The Plague and I

  Always cross and irritable in the morning, I was now also sodden with fatigue and cramped with cold and when I had finished washing in the small puddle of already lukewarm water, my face felt as pulled and dry as though I had on a mud pack. I reached in my stand drawer for my bottle of rose water and glycerin and found that the nurse who admitted me had evidently considered it medicine and sent it home.

  I took out my hand mirror and prepared to do something with my hair but one look at my dry gray face and sphagnum moss hair made me want to bang my head against the back of the bed and scream. I took out my lipstick and Sylvia said immediately, “No, no, Betty, patients are not allowed to wear makeup except on visiting day.” This made me want to bang her head against the back of the bed and scream. To make matters worse my blood was all crouched shivering in the vicinity of my heart instead of coursing warmly down into my icy extremities. I slammed the drawer of my stand shut and lay back and hated morning.

  I have always hated morning. It is a horrible time of day. It is too early and it brings out the worst in everybody. My sister Dede and I used to keep from biting each other on our way to work by classifying morning types encountered on the seven-twenty streetcar.

  There was “Bills, bills, bills!” a man who, having quite obviously just before boarding the streetcar, slapped his children and kicked his poor old mother down the cellar stairs, rode all the way downtown with chin on chest, pig eyes brooding, his thoughts quite naturally on “Bills, bills, bills!”

  There was the Silent Hater, always a woman, who in spite of having gotten up extra-early to drink hot water, lemon juice and fruit salts, was still bilious and nasty at seven-twenty. She burped behind her hand, hated everybody, and glared at anyone who sat down beside her. Coming home on the five-thirty at night, the Silent Hater usually had a large square bakery box filled with rich dessert to make her more bilious and nastier the next morning.

  Big Saddo, also usually a woman, was so busy feeling sorry for herself that every morning she forgot to get out her money, dropped the change on the floor, forgot to get a transfer and fought a tearful losing battle with the conductor all the way downtown.

  The Non-Sleepers were usually men and so sensitive to noise that a celery seed carelessly brushed from the kitchen table by a callous wife would hurl them into another long sleepless night and another long dull story about it on the streetcar the next morning. The Sickos were women with voices like whistling teakettles, lots of “trouble” at night and retentive memories for all the boring details of tossing, turning, twitching, lurching and finally getting up and heating milk.

  The Sighers sat and sighed dolorously and heavily like wind in the pines, all the way to town. The Chokers, for at least ten blocks after they got on, cleared their throats, made noises like a clogged drain, snorted, hacked, rasped, croaked and spit inexpertly out the window.

  The Pretend-to-be-Cheerfuls were women who, laughing only with their mouths, said to seatmates in loud carrying voices, “Oh, I always feel wonderful in the morning. You’d feel better in the morning too if you didn’t wear that green coat. People with sallow skin like yours [laugh, laugh] shouldn’t ever wear green.”

  Marie and Sylvia were coughing, spitting and clearing their throats. It was only prescribed routine procedure to them but, in my nasty mood, it was willful, deliberate disgustingness. From all over the hospital came the same horrible noises. I shuddered and looked over at Kimi who was at least quiet. She was busily taking an entire, very lathery bath in the two scant cupfuls of water the washwater girls had given her, scrubbing with as much intensity and vigor as though she had been shoveling coal all night instead of lying perfectly still in a clean white bed. As she added more and more lather, I asked her how she intended to rinse it off. She said, “I will dry it off.” I said, “I should think that would make you feel like you had been dipped in white of egg.” She frowned at me and said, “It does but I do not care. Germ which might flourish on skin do not flourish on soap.” I laughed. Laughing made me cough but it lifted the veil of my morning hatefulness.

  After the washwater girls had collected the basins, we all removed the brown paper bags of used handkerchiefs from our stands, unfolded the edges, twisted the tops and threw them to the foot of the beds. Then we put in carefully folded clean bags, marked our sputum specimens with the name, date and whether it was an eight- or twenty-four-hour specimen, assembled our new sputum cups, tidied our stands and listened to Marie complain.

