XIV
Ambulant Hospital
MARCH TWENTY-FOURTH was a spring day. A nice regulation spring day patterned after a picture in a Second Reader. The sunshine was direct and warm and gave the straight pale green poplar trees and the small well-stuffed white clouds neat black outlines against the flat blue sky. Over all were pleasant usual spring noises. An airplane busily humming through the serene atmosphere, a boat whistling conscientiously as it threaded its careful way through the little islands of the Sound, a rooster crowing, the rhythmic ringing of a distant hammer, the whirring of a lawn mower, the hurried click of hedge clippers.
It was a day to hang out clean white clothes, to dig in the garden, to try out new roller skates, to put up a swing, but Kate and I had to be satisfied with lounging in lounge chairs on the porch, doing fancywork and taking our time up. We had reached our full three hours the evening before and we felt like eager fledglings teetering on the edge of the nest waiting for the push that would make us try our wings. From now on anything might happen, the Ambulant Hospital, a tub bath, a trip to the beauty parlor, work in the occupational therapy shop, six hours’ time up—anything. All we had to do was to sit quietly and wait.
The friendly sun drew sparks from my laborious tatting shuttle, making it seem quick and agile. It picked up Kate’s darting crochet hook and turned it into a tiny winking light. It even warmed and thawed the five porch patients so that they came up out of their white coverings like brave crocuses above the snow.
I said to Kate, “Isn’t it much harder to be on bedrest in the summer?” She said, “Oh, my yes. You get hot and restless and itchy and irritable. It seems like a month between baths and like a year between shampoos and all the awful hospital smells cling to you until you gradually lose every vestige of appetite. It isn’t so bad on the porches, which is why those poor things over there suffered out here through the winter—it gives them squatters’ rights for the summer.”
I said, “Why then do people go to hot places like Arizona to cure tuberculosis?” Kate said, “I suppose it is because people have heard that exposure to sunlight will kill the tubercle bacillus and they think that if they lie in the sun long enough the rays will penetrate to their lungs and kill the germs in them. According to the Medical Director, exposure to the sunlight is very dangerous for pulmonary tuberculosis, except under medical supervision. He warns us against sunbaths, even sitting in the sun without a hat, says it increases our temperatures and pulse and I suppose sends the germs whirling through our blood stream.”
I said, “But what about people who live in hot climates? I should think they’d have to take the cure in a hot climate in order to determine their resistance to normal activity in a hot climate.” Kate said, “The way I understand it, pulmonary tuberculosis is caused by tubercle bacilli in the lungs and to date the only way found to render these tubercle bacilli inactive is to wall them off in the lungs with fibrosis. The fibrosis forms quickest when the lung is at rest. If your lung was put at rest with pneumothorax or other surgery I shouldn’t think it would matter whether you were in Alaska or South America, but if you had to depend on bedrest to build your fibrosis then I should think that a year-round cool climate at sea level would be the most pleasant.”
“Why sea level?” I asked.
“Because,” Kate said, “mountain air is thinner, requires the lungs to work harder for their oxygen, and is also exhilarating—which makes it more difficult to rest.”
“But what if you lived in the mountains and intended living in the mountains after you were well? Wouldn’t it be better to take the cure in the mountains?”
Kate said, “Wouldn’t it be easier to try out a broken leg on the level? After you had proved that the break was all healed and the leg was strong then you could climb all the mountains you wanted.”
“You know,” I said, “much as I hate to look on the bright side of things, I’m glad that I was poor when I got tuberculosis; otherwise I might have rocketed off to the desert or the top of some mountain, and I’d be dead now, instead of sitting here on the porch avoiding the sun, making this great big ugly tatted collar and wondering where a large fat slightly tubercular lady could get a job.”
Kate said, “Much as I hate to look on the bright side of things too, I am glad I was poor when I got t.b. because I know that, if I was rich and paying fifty or sixty dollars a week in some private sanatorium, I would never let the nurses boss me around as much as they do, and have done, here, and I wouldn’t have this big dirty ugly lace tablecloth for my hope chest.”
