by Lucia Berlin
We do get critical trauma or cardiac patients, and they are treated and stabilized with awesome skill and efficiency in a matter of minutes and rushed to surgery or ICU, CCU.
Drunks and suicides take hours of time holding up needed rooms and nurses. Four or five people waiting at my desk to sign in. Ankle fractures, strep throat, whiplash, etc.
Maude, beery, bleary, is sprawled on a gurney, kneading my arm like a neurotic cat.
“You’re so kind … so charming … it’s this vertigo, dear.”
“What is your last name and your address? What happened to your Medi-Cal card?”
“Gone, everything is gone … I’m so miserable and so alone. Will they keep me here? There must be something the matter with my inner ear. My son Willie never calls. Of course, it’s Daly City and a toll call. Do you have children?”
“Sign here.”
I have found a minimum of information among the rest of the mess in her purse. She uses Zig-Zag papers to blot her lipstick. Big smeary kisses, billowing like popcorn all over her purse.
“What’s Willie’s last name and phone number?”
She begins to cry, reaching both arms for my neck.
“Don’t call him. He says I’m disgusting. You think I’m disgusting. Hold me!”
“I’ll see you later, Maude. Let go of my neck and sign this paper. Let go.”
Drunks are invariably alone. Suicides come in with at least one other person, usually many more. Which is probably the general idea. At least two Oakland police officers. I have finally understood why suicide is considered a crime.
Overdoses are the worst. Time again. Nurses usually too busy. They give them some medication but then the patient has to drink ten glasses of water. (These are not the stomach-pump critical overdoses.) I’m tempted to stick my finger down their throat. Hiccups and tears. “Here, one more cup.”
There are “good” suicides. “Good reasons” many times like terminal illness, pain. But I’m more impressed with good technique. Bullets through the brain, properly slashed wrists, decent barbiturates. Such people, even if they don’t succeed, seem to emanate a peace, a strength, which may have come from having made a thoughtful decision.
It’s the repeats that get to me—the forty penicillin capsules, the twenty Valium and a bottle of Dristan. Yes, I am aware that, statistically, people who threaten or attempt suicide eventually succeed. I am convinced that this is always an accident. John, usually home by five, had a flat tire and could not rescue his wife in time. I suspect a form of manslaughter sometimes, the husband or some other regular rescuer having at last finally tired of showing up just in the guilty nick of time.
“Where’s Marvin? Must be worried sick.”
“He’s phoning.”
I hate to tell her he’s in the cafeteria, has gotten to like their Reuben sandwiches.
Exam week at Cal. Many suicides, some succeeding, mostly Oriental. Dumbest suicide of the week was Otis.
Otis’s wife, Lou-Bertha, had left him for another man. Otis took two bottles of Sominex, but was wide awake. Peppy, even.
“Get Lou-Bertha before it’s too late!”
He kept hollering instructions to me from the trauma room. “My mother … Mary Brochard 849-0917 … Try the Adam and Eve Bar for Lou-Bertha.”
Lou-Bertha has just left the Adam and Eve for the Shalimar. It was busy for a long time, then an answer, and Stevie Wonder for a whole record of “Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing.”
“Run that by me one more time, honey … He OD’d on what?”
I told her.
“Shit. You go tell that toothless worthless nigger he better be taking a lot more of something a lot stronger if’n he expects to get me outta here.”
I went in to tell him … what? She was glad he was okay, maybe. But he was on the telephone in room 6. Had his pants on, still wore a polka-dot gown on top. He had located the half-pint of Royal Gate in his jacket pocket. Was just sort of lounging around, like an executive.
“Johnnie? Yeah. Otis here. I’m up here at City Emergency Room. You know, off Broadway. What’s happening? Fine, fine. That bitch Lou-Bertha messing ’round with Darryl … [Silence.] No shit.”
The charge nurse came in. “He still here? Get him out! We have four Codes coming in. Auto accident, all Code Three, ETA ten minutes.”
I try to sign as many patients as possible before the ambulances arrive. The people will just have to wait later, about half of them will leave, but meanwhile all are restless and angry.
