Now that I was checked in and Accounts Receivable knew that I was alive and covered by Blue Cross, waves of doctors and nurses started to flood into my room. Every one of them came armed with a needle. They started taking blood, more blood, and still more blood. They hooked me up to my own IV pole so I could get up if I felt strong enough, but I didn’t. I kept asking the doctors what was going on, and they kept ignoring me. They didn’t care that I was the Champion Trader. Here I was just another patient. Thank God for Esther Frederiksen, my principal private nurse. Esther wouldn’t let them get away with ignoring me. She wouldn’t let them touch me until she understood the procedure. She kept peering at my chart, checking the monitors, quizzing the doctors, beating on the nurses, and constantly asking me how I felt.
Doctors and nurses kept hovering around me, probing, poking, prodding, and pricking. Esther told me that the reason they were taking so much blood was that they wanted to determine whether the cause of my infection was bacterial or viral. The head of infectious diseases for New York Hospital was personally monitoring my case. Esther said that he was concerned because he’d seen four similar cases in the hospital the past month, and all of them were viral. “Mr. Schwartz,” Esther explained, “if your infection is bacterial, they can find it and kill it with antibiotics, but if it’s viral, the odds are that they’ll never be able to find it, and hopefully it will just run its course.”
“So, what are they going to do?” I said.
“They’re going to start intravenous solutions of erythromycin, an antibiotic used to treat respiratory tract infections, and Cefuroxime, a cephalosporin antibiotic used for bronchial and throat infections, and…” Wap. Wap. Sure enough, before Esther could finish, they had more tubes in my arms.
The drugs kicked in. All that night and the following morning, they began to beat back the infection. By the afternoon of Friday the ninth, I was feeling a little better. At around 2:45, before Esther wheeled me down to X ray, I phoned Avi Goldfedder, one of my bond brokers in Chicago. I was very bullish on lower interest rates and I’d brought my Metriplex machine with me, which was the size of a beeper and gave me futures updates twenty-four hours a day, so I knew what was going on. “Avi,” I snapped, trying to sound like my old self, “buy me four hundred Decembers at the market.” I had just bought four hundred U.S. Treasury thirty-year bond futures contracts. According to my Metriplex, I had them at “9224,” meaning at 9224/32, or $92,750 per $100,000 contract.
“Motty, you sure?” Avi said. “You’re s’pose to be resting.”
“Yeah, I’m sure. In fact, make it six hundred.”
“Motty, ya nuts! You’re in the hospital, already. What the hell ya doin’? Hey, the last thing ya need is more pressure.” Normally, I would have told Avi to shove it and just do what I told him to do, but I was too weak to argue.
“Okay. Just get the four hundred. But get ’em now.”
Over the weekend, I kept improving and while my temperature had gone down to 99.8, the bonds had gone up to 9301. When the market opened on Monday the twelfth, I sold the four hundred bonds for a $112,500 profit. I never should’ve let Avi talk me out of the other two hundred. Still, smacking the bonds put some color back into my cheeks, and I told Hochman I wanted to go home. Two more investors in Sabrina Partners had just notified me that they were pulling out because the new asset allocation (50 percent futures, 50 percent equities) was too volatile for them. I had to start making some real money.
Hochman agreed to let me out and Audrey came to pick me up on the morning of Tuesday the thirteenth. I worked all that afternoon and well into the night updating my charts, calculating my ratios, getting back into control. I went to bed around ten and fell right to sleep, but at 1:30 A.M. on Wednesday, I woke up with a terrific pain in my chest. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before. A vertical white-hot line kept running across my heart. I didn’t think I was having a heart attack, but every breath sent a new bolt of pain all the way into my spine. Audrey began massaging my chest, trying to relieve the pressure, but it didn’t work. We called Hochman’s service. He finally called back about four A.M. and Audrey described my condition to him. “Take two Tylenol for the pain, two Benadryl to help you sleep, put a heating pad on your chest for relief, and I’ll call you first thing in the morning.” I finally fell asleep and woke up at 7:30 the next morning in a pond of sweat.
