The Plague and I

  The only time I ever knew her to fail was in the case of Eileen. She slipped down to our ward fifty times a day but never caught Eileen reading, writing, sitting up, laughing, talking, turning up the radio, putting on makeup, curling her hair, fixing her nails or talking to anyone who would listen or answer.

  Miss Murdock, Miss Muelbach, a Mrs. Macklevenny who was tall and disagreeable and always seemed to be smelling something putrid, a Miss Garnet, who was thick and white with very short legs and a low behind that banged against the backs of her legs when she walked, and a Miss Whiting who was very young but kept her lips folded in like a buttonhole, may have had their innate sympathy and kindness worn thin by the complete ungratefulness and foolhardiness of the patients, but to me it seemed more likely that they had obtained their vocational training kicking cripples and hitting small children. I spent nine months at The Pines longing for the day when they had t.b. and I was the nurse.

  Once during my first week, I asked Kimi how she could lie in her bed so entirely immobile hour after hour. She said in her gentle way, “It is not difficult. In my mind, I am torturing the nurses.” She only meant Granite Eyes, Gravy Face, Mrs. Macklevenny and Miss Garnet, of course. The rest of the nurses were unfriendly but not unkind. A few were darlings.

  The darlings were Miss Hatfield; Katy Morris, of course; Ann Robinson, who came to The Pines the same day I did, was tall, dark, beautiful and gentle and after nursing us for seven months, contracted miliary tuberculosis and died in two months; and Molly Hastings, an English nurse, who had been at The Pines for two years but was still sweet and friendly to the patients and had a wonderful sense of humor.

  Molly told us some of the trials of being a nurse at The Pines. She said that the discipline was not limited to the patients as the nurses were not allowed to smoke on the premises, had to be in every night by ten-thirty, were required to attend school three nights a week and were under twenty-four-hour surveillance to be sure that they obeyed these rules and many others, including no indulgence in SEX, thoughts of SEX, actions which might eventually lead up to SEX, discussions of SEX or literature concerned with SEX. She said that with the exception of the charge nurses, the nurses weren’t allowed to speak to the doctors, which made it rather difficult as she and one of the staff doctors were engaged. She said, “If it weren’t for Larry I wouldn’t stay ten minutes in this nunnery.”

  Molly told us that only unattractive nurses were sent to the men’s hospital because of SEX. We asked her if many of the nurses married patients and she said that many of them did. “And after all,” she said, “what could be better? A sick man and a nurse to look after him the rest of his life.” “You mean the men patients marry those ogly nurses?” Kimi asked horrified. “Sure,” Molly said. “Anything looks good to you if you’re sick enough.” “A fellah’d have to be unconscious before he’d want Gravy Face,” Eileen said. “Oh, she had a young man,” Molly told us. “He worked in x-ray but he died before they got married.” “Probably poisoned himself,” Eileen said bitterly. “Jesus, imagine having t.b. and her too!”

  IX

  Kimi

  WHEN I HAD been at The Pines almost three weeks, I realized that though Minna and Eileen and I seemed to be improving, Kimi was gradually disintegrating, hour by hour, joint by joint. She looked well, on the surface at least, with cheeks as plump and ruddy as winter pears, thick shiny hair and clear bright eyes, and her appetite was excellent. But for over a week, every morning and every evening when the Charge Nurse or House Doctor made their rounds, Kimi reported some slight ailment.

  Sometimes it was a pain in the joint of her little finger, sometimes a little headache, “some prickle” in the leg, “small thumping in the heart.” But always something. This morning it had been a “little stiffness in the large toe” and a dramatic closing of the eyes in pain when the Charge Nurse manipulated the toe.

  I was worried, for I had heard gruesome sanatorium stories of the always fatal miliary tuberculosis that attacked every part of the body. At dinnertime, like a fool, I asked Charlie if he knew anything about miliary tuberculosis. He clicked his false teeth with pleasure over the really bad news he was about to impart and told me of seeing the chest x-rays of a patient who had died of miliary tuberculosis. “Lungs was so full of holes they looked like strainers,” he said, “and the fellah in x-ray told me that there wasn’t a part of that poor girl’s body that wasn’t just riddled with germs. Just riddled!”