Oh, hell … there were three here before this one but better just sign her in. It’s Marlene the Migraine, an Emergency habituée. She is so beautiful, young. She stops talking with two Laney College basketball players, one with an injured right knee, and stumbles to my desk to go into her act.
Her howls are like Ornette Coleman in early “Lonely Woman” days. Mostly what she does is first, bang her head against the wall near my desk, dump everything off my desk with a swoop.
Then she starts her cries. Whooping, anguished yelps, reminiscent of Mexican corridas, Texan love songs, “Aiee, Vi, Yi!”
“Ah-hah, San Antone!”
She has slumped to the floor and all I can see is an elegantly manicured hand, extending her Medi-Cal card above the desk.
“Can’t you see I’m dying? I’m going blind, for crissakes!”
“Come on, Marlene—how’d you get those false eyelashes on?”
“Nasty whore.”
“Marlene, sit up and sign in. Ambulances are coming, so you’ll have to wait. Sit up!”
She sits up, starts to light a Kool. “Don’t light that, sign here,” I say. She signs and Zeff comes to put her into a room.
“Well, well, if it isn’t our old angry pal, Marlene.”
“Don’t you humor me, you dumb nurse.”
The ambulances arrive, and for sure they are emergencies. Two die. For an hour all the nurses, doctors, on-call doctors, surgeons, everybody is tied up in room 6 with the two surviving young patients.
One of Marlene’s hands is struggling into a velvet coat sleeve, the other is applying magenta lipstick.
“Holy Christ—I can’t hang around this joint all night, right? Seeya, honey!”
“See ya, Marlene.”
Temps Perdu
I’ve worked in hospitals for years now and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that the sicker the patients are the less noise they make. That’s why I ignore the patient intercom. I’m a ward clerk, my priorities are ordering meds and IVs, getting patients to surgery or X-ray. Of course I answer the calls eventually, usually tell them, “Your nurse will be there soon!” Because sooner or later she’ll show up. My attitude toward nurses has changed a lot. I used to think they were rigid and heartless. But it’s sickness that’s what’s wrong. I see now that nurses’ indifference is a weapon against disease. Fight it, stamp it out. Ignore it, if you will. Catering to a patient’s every whim just encourages him to like being sick and that’s the truth.
At first, when a voice on the intercom would say, “Nurse! Quick!” I’d ask, “What’s the matter?” That took too much time; besides, nine times out of ten it’s just that the color’s off on the TV.
The only ones I pay attention to are the ones who can’t talk. The light comes on and I push down the button. Silence. Obviously they have something to say. Usually something is the matter, like a full colostomy bag. That’s one of the only other things I know for sure now. People are fascinated by their colostomy bags. Not just the demented or senile patients who actually play with them but everyone who has one is inevitably awed by the visibility of the process. What if our bodies were transparent, like a washing machine window? How wondrous to watch ourselves. Joggers would jog even harder, blood pumping away. Lovers would love more. God damn! Look at that old semen go! Diets would improve—kiwi fruit and strawberries, borscht with sour cream.
Anyway, when 4420, Bed Two’s light came on I went into his room. Mr. Brugger, an old diabetic who had had a ma
ssive stroke. I saw the full bag first, just as I figured. “I’ll tell your nurse,” I said and smiled into his eyes. My God, the shock that hit me, like falling on a bicycle bar, a Vinteuil sonata right there on Four East. Little beady black eyes laughing from epicanthic gray-white folds. Eyes just past Buddha eyes … sloe eyes, slow eyes, near-Mongoloid eyes. Kentshereve’s eyes, laughing into mine … I was engulfed with the memory of love, no with love itself. Mr. Brugger felt this no doubt, since now he rings his ever-loving bell all night long.
He shook his head, mocking me for thinking it was his colostomy bag. I looked around. The Odd Couple was spinning dizzily up on the screen. I adjusted the set and left, hurrying back to my desk, to soft billows of memory.
Mullan, Idaho, 1940, at the Morning Glory mine. I was five years old, making shadows from the early spring sun with my big toe. I heard him first. The sound of apples. Celery? No, it was Kentshereve, under my window, eating hyacinth bulbs. Dirt in the corners of his mouth, purple liver lips, wet like Mr. Brugger’s.
