The Plague and I
The dining room, large and rustic, had a beamed cathedral ceiling, a stone fireplace—without a fire, of course—open casement-windows on two sides, open French doors on either side of the fireplace and rows and rows of brown oblong tables for four. The tables for the men were on one side, for the women on the other, a no man’s land in between. The men and women were not allowed to speak to each other in the dining room; in fact no communication of any kind, including winking, waving, smiling or note writing, was allowed between male and female patients, I was informed by the little nurse as she deposited me at a table at the front of the room near the serving counter. She also informed me that the dining room was run like a cafeteria; that the patients lined up to be served (males and females on opposite sides of the room), carried their own trays, stacked and scraped their dishes and returned the trays to the counter; but that for the first week I would be served by nurses.
She left to get another patient and I sat at the table and watched the patients file into the dining room. Some wore robes, some were dressed, all were plump, clear eyed and healthy looking. I found that I knew most of the women patients as they had either been in Bedrest with me or I had met them on their washwater or flower duty. Everyone was very friendly and came to my table to congratulate me. I couldn’t get used to the strange delightful sound of talking and kept flinching and looking for nurses whenever anyone spoke to me. Voices were kept low and there was no loud laughter or other mark of hilarity, but it was wonderful beyond belief to contemplate eating with an accompaniment of conversation instead of cold silence and a reproving eye.
Also seated at the front table with me was Sylvia, still as thin as a sparrow but shining with happiness over her time up. She had been at the Ambulant Hospital for two days and for this accomplishment I thought the Medical Director should have the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Then came Kate, smiling but a little grim. She told me that she had been put on the north side of the hospital, in a room with a big, fat, sorry-for-herself who complained constantly. “She even thinks her eyeballs are hardening,” Kate said, “and she . . .” “Shhhh,” Sylvia said, as a stout older woman, with gray hair and a mouth turned down so far at the corners it looked as if she had put it on upside down, was helped to a chair at our table.
The stout lady settled herself with a great deal of wiggling of the table and spilling of Sylvia’s and my tea, then removed from her bathrobe pocket and lined up in front of her place, two cod liver oil capsules, two round peppermint-flavored discs of calcium, some black oval pills, and some little red pills. “The doctor tells me to take these medicines,” she said sighing, “but with the nurses so careless I always think I’m taking a terrible chance. How do I know these are the right pills? How do I know that some of them are not filled with poison?” She took them all, however, rolling her eyes and gulping as each one hit bottom. It reminded me of dropping stones into a well.
As she took the last pill, Sheila and Kimi, the last ones into the dining room, came enthusiastically up to the table. They were still wearing robes but told me that they had each been given six hours’ time up and expected to wear their clothes in a week. While we were talking, the stout woman’s tray was delivered to her. On it was a small glass of medicine, which the nurse told her to take after she had eaten her supper.
Kimi reached over and picked up the medicine, lifted it to her nose, sniffed and said, “This smells like something labelled with a skull and crossbone. Demand to see the bottle from which it was taken, Leila. Remember there is a long waiting list to get into The Pines and an empty bed is a helpful bed.” Leila, looking exactly as if she were going to cry and in a voice midway between a whine and a wail, said, “Now, Kimi, don’t make me laugh, you know how I cough.”
Sheila informed me that after the first week I would have to be invited to sit at one of the tables. I asked where I would sit if no one asked me. She said not to worry as nobody in the history of the sanatorium had ever been that unpopular. Kimi said, “But if there should be a first time I will stand by you. There will be two pariah to share that one lonely table.”
The Charge Nurse was motioning with her spatula for Kimi and Sheila to get in the food line, so they scuttled away and the rest of us ate our supper to the accompaniment of Leila’s complaints. At last Sylvia said, “Leila, nurses do not make mistakes. I have been in hospitals and sanatoriums for twenty years and I have never once heard of a nurse giving the wrong medicine.” Kate nudged me and said quite audibly, “I can hope, can’t I?”
