Eileen waited for a few minutes, eyes on the door, then turned her face to the wall and bawled with loud slurping sobs. I felt desperately sorry for her. I knew how cold, unloved and unwanted she felt. I knew how hateful everyone at The Pines must seem but I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound like a beautiful thought or a quotation from the book of rules. Kimi solved the problem by saying, in her small sweet voice, “Eileen, all crying will do is to make your pillow and sheet wet and colder. When Katy, the evening nurse, comes on duty she will fill your hot-water bottle. Don’t be sad, we are your friend and are in sympathy with you.”
Kimi’s speeches always sounded as though they should have been on parchment with a spray of cherry blossoms or a single iris painted across one corner. Eileen coughed hard without covering her mouth, in fact with her mouth wide open and aimed toward the hall, then she wiped her eyes on the sheet and turned over. She said to Kimi, “Why do they all have to be so goddamn mean?” Kimi said, “It would be wiser not to talk until the day staff goes off duty. In a few minute we can exchange confidence without fear of punishment.”
When Katy came on duty she gave Eileen a fresh hot-water bottle, some hot milk and some advice. She said, “We’re not trying to be mean to you, honey, it’s just that we have a routine and a set of rules and we have to see that the patients conform.” Kimi said, “What you say is true, Katy, but it is also true that an insensitive person often becomes overbearing when given unlimited authority.” Katy said, “These nurses are mostly just young kids, right out of training. Lots of times when they act mean they are only trying to obey the rules.”
I said, “I think that for the benefit of both the patients and the nurses, there should be a short adjustment period. Tossing a normal fun-loving human being into The Pines and expecting him to blend immediately in to the tuberculosis routine is as asinine as tossing a hot-blooded Spaniard into a snowbank in Norway and telling him to By God begin skiing and speaking Norwegian.”
Katy said, “But in many cases there isn’t time. By the time some patients had willingly adjusted themselves they would be dead.” She was probably right but I thought I had a point too.
Subsequent exchange of confidences revealed that Eileen was twenty-one years old, an only child and an orphan. She had been brought up by her “Gramma,” educated by the Catholic Sisters and employed, since the day she graduated from high school, by a very large motion picture theatre as an usherette. Eileen adored her job, loved all moving pictures, read nothing but movie magazines, and was an inexhaustible source of information about all movies and the private lives of the stars.
She started the very next morning bringing warmth and color to that cold, filmy period between washwater and breakfast by telling us the stories of movies she had seen. Her mind was as quick as a rocket and her memory was excellent but her method of telling and her vernacular made all the stories sound exactly the same. It was possible to distinguish between a tender delicate picture like Good-bye, Mr. Chips and a George Raft gangster picture only by the locale.
Eileen’s antics were amusing to Kimi and me but they were not curing her t.b. and they were definitely not resting. At first Kimi and I pointed this out to her. Her reaction was immediate and violent. She said, “These are my lungs and if I want to sing with them or talk with them or laugh with them or cough with them it’s nobody’s goddam business but mine, see.”
After a while Kimi and I got so we didn’t even flinch when Eileen crawled down to the foot of her bed, reached far above her head (absolutely forbidden) and turned the radio control up; or read movie magazines under the covers during rest hours; or wrote letters under the covers all day; or sat up in bed and polished her anklet with toothpowder; or sang songs; or talked constantly when the nurses weren’t actually in the room.
Eileen had a severe cough, her various activities brought on many coughing spells and both her mother and father had died of tuberculosis, but Eileen was not at all concerned. She considered her tuberculosis merely a punishment inflicted on her by her “Gramma.” She regarded The Pines as a reform school and the nurses as wardens.
When the barber (an ambulant patient interested in, or with past experience in, or with no experience and no interest in barbering) came to cut Eileen’s hair, she decided suddenly that rather than have her hair cut she would go home. The barber, a long pale shy boy, fetched a nurse, the nurse fetched an assistant charge nurse and finally the assistant fetched the Charge Nurse.
