The Plague and I
From past experience with sick males, I knew that no form of occupational therapy, including how to make your own diamonds, would get a very enthusiastic reception, as a man’s natural reaction to illness of any kind seems to be to see how big a stinker he can be and how much resistance he can muster against all forms of treatment. However, even the novelty of being a stinker must wear off after the first year, and it seemed to me that there should be something for those large idle hands to do. Something to bring a smile to those sad dejected faces, to lessen the tedium of tuberculosis.
I was wondering what that something could be, when the door of the x-ray lab opened and Miss Welsh winked at me, jerked my wheelchair into pitch darkness, took off my robe and the tops to my pajamas and put a sheet around my shoulders. When my eyes had become accustomed to the dark, I saw that there were several doctors sitting facing the fluoroscope with their backs to me.
A door to the right of the fluoroscope opened and a girl came in, closing the door quickly behind her. She sat down in front of the fluoroscope, slipping the sheet from her shoulders as she did so. There was a buzzing noise and I could see her ribs and lungs. They looked just fine to me but the technician ran his finger over the plate on her right lung and the doctors grunted unintelligible things to each other. They told her to raise and lower her arm.
When she left it Was my turn. The technician asked me my name, the House Doctor found my card, the technician ran his finger over the plate on my left side, I was told to raise and lower my arm, the doctors grunted unintelligible things to each other and it was over. Miss Welsh pushed me out into the hall again and over to the bench on the women’s side, where they crowded over to make room for me.
The woman next to me was embroidering “When you come to the end of a perfect day” in bright orange yarn on a maroon velvet pillow. Just behind the word “come” she had already embroidered half of a large orange with spikes protruding from it. This puzzled me a good deal until she turned the pillow around and I realized that the prickly half-orange represented a sun setting behind a maroon horizon.
The Perfect Day woman was talking to a girl, who had a big heap of loose curls on top of her head and winked every time she spoke. She was crocheting something in ecru string. Perfect Day said, “I was talking to Bill, Thursday, and he said that the Charge Nurse wouldn’t send Mervin to the dentist because he was going to die anyhow and the Institution don’t want to waste their materials fixin’ his teeth.” Heap O’Curls winked and said, “And I’ve heard that the poor kids in the four-bed ward up in Bedrest are starving and the Charge Nurse just laughs when they ask for seconds.” Perfect Day said, “It’s a wonder to me that anybody gets out of here alive.”
The girl on my other side was making a rag doll. It was supposed to be one of those long-legged French bed dolls but there had evidently been no pattern for the girl had made the body as long and thin as the legs and arms. The result looked like a squid. A tough delinquent squid with its face all pulled down on one side and bright orange hair exploding from its peaked head. The girl was attaching an arm and as she sewed she told her neighbor on the other side about a hemorrhage she had had at dinner before coming to The Pines. “A cup full of blood!” she finished triumphantly and I wondered where and how she had measured it.
All the conversations were about operations, hemorrhages, ambulant patients who were to be sent back to Bedrest and bedrest patients who were to come to the Ambulant Hospital. I said to Perfect Day, “My, everyone certainly looks healthy!” She said, squinting as she threaded more orange yarn into her needle, “Don’t let it fool you, honey, those red cheeks are t.b. flushes and only show germ activity.”
Rag Doll leaned across me and said, “Hazel, I had a chest exam yesterday and if it’s o.k. I’ll get six hours and my clothes. Mama said she’d buy me a whole new outfit.” Perfect Day said, “God, honey, I’m prayin’ for you but I wouldn’t count on it. Henry Welter had a chest exam last week and they sent him back to Bedrest this morning.” The Rag Doll girl said, “Really! Oh, the poor kid!” They both sewed in silence for a minute or two in honor of poor Henry’s memory.