At nine, Hochman called. “Marty, I don’t want you walking around,” he said. “I’ve scheduled you an echocardiogram at 10:45 with Doctor Christodoulou, who has an office in your apartment building. The four patients with viral infections we’ve been monitoring have all ended up with pericarditis.”
The echocardiogram confirmed our worst fears. I had pericarditis. Fluid was building up in my pericardium, the membranous sac that surrounds the heart, and this fluid was constricting the heart, causing the terrific pain. It was back to the hospital.
Once again, Hochman pulled a few strings and I was able to get a private room. This time I was on a chemo floor. Once again, Audrey hired Esther, and once again, waves of doctors and nurses flooded into my room, all armed with needles to take blood, more blood, and still more blood. Before, I was concerned. Now, I was terrified. Before, it was my lungs. Now, it was my heart.
My temperature kept creeping up all day. 100.3. 100.9. 101.6. Tubes were sticking out from all over me. One was in my right arm administering an intravenous solution of erythromycin. Another was in my left arm administering Cefuroxime. A third tube, a Foley catheter, was stuck in my penis. It was just collecting urine from my bladder, but that was the one I hated the most.
Dr. Gold, the thoracic surgeon, came to see me to explain my options. “Mr. Schwartz,” he said, “we’re going to try and control this infection with antibiotics, but you know, if that fluid keeps building up around your heart, we’re going to have to operate.” That was one option I didn’t want to exercise.
That evening at seven, Audrey came to see me. After telling me about the kids, she mentioned that Jean-Claude had been calling all day. Jean-Claude was a true parasite, another middleman who matched wealthy Europeans with hot money managers. Unlike Willie the Web, who worked out of Zurich, Jean-Claude worked out of the World Trade Center. That way, he could keep an eye on his stable of managers while his brother Jean-Pierre, a Swiss banker, dug up the clients. For the past ten months, Jean-Claude had been nothing but a pain in the ass. He was always calling, bothering me when I was trading, whining about how the funds should be doing better. “Martay, Martay, pourquoi ze funds, zay are not perform up to standairds. It is necessaire for you to do bettair.”
Jean-Claude told Audrey that he had to speak to me immediately. When Audrey told him that I was back in the hospital, Jean-Claude wanted to know which hospital. He said he’d come to see me, but Jean-Claude wasn’t worried about me, he was worried about his money. When Audrey wouldn’t tell him where I was, he’d become indignant. “If Martay does not respond to me by ze end of ze week, I’m moving my people’s monay to zomeone who will.”
I told Audrey to go home and to forget about Jean-Claude. I was too looped on drugs to talk with her and too hurting to worry about a little Swiss weasel like Jean-Claude. Audrey left and I tried to sleep, but at about nine P.M., the room started spinning. “Esther, help,” I rasped, “I think I’m gonna pass out.” The next thing I knew, a “crash cart” came flying into the room. Esther had pushed the button. The drugs hadn’t worked; the fluid buildup in my pericardium was strangling my heart. I was code blue, tamponade, blood pressure 50 over 40. Within minutes, a whole team of doctors was hovering all over me. There was an anesthesiologist by my head, a thoracic surgeon leaning over my torso, a cardiologist at the end of my bed reading my chart, even a resident holding the electric paddles. People were crawling all over me calling out numbers and giving orders. “Pressure’s 80 over 60 and falling.” “Gimme five cc’s.” “70 over 55.” “Pulse 160, very rapid and thready.” “50 over 40, we’re losing him.” Holy shit, losing me? “Save
me. Save me. Please don’t let me die,” I whispered. I saw my little daughter’s face, and my little son’s. “Please, pleeease, don’t let me die.” The doctors started to stabilize my blood pressure, but my legs started to shake violently from the cold fluids being pumped into me. I passed out again.
I woke up on a gurney going to the cardiac care unit, tubes coming out of every orifice. A Swan-Ganz catheter was dangling from a hole they’d punched into my neck. Luckily, Dr. Gold was a workaholic. He’d been performing open heart surgery until midnight and was sleeping in the hospital. When he saw me, all he said was, “Let’s go.”