The Charge Nurse sent the others away and said, “It is immaterial to me whether you go or stay, Miss Kelly, but I think that you are being very unfair to your wardmates. You say that having your hair cut will make you look like an ugly old hag yet Mrs. Bard and Miss Sanbo have both had their hair cut and I don’t think they look like hags.” Eileen looked at us and said, “Well, it didn’t improve ’em any.” Then she looked at us again and said grudgingly, “Well, okay, but only to here.” She measured a good three inches below her ear lobe and the Charge Nurse dumfounded us all by acquiescing.
The barber was called back. He came in red-faced and sweating and began in a most unprofessional and unsure way to hack off Eileen’s lovely long hair. Eileen’s frequent loud cries of “OUCH” and “Watch yourself, Buster” added nothing to his self-assurance nor did the fact that when he finished, her hair looked as if it had been cut with a very dull pair of pinking shears and one side was at least an inch shorter than the other, giving her an appearance of holding her head permanently on one side. Eileen looked in her hand mirror and said, “Well, Jesus God, will you look at that!” She turned to the barber shaking and blushing by the door and asked, “One arm shorter than the other, lover boy?” He beat a hasty retreat.
Eileen had one visitor each visiting day. On Sundays her grandmother, a belligerent little old Irish woman, came and fought with her for two hours. Busy with our own visitors, Kimi and I couldn’t hear the quarrels, but Eileen told us about them afterwards. “Gramma’s gone back to tradin’ at Busby’s Market. I don’t know what’s wrong with her head anyway. Busby’s such a big cheat that he don’t even try to hide the fact that he’s layin’ his whole arm on the scales when he’s weighin’ the meat but Gramma says it’s closer and her bunions won’t stand the extra block to the Super Market. Gramma said for me to quit tryin’ to mind her business and to hurry and get well so I can go back to work.” Or “Gramma found an old bill where I paid fifteen dollars for a pair of green shoes and, boy, did she hit the ceiling.” Or “Gramma is still going to church with that dumb old Mrs. Wallady. Mrs. Wallady lives next door and she’s stone-deaf and talks out loud in church and when she goes to confession you can hear her shoutin’ her sins for three blocks. Gramma won’t quit though. Says she feels sorry for Mrs. Wallady.”
In spite of the quarreling, Gramma’s visits seemed to exhilarate Eileen. Deciding such homely things as whether to shop at Busby’s Market, or whether to go to church with dumb old Mrs. Wallady or how much she should pay for a pair of green shoes, pushed The Pines and its sputum cups and rules and bedpans, so far into the background as to make them invisible until well after Sunday supper.
On Thursdays, Jackie Fiske, Eileen’s “boy friend” came to see her. Jackie had a small black mustache, high heels on his pointed black oxfords and long straight oily black hair that he wore folded one half over the other in the back. He was a musician and very unhealthy looking. He always brought Eileen flowers and sometimes a box of candy or a large stuffed animal that he had won on a punchboard but he never stayed more than fifteen minutes. “He don’t like hospitals,” Eileen explained, “and anyway he can’t go more’n five minutes without a smoke. Jesus that fellah smokes a lot.”
After his first visit Eileen asked Kimi and me if we didn’t think that Jackie was “a wolfie-lookin’ guy.” We certainly did but we didn’t say so. Eileen loved Jackie and intended to marry him some day but in the interim she showed an avid interest in any and all other males.
Within twenty-four hours a
fter her admittance, she had learned that the Men’s Bedrest Hospital was on the same floor as the dentist and that in order to go to the dentist a patient, no matter what his sex, had to be wheeled through the men’s ward. She spent that evening planning on having her teeth pulled one by one.
The next morning, she sprayed herself heavily with My Sin and complained to the Charge Nurse of a toothache. She was sent to the dentist. When she came back she said that the dentist had nearly killed her, refusing to use novocain, but that it was worth the pain to have the Charge Nurse wheel her through the men’s ward. She said, “The Old Dame went so fast the tires screamed but I saw two real cute fellahs down near the dentist. I’m goin’ to ask Charlie who they are.”
Charlie, when asked, knew their names all right, one was Sandy and one was Arthur, but he didn’t think that either of them would last six months. Eileen said that in that case she had better write them a note and cheer them up but Charlie said that sending notes between men and women was absolutely forbidden and he wouldn’t deliver it, so Eileen gave Sandy and Arthur up temporarily and took to spraying herself heavily with Surrender just before the House Doctor’s visits.
