The Plague and I

  A wheelchair creaked past. I looked up expectantly but it was only another throat-light patient. Kimi and I had learned from Kate that the Silence signs were not punishment, as we had thought, but meant that these patients had laryngeal tuberculosis and probably ulcerated vocal chords. They were given Alpine Light treatments in their throats every morning. The light room was a small room directly across from the Charge Nurse’s office and Kimi told me that in addition to its use for throat light, it was used as the last gasping place for the dying patients. She said, “If they take you in there, Betty, be sure you have made your will.”

  In spite of Kimi’s gloomy talk, no one had died during the time I had been at The Pines. There was Margaretta, a beautiful Negro girl in one of the private rooms, who took throat light, and every time she went by Kimi said, “This will probably be her last trip,” and even Katy admitted that her case was hopeless, but so far she had held her own.

  That morning Margaretta had waved at us as she went by and even though she was thin, I had thought she looked cheerful and very much alive. Not at all like Camille or “poor little Beth.” I had remarked on it and Kimi had said, “Those bright eye and that rosy cheek are not health—it is the disease.”

  The rain splatted on. My bed was as cold and damp as an empty house. Gravy Face had filled our morning hot-water bottles and had thrown them at us, cool and dripping. There is nothing as cold as a cold, metal hot-water bottle. I kicked mine petulantly down between the end of the bed and the mattress. Kimi said, “I am thinking that from now on I will be very well.” A wheelchair careened into our cubicle and Gravy Face said, “Patients are not allowed to talk, Miss Sanbo.” To me, “Hurry up, you, I’ve got four more baths to do this morning.”

  She stuffed me into my robe and slippers and off we went, banging from wall to wall, crashing into a trusting little new nurse so hard we almost snapped her legs off at the ankles, and slamming through the bathroom door. She rammed the wheelchair into the bed and I climbed thankfully out and began to undress. While I undressed, Gravy Face filled my little tub with tepid water, then went thundering off down the hall to change the sheets on my bed.

  My new bath partner was a gray-faced girl with toothpick legs and no voice. Her name was Beryl Hanford and she was very sick and on absolute silence, but she talked incessantly. While we washed our faces, Beryl told me in a hoarse whisper, that her name was Beryl; that she had t.b. of the throat, lungs, stomach, intestines and kidneys; that she thought The Pines stank; that she thought the food at The Pines stank; that she thought the nurses at The Pines stank; that she thought the doctors at The Pines stank; that the eggs at The Pines stank. She said, “I never eat nothing but what Chet brings me from home. Yesterday he brought me a whole roasted chicken and twelve chocolate eclairs [she called them “eeeclears”] and that’s all I’m gonna eat until next Thursday.”

  I asked her how she managed to keep food in her stand as it was absolutely forbidden. She said, “Oh, I wrap it all up in my clean pajamas.” I asked her how she got t.b., although I really didn’t care, and thought she deserved it. She said, “I was workin’ in a candy factory dippin’ chocolates and one day I had a hemorrhage.” I asked her if she had had a cough. She said, “Oh, God, yes, for years and years. I never thought nothing of it.” I thought something of it. I thought of all those chocolates she had dipped and sprayed with germs.

  Beryl was so stupid, so uncooperative and so ungrateful that in comparison Gravy Face seemed like an angel of mercy as she knocked me around, finally forcing me into clean pajamas while I was so wet and soapy that when I climbed back into bed I pulled and snapped as if I had been dipped in glue. I told Kimi about Beryl. She said, “Oh, I know that one. I have been to x-ray with her several time. She is ogly and ignorant and she will die very soon. With t.b. of the throat she will probably choke to death,” she finished pleasantly.

  The next day Kimi had her first shampoo. Our hair was supposed to be shampooed once a month but if there were many new patients and the nurses were busy we sometimes had to wait six weeks. A shampoo at The Pines had absolutely nothing in common with a beauty parlor shampoo, with its setting of waves, pin curls and hair styling. A shampoo at The Pines meant a good scrubbing with green soap, a slight rinse and a thorough drying with the hot forceful blower. What you did with your hair afterwards was your problem.

