Natalie Cole
(CONTINUED FROM PAGE 47)
“You need to go home.” She refused.
Natalie received IV fluids in her
dressing room to keep her hydrated,
and she traveled to the stage in a wheelchair. “As miserable as I was, once I
started singing, I felt better,” she says.
Many of her Japanese fans, watching
her perform, applauded and wept. But
crew members kept asking, “Why are
you doing this? We shouldn’t be here.”
“Natalie loves her audience and
doesn’t want to disappoint them,” Eng-
elstein explains. “If you’ve never seen
her perform, go. You’ll walk away with
everything she is about.”
“It was tough,” Natalie admits, “but
I felt if I didn’t push myself, I would
probably either die or just crumble.”
She performed ten shows before finally
heading back to the United States.
Still Unforgettable was released in
early September 2008, and once again
Natalie rallied, flying to New York City
for a series of interviews. When the
cameras were rolling, she struggled to
appear healthy and animated. But in
between, she was experiencing short-
ness of breath, a result of fluid buildup
caused by poor kidney function. On the
morning of September 12 she spoke
by phone to a New York friend, the
songwriter and socialite Denise Rich.
Alarmed by Natalie’s gasps, Rich sent
her own physician to check on her. He
did a quick examination and said, “You
have to go into the hospital right now.”
“Had Denise not called her doctor,”
Natalie says, “I might have died that
day, alone in my hotel room. I owe so
much to her.”
At Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhat-
tan, tests showed that Natalie’s kidneys
were barely functioning, and she soon
began dialysis. While her liver function
remained healthy—thanks, most likely,
to the interferon—it is possible, accord-
ing to Mittleman, that the same drug
hastened the failure of her kidneys,
already compromised by years of high
blood pressure. Her doctors stopped
the interferon treatments.
Ten days later Natalie returned to
Los Angeles. After a few more trips to
the hospital, she was placed on a list
for a donor kidney and began a three-
hours-per-session, three-times-weekly
outpatient dialysis regimen.
BEFORE THE SUN CAME UP ON
May 19, with Cookie still unconscious,
Natalie kissed her sister goodbye and
rushing from one bedside to the other.
“Had Denise not called her doctor, I
might have died alone in my hotel,”
Natalie says. “I owe so much to her.”
headed home to pack a bag for her stay
at Cedars-Sinai. Engelstein met Nata-
lie at her condominium. “Two sisters
couldn’t have been closer than Natalie
and Cookie,” Engelstein says, so it came
as no surprise that Natalie, while get-
ting ready, kept muttering, “How can I
do this? Cookie is in a coma.”
Engelstein looked her in the eye and
said, “Cookie would want you to do
this. This is a chance of a lifetime.”
Cookie Cole, who ran Nat King
Cole’s estate for the family, died at
8: 30 A.M. that morning, just as Natalie,
unaware, was being prepped for sur-
gery. Many of the Cole family mem-
bers, including Natalie’s mother—who
had reconnected with her daughter
after her hepatitis C diagnosis—and
her twin sisters, convoyed from the
Tarzana hospital to Cedars-Sinai,
bed, some offering encouraging words
about how well the surgery had gone,
others telling her, bit by bit, of Cookie’s
death. Natalie processed the news,
then looked over at Engelstein, who
was standing in the corner. “I couldn’t
tell you, Sweetie,” Engelstein said. “Dr.
Mittleman said we couldn’t tell you.”
“I was getting good news and very
bad news at the same time,” remem-
bers Natalie, wiping away tears. “This
was a very joyous moment where I’ve
got new life. It was also a very sorrow-
ful moment, where my sister had gone
on, and the family that donated the
kidney had lost their daughter as well.
My first reaction was that I wished I
were back on dialysis to have my sister.
These two people had left this earth—
and I was here. Why? I feel like I don’t
deserve it.” (CONTINUED ON PAGE 78)