After supper I was wheeled back to bed; at five-thirty the Charge Nurse and the House Doctor made rounds; at six-thirty we were served hot or cold milk; and at seven the radio was turned on. The radio was loud enough to hear all the words and there was a control switch just outside our door to raise or lower the volume, according to our pleasure. This would have been the ultimate in luxury back at the Bedrest Hospital, but now it mattered not a whit to me.
I had so much else to think about, so many other joys. I could lie in bed, my feet nuzzling a hot hot-water bottle, and listen to the frogs screaming a welcome. I could breathe the sweet spring-scented air and watch the evening creep through the cherry orchard. I could see a small moon hanging like a splinter of mirror above a straggly black fir tree. I could think about a bath in a bathtub the next morning. I ached all over from the unaccustomed activity, I knew the Charge Nurse had singled me out for the object of her venom, I hadn’t had nearly enough supper—but I fell asleep before lights out.
XV
Eight Hours Up
The next day, I had a bath in a bathtub, my first in exactly six months! The bathroom, just around the corner from our room, was a series of small spare wooden rooms smelling strongly of disinfectant and dampness. There was a reception hall containing large hampers for soiled towels and pajamas, a rack of newspapers to be used for bathmats, and printed instructions prominently displayed and carefully framed in glass to protect them from the steam. The instructions read: “Do not lock the door. . . . Do not gossip about nurses and doctors. . . . Do not leave bathroom in a mess. . . . Do not have the bathwater too hot. . . . Do not steal from other patients. . . . Do not cough without putting a napkin over the mouth. . . . etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.” At the bottom of the list in the boldest type was, “Patients who cannot obey the rules should be sent home!” Opening off the reception room were two shower rooms with wooden-slatted floors, a broom closet, a toilet and two narrow rooms containing one large white bathtub each.
A nurse had already prepared my bath, a service performed only for three-hour patients, and I hurried to the bathroom expecting a steaming tub. What I found was a tub gingerly wet on the bottom with, apparently, equal portions of lukewarm water and sheep dip, for a pungent odor of disinfectant arose from the tub in gray swirls. I callously locked the door, let out the water, rinsed out the disinfectant, substituted several handfuls of bath salts and filled the tub to the lip with warm water. Nothing ever again will equal my exalted sense of well-being as I slipped into the warm scented water, nor will anything ever again equal the unexpectedly informal note supplied by the janitor who bustled in and out of the reception hall, emptying hampers, exchanging brooms and mops and tossing pleasantries to me over the alarmingly low door of my bathroom.
“Nothing like a bath in a bathtub,” said the janitor. “This your first one?” “Yes, it is,” I said soaping my washcloth and afraid to look up for fear I’d find him peering interestedly over the door. I washed my left thigh. “Whatever you got in there sure smells good,” said the janitor sniffing loudly, much too close to the door. “It’s carnation,” I said reaching for the newspapers just in case. “I prefer showers myself,” said the friendly janitor from behind the thin wall just back of my head. “I don’t care whether it’s a shower or a tub bath, I just like to be alone in it,” I said meaningly. It was wasted effort. “Gosh, when we was kids,” the janitor said, between counting towels, “they was eleven of us and my maw used to put three, fou
r of us into the tub at once.” It began to sound ominously as though I were going to have to move over. “I don’t care what your mother did—” I had begun testily when a new bather entered the reception room. “Well, hel-lo, Janet,” said the keeper of the bath, “I thought Thursday was your day.” I wouldn’t have been surprised to have him add, “And I see you got the same old birthmark.” The three of us finished my bath in a volley of conversation and I returned to my bed enlightened by more than my cleanliness.
Two days after my first bath I had a shampoo in the beauty parlor. The beauty parlor, in the basement of the Ambulant Hospital, was operated by ambulant patients except for the three-hour patients who were shampooed by nurses. Unfortunately my shampoo in the beauty parlor differed from other shampoos only in location, as Gravy Face, who had been transferred to the Ambulant Hospital, did the washing and, when she had finished, my hair was as dirty as before and so full of green soap that running a wet comb through it left a wake.