I flew to him (Kentshereve), no looking back, no hesitation. At least the next thing I remember is biting into the crisp cold bursting bulbs myself. He grinned at me, raisin eyes glinting through doughy slits, encouraging me to savor. He didn’t use that word—my first husband did showing me the subtleties of leeks and shallots (in our adobe kitchen in Santa Fe, vigas and Mexican tile). We vomited, later (Kentshereve and I).
I worked mechanically at my desk, answering phones, calling for oxygen and lab techs, drifting away into warm waves of pussywillows and sweet peas and trout pools. The pulleys and riggings of the mine at night, after the first snow. Queen Anne’s lace against the starry sky.
“He knew every inch of my body.” Did I read that somewhere? Surely no one would ever say such a thing. Later that spring, naked in the woods, we counted every single mole each other had, marking where we left off each day with India ink. Kentshereve pointed out that the ink dabber was just like a cat’s pecker.
Kentshereve could read. His name was Kent Shreve, but when he told me I thought it was his first name and that first night said it over and over, sang it over and over to myself as I have done with Jeremys and Christophers ever since. Kentshereve Kentshereve. He could even read the Wanted posters at the post office. He said that when we grew up he’d probably read a poster about me. Of course I’d be using an alias but he would know it was me because it would say large mole on ball of left foot, blaze on right knee, mole in the crack of the ass. Maybe somebody will read this who was once my lover. Bet you didn’t remember those things. Kentshereve would. My third son was born with the same mole, just at the crack of his buttocks. The day he was born I kissed him there, pleased that probably one day another woman would kiss him there, or count it. Kentshereve took longer to document than I did since he had freckles as well and there was a fine line. He didn’t trust me when I got to his back, accused me of exaggerating.
* * *
I was annoyed when we got two post-op patients—pages of orders, just as I was having all these insights. That blast of love I got from room 4420, Bed Two, it was indistinguishable from all the others. Kentshereve, my palimpsest. An older intellectual with a sardonic wit, obsessed with food and sex. He started a lifetime of cookouts that ranged from Zihuatanejo to upstate New York. Hamburgers on top of a Zuni grave with Harrison, that fraud.
None so delicious and scary. Since he was able to read he could tell that the fire we built could mean a thousand-dollar fine or imprisonment. Not for us, for our parents, he chuckled, tossing more pine cones onto the blaze. Massé nipple cream, heat lamps to the perineum, Americaine spray for hemorrhoids, sitz baths TID. I flew through the orders so I could get back to smelling pine, to tasting his chipped beef on white bread. The sauce was a bottle of Jergen’s hand lotion—honey and almonds—and no sweet-and-sour sauce since has rivaled it. He could make pancakes in the shape of Texas and Idaho and California. His teeth were black until Wednesday from Saturday’s licorice, blueberry blue all summer long.
We tried to duplicate the sexual act but gave up and concentrated on hitting targets with our pee. Of course, he was better, but it’s no mean trick for a girl to aim. He gave me my due, with a nod, a glint from the slits of his eyes.
He took me to my first trout pool. Only trout pool. Empty pool, I mean, at the hatchery. Only a few times a year would they drain these shallow pools, but he knew just when to go. He saw everything even though his eyes looked closed, like wooden Eskimo sunglasses. The trick was to get there on a warm day before they cleaned out the empty pond. There was about three inches of gelatinous mucusy trout-come slime lining the pools. I’d give him the first push, shooting him off to the end when he’d ricochet back into me, a jet-propelled toad, and off we’d go careening from the walls like greased pneumatic tubes, shimmering with trout scales.
We’d wash our hair in tomato juice to get the smell out but it didn’t. Days later, when he’d be at school and I’d be lying there making toe shadows on the wall I’d get a whiff of dead fish and I would long for him, for the moment when I could hear him coming up the hill, his lunch pail banging against his leg.
* * *
We hid in the shed back of J.R.’s kitchen, watching him and his skinny wife doing it, an act so monumentally hilarious it has since ruined many a blissful moment of my life with a giggle fit. They would sit at the oilcloth table, glum, smoking and drinking away, just smoking and drinking, silent, and then he would rip off his miner’s hat with the lamp, holler “Doggie style!” and flip her over the kitchen stool.