Gold called Audrey and told her he was going to operate immediately, but she didn’t have any help and she couldn’t leave the kids. She’d have to call her sister Linda, wake her up, and wait until she could get over to our place. By that time, I’d probably be under the knife. It occurred to me that I might never see her again. Just before I was wheeled into surgery, a very pretty nurse said to me, “Mr. Schwartz, I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to remove your wedding ring. You can’t wear rings into surgery.”
I was a real straitlaced guy and always wore my wedding ring. Even on the rare occasions when I took it off, I still looked like I had it on, because given the weight I’d put on since I’d gotten married, the ring left an imprint on my finger. I tried to slip it off, but I couldn’t. I was retaining a lot of fluid and my arms and fingers were swollen from the drugs. The nurse got some soap and water and gently worked the ring off my finger. I started to fight back the tears and said to her, “Please, give my wedding band to my wife and tell her that I hope she gets the chance to put it back on.”
At 4:30 A.M., they wheeled me into the operating room. I lay on my back looking up at the stark cold lights, wondering if I’d ever see the sun again. They lifted me from the gurney onto a small stainless-steel operating table. My bulky frame barely fit. They slid another IV into the vein in the back of my left hand. The anesthesiologist started talking into my ear in a low, confident, calming voice. “Marty, we’re going to wrap your arms.” My right arm was wrapped and pinned in a sheet, and my left arm was wrapped and placed by my side. “Now we’re going to slide a wedge under your lower back so that the area of the incision is perfectly aligned for Dr. Gold.” The wedge felt hard and cold as it slipped into place. “Now we’re going to cover your head with protective drapes. When the anesthesia starts, you’ll be out in a few seconds. Now I want you to start counting backward from one hundred. Okay, here we go. Ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninety-seven…” At ninety-six a wild sensation shot through every nerve in my body. I saw white tiles flying past my face, faster and faster. It was like I was on a roller coaster that just kept accelerating.
It was the thirst that woke me up. My mouth was drier than the Mojave and all I could think about was getting a drink. I didn’t mind the tubes at all. The tubes and the pain told me that I was still alive. A nurse was leaning over me. “Good morning, Mr. Schwartz. Nice to have you back. How do you feel?”
“Water,” I croaked.
“No, no, not yet. Doctor’s going to take a look at you and then we’re going to bring you up to the CCU.”
“Hurts. Ahhh. Pain.”
“That’s good. Pain means you’re getting better. They’ll give you some morphine as soon as we get you to the CCU.”
I drifted off again. Pings, rings, and dings were going off all around me; it was like being in a pinball arcade. Then I began to realize that I was lying in the cardiac care unit, that the sounds were coming from banks of machines monitoring fragile hearts all around me. A big clock on the wall read 11:30. Now, I felt pretty good. It must’ve been the morphine.
I started reconnoitering, checking out the machines that were surrounding me, trying to figure out what all the numbers meant. Even with a tube up my penis, I was trying to regain some control over my life, no matter how small. I focused on a big TV monitor next to my bed. There were five displays. An EKG continuously rippled across the top. Under it were little boxes with green digital displays showing my blood pressure (134/82), my pulse rate (98), my blood oxygen level (97), and my heart pressure (80/10). They reminded me of my Quotron and Metriplex. I started doing breathing exercises to see whether I could control my blood pressure. I kept inhaling and exhaling, holding my breath, peering at my numbers. 130/78. 138/86.
“Buzzy! Stop that!” I was so focused on my monitor that I hadn’t seen Audrey walk in. She turned to the nurse who’d come in with her. “What are you people doing! Reading screens is what he does for a living. You want to get his blood pressure down, turn those damn monitors around!” The nurse did.
Time passes slowly when you’re lying on your back watching the clock, and that was about all I could do for the next five days. When I was trading, I never seemed to have enough time and I was always willing the clock to stop. Now, I kept urging it to keep moving because I knew that the more it moved, the better I’d be. My goal was to get the fever down and be home for Thanksgiving. I made it. On Thursday the twenty-second, Thanksgiving Day, Audrey came to get me. I didn’t have the strength to sit and eat at the table, and I was still groggy from the medication, but I was out of the hospital and home with my family. That was a great trade.