  During rest hours I stared at the cold green walls and saw Kimi’s plump brown body riddled with germs, her lungs like strainers. By suppertime my depression was so great I couldn’t stand it any longer. In a voice loaded with tenderness and concern, I asked Kimi if she thought her tuberculosis had suddenly become virulent and was causing all the little extra aches and pains. Slowly taking a large bite of pudding before answering, Kimi said, “Oh, no, Betty, it is not the tuberculosis. It is the lesson. Every lesson tells me they need my bed for someone else so I am making sure they know I also need it.”

  The lessons on tuberculosis were informative and helpful. They explained to us why we felt as we did, what tuberculosis was and what the cure was, but they also pointed out with irritating frequency that we were only there on sufferance.

  “If you cannot do these things, go home at once and let us have the room for someone who will be of value” (Lesson I). “The obligation, then, upon you is the greater, for you are occupying a bed badly needed for someone else” (Lesson II). “Your conduct throughout your stay should show that you are grateful to the nurses, to the doctors” (Lesson III). “The careless patient is not conscientious and lacks Character, is a danger and is of no value to the Community. If he will not learn he should be sent home” (Lesson IV). “A patient who does not rest properly is not conscientious, and a patient who is not conscientious in following treatment should not be allowed to occupy a bed that is badly needed by someone who has not yet had a chance to make good” (Lesson VII). “The patient who does not take kindly to instruction and who does not set a good example to other patients, is occupying a bed that could be used to better advantage for some more deserving person” (Lesson XI). “Do not argue, and if you cannot obey the rules do not stay here and kick about them, but go home” (Lesson XXI).

  The meat in Lesson V was: If you had a broken leg you wouldn’t dance on it nor walk on it but would have a plaster cast or splints on it so that you couldn’t use it even if you were foolish enough to try. If you had a sore on a joint or a knuckle, you would know that constant bending would break the sore open and prevent its healing quickly. When you have tuberculosis you have broken lungs with sores on them and the less you use them the quicker they will heal. How can you rest your lungs? By breathing less often and less deeply. A person resting quietly in bed, breathes two times less each minute than a person sitting up and of course much less than a person walking. Deep breathing, hurried breathing and excitement, cause both lungs and heart to work faster and to wash out more poisons from the tuberculous sore. This is what gives you that tired feeling, rapid pulse, fever, etc. Rest is the answer. Rest, rest and more rest.

  The lesson ended with, “The cure of tuberculosis is not medicine but a new regime of living, not only during the sanatorium period, but for years and years, maybe for a lifetime afterwards.”

  Kimi finished reading her lesson, tossed it to the foot of her bed and said, “If that ‘new regime of living’ means cabbage for the rest of my life I would prefer death.” Cabbage is a vegetable rich in vitamin C, easy to grow in this moist cool climate, procurable in winter and sure to produce indigestion in bed patients. We had it every day in some form. I didn’t mind because I was fond of cabbage and had come to accept indigestion, along with continual cold and perpetual hunger, as accouterments of tuberculosis. But Kimi loathed cabbage, yet was so certain that leaving it uneaten on her tray meant that she would be sent home to die, that she ate it all every day, with tears in her eyes and moaning, “Cabbage are hahrrible medicine.”


  Other hahrrible medicine to Kimi were the once-a-week baths and once-a-month shampoos. The bathing and shampoo schedules, as was everything at The Pines, were established to keep the patient clean with the least possible amount of rest disturbance, for even such small things as a bed bath or a shampoo could and did increase the pulse and temperature of a sick patient. “But do they not realize that germ flourish on feelth?” Kimi asked angrily, as she dipped her small brown feet into her wash basin.

  On bath days she began her preparations early. First she got out all the necessary equipment, then with her hair pinned into a hard black knot on top of her head, a towel around her shoulders, and looking just like a Japanese wrestler, she would sit crosslegged on her bed, manicuring her toenails. She seemed to have no bones in her legs for she would pick up a foot, turn it over and examine the sole with as much ease as though it weren’t attached to her. Kimi’s bath partner was a Japanese girl but when she returned from the bath, gleaming and beet red, and we asked about her, Kimi said, “She is a girl of no character,” and refused to discuss her.

