CHAPTER 20

While Fat Boy was doing his best to give our happy little a home a bad name others especially members of the personnel were trying their best to build up its reputation. There is no better method for publicizing something than television, and the hospital was selected to be the site for a documentary on rehabilitation. By this time Doctor Abrahamson had worked his way up in the ranks of the Physical Medicine Department, and was selected to be the star or the show. None of us was curious enough to roll down to the swimming pool to witness the actual broadcast but we were interested enough to watch the performance on the ward television sets. The real reason that the majority of us turned on those sets was that we were secretly hoping that Abe would make a jackass out of himself and provide some good belly laughs.
The directors of the show were more than a few steps ahead of us, and instead of Doctor Abrahamson the real star was Tony the therapist. Tony was the only person in the hospital who could command the respect of everyone who had seen him even though he had not spoken to him. Tony always made everyone gape as he strode vigorously through the hospital corridors with a blind man’s arm tucked under his. His job was to teach the blind how to retrieve as much of life as they possibly could, for he was the instructor who had been assigned to their rehabilitation. The only difference between his instruction and that given to the blind by any other therapist was that his was a true case of “the blind leading the blind”.
The type of good publicity that the hospital was receiving through Tony’s efforts made us a bit jealous, for we knew that if the problem of spinal cord regeneration were ever to be solved it had to be presented to the public through such a broadcast as that had been; plus many more. This thought was still bouncing around in our minds when one morning one of the boys rolled into the room and yelled with a big smile on his face, “The war’s over, men; we’re cured.” Silence reigned and he continued as he waved a newspaper wildly at us. He went on, “Look here it is on the
front page of The New York Times. There’s a drug called pyromen that can make spinal cords regenerate.” The ceiling blow off of the place as our cries of elation hit it. Some of the boys cried for joy, others banged loose objects wildly on their beds and bedside tables, some yelled whoopee over and over again while the remainder sat there with amazed smiles on their lips too dumbfounded by the good news to believe that it was true. It took quite awhile for the majority of us to quiet down from hearing the super colossal news when our thoughts started for the first time since we had been hurt to the future and plans for it. One
youngster who had sent his girl away to give her a second chance at happiness called her on the phone to beg her to forgive him which she did. Another started making plans as to exactly how he was going to beat hell out of the lousy bastards on their feet who had been mean to him since he had been hurt, and I just sat there taking it all in, feeling good all over, while trying to think of what my first move in my second life would be.
The tide of joy that that news has brought was surging so strongly that the breakfast trays came and went without their contents hardly being touched by any of us. The uproar had almost eased a bit when one of the boys shouted, “what are we going to do to the doctors when we’re all up on our feet again?” That was an open invitation to all to start shouting again, for each had his pet likes and dislikes about our mighty men of medicine, and this was his first public opportunity since he had been injured to air them. The debate had just started on its heated way when to everybody’s surprise and annoyance plus at least fifteen minutes early in walked the medicos. Before anyone could throw a question at them Doctor Delagi the more likeable of the two shouted, “Quiet.” The response to his request was made but half-heartedly. He then went on. “Doctor Weiss and I have been up all night answering phone calls from your families and friends, but we’re going to tell you the same thing that we told them.” He then planted a bombshell. “The story in the papers is false.” “But Doc,” we shouted back, “we saw it in the New York Times, and you know the Times wouldn’t print a misleading story on its front page.” He waved for silence and continued, “I don’t give a hoot where you saw it; it’s not true. The papers have printed the story of a quickly drawn conclusion, and that is all. There is no concrete scientific evidence to support the miraculous recovery of the patient whom the drug pyromen was used on; He was an early injury with an incomplete lesion. There is nobody on earth who can guarantee that he isn’t the one in a million case which manages to snap out of it without the aid of drugs, or the assistance of any doctors.”