  Marie had pains in her chest, gas on her stomach, aches in her joints, was sure she had bedsores, and was constipated. She thought all doctors were quacks because they hadn’t diagnosed her tuberculosis while it was in its early stages, and though I learned that this complaint was common among all the t.b. patients and stemmed undoubtedly from the fact that too many doctors wouldn’t know tuberculosis if it was coiled around their legs, in Marie’s case picking early tuberculosis out from among her hundreds of other ailments would have been as difficult as picking one lone violet in a field of vetch.

  Marie said that all patients were supposed to be moved out of the four-bed ward and up the hall into one of the cubicles at the end of one month, yet she had been at The Pines five weeks and they hadn’t moved her. She said that all the other patients were allowed to read and write fifteen minutes a day and walk to the bathroom once a day at the end of the first month, but not she. The Charge Nurse didn’t like her.

  Marie was thirty-five years old and had worked in a law office for years and years but she reasoned like a ten year old. Everyone at The Pines was against her. They were keeping her in bed just to be mean. Sylvia told her that she hadn’t been moved and hadn’t been given her reading and writing time because she was running a temperature, so Marie said that she would shake her thermometer down. Sylvia said, “You would only be fooling yourself.”

  Kimi said, in her small high voice, “It has been my observation that, in all things in life, the man is favored. Here at The Pines, in the Men’s Bedrest Hospital, which is one floor below this, a man may read all the daily paper from the day he enters.” Sylvia said, “Men are stronger than women. They don’t need such complete rest.” Kimi said, “Nonsense, it is because the Medical Director is also a man. He thinks, ‘The woman’s mind is little. She can lie twenty-four hour a day for thirty day, a total of seven hundred and twenty hour, doing nothing. The man’s mind is big. He must give it something to think about. I will let him read the paper immediately.’”

  Marie said, “How did you get so smart in only seventeen years?” Kimi said, “I will be eighteen tomorrow and anyway I have not been popular. I have had plenty of time to observe and think.” As Kimi was very beautiful, I was curious to know why she had not been popular. She said, “The Japanese are a race of small people. I am tall. I used to go to parties but I would spend the evening sitting alone on the couch. Like a giant Buddha I smiled and smiled as I watched the antics of the little people.”

  The night nurse came in bringing medicines. She was tall, slender, young and pretty. Her dark hair sparkled with night mist from the porches and her cheeks were pink from hurrying to finish her work before the day staff came on duty. She clicked the medicines down on the stands, smiled at us and started for the door but Marie stopped her. “Didn’t you bring me anything for my constipation,” she whined. The nurse said, “I’m sorry but the doctors prescribe the medicines.” She turned off the overhead lights and was gone. Marie said, “My God, the way they act here you’d think constipation was a permanent thing like a birthmark.” Sylvia said, “Shhhh.”

  It was time for the day staff to come on duty so we all leaned back on our pillows and closed our eyes. We had been lying perfectly still for about ten minutes when I opened my eyes a crack and saw the Charge Nurse materialize in the doorway. She walked without a sound and appeared in the doorway so suddenly it was as though she had been projected there by a machine from the main office. She looked us over quickly and moved on to appear in other doorways and maybe catch other
patients talking or laughing or reaching or singing or scratching or twitching or any of the other things that did not come under the category of resting.

  At twenty minutes past seven the same ambulant male patient who had come in the evening before, put up our beds for breakfast. The beds operated like lawn chairs and, after he had helped us to sit up, he adjusted the backs of the beds according to our comfort. The evening before he hadn’t spoken a word so I presumed that talking to us was against the rules. Unfortunately it wasn’t.

  As he put up the back of my bed he said, “My name’s Charlie Johnson. You’re new here, ain’t you?” I said yes, so he said, “Well, I been here five years and I seen ’em come and I seen ’em go. Some go out on their feet but most of ’em go out in a box. How bad are you?” I said that I didn’t know but that I only expected to stay a year. “Ha, ha!” he laughed mirthlessly. “A year. That’s what they all say when they first come. Ha, ha! The only one who ever got out in a year was a woman who had cancer of the lungs. They let her out in three months—feet first. Ha, ha!”

