Read Last Dance, Last Chance for Free Online Page B

and cousins, nieces and nephew, Frank Rago was “Uncle Junior,” a vital and integral part of a wide, extended family. His advice was always solid. Everyone called Uncle Junior for counsel or for comfort.
    Debbie followed his directive to forgive her husband once, but it was to be the last advice her father would ever give her. On November 16, 1987, Frank Rago slipped into severe congestive heart failure and was taken to the hospital to undergo diuresis in an effort to remove the fluid that was drowning his lungs. Caroline and Carmine were at the hospital with him, and Debbie was home with her infant son, waiting for word. But Anthony had gone deer hunting with his father at dawn. He assured Debbie he would carry his pager with him in case she needed him. Hunting was very important to Anthony—both hunting for deer in New York and later for big game in faraway countries.
     
    Debbie needed him that day, and needed him badly. Oddly, Anthony chose to immortalize that last day of Frank Rago’s life in his book by prefacing it with a description of his successful shot into the heart of a white-tail deer.
    “I was confident he was dead,” Anthony wrote of the buck he shot. “As I descended from my stand I knew that no animal could withstand such a violent penetrating chest wound. As I followed the trail, my pager began to beep. I canceled the signal and caught up with my trophy. Knowing my passion for this sport, neither my answering service, nor my wife, would risk the wrath of my response to the disturbance of a loud audible beeper in the silence of the forest. I had the deer gutted and field dressed as soon as possible, and began the half-mile drag back to our vehicle with the innate fear that the page was real…”
    Even so, when Anthony learned that his father-in-law’s condition had worsened, he stopped to shower and change. “But I neglected to shave,” he added. “Stepping off the elevator, we presented to the ICU, Carmine, my brother-in-law, greeted us with the most crestfallen expression of bereavement as he simply shook his head, ‘No.’
    “Deborah erupted with the most gut-wrenching expression of pain that I ever remember. Her best buddy was gone. I knew that nothing has hurt her as much as this…”
     
    Debbie Pignataro withstood several emotional losses that year. Her father was gone. Her husband had been unfaithful, and more and more he was often missing when she needed him. Still, she was made of steel as well as velvet, and she kept going. The Pignataros made Debbie welcome. The news of Anthony’s dalliance with another woman was apparently common knowledge in the family, because Lena took Debbie’s side, confiding to her that she understood how Debbie felt. “It happened to me, too—twice,” Lena said.
    That shocked Debbie, but it reassured her, too; Dr. Ralph and Lena certainly had a strong marriage now.
    “In many ways,” Debbie remembered, “we had a wonderful year. I was pregnant again. Anthony was always sending me flowers and cards saying he loved me. I didn’t worry about him cheating on me, and we were both looking forward to summer when our new baby would be born.”
    The prospect of a new baby proved to her that life went on after all, even though she still grieved for her father. After her second cesarean—this one an emergency procedure—Debbie’s baby emerged on June 5. It was a girl, just as the ultrasound had shown. But the atmosphere in the delivery room was strangely stilted, and the newborn was whisked away for what they told her was “testing and stabilization.”
    Her name was Christina Marie—just as they had planned—but there was no joy in her birth. Her head was enlarged and misshapen. “She had a brain tumor that had been growing for months before she was born,” Debbie said sadly.
    Christina had no significant brain function, and neonatologists agreed that she couldn’t survive without being on a life-support system that would breathe for her. Even then,