It was hard to make conversation, and even harder to laugh for many weeks to come. Taking ourselves back to our normal routine of paralyzed living was a genuine effort, and I was able to offer little resistance though it was a bitter cold night when Stanley of broiled steak fame said, “Come on Joe; loan me your car; I want to buy a few sandwiches for the fellows in my room.” I threw him the keys and added, “Be certain to pick up my favorite; a ‘Joe’s Specia1’” which was what the man in the delicatessen called my sandwich. As I was already lying on my Stryker frame when Stan came to see me I very easily fell asleep without wanting to. The night crew awakened me around midnight as it went about the routine of turning patients in order to prevent bedsores. When I noticed whom the aides were I quickly realized what time it was, but before I could utter a question Harry the orderly said, “Joe; did you hear about Stan Glazewski; he’s been in an auto wreck.” Without thinking or asking any further questions I jumped into my chair, threw a sheet over my lap, and rolled like hell down the hall looking for Stan, but he was not in his room. I then started searching for the nurse who was nowhere to be found on our ward. I sat in the darkened corridor drawing an ever gloomier and gloomier picture in my mind of what a mess my car must have looked like when I spotted her visiting in the nurses’ office of the neurosurgical ward. I made haste while the moon shone, and rolled towards her. Before I stopped rolling I shouted, “where’s Stan; he’s wrecked my car!” She snapped back, “The doctor ordered him sent to the fourth floor for observation.” I butted in, “But where are the keys to my car? That Oldsmobile was the best automobile I ever had.” She replied, “What are you talking about? Stan was in a wreck with Eddie McCardle in his Buick.” I replied, “It can’t be; something doesn’t make sense.” She went on, “Joe,
Why don’t you go to bed? The doctor will straighten it all out in the morning.” I felt in no mood to listen, but I slowly rolled back to my room. There to my pleasant surprise were my keys, and sandwich. My blood pressure slowly began to return to normalcy as into my sack I went. In the morning I learned that he had changed his mind about using my car after all.
When Stan returned to the ward none the worse for having been detoured through the psychiatric floor I made it a point to avoid mentioning that night or its escapades to him, for I knew that he had no desire to remember his misadventure nor I the stupid way that I had acted in haste. Sometimes lack of complete information or briefing can cause a diagnosis of a worse nature though it was not so in the next case.
The two of us were sitting in the hall a few weeks before the Yuletide season when in came two men with packaged radios and a cameraman from The New York Daily Mirror. They were seeking two patients to volunteer to be pictured with the radios which they were going to donate. I had a radio and so did Stan, so we said it would be best if they asked someone else which they did. Two other patients quickly agreed to be subjects for the photographers, for the bait was too great to resist. The four of them posed together as the photographers proceeded to snap pictures of the two volunteers handing a radio to each of the patients while receiving in turn handshakes of thanks. When the little ceremony was over and the cameraman was satisfied that he had taken enough shots to offer his editor a decent selection to choose from the volunteers took back the radios. The two patients let out a wild howl about this unorthodox action to which the volunteers answered, “Oh, we weren’t going to give these to you in the first place. We only wanted you for the snapshots. The radios are being donated to the special services department.” “Get the hell
out of here you phony lice,” was the patient’s last remark.
It was a shame that those two so-called volunteers chose our ward for their mockery as we had coming to the ward volunteers who were just as kind, gracious, and honest as could be. An outstanding one of these was Mrs. Riley whom we sometimes took pleasure in teasing. Ted Bramley was the name of the latest member of our exclusive paralyzed club, and on the next day that she came to the hospital to put in her tour of duty as grey lady she spotted Ted and said, “I see you’re new here. Is there anything that I may bring you from the canteen?” Sensing another opportunity to tease the good sport that she is, I called out, “Be careful how you address him; Mrs. Riley, he’s sti1l a Lieutenant in the Navy, so don’t forget the “sir’.” She turned to face me at an oblique angle and said, “I don’t care what his rank is; my husband is a General, and I only call him Nick.” That took care of me for the rest of the day, but it wasn’t many weeks later that she brought him up to meet us, and I learned that he had been in charge of the construction at Idlewild Airport.
It was a wonderful thing for the General to take time out from his busy existence, and come to the hospital to spend an afternoon with an ex-Army Corporal and a former Naval Lieutenant, for it helped reinforce the old adage that states, “The bigger the guy the bigger the heart.” We had plenty of our own brass at the hospital, but none of them ever measured up to the General’s humility in fact the case with them was quite to the contrary. This lack of modesty and devotion to duty almost killed off one of the colored boys one evening as he found himself back on the
ward post-operative from a cystoscopic treatment. The pretty nurse who asked me for the male point of view of her lovely chest was on duty that evening, and despite her physical attractiveness was also an excellent nurse.