  Kimi, red-faced and furious, jerked the comb through her thick black hair. “It is like a whisk broom. Only the blowtorch would curl it now.” She put on a woolen hood and saved the sugar from her supper tray. That night after lights out she mixed up a solution of sugar and water in her water glass, wet strands of hair in it and rolled them up on curlers. The next morning she had to chip the curlers off and she said combing her hair was “like raking weed.” To make it worse, the effect was not a soft curl as Kimi had anticipated but more like black uncoiled springs distributed over her head. As it was very obvious that she had done something to her hair other than a simple combing or brushing, Kimi had to wear her hood all that day.

  It was one of those days with the rain thrown at us at intervals like some giant sprinkling clothes and by night our pillows and all of us that was outside the covers was damp. Very damp. Kimi went to remove her hood, before going to sleep, and found that it was stuck to her hair. She ripped it off angrily and left little blue wool tufts on the springy curls. She brushed and combed vigorously, but the wool stuck and her hair merely straightened out in gluey hunks.

  I suggested that she confess to the Charge Nurse and maybe get another shampoo. Kimi said, “Nevair. They would throw me out to die. I am the object lesson these patient have needed for a long time.” I told her I was sure that a patient had to do something much more serious than dipping his hair in sugar and water in order to be evicted from The Pines but Kimi said, “Yes, but you are not sure and I cannot afford to be the test case.”

  For one month she suffered with the sticky hair, peeling her head off the pillow in the morning and peeling her hood off her hair at night. Then she had another shampoo and came back from the bathroom, red-faced, and furious, with her hair exploding from her head. As she forced the comb through it she looked at me with flashing black eyes and said, “I am contemplating the sugar again.”

  On October twentieth, I had my first x-ray and my first trip through the tunnels of The Pines. The x-ray laboratory was underground somewhere between the Administration Building and the Bedrest Hospital. To get there I was taken in a wheelchair via elevator to the basement of the Bedrest Hospital, then wheeled rapidly down hills and around curves in a lighted cement tunnel, until we came to a door labeled X-RAY.

  The patient to be x-rayed had to strip to the waist no matter what his sex and stand in the large x-ray room and assume different poses, while the technician and the two assistants took the x-rays.

  At first I was horribly embarrassed as I stood with hands on hips, but no tops to my pajamas, bending right and left and raising the right and then the left arm. I soon got used to it, however. At The Pines nobody cared about any part of your body but your lungs. Kimi said that when they first x-rayed her they laid her on a marble slab and x-rayed her in one-inch strips. She said, “It was like a hahrrible nightmare with those alien male eye and alien male patient putting chalk mark on my naked back. Now I am like a native of Bali and feel fully dressed with only a skirt.”

  On October twenty-eighth, a wild and stormy Sunday morning, the Charge Nurse came into our cubicle and said, “Mrs. Bard, you have been here one month today. The doctor says that you may read and write for fifteen minutes a day and you may walk to the bathroom once a day.” She smiled and said, “I have brought you the Sunday papers. Do not exceed the time.”

  A few minutes ago our little room had been cold and depressing with the wind howling through the windows, the rain splatting on the sills, the green walls dank and confining. Now, with my first assurance that I was getting well and the delightful prospect of walking to the bathroom, the whole picture changed. I turned
on my bed lamp and snapped open the funny papers. How cozy everything seemed.

  I looked over at Kimi busily writing a letter, at the two women across the hall reading the Sunday papers, at the brisk efficient nurses whisking past the door. From the diet kitchens came the cheery clatter of trays being emptied, dishes being stacked. The elevator doors clanged, there was the pleasant male rumble of a doctor’s voice and the creak of a wheelchair. A sharp puff of wind and a dash of rain sent me further under the covers but I didn’t mind. I read the papers and thought what a pleasant place The Pines was to be in on a stormy Sunday morning.

  Like everything else, walking to the bathroom was governed by rules. A patient enjoying this privilege put on her robe and slippers right after breakfast and sat on the edge of her bed until the patient across the hall, or whoever she was to follow, had returned from the bathroom. Then very slowly, and looking neither to right nor left, she walked to the bathroom.