Over the weekend, I went through the previous week’s mail. Zurich: “As requested, we hereby instruct to redeem the total of Sabrina shares…” Rakesh Bhargava, c/o Kidder, Peabody & Co., New York: “We hereby instruct to sell from our account…” Cayman Islands: “Refer to my telephone call of the 13 November and confirm that shares will be sold…” Grand Bahamas: “This letter serves to inform you that we wish to redeem our total holdings…” Channel Islands: “We hereby request redemption of all shares ‘as soon as possible,’ latest December 31, 1990…” Rasulgarh, India: “Will be drawing out my capital as of the end of the year, I am uncomfortable personally with the increased risk…” And finally, from Curaçao: “Please accept this letter as official notification that Hausmann Overseas N.V., has decided to redeem its entire account (terminate its agreement)…” Like I was too stupid to figure it out for myself. Seven more investors, including Hausmann, my $5 million private account, were bailing out. You would’ve thought that at least one of them would have said, “P.S.: Hope you’re feeling better.” But all they cared about was their money.
I was hoping that this was the end of my investors’ exodus. Wrong. Monday morning, the twenty-sixth, a new batch of faxes, letters, and couriers arrived at 750 Lexington Avenue, all with bad news. The Pakistani clients had bailed out. My Panamanian investors had told me “hasta luego,” my Channel Islanders had said “ta ta,” my Luxembourgers, “au revoir,” and my Zürichers, “auf Wiedersehen.” My Italians probably would’ve said “arrivederci” if I’d had any Italians. My capital had plummeted from $70 million to $45 million in a month, and I still had to get through December. I needed to MAKE SOME MONEY.
But first, I had to see Dr. Gold. He was removing my staples on Monday. The thought of going back to the hospital put me in a panic. I was sure that once I got inside, they’d recapture me and the whole ordeal would start all over again. It didn’t. “Marty, the incision’s healing nicely,” Gold said, “but you’re not out of the woods. Go home, relax, and don’t put yourself under any stress.”
I kept trading all that week, but on Friday the thirtieth, the market opened lower and I could feel a knot growing in the pit of my stomach. I was physically drained and just wanted to get out of all my positions. I held on until the market ticked up and dumped everything. Then the bond market really started to take off. I was totally exhausted, almost too weak to take advantage, but I couldn’t be left at the station watching the train pull away. The hell with Dr. Gold. I had to show all those bastards who’d sold me short that I was still the Champion Trader. I called Goldfedder and put on a six hundred contract bond futures position.
Saturday, December 1, I could barely get out of bed. As I worked up my month-end figures, my temperature crept up to 100.5. By Sund
ay afternoon, it was 101.2 and I knew I was back in trouble. Audrey called Hochman and he told me to get over to the ER. My temperature was up to 102.8 by the time we checked in. Fortunately, Dr. Gold, the other workaholic, was there. I begged him to make me well. I asked him if there was anything he wanted. I told him to just name it and it was his. He thought that I was kidding, that I was delirious. “JUST NAME IT!” I shouted at him. Maybe I was delirious.
“Well, er, now that you mention it, I could use a new stereo,” he said in jest.
“AUDREY! Get Dr. Gold a new stereo!” I yelled. “Spare no expense! Now SAVE MY LIFE!”
Dr. Gold immediately started an echocardiogram. The problem was that my pericardial sac was starting to fill up with fluid again. He reviewed my situation with us. “We’re going to take you back up to the cardiac care unit and observe your coronary functions. We don’t want to operate again, but we might have to. If we can’t beat this thing with drugs, we can take out your pericardial sac and you can live safely without it.”
The Chicago Board of Trade had a Sunday-night session where the bond futures traded. On my way to the hospital, I’d put a call in to Avi Goldfedder and left a message for him to get back to me immediately. I might be able to live without my pericardial sac, but I wasn’t sure that my body could withstand another major operation. I had to get out of that bond position. When those avaricious schmucks called and wanted to know “how’s my money doing?” Audrey could tell them that it was fine, even if I were dead.
I lay on my bed, listening to the pings and rings and dings, wondering what was going on with my bonds. Then a nurse came up with a phone. “Mr. Schwartz. It’s your personal physician, Dr. Goldfedder from Chicago. We’ve read him your charts, but he insists on talking with you.” Dr. Goldfedder?
Pit Bull Page 24