  Eileen’s bath partner was the very sick girl who had to be taken to and from the bathroom on a bed. Eileen had said, “Jesus, honey, wouldn’t you know I’d draw some dame about to croak, for a bath partner? ‘And how are you today?’ I says to her. ‘Ugh,’ she says, looking at the ceiling. ‘How long you been here?’ I asks as I washed my face in the icewater old Granite Eyes had given me. ‘Ugh,’ she says, closin’ her eyes. ‘And an ugh to you and many of them,’ I says. I didn’t even learn the dame’s name.”

  “Her name is Mrs. Fox,” Kimi said. “She is very sick but they are trying to save her.”

  “What for?” Eileen asked.

  “What are they trying to save any of us for?” Kimi wanted to know. “We will never be well and strong again.”

  “We may not be very strong,” Eileen said, “but we manage to say something besides ‘ugh.’ That dame belongs on an Indian Reservation.”

  I asked Kimi where she had gleaned her information about our never being well and strong again. She said that she had heard it from other patients who had left The Pines apparently cured and had come back within the year, desperately sick.

  I asked the nurse, Molly, about this and she told us that the patients who had breakdowns and came back were usually foolish patients who stopped taking pneumothorax, didn’t report to the clinic, kept late hours, and didn’t take care of themselves generally. She said that she knew hundreds of arrested t.b. cases who were married, had children, were working and living absolutely normal lives and were in much better health than most of the people who had never had t.b. and consequently didn’t know how to take care of themselves.

  Minna said, “If Ah eveh get out of heah, Ah’ll neveh be well again Ah know. Ah don’t know why Ah had to be so little and weak—everyone else in mah family is big and strong.” Eileen said, “Oh, on every apple tree there’s always one little wizened-up rotten one.”

  On October nineteenth, Kimi and I were moved. Just after rest hours the Charge Nurse suddenly materialized in our room and without a word put my chair on the foot of the bed and wheeled me up the hall into a cubicle on the east side of the building. I was pleased, for the last week had been very tedious and any change was welcome. I said to the Charge Nurse, “Oh, I’m glad you moved me today.” She said only, “I have put you near the office where I can give you more supervision.” Then, “I’m putting Miss Sanbo in with you, if you don’t mind.” Mind! I was delighted. She said, “Some people would object to sharing a room with an Oriental.” I said that I would prefer it, so she went to get Kimi.

  Our new little room was just large enough for our two beds, placed with the heads to the windows and tight against each wall, our bedside stands and chairs. By stretching only a little we could pass things to each other. The walls were the same mildewed green but there wasn’t much of them for the front of the tiny room was mostly doorway, the back was all windows and the walls, like screens, began a foot off the floor and were only about six feet high. They were apparently made out of some kind of light plywood, for I could hear the woman in the next room breathing. She rattled faintly when she breathed, like an Indian basket Mother used to have that had a hollow bottom filled with little dry seeds.

  It was strange to have anyone so close to you. When she took a drink of water I swallowed. When she turned the pages of a magazine it was as though I had turned them. “How cozy this is,” I thought and made motions to Kimi to show her how close the woman was. Kimi made motions back to show me that she also had an unseen, unknown person half an inch away and we smiled at each other delightedly.

  Our delight was short lived, however, for at suppertime my close companion, the Rattling Breather, coughed, gagged, cleared her throat, snuffled, snorted and spit all through supper. She was so close to me that sometimes involuntarily I covered my mouth when she coughed. It was horrible. Like having a Siamese twin. But one with far-gone tuberculosis and no sense of delicacy. I was making signs of disgust and nausea to Kimi when the woman across the hall from us threw up.

  Having been taught since early childhood that no matter how sick I was I could control myself until I got to the bathroom, I couldn’t get used to the complete abandon with which people at The Pines threw up. I did notice a preponderance of throwing up at suppertime and wondered if the beautiful thoughts had anything to do with it. That evening it had been: “Little things affect little minds.” “You don’t say,” I said angrily as I took a bite of scalloped potato and the woman in the next bed prepared to clean out her entire respiratory system.