Thursday morning at breakfast a nurse informed me that Thursday was my assigned bath day and that right after temperatures and pulses I was to get ready. I was very happy both because Thursday was the best bath day of all, as it meant I would be very clean for one visiting day and reasonably clean for the other, and because I knew that the bathroom would be warm.
As I got out bath powder, clean pajamas and soap, I hummed a little tune under my breath and wondered which nurse I would get for the bath and how long she would let me stay in the tub. Frankly I was hopeful for Granite Eyes and her “all patients must be boiled.”
My first disappointment was in drawing a scared little new nurse. My second blow was to learn that bedrest patients were not allowed tub baths. “Oh, well, at least the bathroom will be warm,” I comforted myself, as visions of me soaking in a steaming tub faded into an accurate picture of me lying on a bed being hastily soaped and not rinsed by a bored nurse.
As two patients were bathed at one time, who your bath partner might be was an important contributing factor to the pleasantness or unpleasantness of the bath period. I was very fortunate in drawing for my first bath partner, a charming colored girl, Evalee Morris. Evalee was shy and quiet but when she spoke her voice was deep and as soft as melted chocolate.
After the nurses had deposited us, each on a bed, and covered us with our night blankets and told us to undress, they filled small tubs with hot water, put them on stools beside the beds and told us to wash our faces and necks, shave our armpits and legs, cut our toenails and perform any other little niceties we thought necessary. They warned us that this was to be accomplished in absolute silence, which was a good idea but didn’t take into consideration our being human and female as well as tubercular.
The nurses left to change the beds and we turned on our sides and began to wash. Evalee looked at me occasionally shyly from behind her washcloth but I stared frankly at her. She had a flame-colored woolen scarf knotted around her head turban fashion, smoke-colored skin and a body so plump and firm and shiny it looked like white marble with black chiffon stretched tight over it.
Lying on her side languidly dipping her hands in the tub of water, against the background of the pale green bathroom walls, she looked like a poster advertising the Bahamas. I told her so and she laughed, showing white teeth and deep dimples, which only added to the illusion.
Evalee was twenty-seven years old, had graduated from the University of Washington in Home Economics, was married and had two children, a little girl three and a baby ten months. As her husband was a porter and away a great deal and her mother worked as a maid in a hotel, the Medical Director had allowed Evalee to put both children in the Children’s Hospital. She said, “You should see the children out here. They play out of doors all day every day and they never wear anything but shoes, socks, shorts and hats. Billy and Rosanne haven’t had a cold yet and they’ve been here five months.”
She told me that her bed was on one of the big screened porches. She said that it was very cold out there but on clear days she could see the water and every day could hear the laughter and voices of the children when they took their walk.
She said that the woman in the next bed to hers threw up halfway through each meal and in order to finish before the woman threw up, all the porch patients had to choke down their food in double-quick time. One woman had complained to the Charge Nurse but she had said, “We must find happiness in little things.”
I asked her if anyone could go out on the porch or if you were chosen by the Charge Nurse. She said that usually only very trustworthy patients were allowed on the porches because they didn’t get quite as much supervision out there, but in her case she supposed that even if she had been noisy and boisterous they would have put her out there because she was colored.
“What difference would that make?” I asked, thinking of course it had something to do with colored people’s resistance to cold. “Oh, it solves the roommate problem,” said Evalee matter-of-factly. “Most white people would object to sharing a room with a colored person. Even on the porch where we are quite far apart, there have been complaints.”
My bed bath turned out to be even more unsatisfactory than I had anticipated, for the little nurse was so new and so timid that she merely made stroking motions toward my body with the washcloth, not once getting up enough nerve to touch me. After she had not washed me she dabbed fearfully at me with a towel and I slapped on quantities of carnation bath powder and soaked my hair until I looked like a seal.