  In the bathroom, patients were not supposed to speak but of course did. On my first trip I was assisted by a nurse. She happened to be friendly and told me who each patient was on the west side of the corridor. When we passed the four-bed ward Eileen waved lustily, even though the Charge Nurse was in there making rounds.

  In the bathroom that first morning I met a small brown-haired girl named Myra, who told me that she had been at The Pines on complete bedrest for three years, that she had cavities the size of teacups in both lungs, that she was taking bilateral pneumothorax, that she had been married just six months when she got sick, that she hated all the food at The Pines and was hoping for a “thoro.” (The nurse explained that this was a thoracoplasty operation in which a small section of all the ribs on one side was removed—thus making that side very much smaller and effecting a permanent collapse of the lung.)

  Myra asked Kimi and me if we were taking any kind of treatment or had had any operations. We said no and she said that was too bad but that sometimes cases were so far gone they didn’t dare try anything. Kimi said angrily, “A patient who was that far gone would not be walking to the bathroom.” Myra said, “Oh, they try to make the last months pleasant for bad cases.” She left then, taking her large cavities and her black outlook with her.

  Sylvia was also in the bathroom. She said that she had had a phrenic operation and didn’t cough at all now. We asked her what a phrenic operation was and she said that it meant crushing the nerve that controlled the diaphragm so that the diaphragm pressed up against the lower part of the lung and caused a partial collapse. She was hoarse and breathless. She said that her stomach pains were much better since she had been put on an enteric diet. She was sweet and cheerful but painfully, horribly thin and it made Kimi and me ashamed of our fat faces and well-filled bathrobes. Sylvia said that Marie still had a temperature and so hadn’t been given the bathroom privilege.

  In the bathroom also were the little girl of thirteen and the old woman of seventy-eight. The old woman said, “Nothing sets with me but tea. Everything else repeats on me and gives me gas.” She pronounced it “gazz.” The little girl had round scarlet cheeks and said nothing. The old lady said, “I’ve got so much gazz on my stummick I can’t sleep. The Charge Nurse don’t do nothing about it. She don’t care because she’s up and around, not laying in bed with pains.”

  The little girl giggled behind her hand, then coughed. Her cough was deep and resonant and didn’t sound like a child’s cough at all. It left her shaking and leaning against the bed. I recognized the cough. It was the one we used to hear from the four-bed ward. The old lady said, “Just listen to that. They don’t do a thing for that poor child. Just stick her in a bed and leave her to die.” The little girl looked at Kimi and smiled. She didn’t speak.

  On the way back from the bathroom, Eileen was waiting for us. She was kneeling at the foot of her bed leaning out into the hall. As we went by she hissed, “Only four more days and I get moved and walk to the bathroom. Jesus, honey, you should hear Hush-mah-mouth now. She goes on about her symptoms all day long. I wish they’d put her on silence.” Kimi and I waved and smiled and walked as slowly as we could. Minna waved too and said, “Ah wish Ah was big and strong like you two. Kimi, you’ah fat as a pig.” Eileen said, “Here we go again. ‘You’ah so big! You’ah so enorhmous! You’ah so fat! Ah’m so little! Ah’m so tiny! Ah’m such a goddamn little stinker!’” Minna said something but we were past the door and couldn’t hear her.

  In the room next to the four-bed ward were the little red-cheeked girl, who waved to us, and old Gazz-on-Her-Stummick who didn’t. The name on the little girl’s bed was Evangeline Constable. Next to them in a single room was a Miss Sigrid Hansen, a pretty blonde who stared at us unsmilingly as we went by. In the next double room were a red-haired girl with her eyes closed, her name plate covered by her robe, and a Mrs. Melville, who had on a yellow turban and large earrings and looked like an old Gypsy. Then came two little Japanese girls and judging by Kimi’s averted head and narrowed eyes, they hadn’t a shred of character between them.