Always being the type who was constantly on the alert for any difficulty that post-operative cases might encounter she kept an eye peeled towards him while carrying out her routine chores. It didn’t take but a glance or two for her to discover that the patient was in serious trouble when the urine in his collection jug showed a dark red. Being more than experienced with these types of symptoms she quickly diagnosed it to be hemorrhaging in the bladder, and set about to call the Urological Officer of the Day. We were yet to have a public address system installed in the building in those days, so she had to rely on the telephone operator to search out the hospital room by room. While the
operator was making her slow and painful search the patient was rapidly going into a state of shock. The nurse was growing even more worried, and was on the verge of going into a temper tantrum when finally the surgeon walked in. He was just in time, but to be certain that he wasn’t too late he gave the boy a transfusion that only took fifteen minutes to run in. After finally feeling confident that the patient wasn’t going to leave the hospita1 in a box the doctor left, and with that the nurse came up to me and said, “You know why I couldn’t find that lazy bum? He was hiding in the movies.”
I don’t know whether or not Eddie Simon was happy about being saved and brought back to a wheelchair existence, but had he gone the other way he would have found himself a subject for the ward underground communication system. Sometimes this system works so rapidly that it seems it would have been wiser for the nurse to employ it when searching for the doctor who was needed in a hurry. Had Eddie died the news of it would have taken about two minutes to reach ninety percent of the paraplegics in the hospital, for that underground telegraph seems to take the news and gossip through the walls and down the drainpipes. We even hear the full story of a death before a majority of the men responsible for taking care of the deceased do. The usual stale expression, “He’s better off,” follows such a happening accompanied by an indifferent shrug of the shoulders which to an outsider who has never seen the complete picture of our hard existence seems quite calloused. He might while watching our cold actions say to himself, “What a group of lice these people are; one of their number dies and it doesn’t bother them.” Perhaps an onlooker would not feel so harshly towards us if he could know as we do that pain is worse than death. Facing such an outlook for the future can do a great deal towards destroying any initiative that we may try to build up for ourselves.
One thing that can do much to counter any distraction in our interest in living after these periodic deaths is good entertainment especially the high caliber that was so graciously supplied to the hospital by the Great White Way. We still had a lingering memory of Eddie’s almost passing when we found ourselves viewing excerpts from South Pacific with Martha Wright and Myron McCormack presenting them to us in person. They had to contend with makeshift stages and dressing rooms as all volunteer performers did. During that show the patients’ day room served as the male actors’ dressing room, and a few of us sat there laughing as we saw Myron McCormack put half coconut shells over his breasts in preparation for his famous hula dance routine. He had just succeeded in putting the last part of his nutty brassiere in place when the portable phone which happened to be standing in the room at that moment rang. Much to our surprise he answered it. After asking us where he could locate the recipient of the call he proceeded to push the phone to him. The recipient of that call was more than a little hesitant about picking up the receiver when he was awakened from a dreamy, half asleep state to see standing before him a wild looking half nude male dressed only in a grass skirt and a coconut brassiere. We had to admit that even the phone company’s publicity department couldn’t think up such an excellent public relations stunt as that Mr. McCormack had performed for us so freely.
With the cast’s numbers being performed for us right before our eyes on the ward floor we received the same effect as we had been seated at a hundred dollar ringside table in one of the city’s finer nightclubs. Sometimes though we, without the help of professional entertainers, received the same effect as a nightclub floorshow would have given us by watching one of the quadriplegic lover boys at work with his favorite volunteer. What she was volunteering for was not exactly according to her job description, but it kept him quite happy and gave us something to ogle at. They were becoming quite adept at putting on their scenes of passion when word of what the paralyzed lover was doing to his happy home life leaked back to her husband. He to say the least was not too pleased with the happenings on Kingsbridge Hill, and promptly slammed his foot down. That put an end to their tryst for a while, but lust got the better of their sense of fair play, and they could be once again seen at the same old bedside doing monkey business as usual. One thing the fellows all thought to a man about our hero in this drama was that he was either the nerviest or craziest lover on Earth as had had his neck broken in a football game in which he was up against giants, and now he was chancing having his head split open by a healthy man on his feet. Secretly, we were damned proud of seeing him, a helpless invalid from the neck down, outdo a man on his feet in the art of lovemaking. No matter what our ideas were about that pair of lovers and their illicit affair we really had no right to comment, for to say the least we were not paying any cover charge.