When I returned to bed, warm and cheerful, the Charge Nurse was waiting for me with a wheelchair and whisked me down the hall for a throat examination. The throat doctor, who was old and disagreeable, stuck a flashlight so far down my throat I thought he had dropped it. He asked me if I had been hoarse and I told him a little. He stuck the light down even further and said, “You’ve got bad tonsils.” By that time he was so far past my tonsils it was like using a stomach pump to diagnose dandruff. I told him that I had had my tonsils taken out but he merely grunted and wrote on a chart and asked me if I wore glasses. I told him that I did when I read and he said, “Date of last eye examination?” I said, “A month ago.” He wrote on the card, pushed me out of the way and jammed his light down into the next patient. As the Charge Nurse pushed me past the door of Sylvia’s and Marie’s cubicle I smiled and waved. They were both reading but looked up as we creaked past. They showed recognition with their eyes but dared not go further.
When Charlie came in to put up the beds for dinner he said that Evalee had said hello. He said, “There’s one that won’t be here long.” I said, “You mean she’s going to be discharged?” Charlie said, “I mean them niggers don’t have no resistance to t.b.” I said, “Don’t be so depressing and don’t call Evalee a nigger.” Charlie said, “I’ve saw plenty of niggers die out here. They don’t have no resistance to t.b.”
Eileen said, “I won’t take a bath with no nigger. Niggers stink.” Charlie said, “You bet they do.” I wanted to say, “Look who’s talking,” for Charlie’s b.o. preceded him like a fanfare and followed him like an echo. Instead I said, “It’s as ridiculous to say that all Negroes smell as it is to say that black cats are bad luck or if you shiver somebody’s walking over your grave.”
Eileen said, “I don’t care what you say, niggers stink.” Kimi said, “In Japan they think that white people smell.” Eileen was incredulous, “You mean that Japs smell different from white people?” Kimi said, “It is our opinion that we Japanese do not smell at all.” The nurses came in then with the dinner trays.
Friday after rest hours another new patient was wheeled in. She was twenty-four years old, very thin, very blond and very Southern. Her name was Minna Harrison Walker. She had large, slightly prominent, pale blue eyes, white eyelashes and she blinked when she talked. When the nurse th
rust her into bed and told her to keep warm with rules, she smiled up at her and said, “Ah declah, Miss Swenson, you ah the sweetest thing. Ah’m so lucky to be heah. Pore little ole me would have died if that nice doctah hadn’t taken me in heah.”
Eileen looked over at Kimi and me and held her nose. Miss Swenson was murmuring to Minna. Minna said, “Of course Ah don’t want you to get in any trouble, you sweet lil ole thing, but Ah’ve got this awful pain in my tummy and Ah suah could use a hot-water bottle.” She got it.
When the Charge Nurse made her rounds that evening Minna said, “You know that ole list didn’t have a bed lamp on it and it’s so dahk and lonely heah in the cohnah. Ah wrote mah Sweetie-Pie to bring me a bed lamp but it won’t be heah until next visitin’ day. Ah suah am lonely.” The Charge Nurse brought her a bed lamp, which had probably belonged, Kimi gently reminded her, to some patient who had died. At that time Eileen didn’t have a bed lamp either and she was furious. As the Charge Nurse finished attaching Minna’s lamp, Eileen said, “Well, Jesus, honey, it’s dark ovah heah too,” but all she got was a cold look.
The next day it rained. Cold, wet, gray, chilling rain. It blew in the windows and under the covers and Kimi and Eileen and I were cold and miserable. Granite Eyes filled Minna’s hot-water bottle twice. During rest hours Eileen read movie magazines under the covers, but Minna read the Bible and let herself be caught doing it.
It was a little new nurse who caught her or the punishment would have been more drastic. She rattled the pages just as the nurse came to the door and the nurse threw back the covers and there was little Minna clutching her Bible and looking up with big, scared, pale blue eyes. The nurse said, “Reading during rest hours is forbidden, Mrs. Walker. Any activity during rest hours is forbidden, Mrs. Walker. New patients may not read or write for one month, Mrs. Walker.” Minna said, “Oh honey, Ah’m so sorry. The other girls were readin’ so I thought it was all right. Oh, hush mah mouth, what have Ah said? Ah didn’t mean to tell.”