#1954 Postby TexasStooge » Mon Jun 27, 2005 11:17 am
She's not awake, not asleep, not alone
Exclusive: Life for Peggy Railey 'worse than death,' brother says
By GRETEL C. KOVACH / The Dallas Morning News
TYLER, Texas - Peggy Railey's mother never stopped waiting for her to "wake up." Not even after doctors said there was no chance she would get better.
She remains in a persistent vegetative state in a Tyler nursing home, almost two decades after someone tried to strangle her at her Lake Highlands home.
When Billie Jo Nicolai died about five years ago and Ms. Railey's younger brother became her guardian, he decided to respect their mother's wishes. But it has been a difficult vow to honor.
"There are some things worse than death. This is one of them," Ted Nicolai said, standing at Peggy's bedside last week. "Peggy would not have wanted to live like this."
He will not remove his sister's life support, though he feels she already has died in spirit and in mind. Until her body follows, Peggy is a constant reminder of the woman she once was and the man he believes tried to kill her.
Walker Railey, the charismatic senior minister of First United Methodist Church in Dallas, was accused of trying to kill his wife in 1987 to make way for his mistress, Lucy Papillon, then a Dallas psychologist. He was acquitted in 1993 and had reinvented himself in California where, until Friday, he was a vice president at the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles.
The mission announced Friday that Dr. Railey was no longer an employee after officials there discovered that Dr. Papillon had worked at the mission as a volunteer in 2001 and 2002. A spokeswoman declined to elaborate beyond a short e-mail statement announcing Dr. Railey's departure.
"He has moved on. It's the rest of us who can't," said Mr. Nicolai's wife, Linda. "His day will come. Someday he'll be judged."
Dr. Railey, 58, through a spokesman for the mission, declined to comment. He also did not return a call to his home after his departure was announced.
So many lives changed irrevocably after Ms. Railey was found that night in her garage, her brain starved of oxygen from a cord tightened around her neck.
The Raileys' young children went to live with family friends. They're grown now, but the Nicolais have discouraged them from visiting their mother in the nursing home, and they haven't. The Nicolais didn't want new photographs of her taken either.
The change is too traumatic to witness, even for Mr. Nicolai. Lately, he's been stopping by the nursing home every couple weeks, but his wife comes more often.
The visits take a toll on her husband.
"It really affects him. He gets quiet. I see a different Ted for a few days," Mrs. Nicolai said.
"It's my sister," he said. "I remember her the way she was. Knowing she will never be like that again, that's the hard thing. I still get extremely angry."
A couple years before the attack, Ms. Railey's parents had retired and her brother had remarried. The elder Nicolais had planned to travel, but after their daughter's traumatic injury, they spent their last years visiting her daily.
When his parents' health began to deteriorate, Ted and Linda Nicolai moved from Arlington in 1994 to help out. They uprooted Mr. Nicolai's teenage daughter from an earlier marriage and quit their jobs. At first, Tyler seemed so quiet that Linda Nicolai couldn't sleep.
"It wasn't just Peggy," she said. "It was her parents, her children, everyone was affected by this."
Ms. Railey's father, Bill Nicolai, died a couple of years after his wife died. The strain of their daughter's condition had chased them to the grave, Ted Nicolai said.
"They lost the golden years of their life. They had just run themselves into the ground."
The Nicolais have maintained a close, jocular bond through the ordeal.
"We were lucky it didn't tear us apart," said Mr. Nicolai. "Life isn't what we thought it would be."
When the Nicolais entered Ms. Railey's room one afternoon, Mrs. Nicolai glanced at her feeding bag and said: "Hi, Peg, what's in your bottle today, steak and potatoes?"
She leaned over to stroke her hair, and Ms. Railey seemed to gaze at her in rapture.
Her eyes flitted around the room like an infant's, sometimes seeming to look at her visitors, sometimes through them.
Mr. Nicolai searched for a glimpse of recognition or a communicated signal from his sister but didn't really hope to find one.
Ms. Railey used to have soft brown curls framing a handsome face. She is 56 now, her hair gray, her face plump from inactivity. Otherwise, there has been no change since she moved into the nursing home in 1988.
