A Life Lost, a Life Regained

BALTIMORE — Through the awful hospital weeks, once their worries had been fully shared, the two would sometimes talk about that bottle of wine. For theirs was a waiting-room union of tears and exhaustion and dread, but also of hope: Surely, surely her mother with the bad heart and his wife with the brain malady were going to get well. And on that better day, all four of them would laugh and raise a glass together.

Carman Moloney and Bob Bradshaw met in January at the University of Maryland Medical Center. She had been all but living there for more than two months, ever since her mother, Bobbie diSabatino, suffered a heart attack and began a gentle descent toward the grave. He had just arrived with his wife, Cheryl, who was facing brain surgery.

They saw each other daily, Moloney remembers. The conversational topics were pretty consistent: her mother, his wife, time away from their children. Each became invested in the other's pain, and as the weeks went by, the friendship--and the interdependence--became ever more intense.

Moloney shakes her head, as if to dislodge the memory. She's seated in her mother's big paneled kitchen, and a smile comes to her face as she gazes across the table. There, DiSabatino sits demurely, enjoying a story she has heard many times before.

When trouble leads to a happy ending, it changes colors in the remembering. There is something close to pride in DiSabatino's voice when she says, "I was on the Eastern Shore at my grandson's Grandparents' Day at school and suffered a massive heart attack and died. I mean I literally was dead."

What saved the 57-year-old retired secretary--just as her situation threatened to slip from dire to desperate--was a heart transplant. "I always had faith that someday the right heart would come and I would be OK," she says.

DiSabatino's manner is sweet and reserved. Moloney, who didn't always share her mother's optimism, exudes the kind of glad-that's-over ebullience that often comes when a story turns out the right way.

"I always think to myself, 'Jeez, how screwed up must I be that God thinks I still need my mother?' " she says, laughing. "God must say, 'Oh, man--she's really a wacko!' "

We can say that DiSabatino's prayers--and her daughter's--were answered. But of course that gets a little dangerous because some people's prayers get no response. And don't the sick and those who love them always ask for the same things?