Most of the miners were Finns and when they got off work they would shower and sauna. There was a wooden pen outside the sauna and in winter they would run out and jump into the snow. Big men, little men, fat men, skinny men, all pink men, rolling over and over in the snow. At first watching from our hole in the fence, we giggled at all the blue peckers and balls but then we would just laugh too as they did with the joy of it, with the snow and the blue blue sky.
* * *
The night quieted down at work. Wendy, the charge nurse, and her best friend Sandy doodled at the desk near me. Really doodled, practicing writing 1982 and their names if they married whoever it is they are going out with now. Grown women, in this day and age. I felt pity for them, these lovely young nurses, who had not yet known romance.
“What are you daydreaming about?” Wendy asked.
“An old love,” I sighed.
“That’s neat—that you still think of love at your age.”
I didn’t even react. Poor fool had no idea of the passion that had just occurred between me and 4420, Bed Two.
His bell had, in fact, been ringing away. I answered it. “Your nurse will be in soon.” I told Sandy that he wanted to get back into bed. Because I knew him by now, just by letting in those Kentshereve eyes. Sandy had me page the orderly to help her. Dead weight.
I’ve always been a good listener. That’s it, my best quality. Kentshereve had all the ideas maybe but I was the one who heard them. We were a classic couple, like Zelda and Scott, Paul et Virginie. We made the Wallace, Idaho, weekly paper three times. Once when we got lost. We weren’t lost at all, just out in the woods after curfew but they drained the ditches anyway. Then we found the dead hobo in the woods. Heard his death first, from way down in the clearing, the flies buzzing. The last time was when the ladder fell over Sextus. At least the paper appreciated it, our folks didn’t at all. Kentshereve had to babysit Sextus (the sixth child, only a month old). Just a soggy little bundle and he slept all the time so it didn’t seem to matter if we took him out to the shed. We decided to swing from the rafters, left the little bundle on the floor and climbed the ladder. Kentshereve never once blamed me for kicking over the ladder. He took such things as they came. What came was that the ladder fell over the baby, the rungs just missing him on all four sides and he didn’t wake up. A miracle, but I don’t think we knew that word yet. There we were, for hours, on the narrow two-by-four, far above the ground, hanging f
rom it by our knees as it was too scary to sit up. Blood-red faces, talking funny upside down. No one heard us holler. Both our families had gone to Spokane and no other cabins were near. It got darker and darker. We figured out how to sit up and inch our way to the edge, took turns leaning against the wall. We played owl and spat, aiming at things. I wet my pants. Sextus woke up and began to wail and wail. Loud, above the baby, we listed all the things we wanted to eat. Bread and butter with sugar on it. Kentshereve ate those all day long. I know he’s a diabetic by now, sneaking Jergen’s lotion and going into shock. He always exhaled, his plaid shirts sparkled with sugar in the sun.
He had to pee, got the idea that if he aimed just next to Sextus it would warm him and cheer him up. That’s what he was doing when my father came in and screamed. I got so scared I fell off the rafter. That’s how I broke my arm the first time. Then Red, Kentshereve’s father, came in and grabbed up the baby. Nobody got Kentshereve down or even noticed the miracle of the ladder missing the baby on all four sides. From the car, shivering with pain, I saw Red beating up Kentshereve. He didn’t cry. He nodded at me across the yard and his eyes told me it had been worth it.
I spent one night with him, the night my baby sister had her tonsils out. Red sent me and my blankets up the ladder to the loft where the five older children slept on straw. There was no window, just an opening in the eaves covered with black oilcloth. Kentshereve poked a hole in it with an ice pick and there was a jet of air like on airplanes only icy cold. If you put your ear to it you could hear icicles in the pines, chandeliers, the creaking of the mine shaft, ore cars. It smelled of cold and wood smoke. When I put my one eye to the tiny hole I saw the stars as if for the first time, magnified, the sky, dazzling and vast. If I so much as blinked my eye it all disappeared.
