Love and Death on the Third Floor
On the cystic fibrosis wing of Dallas’ Presbyterian Hospital, an unlikely romance bloomed between two sick patients. The outcome was inevitable.
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It was a race against time. David said he would not waste a single moment: In July, to celebrate their birthdays—David’s twenty-sixth, Kim’s twenty-fourth—he insisted that they take the week-long Florida vacation that they had always talked about. “Only once did they feel good enough to leave the condo and go to the beach,” says Kim’s sister, Mandy, who traveled with them. “They both carried their portable oxygen tanks. Kim couldn’t get too deep into the water because of her balance problems, and David couldn’t get in because of his lack of strength. They finally just sat on the beach and let the waves roll up to their feet. They knew it would be the last time they didn’t have a care in the world. People would walk by and stare, but Kim and David just looked at one another, holding hands.”
Three months later, David and Kim went to see Kramer for a checkup. While Kim waited in another room, Kramer studied David’s oxygen levels. David couldn’t say more than two or three words without needing to take a breath. “You’ve got to go into the hospital,” Kramer said. “And this time, I don’t think you’ll be coming out.”
David managed only one response: “Make sure Kim is okay.”
Kramer walked across the hall to tell her. After a long silence, she asked if David could go home for one more night, back to their little one-bedroom apartment, where she could cook him a meal. When Kramer softly said no, Kim dropped her head and tried not to cry. “Don’t let him suffer, Dr. Bob,” she said. During thirty years as a specialist in CF, Kramer had watched more than four hundred of his young patients die. For his own sanity, he distanced himself emotionally from cases like David’s. But at that moment, he gathered Kim in his arms and wept.
David was admitted to the hospital on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 21. A showman to the end, he tried to make his mother laugh by reminding her of the time they were fishing and she accidentally hooked her lure in his hat. He and his father swapped auto-racing stories. When an aunt and uncle shuffled in meekly, David said, “I guess you’re wondering why I’ve called you here.” The couple uncomfortably cleared their throats. “It has come to my attention,” he continued, “that you owe me some money.”
Throughout the ordeal, Kim sat by David’s side. She tried to write a letter to Medicare officials, begging them to consider him for a lung transplant—a risky $250,000 operation tried as a last resort on a few CF patients—but she never got to finish. By Monday, David’s lips and fingernails were turning blue, and nurses had put an oxygen mask over his face. When they brought in a morphine machine to relieve some of the pain, Kim knew it was over.
“David, not yet,” she said, but he was unable to speak. All he could do was mouth “I love you” to his young wife and blow her a kiss. Just outside the door was the usual noise of the hospital: carts rolling by, people moving with quickened footsteps, doctors speaking in half-finished sentences. But at the bed, Kim and David stared at each other in silence, exchanging one long look of grief and love.
He died at 5:50 a.m. on October 26. Kim was the only one in the room. She wiped off his face with a tissue and then called for the nurse.
She had told everone—her mother, the doctors, and everyone at the hospital—that she wanted to live. She said that she knew David would not want her to give up. She and Dawn even talked about attending a performance of The Nutcracker over the Christmas holidays.
But within 24 hours of David’s funeral Kim collapsed while taking a shower. She got up, walked to the kitchen, and fell again. “Her mouth was like that of a fish out of water,” Dawn says. “I could see the vein throbbing in her neck as she tried to get her breath, but I had no idea how to help her.” She managed to put Kim into bed, where she lay in semi-darkness, staring at a photograph on her nightstand of David with his arms around her.
It was all happening so quickly, a panicked Dawn thought. It was too cruel. Kim was just beginning to mourn her husband’s death; now she had to deal with her own death. Dawn put her daughter in the car and took her back to the third floor of Presbyterian. Kim, in her favorite pink nightgown with white hearts clutched her pink blanket. She said to her mom that it felt just like the old days. Two of her cystic girlfriends, in rooms across the hall, came in to see her, trying to speak with even, cheerful voices. Disguising a sob as a cough, one of them said they would all soon be out and driving around Forest Lane. Kim leaned up and kissed her on the cheek.
Those who knew Kim well said there was something mysterious and haunting about her final days. “To me, it was Romeo and Juliet all over again,” Kramer says. “I know it sounds sentimental, but this really was a story of star-crossed love.” After Kramer stopped by to see Kim for the last time, he led Dawn and Kim’s father, Bill, out to the hallway and offered a decidedly unmedical diagnosis. “Her body is giving up,” he told them. “It’s like she’s dying of a broken heart.”
When friends and relatives came to say good-bye, Kim whispered that she felt like she was getting better. In fact, her eyes were the color of ash, and her weight was down to sixty pounds. “Mom,” she told Dawn, “I’m sorry I’m taking so long this time.” Dawn walked to a corner of the room, not wanting her daughter to see her cry.
Then David’s parents came. In some ways, Big David and Mary Crenshaw had misgivings about what had happened to their son. They believed their only child would still be alive if he hadn’t gotten married, if he had spent more time taking care of himself. They had told others that David had sacrificed himself for Kim. But now, looking at her, they told her that they knew she had made their son happy.
Kim was semi-comatose for the last two days of her life. The only sound in her room was the hiss of the oxygen machine. It will never be known for sure why one of her good friends lying in a room down the hall, suddenly awoke at three in the morning on November 11 and called for a nurse. “I feel like something’s happening,” the friend said, scared. A couple of minutes later, Kim regained consciousness, opened her eyes, and began speaking in a kind of mumble—a peaceful, cooing kind of sound that no one could fully understand. A nurse in the room said it sounded as if Kim was talking to David. “Kim, what is it?” said Dawn, who was resting on a cot at the foot of the bed. But Kim had shut her eyes and died, still clutching her pink blanket.
She was buried in her white wedding dress. On her wrist was a watch that David had given her for Christmas; she wore ruby earrings, also a gift from David. She was placed beside her husband in a new section of Restland Cemetery. Despite his limited income, David had been paying $47 a month for that plot ever since he and Kim were married. He had said it was important for him to know that they had a final resting place together. Their tombstone read: “David S. (Bear) Crenshaw and Kimberley (Tigger) Crenshaw … Together forever. Married three years.”
For weeks afterward, Dawn halfheartedly sorted through their possessions, trying to decide what to keep and what to give away. When people called with condolences, she wasn’t sure what to say. She wanted to tell everyone how much she missed caring for her sick daughter. She also wanted to say how relieved she was that she would not have to endure such agony again. She wanted to say that she was happy Kim and David no longer suffered. But she also was sad they had been given so little time together.
Perhaps Dawn found some solace one afternoon while going through some of Kim’s papers. She came across the last card David sent Kim before he died. “We are close even when we are apart,” the front of the card read. “Just look up. We are both under the same starry sky.”
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