x with him-at least not if he practiced what he preached.

Twenty-four weeks into my pregnancy I started to have complications. I started to bleed from placenta previa. At first the bleeding was manageable, but it increased as the pregnancy progressed, and I knew it could be life-threatening if the cervix dilated enough to rip the placenta apart. I could bleed to death in a matter of minutes.

Audrey's husband agreed to let her help me as much as she could during the day. I had to rest as much as possible. Cathleen helped with my other children when she was home by doing laundry and helping me keep their bedrooms clean. I managed to make it through another four weeks until I was finally hospitalized during my twenty-eighth week. When I stabilized, I was sent to Jubilee House, across the street from the hospital. It was a home for cancer patients who needed daily outpatient therapy but lived out of town. It wasn't routinely used for high-risk pregnancy patients, but my obstetrician wanted me near the hospital so I could be closely monitored and whisked into the ER at the first sign of an emergency.

I'd stayed at Jubilee House once before and was able to go back again.

I concentrated on trying to have a healthy baby. It was the best thing I could do for all of us. A severely premature infant would need constant care and run the risk of having disabilities. I couldn't care for two compromised children on my own.

I was given two shots of medication to help the baby's lungs develop. The rest was welcome. I had not had a night of uninterrupted sleep for over a year. I had plenty of food and fluids in the hospital and could feel myself becoming stronger. But it was hard to maintain because I was hemorrhaging more frequently and I lost more blood each time. Sometimes I pa.s.sed huge blood clots. I would hemorrhage about every three days, and that made me feel weaker and weaker even with the food and rest.

Audrey brought Harrison to see me along with several of my other children, which made me so happy. Harrison was doing better. Audrey's devotion to him was absolute. My other children snuggled in bed with me. It was so sweet, but I was so scared. I didn't know when I could really mother them again because I felt so overwhelmed by the thought of caring for a new baby and Harrison. I felt unstable emotionally because I was so depleted from all the blood loss. Most of time I just wanted to cry.

The three weeks I spent in St. George seemed like an eternity. It was such a dramatic s.h.i.+ft for me to be bedridden. Harrison's care had consumed my days and nights for so long. I was too weak even to read, and I slept most of the time. I could not watch more than forty minutes of television before I had to turn it off because the noise was too tiring. I had been quilting some baby blankets before I came to the hospital, but I was too weak to move my fingers enough to sew. Severe headaches-probably from all the blood loss-were a daily problem.

One morning my phone rang. It was Cathleen. "Have you heard the news?" I told her I'd been sound asleep. "Turn on the TV. We've just been attacked. They hit the World Trade Center in New York."

"Who hit the Trade Center?" I asked.

"No one knows yet. All we know is that the towers came down and thousands of people were killed." I don't think she'd seen pictures; no one in Colorado City had a television. Cathleen had heard about it at work from people who listened to the radio. Warren Jeffs' followers were some of the few people in the world who never saw coverage of the 9/11 attacks.

I turned on the television and saw the replay of the towers collapsing. It was beyond comprehension. The images were sickening. It was hard to watch, harder not to watch. The pictures burned through to my soul. I, like so many others, had thought America was invulnerable.

It was upsetting to me to see Arabs dancing in the streets because of the 9/11 attacks. I had a hard time watching people rejoice over killing and death even though I knew they hated us.

What was worse was the reaction from people in Colorado City. Tammy came to visit me with several of Merril's daughters in the aftermath of 9/11. She couldn't stop talking about how she and all the righteous people she knew saw the hand of G.o.d in the attacks. The Lord's people had finally proven worthy enough for G.o.d to answer their prophet's prayers. The destruction of the towers was just the beginning. Warren Jeffs had been preaching that the entire earth would soon be at war and all the worthy among the chosen would be lifted from the earth and protected, while G.o.d destroyed the wicked.

Tammy's fanaticism was as idiotic to me as the Islamic extremism of the men who'd flown the planes into the twin towers. I had been taught as a child that only the wicked would be destroyed before the beginning of the thousand years of peace. Thousands of ordinary citizens had been murdered on 9/11, and it was impossible for me to see how anyone-even Warren Jeffs-could spin this as an act of G.o.d.

Uncle Rulon had encouraged us to pray for the destruction of the wicked. I never could pray for harm to come to anyone else. Watching the smoldering ruins at Ground Zero and listening to the final, frantic cell phone calls of those trapped in the towers made me know in the deepest part of my being that only the wicked could rejoice in a tragedy like this-which didn't say much for my own community.

My doctor was pleased when I made it to thirty-one weeks-nine weeks short of a normal pregnancy. He thought the baby was doing well and said that he'd do a C-section when the placenta finally tore and I started to hemorrhage. Every day that my pregnancy continued made my baby healthier and stronger.

Merril came frequently to St. George. He was thrilled to have finally gotten one of his wives pregnant again. He drove up to Jubilee House several times a week and took me out for a steak dinner and was planning to stay with me overnight, but once when Barbara called, in tears, he turned around and drove back.

I was so frightened being alone when I was sick that it was a relief to have Merril there. He came just as I was beginning my thirty-first week. I awoke during the night in labor. I could feel the contractions beginning to come. I stayed still, thinking that maybe I could will them to stop. But two hours later, I was hemorrhaging ma.s.sive amounts of blood. Blood pooled around me. Merril called the ER and told them to send an ambulance.

One of the EMTs was a woman. When she saw the amount of blood around me she started shouting orders. "I have to get a line into her while I still can!" In minutes she had two IVs in each of my arms. She didn't start them on a drip, she just opened them up. I sensed how frantic she was beneath her professional calm. She called the hospital and said she was taking me directly to the OR.