She hasn't had a drink of water since or eaten anything that wasn't fed to her through a stomach tube.
But it is her hands that appear the most outwardly ravaged.
"She was a professional pianist. Look at her hands now," Mr. Nicolai said. They are pale white and hooked at the wrists, the fingers splayed at odd angles.
When Mrs. Nicolai absentmindedly rubbed a hand peeking out from the blanket, Ms. Railey fidgeted and pulled back.
"She doesn't like it when you touch her hands," Mrs. Nicolai explained.
Terri Schiavo had the same problem with her extremities, and the same slack-jaw stare, Mr. Nicolai said. "The first time I saw Terri Schiavo on TV, I said, 'What are they doing with Peg?' It was that similar."
Doctors told the Nicolais that Ms. Railey's brain is irreversibly damaged and that she can never "awaken" as her mother had wished.
Ms. Railey always seems fascinated by Mrs. Nicolai. They can never tell if it is because of the female timbre of her voice, or the way the light from the nursing home window glows behind her short blonde coif of hair in an angelic halo.
"Some people say maybe she understands what's going on. But I pray she doesn't," Mr. Nicolai said. "How would you like to be trapped inside that body and not be able to do anything, not be able to say anything?"
"I don't see anything of her left," Mrs. Nicolai said, sighing. "She was friendly, she was warm. She loved her children and music."
Old pictures of Peggy and Walker Railey's children adorn a bulletin board in her room.
Megan was just 2 years old at the time of the attack. Ryan was 5. In the days and months afterward, the boy told some people that on the night of the attack he had seen his father's hands around his mother's neck. Then someone came into his room and held his head down so he couldn't breathe, he told a psychiatrist hired by the FBI.
But sometimes Ryan blamed a masked robber or robbers for the attack. His conflicting accounts were never resolved, and he did not testify before the jury that acquitted his father. He hasn't spoken publicly about it since.
Dr. Railey, who lost an $18 million civil judgment in his wife's attack, has always maintained his innocence.
The children's guardians, John and Diane Yarrington, were close friends with the Raileys before the attack. Mr. Yarrington said no one in their family – including the children – wants to talk about Dr. Railey anymore.
"It's been years and years since we communicated" with Dr. Railey, Mr. Yarrington said, declining to comment further. "We've had no contact."
After the attack, the Yarringtons moved to Arkansas, where they could give the youngest additions to their family a more normal, protected life.
"The Yarringtons, they have been very good parents. They taught them the right values," Mr. Nicolai said. "I think they're very special to do what they have done."
The Railey children adopted the Yarrington name, and today they are students at Houston Baptist University, where Mr. Yarrington teaches music.
Ryan, 23, has grown into a tall young man with movie-star good looks. "After coming here ... I could strengthen my faith in the Lord by spending time with other Christians," he said in The Ornogah , the HBU yearbook.
During Christmas of 2001, his freshman year, he sang with an HBU choir at Carnegie Hall.
Mrs. Nicolai said she thinks Ryan will go into a helping profession, but the Nicolais don't see him becoming a preacher like his father.
"They both are very bright. Megan in particular is a talented musician," Mrs. Nicolai said. "We like to think she takes after her mother."
As for Dr. Railey, "They don't want anything to do with him," Mrs. Nicolai said.
The conversation drifted to the attack and what Ryan may have witnessed. Ms. Railey began to moan and turned her head side to side.
Mrs. Nicolai ran to the hall to grab a nurse. "Do you think she's disturbed?"
"Hey Peggy, hey honey, what's going on?" the nurse asked, before giving her some Tylenol. Ms. Railey calmed down, and Mr. Nicolai asked his wife: "Do you think it was because we were talking about the kids?"
But the Nicolais have been through this before. "She has reactions ... more reflex than anything else," Mr. Nicolai said.
Before they left, Mrs. Nicolai kissed Ms. Railey on her forehead. She was already dozing off. "Night, night," Mrs. Nicolai said.
Ms. Railey's heart is strong. She could live 20 years more. The Nicolais fear it won't be long enough for her attacker to finally be punished for his crimes.
The justice system failed them, they said.
"The man upstairs, he'll do his judging," Mrs. Nicolai said. "Walker won't like what he has to say."
0 likes
