Fallow Park Today

by Joseph Glenn

  “It almost seems like eighty doctors aren’t enough.”

  “They aren’t,” Dr. Haze agreed.

  Once he was satisfied that he had got as much usable footage as he could, which he conveyed to Meredith with his comment, “I guess that’ll do it,” Austin directed the collection to the elevator bank. All six elevators appeared to be operational, Meredith noted with relief. “Here, at least, they understand the importance of transporting people quickly,” she remarked to no one in particular, but for the benefit of everyone within earshot. Bill, at her side, jingled coins in his pocket, a prearranged signal for “save it for the camera.” She smiled up at him to let him know the message has been received. The fact that Alex, the thorn-in-her-side intern, had been instructed to hold four of the elevators in anticipation of the filmmakers’ use, caused her some dismay. Attendants with patients in wheelchairs and rolling beds were beginning to collect at the elevator bank. She assumed the same was true on the higher floors, as two-thirds of the elevators were unavailable.

  She seethed on the elevator ride, but reminded herself that her assistant was right; she should save her outrage for the filmed segments.

  Standing outside one of the occupied rooms on the third floor, Meredith and Dr. Haze continued to chat. While Austin and the crew prepped the room and its occupant, Meredith sought to draw the doctor out, hoping for some disturbing revelation she could bring up once the interview recommenced. The doctor was long on horror stories and struck Meredith as having minimal loyalty for the Fallow Park line that the healthcare in the facility was as top drawer as had always been claimed. This line, this perception that one could not find better medical services elsewhere, was supposedly a bragging point, a “pro” on the pro/con balance sheet; so many occupants had been assured that they would receive better care in the parks than they had ever before known. Some were even lured by that promise. The government line continued to extoll this position, assuring taxpayers that their tax dollars were being put to good use treating the poor souls of the parks.

  Alex interrupted them after several minutes. Austin, it seemed, was ready for them.

  As the two women flanked either side of the hospital bed, Meredith introduced herself to its occupant. “I know you’re Jean,” she said to the woman. “Dr. Haze has briefed me on the specifics of your case. I’m so grateful that you’re willing to share your story with us.”

  “I don’t mind,” the grey-haired woman in a hospital gown said with some effort. “I was on television once before, years ago. I won a trip to Hawaii on Spin the Circle. But then I had to come to Fallow Park. I sent my brother and his wife to Maui.” She stopped to catch her breath. “They sent me wonderful postcards.”

  “How awful,” Meredith wanted to say, but the woman’s ill health and reasonably upbeat demeanor, considering her circumstances, cautioned her to say nothing more than, “Well, then you’re an old pro at being yourself on camera.”

  “Let’s try not to go too many takes on this,” Austin said. “I want a shot of the crew returning to the Administration Building when we’re through here. I noticed on the way over there’s an arresting shot we can get with the whole troop. The setting sun, everyone in a single file line. The group returning home after a hard day, struggling against the elements.”

  “Everyone less the camera man who shoots the thing,” Meredith interrupted.

  “Right. It’s a great shot of the Ferris wheel silhouetted behind everyone. And I want to get that while there’s still light.”

  “The non-operational Ferris Wheel? The one they shut down at least ten, twelve years ago?”

  “The very one,” he said. “We’re not going to get into all of that. We’re just going to show the damn thing. It’s such an iconic aspect of the park; the audience will be expecting a few shots of it.”

  After he shouted “Action!” Meredith launched into her introductory remarks. “We’re in the long-term care wing on the third floor of the infirmary. This is Jean Ripkin, who has been hospitalized for the past month. Jean, would you let the audience know the nature of your care, and the quality?”

  The woman smiled as her bed was automatically raised. She appeared to be in her early forties. Her frailty was dramatically emphasized by her satin bed jacket and elaborate makeup. Why she had consented to the elaborate makeup, complete with pasty-white foundation and false eyelashes, Meredith could not guess. She looked like a casket-ready corpse.