“And as long as we’re counting our blessings,” I said, “isn’t it lucky that when we got our tuberculosis we happened to be living in a part of the country that is under water eighty percent of the year? No danger from too much sun up here, but watch out for mildew.”
“Speaking of mildew,” Kate said, “the Charge Nurse down at the Ambulant Hospital acts as though this hospital were built right on the Equator and if she knew where to get sun helmets she’d make them a required article of clothing. She makes all the patients cover their heads, even on the grayest days, when they walk to the store.”
“How far away is the store?” I asked, thinking in terms of miles.
“About half a block,” Kate said, “but the Ambulant Charge Nurse thinks The Pines is the whole world and that the sun sends its rays directly on to the patients like a person directing a flashlight beam.”
The sun now had one or two of its beams aimed at my back, which made me feel like a frozen roast just slipped into a hot oven. I knew I should get up and move but I was hypnotized by the delicious warmth. I leaned back and closed my eyes and let the dangerous sunshine flow over me like warm oil. I was jerked from my lassitude by the Charge Nurse’s voice. It quivered with horror as she said, “Mrs. Bard, you’re sitting in the sun!” I said, “I’m sorry, I must have dozed. I’ll move right away.” She said, “No need to move, you and Miss Harte are to go for chest examinations.” Chest examination! That meant the Ambulant Hospital! I wanted to shout with joy but I tried very hard not to register anything other than blind obedience. I looked at Kate. She winked and held up two crossed fingers. The Charge Nurse said, “You may walk to the examination room,” and left the porch.
I had gained twenty pounds in the five months I had been at The Pines and I felt like a tank as I lumbered uncertainly up the long hallway, on legs unsteady with disuse and excitement. Once I stumbled and, when I grabbed at a cubicle wall for support, it gave way under my tremendous impact and wavered indecisively over the head of a sleeping patient. Kate, ten pounds fatter than she had been a month ago but still as slender as a nutpick, laughed at my joust with the wall. Before we had passed the last cubicle in our ward we could hear the whispers, “They’re going to the Ambulant Hospital. They’ve got six hours’ time up. They’re going for chest exams.” News about us traveled faster than we did.
When we reached the examination room the Charge Nurse was waiting for us. She sent me in first. The doctor examined my chest and lungs very thoroughly but said nothing. When I came out my face was hot with excitement and I was afraid the Charge Nurse would think I had the dreaded t.b. flush. Before Kate went in she said in a tense little voice, “Pray for me hard.” Her eyes were wide with fear, the pupils dilated to cover the whole iris.
While Kate was examined I shuffled slowly back to my bed, now in a four-bed ward at the opposite end of the building from the entering ward. My wardmates, besides Kate, were Mrs. Harmon, the small, dauntless woman of my first attempt at time up, and Lizzie Merritt, a former nurse. As Lizzie had been on bedrest for two years and had no hope of time up for at least another year, and Mrs. Harmon had just lost her time up for the sixth time that year, I was not eager to share the news about Kate’s and my chest examinations.
When I came to the door of our ward I was glad to see that Lizzie was asleep and Mrs. Harmon was gone. I climbed into bed and for once the icy sheets felt soothing to my excited, flushed body. I looked in the mirror an
d my face, as I had feared, was a mottled tomato red. I put my cold, damp washcloth over it and closed my eyes. My heart was pounding boom, boom, boom, and my unused muscles twitched convulsively like a dying chicken, so of course the Charge Nurse chose that time to take my pulse and temperature. After a minute or so she said, “You’re excited, I’ll come back later.” Then, “Better get that pulse down if you want to go to the Ambulant Hospital this afternoon.” She sounded stern, but she was smiling and I knew that she was happy over my progress and no doubt glad to get rid of me.
Kate came in then and the Charge Nurse told her that she too was to go to the Ambulant Hospital that afternoon. She said that we were to rest quietly until the move. It was like asking someone to rest quietly on her wedding day, but we tried. Lizzie and Mrs. Harmon were pathetically generous with their congratulations as were all the other patients who learned of our good fortune. I even had a note from Eileen, who in spite of her optimistic outlook in January, as yet had no time up.