  Laughing Boy’s appearance was as morose as his outlook. His putty-colored cheeks had deep little gullies running from the bridge of his nose down past the corners of his drooping mouth, as if his face had been eroded by a constant flow of tears from his small watery eyes. His long sad-looking gray cardigan, obviously hand-knit on very large needles by trembling weak fingers, gave the appearance of being pulled down around his knees by the weight of its own sorrow. It was so long that when he reached in one of its gaping pockets for a handkerchief, he had to bend nearly to the floor. His wrinkled gray trousers poured down over his shoes and his shoes were so spread and shapeless they seemed to be melting on the floor.

  Charlie moved slowly and resentfully, as though the little tasks he performed for the institution would be the death of him and he and the institution both knew it. It was our misfortune to be the last room to be served food, so Charlie was in no hurry. He lingered on and on as depressing as an open grave. At last the nurses came with the breakfast trays.

  Breakfast, at seven-thirty, consisted of half a grapefruit, oatmeal and cream, toast, boiled eggs and coffee. It was very good and very cold. The Charge Nurse, who served the food, said, “You may have as many eggs as you wish, Mrs. Bard, and you may have them either hard- or soft-boiled.” I chose two hard-boiled and when she had gone Marie whispered loudly. “That’s a laugh. ‘Choose what you wish.’ All the eggs are hard-boiled and if you take less than two, old Gimlet Eyes will say you are not a cooperative patient and you’ll get a warning letter from the Medical Director.” She also said that the coffee was fifty per cent saltpeter and that if I didn’t find a cockroach on my tray it was just beginner’s luck. She wrinkled her nose with distaste, took one bite of the grapefruit, two sips of coffee and pushed the tray away.

  After we had eaten breakfast, the Charge Nurse made rounds to see what we had eaten and to hear our complaints. As we were all as immobile as blobs of dough in rising pans when she flashed in our doorway, she was very pleasant to us. Sylvia complained about pains in her stomach and diarrhea, Marie complained about pains in her stomach and constipation, Kimi said nothing.

  My only complaint was that I was cold. A dank shivery cold that lukewarm coffee had done nothing to dispel. I said so. The Charge Nurse smiled blandly and said, “October first we have hot-water bottles.” I said, “How about an extra blanket?” She turned back my spread and saw that I had two woolen blankets and a night blanket. She said, “You should be warm, Mrs. Bard.” I said, “I’d like to be but I’m not.” She looked at me sternly for a few minutes, as though I were deliberately not circulating my blood, then went away. I could see what Marie meant about her constipation.

  After she had gone Charlie came back to let down the beds and to tell us about two hemorrhages in the Men’s Bedrest Hospital. “I’ll probably be next,” he finished gloomily. Like everyone else, I had heard that people with tuberculosis are characterized by over-optimism and a great sex urge. From my limited experience I had found that people with a great sex urge are usually over-optimistic but I hadn’t learned why it characterized tuberculosis and watching Charlie shuffle morosely out the door didn’t do anything to clear it up. If he was either overly optimistic or a bundle of taut desires, I was Clara Bow.

  A nurse came in and put a thermometer on each bedside table. “Take your temperature in half an hour,” she told me. “Put the thermometer under the tongue and leave it in the mouth five minutes.” Another nurse came in with bedpans. Past the door went a parade of lucky month-or-more patients on their way to the bathroom. Their long housecoats, measured tread and serious demeanor made them look like bridesmaids. Occasionally the illusion was spoiled by a nurse helping a new patient on her first trip, or by some brave patient who waved and smiled at us.

  When the bathroom parade was over we took our temperatures. They were low. A nurse came in to count pulses and collect the thermometers. I asked her if everyone’s temperature was low in the morning but she didn’t answer. Just looked at me blankly and wrote on her chart.

  When she had gone Sylvia got out bath powder, towels, washcloth and soap. It was her bath day she explained. Baths were given once a week and bath days assigned on entering. Shampoos were given once a month, and judging from my still excelsior-like hair, even this was too often.