A very attractive blue-eyed, dark-haired girl motioned to me. As she was sitting about ten people down the bench from me, in order to talk to her I had to lean forward. This almost got me Perfect Day’s needle in my eyeball, so the dark girl moved up next to me. She said, “My name’s Sheila Flannigan and my brother Red went to college with your sister Mary.” I said, “Why I remember Red, but how did you know I was out here?” She said, “Molly Hastings told me.” Sheila also told me that she had been at The Pines three months, had time up and was at the opposite end of Bedrest in a room with a former schoolmate of my sister Alison. I began to think that my sister Mary was right and that “practically everybody has tuberculosis.”
Catching my eye over the Perfect Day pillow, Sheila said, “That, my dear, is occupational therapy. ‘There’s a little bit of the artist in each of us,’” she said, quoting someone in a high squeaky voice. Looking at the maroon pillow I thought, “But what a tiny little speck in some people,” and then the x-ray man came for me with the wheelchair.
As I climbed into bed, I realized with surprise that the unaccustomed noise and confusion had been tiring and it was nice to return to the peace of our cold little cubicle. Kimi wanted to hear about everything and during the turmoil of returning patients to their beds, I managed to tell her most of what had happened. When I finished she said plaintively, “You know, Betty, it seems to me that the institution is making a greater effort to save you than to save me.” I laughed, which immediately drew a disapproving nurse to the doorway, for fluoroscope was over and the ward was again so quiet that a whisper sounded like a steam jet in full release.
On November twelfth, Kimi and I had a long bitter letter from Eileen. She had been moved into a room by herself. She said that she had thought that rooming with Minna was as low as you could get. Her exact words were, “Jesus, honey, it was like livin’ under a stone with a grub but now I’m still under the stone but all alone.” She said that the reason for the move was: “Gramma brought old Mrs. Walladay out with her last Sunday and Mrs. Walladay yelled so loud the nurses told her three times to be quiet and finally the Old Dame came down and raised hell and Gramma said, ‘Ain’t you ashamed, a big strong woman like you makin’ fun of a pore old deaf lady!’ Jesus, kids, I almost choked.” So apparently had the Charge Nurse for she moved Eileen by herself. I felt very sorry for Eileen but didn’t realize the extent of my sympathy until I was moved by myself on November fifteenth.
It all happened so quickly I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye to Kimi. I opened my eyes after rest hours and the next I knew I was in a cubicle by myself at the opposite end of the building. A few minutes later Kimi was wheeled past my door and a pathetic note from her that night informed me that she had been put in a room with the Japanese girl with no character. She said, “If not speaking will heal my lung I should be out of here within the week.” The note ended, “Why did the Charge Nurse separate us? How could she perform such an act of cruelty?”
That’s what I wanted to know so I asked her. She said, “It is better for the patients to move every so often. To adjust to different personalities. It is better for you to be by yourself.” I loathed being by myself. It was dull and depressing and I found it impossible to adjust to my own personality.
My new little room was very comfortable with a window opening on a huge porch beside the bed, a radiator within easy reach, so that I could thaw out my feet occasionally in the early morning, and a delightful view of the Children’s Hospital, the waters of the Sound and many trees. It was the first time since entering the hospital that I had been able to look out of a window and I found watching the writhing trees, the angry gray water and the driving rain very exhilarating for a day or two. Then I began to miss Kimi. I missed her gentle voice, her understanding and her acid tongue. Being alone made the whole day seem like the rest hours and I soon lost my fe
eling of high spirits and exuberant good health, and spent much of my time longing for the children and thinking about death.
There were six or seven beds on the porch and the patients in these beds were very quiet, almost immobile. It was undoubtedly because of the cold that they lay so very still under covers pulled high and tucked in, only their faces showing above the white spreads but to my morbid eye they seemed very sick, probably dying. At night when I lay wide awake, cold, lonely and sad, the beds looked like rows of white biers, and the patients’ faces gleamed greenish white and dead in the pale reflected lights from the Administration Building.
Before coming to The Pines, death, if I thought of it at all, which was seldom, was something swift, awe inspiring, cataclysmic, dramatic and grand. Death was a lightning bolt, a flood, a fire, a hurricane, a train wreck, an airplane crash, a pistol shot, a leap from a high bridge.