  “Yes,” she began, “I’ve got end-stage renal failure. I’m a diabetic; I have been for years. It was a problem even before I came to this place, to Fallow Park. As for my care, I must say the staff has been very helpful. I’ve had the same primary physician, Dr. Haze here, since she started—what is it now five, six years?”

  “Seven,” Dr. Haze said.

  “Has it really been seven years?” Jean’s astonishment seemed genuine to Meredith. “Isn’t that something? Yes, I have to say I have no complaints with Dr. Haze and the other people I’ve seen on a regular basis.”

  Continuing with her script, Meredith asked: “Would you say the care is better here than what you had before? I mean, before you came to Fallow Park?”

  “Oh, most definitely. I had a heck of a time finding decent care before I came here. So many doctors turned me down. Always said they weren’t taking new patients, but I knew what was what. I couldn’t prove anything, of course. I’m not aware of any physician who was ever successfully sued for turning away gay business. So I do think I’ve been better off here. And as a person alone, I’m oh so grateful to be in the hands of caregivers I can trust. The day will likely come when someone will have to make decisions for me.”

  Here was the opening Meredith was waiting for.

  “Oh, you don’t have someone in your life to look after your best interests?”

  “On the outside?” the woman asked after a moment’s thought. “Shoot, no. I’ve cut all ties with them, or they’ve cut ties with me.”

  “I mean,” Meredith clarified, “you don’t have someone here to look after your interests if you should ever become unable to do so? God forbid such a day should come, but just in case it does, you must have designated someone who will speak for you, someone to interact with the doctors on your behalf.”

  The woman shook her head. “Are you kidding me? Who would that be? My wife isn’t my wife anymore. So she can’t do that! She doesn’t have any input at all. Ever since the marriages were annulled, she’s seen as no more than my roommate. She’s been demoted to the role of ‘my special friend.’ You might have noticed she didn’t even merit a seat in this room for my television interview. No one even thought to ask me. When she got here this morning, we were told there just isn’t enough room for visitors. You must have seen her out in the hall. She’s usually here in the room every day. Janet!” Jean shouted in the general direction of the open door. “Go home! There’s nothing you can do here. Come back later!”

  A woman in jeans and a heavy coat, Janet presumably, appeared at the doorway. Her entrance was so perfectly synchronized with Jean’s outburst Meredith was certain they had planned it, and better than she could have herself. Meredith looked to her assistant and caught the grin on his face before he bowed his head and hid his expression.

  Alex, serving as bouncer, was there to greet her and firmly direct her out of the camera’s view and back into the hallway.

  “Austin,” Meredith appealed, “don’t you think Janet should be in this?” She assumed an upbeat manner, her instincts telling her to resist the impulse to overplay the moment. If she struck just the right chord, outrage tempered with sympathy, she expected he would have to respond. “Here’s someone very familiar with Jean’s treatment, but can speak as an observer, not a patient. And her observations and impressions of how well Jean has been treated could bolster Jean’s statements. I mean we’re trying to play up, to showcase the quality of care in the hospital. We want the audience to see for itself that a couple like Jean and Janet are treated well, don’t we? Do
n’t you want to show that the hospital, the caregivers, are respectful and make this experience as easy as it can be under the circumstances? It seems to me that’s your story right there.”

  After the obligatory grumbling and consultation with Chuck Makepeace, an action he was taking with greater frequency, he allowed that Janet’s inclusion was “not a bad idea.”

  Makepeace, for his part, was hacked by all the fuss and bother of the afternoon shoot, most likely, Meredith suspected, because there had been no room in the schedule to provide screen time for him. The shooting schedule had been compromised by a visit to the boiler room, a tedious interview in a dark room with interfering mechanical noise rendering the entire interview useless. He surely was able to see that. Austin was now working at a white heat, and while he could make time to briefly consult with the park director, rewriting scenes to give him an opportunity to shine for the camera was out of the question. Fortunately, Austin’s orders and consultations with him kept him reasonably engaged and compliant—and quiet.