  Across the hall from us, in a room exactly like ours, were two patients. One was small and yellow and whispered constantly in spite of a large SILENCE sign pinned to the head of her bed. The other, dark and buxom, had thrown up. I noticed that the small, sallow one ate her supper while the nurse swabbed off the other one. I also tried to put mind over matter but I couldn’t. I drank some tea and pushed the tray away. Kimi did the same. She said, “I seem to find vomiting stranger more repulsive than vomiting dear friend like Sylvia.”

  When the Charge Nurse made rounds she said, “But you haven’t eaten your supper, either of you. Was the moving too much for you?” She intimated that if it was she would move us right back again. I motioned to the woman next to me, who was just getting to work on her right bronchopulmonary lymph node. Kimi said, “The woman across the hall was sick just as I began to eat.” The Charge Nurse said, “Oh, but we can’t let little things like that bother us. We have to learn to ignore them. Now eat!” Her voice was gentle but she twisted our arms with her eyes.

  I found that cold scalloped potatoes are even harder to eat to the accompaniment of spitting than warm ones, so after that I ate everything quickly and while it was warm. We were nearer the kitchen now and the food was a little warmer. The Charge Nurse was right, of course. My repulsive Siamese twin continued to clean out her nasal passages at mealtimes and the woman across the hall threw up at least every other day, but after the first night Kimi and I didn’t miss a meal. Little things didn’t bother us.

  By lights out that night, Kimi and I had learned: We could not see out the windows ever from our new room because of the location of the beds and the heavy windshields over the heads of the beds, but that at mealtimes we could see, through the windows on the opposite side of the hall, the waters of the Sound and some madroña trees, the huge sleeping porch and the children’s hospital; it was much colder and draughtier in the cubicles; we were much more closely watched by the Charge Nurse; we missed Eileen and we could not hear the radio because the patient nearest the switch was an inspirational patient who would not turn it up. The music swelled and fell with the wind, like parade music, and the plays were like listening to a conversation in the next booth in a restaurant: “. . . the axe . . . Joe . . . help! . . . he said he couldn’t help it. . . I have the head. . . .”

  That night Katy brought us a long impassioned note from Eileen. It said in part, “I
have bawled ever since you kids left. We have two new patients. An old dame who coughs all the time and a skinny little dame with a Silence sign on her bed. Minna’s Southern accent has gotten so thick since the new patients came that she sounds like they dug her out of the Mississippi yesterday. Jesus, honey, how I hate that dame! . . . After supper the Old Dame wheeled me down to her office for another little talk. ‘Miss Kelly you must not read. Miss Kelly you must not talk. Miss Kelly you must rest.’ She nags me just like my Gramma used to. How I’d like to get out of this dump! Minna says now that she thinks it will take her ‘lil ole lungie wungies about seven yeahs to heal. . . .’ I told her she’d better heal a little quicker or some day ole Sweetie-Pie would look under another board and find himself another wife. Jesus, did she burn!”

  Kimi said, “Poor little Eileen, she doesn’t understand tuberculosis at all. She will die, I fear.” I said sharply, “Kimi, don’t be so depressing,” but I knew she was right.

  With the move, my bath day had been changed to Monday, which meant that my bath would be hurried and scant, as the nurses were overworked and impatient on Monday, and I would be dirty for both visiting days. It was raining, a violent splattery rain and I thought longingly of hot tub baths and scalding showers, as I got out my clammy bath towel and damp lumpy bath powder.

  Kimi lay in her bed with her eyes closed and two long sticks extending from each nostril. That morning her complaints had been “prickle in the nostril and a small pain in the head.” She had told me confidently that she would soon get aspirin and a large pitcher of fruit juice, the sanatorium treatment for colds. Instead, the new young doctor had returned and stuck silver nitrate swabs in each of her nostrils. He had winked at the Charge Nurse and instructed Kimi to leave the swabs in her nose for at least half an hour. She looked like an enraged Burmese dancer.