When I had told this to Kimi one evening she had said, “Oh, that is not at all my idea of Death. To me Death is a lecherous, sly, deranged old man. His beard is sparse and stained. His eye are coarse lidded, red rimmed, furtive and evil. His loose red lip are slimy and drooling. He pants with anticipation. His partially opened mouth shows brown shaggy thread of tooth. He shuffles up and down the corridor at night, his malodorous, black robe dragging behind him.”
I was horrified and told Kimi that she was morbid. She had said, “I cannot help it. Each time Margaretta or any other very sick patient passes our door I fancy I see Death’s evil face peering around the corner. I think I see his black robe swirl through the doorway ahead of the wheelchair. I can see him hovering like a great bat over the emergency ward, the light room, the private room. I can hear him shuffling up and down the corridor at night.” (He must have done his shuffling in the very early evening for Kimi closed her eyes on the stroke of nine-thirty and did not open them again until the washwater was delivered.)
Now that I was alone and had long sleepless hours to think, to listen and to observe, I thought Kimi’s idea of death much more realistic than mine and I too began to see his evil peering face, to hear him shuffling up and down the corridors in the night. I’d awaken when the night nurse made rounds at about one or half past, and when the friendly yellow eye of her flashlight had darted off the ceiling and the soft pad of her retreating footsteps had been absorbed by the dark, I’d lie waiting. Stiff with dread. Then it would start. From far down the hall a cough—dry and rattling like seed pods in the wind. Then another nearer—gurgling and strangling and leaving the cougher gasping for breath. Then from across the hall a harsh deep cough with a strange metallic ring. Then the girl in the private room, the girl with skin the color of old snow, the girl with arms and legs like knobby sticks, whose voice was gone, would begin to gasp dreadfully. Involuntarily I’d try to help her until my tongue felt swollen, my throat ached, my lungs seemed crushed. “Hurry, hurry,” I wanted to scream, because over it all I could hear the slow, sure shuffle of Death. Up and down the halls he went, never hurrying, knowing that we’d wait for him.
One morning the Charge Nurse said, “The night nurse reports that you do not sleep well, Mrs. Bard. Is something troubling you?” I said no, not any one thing. She said, “What kind of thoughts do you have before going to sleep?” I said with mistaken honesty, “I long for my children and I think about death.” She said with horror, “Death! Why Mrs. Bard, how awful!” Then quickly recovering and jerking herself down so that not a speck of revealing human being showed, she said, “We do not allow patients of The Pines to think about death, or other unpleasant things. You must have pleasant cheerful thoughts.” I said, “But I can’t have cheerful thoughts when I’m by myself. I hate to be alone.” She said, “It is better for you to be alone. You must have cheerful thoughts or I will report you to the Medical Director.” I wrote to Kimi that night and told her that the institution was now controlling my thoughts. She replied, “If only they could. I look at my roommate and think of murder twenty-four hour a day.”
From then on, while by myself, I spent the days trying to line up cheerful thoughts to mull over during the night. As I lay quietly assembling cheer, the two women in the next cubicle compared ailments. One of them had a liver that was crowding her tonsils; the other a uterus hanging by a thread. One had an ingrown toenail; the other a loose crown on her tooth. One of them belched and the other had pains because she didn’t. One’s sinus was so clogged she could not get any breath, the other had an empty tunnel from one ear to the other through which cold air whooshed, giving her earaches and other discomforts. One had fluid on her lung which had to be aspirated, the other was taking pneumothorax. They were each sure they were being given the wrong treatment and the wrong medicines.
One of the women had a sweet motherly voice and talked about her organs as though they were little friends. “Old Mr. Gall Bladder acting up this morning,” she would say right after breakfast, or “All my little intestines are crowded today, I don’t think they liked the salad we had last night.” I could picture Old Mr. Gall Bladder pounding on her liver with his cane and all her little intestines with bibs on crowded around the table not liking the salad.