I was warned by Sigrid that the next step in the Ambulant Hospital routine would be a trip to the Charge Nurse’s office for a little talk. The Charge Nurse said, “We do not encourage any friendships between the men and the women, Mrs. Bard. In tuberculosis, sex is the worst complication, Mrs. Bard. Infractions of the rules are punished by taking away visiting or show privileges, not granting requests for town leaves or sending you home, Mrs. Bard. I hope you will like it here and continue in your splendid recovery.” I said nothing and we parted friends.
My first visitors, Mother and Madge, were as delighted as I with the new surroundings.
Mother brought me a dozen cans of fruit juice and a large box of cookies, all of which Sigrid stuffed in my old stand bag and hung under the robes and sweaters in my locker. We were all starving all the time but were not allowed to keep any food in our rooms, which were searched regularly.
Mother also brought a very glamorous pair of turquoise satin lounging pajamas which I had had before coming to The Pines. I tried them on but they were skin tight and very uncomfortable. The insidious piling up of superfluous flesh was the penalty I had paid for my well-encased t.b. germs. The first time I walked to the dining room with my visitors my sister Alison screamed when she saw me upright and said, “You’re the biggest thing I’ve ever seen.” Mother said, “But see how straight her back is.” Alison said, “Nothing about her is straight. I’ve never seen so many curves in my life.”
At the end of the first week I was asked to sit at Kimi’s table. Our other tablemates were Pixie, Kimi’s former roommate who still ate like “the mouse,” and a dour black Scotswoman who had been at The Pines for seven years.
Sunday morning at five o’clock I heard the sweet-faced, gentle Catholic Fathers going softly from room to room on the promenade, blessing their people. I used to see them in the Bedrest Hospital and hear the soft murmur of their voices and even though I am an Episcopalian I often wished that one of them would stop at my bed, often thought that the Catholic Church alone has the true feeling of religion. The other ministers came too, but only on occasion and usually during visiting hours. No doubt their intent was good but to attempt to make contact with God during visiting hours was as futile as trying to pray at a cocktail party.
Monday I went to fluoroscope. Six- and eight-hour patients walked but I was wheeled by Henry, the x-ray man, who took advantage of the Charge Nurse’s day off to ignore the dark tunnels and to wheel me through the grounds so that I could see the freshly dug perennial beds with their clumps of sharp green spikes, thick red shoots, and grayish green leaves, and the full blossoming wild cherry tree down by the Children’s Hospital. Willy, the other x-ray man, brought me back the same way and I filled my good lung with the heady bouquet of earth, new leaves and manure.
Tuesday after rest hours I was peacefully engaged in listening to the drowsy sound of the gardener’s lawn mower outside my window and watching the white foam of the cherry orchard undulate slowly in the breeze, when the Charge Nurse came in bearing a small box of index cards listing reading courses and books available on each. There was a small library at The Pines and through the librarian (a very trusted patient) we could order books from the city Public Library. At Bedrest, the librarian took orders for books one week and the next wheeled in a cart of books and told you that yours was not among them. At the Ambulant Hospital it appeared that only the Charge Nurse was trusted enough for this responsibility, for she waved her little box of cards at Sigrid and me and told us that we must choose a subject and FOLLOW IT THROUGH! The cards embraced such subjects as philosophy, psychology, history, music, art, architecture, etc., but I chose economics, not because I was in the least interested in economics but because it sounded hardest and was, I knew, the one the Charge Nurse had not expected me to choose. The book she recommended for me to start on was called Economics Anyone Can Understand. After rest hours the librarian came breathlessly in to tell me that they were going to have to send to the Public Library for all my books. I told her I hoped it would take months and continued to gaze languidly at the cherry orchard.
When I had been at the Ambulant Hospital a month, Sigrid and I were given chest examinations. We were very excited as these chest examinations were important and could mean six hours’ time up, wearing our clothes, working in the occupational therapy shop, going to the Bedrest Hospital on flower duty and other forms of pleasant activity, but we had to await the whimsy of the Charge Nurse to learn the results.
After rest hours Sigrid was informed that she had six hours. The Charge Nurse said nothing to me so I asked about my time up, which for some strange reason turned her livid with rage and produced a long garbled lecture on “Patients should not take the burden of the cure on themselves.” As all the lessons so far had instructed me to take the burden of cure on myself or be sent home I was confused.