She wrote, “I expect to get to the Ambulant Hospital some day but don’t wait for me. I’ve got a new roommate and does she give the Old Dame a bad time. Her name’s Delores and she used to be a nightclub singer. She’s real good-lookin’ and she’s always gettin’ little pains that the doctor has to look at and whenever he pokes her she half closes her eyes and says, ‘Ohhhhhh, Doctah!’ That new young doctor don’t mind it at all but the Old Dame just burns. . . . Jackie don’t come out any more. . . . He told Gramma he don’t like hospitals but I got it pretty straight that he’s got a new girl, a cheap little tramp with blond hair and good lungs. Oh, well, there’s more than one pebble on the beach. . . . When you come up on washwater be sure the water’s hot and there’s plenty of it. . . .”
Of course I couldn’t sleep during rest hours, but because I knew that I would be under close observation and would have my pulse and temperature taken as soon as I woke up, I kept my eyes shut and tried to relax. Each minute seemed like an hour, and each hour like a century but finally it got to be two-thirty and the nourishment cart came clanking in, closely followed by nurses with carts for Kate’s and my belongings and bedding, and the Charge Nurse with a wheelchair for me. We took the usual route to the basement and the tunnels, then taking all turns to the left instead of to the right, which led to x-ray, we came at last to a low rustic building which housed the dining room, the examining rooms and the Ambulant Hospital Charge Nurse’s office.
This Charge Nurse, according to a letter from Kimi, who had gone to the Ambulant Hospital three weeks before, was “the most terrible creature living—soft-spoken but exuding venom from every pore of her short lumpy body.” Therefore I was not too surprised after the Bedrest Charge Nurse had left, to have her say, “You have been a problem, Mrs. Bard.” I said, “I’m sorry.” She said, “Being sorry is not enough, Mrs. Bard. We must have proof of your desire to cooperate. Proof of your trustworthiness. Proof that we will be proud to have you in our hospital.”
I didn’t know what she was getting at. How could I, sitting in a wheelchair in my blue woolen bathrobe, suddenly produce evidence of good citizenship? I said, “I don’t know what you mean. What kind of proof?” She was acting as though she expected written references. She said, “You’re going to have to change that attitude, Mrs. Bard.” I said, “I’m sorry but I don’t know what you want me to say.” She said, “If you don’t know what to say then we haven’t been able to teach you very much.”
I said, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about and I don’t know what you want me to say.” She smiled at me blandly and said, “I just want you to say that you intend to do your best to be an obedient, helpful, cooperative, industrious patient.” I said, “I do” meekly in spite of a poignant longing to say, “The hell I will!”
The welcome over, we started for the hospital. I had a slight premonition that life from then on was not going to be any gambol on the grassy turf, so, as the Charge Nurse wheeled me to my new room, I asked about the rules. Were they the same as those at the Bedrest Hospital? If not, what were the rules of the Ambulant Hospital? The Charge Nurse said, “We do not tell the patients the rules, Mrs. Bard. We find that the trial and error method is the best way to learn them.” I said, “But how can I be obedient, cooperative and helpful if I don’t know what I’m supposed to do?” She said, “We do not allow arguing, Mrs. Bard. I am in authority and I do what I think is best for the patients.”
We entered the Women’s Ambulant Hospital. The building, brick and of modern architecture, was two stories high, had gentle ramps instead of stairs and was designed like an ocean steamer with all the accommodations outside cabins, opening on screened promenade decks about ten feet wide. The Charge Nurse wheeled me into an apartment on the south side, first floor, facing a cherry orchard, told me supper would be at four-thirty, that a nurse would call for me with a wheelchair, that I was to be ready, and left.
My bed had already been made and my belongings were in cartons on the floor. My new roommate, Sigrid Hansen, the unsmiling blonde from the Bedrest Hospital, said, “You are to have the two bottom drawers in the bureau, the right-hand locker in the bathroom.” I said, “You mean we have our own bathroom?” She said, “Yes, over there. It is warm and we dress in there.” I went over and opened the door. The dressing room was deliciously warm and contained two large metal wardrobes and a wash basin. At the end there was a little lavatory. “No more bedpans, wheee!”