The other woman’s insides were all little machines that didn’t function. She was sure that if the Charge Nurse would only give her something to stir up her bile, the bile would start the wheels in her liver, the wheels in her liver would start the pistons in her stomach, the pistons in her stomach would generate enough juice to run her intestines, which would in gratitude wind around her uterus and keep it from dropping on the floor.
The thing that amazed me was how either of the women had ever gotten tuberculosis, because according to their conversation, for years and years before coming to The Pines, they had spent every day but Sunday in various doctors’ offices and had grown so familiar with all germs that they should have recognized the tubercle bacilli and swatted them like gnats.
I was surprised the first time I saw Friendly Organs’ visitors. I had thought of course that like her they would be dreary operation talkers and symptom discussers. But they weren’t. They were hard bright women with lustreless dyed black hair, black sealskin coats, bright pink rouge, felt hats with vizors like policemen’s hats, and big patent-leather purses. Their talk, loud and cheerful and punctuated with claps of laughter, was entirely about poker parties, drinking beer and people named Chet, Murphy and Vera. When they left, the air around Friendly Organs swirled with the musky scent of tuberoses and gardenias and the air around me swirled with pictures of the visitors at home in their one-room downtown apartments, drinking beer, opening cans of beans and being pinched on the behind by Chet or Murphy.
On the days when the poker players didn’t visit Friendly Organs, a small man dressed all in black came and stood stiffly, like an exclamation point, at the foot of her bed for the two hours. I guessed that he was her husband but could not picture him fitting in with Chet, Vera and Murphy.
The woman with the Little Machine intestines had a husband and son who came every visiting day. They were as pale as oysters, dressed alike in brown belted overcoats, tan fedora hats, and yellow pigskin gloves, and looked like burglars. I was amazed therefore, on a day when my visitors were late and there was a sudden little block of quiet, to hear the older burglar say in a gentle, tender voice, “What did you have for dinner today, Sarah, honey?” Sarah said, “They had cabbage again and I’m all bloated up.” Son said, “Gosh, Ma, you know you can’t eat cabbage. It always talks back to you.” The older burglar said, “Have they done anything for your sinus, honey?” Honey lowered her chin on her chest, belched, patted her stomach, looked at her husband accusingly and said, “See! Cabbage! It’s just poison to me.”
Every morning the Friendly Organs woman would tell the Charge Nurse that she needed a “good cleaning out,” or something for her ingrown toenail. The Little Machine woman would ask for something to stimulate her “nasal drip.” When the Charge Nurse came to me she dared me to complain about anything and I didn’t dare. I was cold and lonel
y and hated tuberculosis but I had cheerful thoughts, By God. “And how are you this evening?” the Charge Nurse would ask, her eyes steely and forbidding. “Just splendid,” I’d answer dutifully reciting my catechism. “Simply splendid.”
XI
Deck the Halls with Old Crepe Paper!
Tra, La, La, La, La, Lala, La, La!
I HAVE ALWAYS liked any special day, be it Mother’s Day, Groundhog Day or Bastille Day and the big full-bodied holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving and Easter fill me so full of feeling and spirit that I can get tears in my eyes just looking at a fruitcake.
Lying in bed at The Pines day after day, week after week, month after month, engaged in pursuits such as listening to the split, splat, splat of the rain hitting the gutter outside my window or waiting my turn to have my lung collapsed, should have increased this feeling for holidays about a billionfold. It didn’t. The days were all so exactly alike and followed each other with such monotonous regularity that I lost all interest in holidays as such.
I knew them only as “gas” day, bath day, fluoroscope day, visiting day, supply day or store day. It was in part infiltration into sanatorium life, divorce from normal living. It was also in part the childish self-centered attitude of an invalid. What I was doing, how I felt, what was to happen to me became more and more important to me as time went on.
At first when my visitors told me of happenings in the outside world I was vitally interested and relived each incident vividly with the telling. Then gradually, insidiously, like night mist rising from the swamps, my invalidism obscured the real world from me and when the family told me tales of happenings at home, I found them interesting but without strength, like talk about people long dead. The only real things were connected with the sanatorium. The only real people, the other patients, the doctors, the nurses.