The Charge Nurse slapped off and I pulled a lounge chair onto the promenade deck so that I could watch the little children come through the orchard on their walk. There were about twenty-five of them ranging in age from two to fifteen years and all except the two oldest girls dressed in nothing but very brief shorts, shoes, socks and hats. They were all as brown and round as hazel nuts. The nurse led the way and they came straggling along, the smallest and largest holding hands and bringing up the rear. A small fat little girl slapped the little boy next to her, then jumped and broke off the end of a branch of cherry blossoms before the nurse could stop her.
Sigrid called to me that May twelfth was Hospital Day and that my children would be allowed to come at eleven o’clock in the morning and stay until four in the afternoon.
Two days later I was told I was to have eight hours and to increase my time half an hour a day instead of the usual fifteen minutes. I would have six hours and wear my clothes the next Tuesday; eight hours a week from the following Saturday and I would be eligible for a town leave on June third. Eight hours at home with my loved ones and good coffee!
When I told the family of my eight hours and impending homecoming they seemed uneasy. I could see them holding worried conferences over what to do with a large fat member soon to be released and too delicate to do anything but eat.
Mother brought me new underclothing—everything marked LARGE—and Katherine Mansfield’s Journal.
Reading of Katherine Mansfield’s tragic and lonely struggle against tuberculosis made me see The Pines as such a paradise that I could even place a small golden halo around the head of the Charge Nurse as she sidled in our door like a giant hermit crab to warn me that from that moment on anything I did, including breathing, would be cause for removing my town leave.
On the following Monday, at ten-thirty, Sigrid left for home. Outwardly she was cool, calm and Nordic but inwardly there must have been some emotion because her hands were shaking so I had to button her blouse.
The moment she had gone a corps of nurses came in with scrub brushes and buckets of disinfectant to remove all trace of her. Her bedding and all her things were dumped into large cardboard carto
ns marked fumigation, and wheeled away. Everything she had touched or used was scrubbed. The faint scent of violets she left behind was replaced with lysol. Her spilled violet bathpowder was wiped away with a rag dipped in sheep dip. Her name was added to the list of “Outgoing” and I smelt the air and looked at the empty bed, the hollow locker, the freshly lined bureau drawers and wondered if she had ever been here at all.
Eileen’s roommate, Delores the nightclub singer, arrived at the Ambulant Hospital and I felt reasonably sure that the Charge Nurse would be too busy to bother with me any more. Delores had a large mouth, perfect, flashing white teeth and bold blue eyes. Her every movement had a purpose and increased weight had given her very delectable curves which she showed to advantage by pulling her flimsy purple kimono tightly around her. Her first entrance to the dining room was late and dramatic.
Arranging herself in the doorway, slightly sideways so that what lay beneath the tightly pulled kimono was prominently displayed, Delores looked the dining room and the diners over slowly and carefully. Then, when it was pretty well established that every single eye in the room was riveted on her, she put everything she had into a great big dazzling smile and slowly undulated to a seat at the front table. One of the men was so carried away by the performance that he began to clap and was rewarded with a 240-volt look from Delores’ blue eyes and a raised beef stew ladle and a warning shake of the head from the Charge Nurse. Kimi said, “For the first time I feel pity for the Charge Nurse. Her worst fears have been realized. Sex has entered her Ambulant Hospital and she has no weapons to combat it but the removal of small privileges, which when compared to Delores’ no longer seem like privileges.”
Pixie said that she was in the cubicle next to Delores for a month up at Bedrest and that Delores quite unintentionally used to torture the Charge Nurse by discussing her ailments so that the whole ward could hear, and by flagging down every doctor who went by and saying in her husky, penetrating voice, “I have a little pain right here, Doctah. No, a little lower down, if you don’t mind, Doctah. No, a little lower down, Doctah! No, it doesn’t hurt very much, Doctah, but if I thought it would make you come to see me oftener I could make it hurt moah.” Pixie said that the doctors quite evidently enjoyed Delores but frost formed on the Charge Nurse during these little tête-á-têtes.