  Janet took Meredith’s seat and the actress moved over to a spot on the bed on the opposite side of Jean.

  “Is this alright?” Meredith asked Jean. She needed to keep herself in the shot and close enough to the woman to hold a conversation, but she wanted to make sure assuming a spot on the bed did not claim more space than the woman was comfortable relinquishing.

  It was Austin who responded: “Yeah, that’s fine Merry, maybe a little closer to the patient.”

  Continuing at his break-neck pace, Austin rushed them into action.

  Jean’s partner and former wife was quick with answers as Meredith ran through her series of prepared questions. Her statements supported Jean’s earlier words, but were offered in a somewhat lifeless, defeated tone. There was about her praise a sense of concession. It was as if she was saying, ‘Yes, it’s true the care has been good,’ and ‘No, we can’t really complain…” Of course, Meredith realized that this lack of joy in her delivery might be attributable to the gravity of Jean’s health, or might be the emotionless response of a woman worn down by the day-to-day experience of attending to an ill relative. Either way, it was depressing and powerful.

  “What is Jean’s prognosis?” Meredith asked.

  The women exchanged a glance before Janet responded. “Well,” she said, “it isn’t too hopeful. There’s a limit to how much longer she can survive without a new kidney.”

  “That does sound serious,” Meredith inserted into Janet’s narrative. It was a statement of the obvious, but a deliberate effort to underscore the seriousness of Jean’s plight. The more compelling the woman’s struggle, the more likely it was the decision makers who cut the film would be to keep it in. “May I assume that you’re on the waiting list for a new one?” She held a frozen, concerned look on her face, but was prepared to look surprised by their response. She did not want to make it clear to her director or Makepeace that she already knew the answer to the question.

  “Oh, no,” Janet said for Jean. “There is no waiting list for us. That is, people in need of transplants at Fallow Park—at all the parks—do not participate in those programs. We’re not eligible.”

  “That’s true,” Dr. Haze interjected. “That was an act of Congress.”

  “I’m at a loss,” Meredith said, still playing naïve, still trying to convey her confusion to the cameras. “How can that be?”

  The codification Dr. Haze referenced, and the years of litigation that resulted from it, were as well known to Meredith as they were to most all Americans who read a newspaper or otherwise kept up with current events. Still, she stuck to her role of the wide-eyed innocent, processing the doctor’s words as if each grim detail was a piece of new information, and going one step further by pretending that the audience was equally uninformed—and shocked.

  “Well,” Dr. Haze said with frustration, and what to Meredith sounded like muted sarcasm, “the popular thinking at the time was that it was too hard to arrange such surgeries. There’s always a time issue involved. There’s such a small window between the time an organ becomes available and the time it must be transplanted. Too many organs were ‘going to waste,’ as some members of the medical community put it, when attempts were made to bring the organs here or to any of the other hospitals in the parks. The patient in need of the transplant is unable to travel, but that’s even truer with a patient in one of the parks because there’s so much red tape to deal with in arranging the patient’s temporary release from a park. And it’s every bit as time consuming to transport the organ—not to mention the surgical team—to the parks. And complicating the situation is the fact that few of the parks are near major airports. Private transportation has to be arranged. It was finally decided that it was best ‘for the country as a whole,’—again, using language some of my colleagues have chosen—to dispense with transplants for residents of the parks.”

  “That’s outrageous,” Meredith cried. She gingerly lifted herself off the bed, being careful not to jostle Jean in the process, before resuming her indignation. “Something has got to be done about this!”

  “But I can still get a transplant,” Jean interrupted.

  “Yes, Jean is on a transplant list,” Dr. Haze said, “but it’s a different kind of a list.”

  “Janet is giving me one of her kidneys.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” Meredith said. To Janet she added: “What a noble, loving thing to do.”