  Then I slowed my steps for I was coming to the cubicle next to ours, the home of Rattling Breather, and I wanted a good look at her. She was much younger than she sounded. Apparently in her early twenties. She had pale blond hair, small brown eyes, pongee-colored skin and was crocheting something large and orchid. She waved and smiled at us, showing a friendly spirit and far-apart little brown teeth. The name on her bed was Mrs. Helen Cranston. Her roommate was also young but dark and plump. Her name was Miss Charmine White. She was crocheting something large and black. “A shroud, perhaps,” Kimi said softly to me as she smiled at Charmine.

  In addition to being weighed once each month, our progress was checked by a blood sedimentation, urinalysis, x-ray, and sputum test. As the rest in bed made almost everyone gain weight and stop coughing, only by laboratory test and x-rays could the Medical Director determine each patient’s progress or lack of progress.

  Of this progress we were told nothing. The only way we could tell whether we were getting well or dying was by the privileges we were granted. If we were progressing satisfactorily at the end of one month we were given the bathroom privilege and fifteen minutes a day reading-and-writing time. At the end of two months, if we continued to progress our reading-and-writing time was increased to half an hour, we were allowed to read books and were given ten minutes a day occupational therapy time. At the end of three months we were given a chest examination, along with the other tests, and if all was still well we were given three hours’ time up, one hour occupational therapy time and could go to the movies (if chosen by the Charge Nurse).

  The time up began with sitting up in bed. Fifteen minutes the first day, twenty minutes the second day and increasing five minutes a day until the patient reached half an hour; then fifteen minutes a day in the morning and fifteen minutes in the evening, increased five minutes a day until an hour was reached. Then the patient was taken to the porch to sit in a reclining chair morning and evening and the time was increased ten minutes a day until the three hours was reached. At that time, if the progress was still good, the patient was sent to the Ambulant Hospital.

  Lesson VI had stated: “There is no advantage in gaining weight rapidly as it only throws extra work on the sick lung. You should gain in weight slowly and gradually, keeping pace with improvements in your lung, until you have reached the weight that is normal for your height and age. Therefore, do not stuff. Do not be a pig”

  Kimi was hurt and thought the lesson had been directed at her for she had gained five pounds. I had gained three and Eileen wrote us a violent note telling us that there was now no point in her getting out of The Pines as she had gained twelve pounds and wouldn’t fit any of her usherette uniforms. Kimi wrote back, “You should complain. Already a giant among my own people, I now face a life of lonely spinsterhood.”

  I had been at The Pines a month and it was Sunday and a visiting day. On the stroke of two I opened my eyes and there were Anne and Joan and Mother. Anne and Joan had on new dar
k blue coats and their own shining faces and were beautiful.

  Anne said, her eyes filling with tears, “I would like to kiss you.” Joan said, “I can do a figure eight on my roller skates.” Anne said, “The nurse said that we couldn’t even touch your bed.” Joan said, “I can do a figure eight on my roller skates.”

  I said, “Don’t you think this is a beautiful hospital, girls?” Anne said, “It smells!” Then added tactfully, “Like medicine. When can you come home, Mommy?” Joan said, “When you come home you can see me do a figure eight on my roller skates.” Kimi’s family came in then and the children were fascinated and had to be turned around and faced in my direction.

  I asked about school and Anne told me about what “a terrible cheater Charlie Thomas is but the teacher loves him so much she lets him cheat—even helps him,” which sounded unlikely. Joan asked, “What is cheating?” I said, “Oh, asking other people to help you with your work, copying off other children’s papers, looking in the book during tests.” Joan said, “Oh, I do those things all the time. Everybody does. Only I get so mad at Marilyn because when I copy her arithmetic paper she has all the answers wrong. I did two figure eights on my roller skates yesterday.” Anne said, “Oh stop talking about those old figure eights.” Joan said, “Well, Grandmother told us not to talk about being Japanese.” Then the Charge Nurse came and the ten minutes were up. The children threw me kisses and went away with the nurse, taking my heart with them.

  After supper, in that most depressing and lonely time of day, early evening, the radio seemed possessed and concentrated on tunes like “Sonny Boy,” “My Buddy” and “Boy of Mine,” all played on the organ. Our little room was morbidly quiet and sorrow was heaped in my corner like dirty snow.