I was so dizzy that I felt like I was going to pa.s.s out. It was hard to breathe. The last thing I remember was a doctor in the ER trying to keep an oxygen mask over my face. Each time the mask was put over my face I panicked and tried to push it off.

I did not wake up again until I was in the recovery room. I asked a nurse if my baby was okay. She said he had stabilized. I was relieved.

I'd had two previous C-sections, but never before had I been in such penetrating pain. I asked the nurse for more medication. She told me she'd given me as much as she could and that I shouldn't be in pain.

But I was. I was in too much pain for everything to be all right. Merril came in and was extremely happy because our baby was tiny and cute. I told Merril something was wrong. I was in too much pain. He wasn't concerned. When he left the room I lost consciousness.

The nurse tried to take my blood pressure and couldn't find one. I came to and remember my bed being pushed down the hall and people running on both sides of it. An ICU doctor running beside me was trying to put a central line in my neck and had the line placed before the brakes were locked on the bed. I still had two IVs in each arm. The door flew open to the ICU and the room was flooded with people. A bag of blood was being connected to the central line.

A doctor was yelling orders and people were moving fast. I had never been in so much pain. It felt like every cell in my body was screaming for oxygen. I felt such thirst, no amount of water would have quenched it. If the worst pain I'd ever had during childbirth had been a 10, the pain I felt now was at 100. The pain, noise, and chaos were too much.

I decided to let go.

I could hear the doctor's voice in the distance saying, "We're losing her, we're losing her!"

I was slipping under the waves of pain and chaos.

The doctor's voice sounded farther and farther away.

Then it got louder.

"Carolyn! We know you have eight kids! We are not going to let you die. You are not going to die on us!"

At that moment I started fighting to come back.

It felt like sledgehammers were hitting me on all sides. My thirst was unbearable. I started begging for water. I was told I couldn't have any because I was going back into surgery.

When I awoke again I could see the colors of a brilliant sunset through a window in the ICU. I took a deep breath. The sun was setting and I was still alive.

The pain was almost gone now. I still had four IVs and was receiving blood through a central line. My entire body was swollen. I felt like a beached whale.

An ICU doctor came and talked to me. He said they'd almost lost me. A nurse came in with more blood, and I asked her how many pints I'd received. She checked. Sixteen.

The surgeon came in the next morning and told me what had gone wrong. When he took out the baby he'd noticed that the placenta had grown through the scar tissue of a previous C-section. He'd cut around the scar and then tried to repair the uterus. He hadn't done a hysterectomy because he knew about our religious beliefs. He was confident he'd repaired the uterus. But apparently the placenta had grown beyond the scar tissue and into the uterus. When the placenta was delivered, I bled out, and the doctor did an emergency hysterectomy to save my life.

I couldn't believe that after four high-risk pregnancies the reason I'd almost died was because the doctor was trying to preserve my uterus! I was glad it was gone!

A nurse asked me if I wanted to speak with a grief counselor after my hysterectomy. I looked at her as if she were crazy. I loved every one of my children and would never give up a single one. But my hysterectomy felt like a get-out-of-jail-free card. I smiled at her and shook my head. "Eight is enough. Believe me, there's no grief."

Bryson was three pounds ten ounces and doing really well. He needed to be in the hospital for a few weeks, but the pediatrician didn't think he'd have any problems.

Before Bryson was born, the challenges of caring for Harrison had made me think my life couldn't get any worse. After my near-death experience, I knew it could. The nurse brought Bryson from the ICU so I could hold him. He was the tiniest human being I had ever seen. Completely perfect, but on a miniature scale-and born into a world I was determined to escape.

I kept thinking of what I needed to do before we fled. Harrison was in the hospital nearly every month, and Bryson would need a lot of care. I had to get both boys strong. Then I would take my children and run for my life.

My religion had always felt like an unsinkable s.h.i.+p. But Warren Jeffs and his extremism loomed large, like the iceberg that could smash everything apart.

I left the hospital after five days and moved back into Jubilee House so I could be close to Bryson. We didn't go home for two more weeks. I missed Harrison so much. He was my buddy. I was desperate to get back to him. I'd been away from my children for five weeks.

Bryson weighed four pounds when we finally came home and he was a feisty baby. He nursed easily, but at first I was allowed to breast-feed him only once a day. Breast-feeding is a lot of work for a preemie. A bottle is easier. I expressed my breast milk so he could be bottle-fed. I marveled at my exhausted and depleted body's ability to create food for this tiny boy. It took me months to feel that I was regaining strength.

I now had two more strikes against me in Merril's family. My hysterectomy and near-death experience were further proof to Merril's other wives that G.o.d was still condemning me for my rebellious ways. I was thirty-three and unable to bear any more children. For me that felt like a divine blessing rather than proof of a curse.

I would sometimes hear the other wives talking about me. They wondered why I refused to get in harmony with my husband. I should know, they said, that it didn't matter how many times I took Harrison to the hospital. As long as I was in rebellion he would only get worse until he finally died. I had nearly lost my life but still refused to repent. What more would G.o.d have to do to make me wake up?

What they did not realize was that I was already wide awake, building my strength, and plotting my strategy.

Cathleen was still my only friend among Merril's seven wives. She welcomed me home from the hospital, helped me with my laundry, and continued to have coffee with me every morning. She bought a few items that I needed for Bryson and Harrison because when I first came home from the hospital I was completely confined to my bedroom.

The other wives treated Cathleen like she was radioactive and shunned her.

Audrey came by almost every day to check on Harrison's and Bryson's vital signs, which was very rea.s.suring for me. If anything s.h.i.+fted, we could respond immediately.

Audrey also faithfully went to church every Sunday. She was as frightened as I by Warren's extremism.

Harrison's New Port