  Janet smiled and looked away.

  “So this is wonderful news!” Meredith continued, again attempting to present her simple and unassuming demeanor as authentic. She took up the idea as though she were planning a wedding. “When will the surgery take place? Pretty soon I imagine. Will we still be here?” She turned in Austin’s direction, but actually looked straight into the camera: “We should get that for the show! Woman successfully undergoes life-saving procedure under the care of the medical staff at Fallow Park! Now that’s great television.” She turned back to Jean, but ignored her attempts to interrupt and, presumably, contradict her. “Will we be allowed in the operating room?” She asked herself out loud, “What will I wear? I suppose we’ll all be in those scrub things.” She caught Bill’s attention with a raised hand. “You might want to give them my measurements, so they can fit me with the right sized costume. The scrubs, I mean. I played a doctor once, in an independent movie. It never found a distributor. So this will be a dream fulfilled for me—”

  “Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as that,” Dr. Haze cut in. “We don’t have that kind of surgeon on staff.”

  “Oh,” Meredith answered, overplaying her disappointment a bit, but with a thought to how strongly this disappointment should contrast the euphoria of her excited outburst. She affected the persona of the hurt child scratched off a birthday party guest list.

  “Jean is on a waiting list only because a kidney donor has been identified. That’s the waiting list Jean is on now. We are waiting for an available surgeon. We have to apply to the cadre of surgeons willing to make the trip and perform the surgery. It’s a small group of surgeons.”

  “Why is that?” Meredith asked.

  “Well, the procedures don’t pay that well. There are guidelines and rules about medical procedures performed at the parks. There isn’t the kind of medical insurance available to cover the out-of-sight cost, the exorbitant price tags that come with major operations. Most of the surgeons who participate in the program are semi-retired and do the work essentially as a service.”

  “Sort of like a doctors without borders thing?” she asked. “I like that. Thank God for human decency. How long will she wait?”

  “It’s been almost two years so far,” Jean answered for herself. “It’s my understanding I’ve got another six months to go. At least that’s what they’re predicting.”

  “More than two years?” Meredith asked with renewed alarm. “And for those who can’t wait two or three years? What happens to them?”

  “Many expire.” This was Jan
et’s observation. “Ironic, isn’t it? She’s been approved for the surgery and she has a willing donor, but she’s still on a waiting list, hoping she’ll live long enough to get the surgery.”

  “And you say they can’t just transport the two of you to a surgeon?”

  “Again,” Dr. Haze jumped in, “there’s the cost consideration. Also, Jean isn’t considered terminal yet. When she is, then the possibility of taking her to a hospital outside the park might become an option.”

  “Basically, I have to wait until I’m on my death bed before my circumstances will be considered dire enough to qualify for a transplant performed outside of the infirmary—at which time I’ll almost certainly be unable to travel.”

  “Well, that’s just fucked,” Meredith stated with a controlled indignation. No one contradicted her and Dr. Haze solemnly nodded her agreement. She pressed on. “Do a lot of people die in the park who would survive if they lived on the outside?”

  A muffled grunt emerged from behind Austin and the cameras. Meredith knew its source was Makepeace.

  “Yes,” Dr. Haze said without a moment’s hesitation, “quite a few. I don’t have specific figures. We’re not allowed to compile that data.”

  “Not allowed to?”

  Makepeace emerged from the collection of filmmakers, pushing his way to the front and stopping in front of the camera closest to him. Compliant with Austin’s instruction that he was not to say the word “cut,” his idea of an acceptable alternative seemed to be blocking the camera and performing a throat-slicing gesture. This, he seemed to think, satisfied his agreement with the director.

  Both cameras continued filming. He stepped into the scene and took the spot Meredith had vacated on Jean’s bed. Jean tried to sit up, but when unable to do so, shifted herself away from the man. He reached for her hand, but she withdrew it at once and buried it under the covers.