  As the nurse helped Sylvia into her robe, I saw how frighteningly thin she was, realized for the first time how much too bright her eyes were, how flushed her cheeks. It gave me an unpleasant feeling, as though someone had hit me hard in the pit of the stomach. I felt my own body and noticed how tight the skin was on my ribs, how my pelvic bones stuck out like hooks in a coatroom. I wanted to ask about Sylvia but Kimi and Marie had their eyes closed.

  I looked out the window. I could see sky and the tops of the poplars that lined the drive. The sky was gray and puffy with rain. The poplar trees were yellow and limp. It was not very stimulating. I looked out the door and saw a nurse wheel by a patient on a bed. The woman’s eyes were closed. Her face as white as the pillow. I wondered why she didn’t ride in a wheelchair like the rest of us. If she was dying. Where she was going.

  Two nurses came in to change the sheets on Sylvia’s bed and to make the rest of our beds. As they made my bed, they instructed me to cover my mouth with a handkerchief and to roll from side to side. They made the top of the bed then the bottom. I asked them why the woman had been wheeled by on a bed instead of in a wheelchair, where she was going. They didn’t answer. They left me apprehensive, the bed plump, smooth and chilly.

  A small withered man in a dirty white cap and clean blue coveralls came in to sweep the room. His name was Bill, he said. As he swept he sniffed loudly and looked longingly out the windows instead of at his pushbroom, which left wads of gray dust under the beds. I asked him if he were a patient and he turned his small sad face from the window and said, “Patient, that’s rich. I been a patient here off and on for nine years.” Nine years! Dear God! Was there no limit?

  When he had gone I asked Kimi if all the male patients were old and sad like Bill and Charlie. She said, “No, most of the male patient are young but because of sex the young virile men are not allowed in the Women’s Bedrest Hospital and, vice versa, the young pretty nurse are not allowed in the Men’s Bedrest Hospital.” I asked her what the young men did and she explained that they worked in the greenhouse, laboratory, x-ray and shops where there was close supervision. I thought of Bill’s yearning glances out the open window and wondered if he was longing for sex or work in the greenhouse.

  At nine-thirty a nurse offered us either hot chocolate or cold milk. She explained that we did not have to take this nourishment but I was already hungry and still cold so I took hot chocolate gladly. So did Kimi. Marie and Sylvia had nothing. The nurse, coming back a little later to pick up the cocoa cups and to bring us clean, filled water glasses, explained that we must drink lots of water, as it was very important in the cure of tuberculosis.

&
nbsp; At ten-thirty the Charge Nurse, with a wheelchair, appeared suddenly by my bed. Without a word, she helped me into my bathrobe, my slippers and the wheelchair and wheeled me out the door. I asked her where we were going but she only smiled, said, “Shhh,” and took me down another corridor and into a small examination room where a young doctor gave me a chest examination. When I came back everyone was eager to know where I had gone and what they had done to me. They seemed disappointed that it had not been the removal of some large organ, something more exciting than a chest examination.

  At eleven, Miss Hatfield, an assistant charge nurse and a gay friendly girl, brought medicines to cure the complaints of the morning. At eleven-fifteen Charlie came in, sagging with bad news, to put up the beds. At eleven-thirty we had dinner.

  I was very hungry and the delicious, well-seasoned food, much to my surprise, was hot. There were roast pork, applesauce, bread-and-butter pickles, mashed potatoes and gravy, string beans, lettuce with French dressing, tomato soup, served for some strange reason after the main course, hot rolls and butter, baked custard and tea. Marie looked at her tray, said, “Ugh, pork again,” and pushed it away. Sylvia said nothing. Kimi covered everything on her tray but the custard with shoyu sauce, a large bottle of which she kept in her bedside stand. When the Charge Nurse returned to offer us second helpings, I asked for more meat and applesauce and was immediately shamed by incredulous stares from Sylvia and Marie. Kimi asked for a “leetle soup, and some more hot roll.”

  While we were eating, a nurse brought in the mail. As this was the only reading matter allowed any of us, we were eager for a letter from anybody, no matter how boring. I was too new to have mail so the nurse informed me that I could read the little book of rules given me at the desk the day before, “but,” she added sternly, “patients are not allowed to open or read mail until they have eaten their dinner.” Thus assuring the Charge Nurse that if the news from home was sad, we would bawl on full stomachs.