I put my clean pajamas and sweaters in the bureau drawers, the rest of my stuff in the bedside stand, and got into bed. The bed was very cold. I asked Sigrid if we were allowed hot-water bottles. She said, “Sure, fill it yourself in the bathroom. Fill it every ten minutes if you want to.” I immediately got up and filled my hot-water bottle with scalding water. What bliss!
The front wall of the room was one huge steel casement-window facing the cherry orchard. The individual panes, about eighteen inches square and hinged, opened to form glass shelves for flowers. As in the Bedrest Hospital, all the windows were open at all times. The door, part of the same steel casement, was also glass and open. The walls were cream plaster, the furniture, consisting of two beds, two bed-stands, two chairs, a bureau and a table for books and magazines, was deep turquoise, the floor terra cotta and black tiled linoleum.
The room was well arranged and attractive, the view into the cherry orchard was lovely, the air was fresh and smelled sweetly of earth, new leaves and sunwarmed grass, but most wonderful of all was the freedom. No nurses patrolled the promenade, occasional voices or moderate little trills of laughter could be heard on either side of us, eight-hour patients walking past the door, arm in arm, stopped to smile and talk to us, and Sigrid and I exchanged pleasantries without first listening carefully for the soft rubber-soled steps of a nurse. I filled my hot-water bottle with fresh hot water about ten times during the next hour and each time my skin prickled with the delight in this small free act of comfort. In spite of the Charge Nurse’s hateful reception, I thought her Ambulant Hospital was pure heaven.
At four-fifteen Sigrid told me to get up and get ready for supper. She said that I could wash my face and put on makeup; that I would be taken to the dining room in a wheelchair for the first week, then I could walk one way one day, two ways the next day and so on. In two weeks I could walk back and forth to all meals.
As I washed my face and dressed, Sigrid sat on the floor of her locker and told me a little about the hospital, a little about herself. She was twenty-two, had been at The Pines almost nine months, had been born on a farm near Oslo in Norway, had a husband who had gone North to fish, loathed the Charge Nurse as much as Kimi did but was completely matter-of-fact about her, as she was about everything.
She said, “She is crazy so I keep away from her. She walks slap, slap, slap and can be heard for blocks. I either close my eyes and pretend to be asleep or go into the toilet when I hear her coming. That way she cannot trick me into one of her arguments.”
Sigrid’s sister had died at The Pines the
year before but she was not sad about it. She said, “She should have had sense enough to go to a doctor sooner. It was better that she died. She would have been sick all her life.” I asked her if she was lonely for her husband. She said, “No. I knew he was going away. We will have a whole lifetime together, why fuss about a few months.”
I roomed with Sigrid for a month and she was the perfect roommate. Always pleasant, always courteous, never emotional. I was all jagged peaks of ecstasy, deep chasms of depression. She could have been graphed with one straight line. As I read a great deal and seemed contented doing it, she asked to borrow my books as soon as I finished them. But after reading just a few pages she tossed them all aside as “too fanciful.” For anyone who thought The Grapes of Wrath “too fanciful” I didn’t know what to suggest.
Sigrid had ash blond hair, large sea blue eyes, a beautiful body and walked like a proud little queen, her head high, her back straight, her steps graceful and slow. I remarked on her beautiful carriage. She said, “You’ll walk the same way. It comes from lying in bed and resting your back.” She was right. All the women patients walked beautifully. As I waited for the nurse to come for me I watched them go by on the promenade on their way to supper, moving slowly and gracefully and as though they had books on their heads, but not one of them had the proud grace of Sigrid. It must have been something Nordic.
The nurse who called for me, a nice friendly little old woman, stopped on the covered rustic walk that connected the Women’s Ambulant Hospital with the dining room and pointed out the miniature golf course, the fountain, the Children’s Hospital, the Men’s Ambulant Hospital, the Bedrest Hospitals, the Isolation Hospital. She said that in June the walk would be covered with roses and that in just a few weeks all the walks would be bordered with flowers, the grounds alight with flowering trees.