We may have been receiving our do-it-yourself floorshow freely; but there was one more important thing that we wanted so terribly, and that was as everyone well knows our health. With us though there was no thought of making gains and progress it was simply a case of trying to maintain what little we had left. While the fat husky paraplegics were for some unscientific reason dying off very quickly, the skinny and rundown rest of us were doing an excellent job of tenaciously clinging to life’s threads. The crazy redhead who had demonstrated his abilities as a lover in that linen closet at Halloran was as emaciated as any of us, but was soon breaking the strong skinny man rule by checking into the hospital with serious kidney complaints. Whenever one of the patients in a room is seriously ill his fellow paraplegics can tell it because the years of unwanted experience have taught them through their own sufferings just exactly what it feels like to have pains shooting through your body, and you know that your insides are boiling up in preparation to erupting. When we see one of our own going through the throes of hell that accompany these periods of illness not only does our heartfelt sympathy go out to him, we also go out of our way to see that he is made comfortable, and that the staff doesn’t neglect him. The thing that I found myself doing for Red and which angered me the most was trying to figure out what painkiller the ever-brave doctors were giving him. I was riled, for they were prescribing for this man who was in a living hell until the day he died Phenobarbital by mouth. While Red was one of the few to let death breach the United Front that we skinny ones presented to it there were others of us who were doing a very good job of keeping up our bony reputation. One such skeletal figure was a colored boy who had been living on a Stryker frame as long as I’ve known him. He was an eerie fixture lying on his frame with his big eyes popping out when we soon learned that he had an idiosyncrasy which could be used to make his eyes pop out even further. He was mortally afraid of snakes, reptiles, and mice. I first found out of how badly he was afraid of these creatures when one of the boys rolled up to his Stryker as he was lying on his back, and threw a smell rubber lizard onto his chest. One glance at the slimy thing as it lay shaking on his chest from his breathing, and he let out a painful scream followed by pleas begging the thrower to please come quickly back, and take the damn thing away. We were all tired out from laughing at his self-inflicted misery when one of the softer hearted fellows rolled over to retrieve the reptile, and give the supine figure his peace. We had a few more stunts up our sleeves that we wanted so badly to try on this susceptible subject, but decided to hold out in order to plan them in such a way that it would insure our success. The respite was also a good idea from a medical point of view, for who knows even though he was very thin he still may have had a weak heart.
In order to have taken those murderous dilations over all those years at the hands of my indifferent doctors I certainly needed a strong heart, but I soon found myself growing weak hearted towards the idea of continuing these brutal treatments under the same terms as I had accepted them in the past. The pain was on the verge of giving me nerve trouble, and I found my pleas for relief from the misery falling on unsympathetic if not deaf ears. The next time that I was scheduled for a dilation I rolled all the way to the operating room on my litter when I balked and decided to revolt. Knowing that under these circumstances as before the doctors could take advantage of me, and give me the treatment even though I had changed my mind as I had already signed a consent slip; I reached under the mat upon which I was lying to retrieve my chart. I searched for the signed consent slip, but picturing myself being held down on the table while the doctors jammed the rod and scope down my hapless esophagus gave me enough incentive to yank the slip from out of its place in the chart, and tear it up. One of the orderlies saw what I was doing and came a-running, but it was too late. All he found upon his arrival was oversized confetti. The surgeon upon hearing of my action came over and said, “I’m very disappointed with you for taking such an uncooperative attitude.” I looked up at him and said, “So what? It doesn’t cause me any pain.” I could sense that he was rather disgusted with me when he took off his surgical mask, and I could see the frown upon his face. He then ordered me sent back to the ward; to say the least my reception at the ward was not a happy one either, but who cared. You know the old story about sticks and stones.
Doctor Weiss and his cohorts were not too elated when they received word of my insurrection, and came well prepared the next time they were at my bedside to give me hell. First Doctor Delagi spoke, as he by this time was the assistant chief of the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Service, having been promoted over Doctor Weiss. According to rank Doctor Andor Weiss then went into a long tirade full of rhetoric and platitudes. I couldn’t tell whether he was out of breath or finished, but it took a long time before I could go back to him with my favorite phrase, “So what?” This wasn’t taken too well by either of them, but before that could regain the initiative I continued “I’m sick and tired of being a guinea pig for every Tom, Dick, and Schmo who’s trying to complete a residency in ear, nose, and throat. I want something drastic done about my esophagus. I’m fed up with this routine.” Doctor Delagi answered back slowly, “Okay, Doctor Silver, what do you suggest?”
I thought it over a bit and realizing that it was wiser to answer his sarcasm with a concrete suggestion instead of a snide remark said, “There is supposed to be a program set up under the present system in the Veteran’s Hospitals where if it is deemed necessary by his ward doctors a consultant can be called in to advise on a patient whom the doctors are having difficulty in helping. Doctor Moore my favorite chest surgeon from Halloran is on the staff at Columbia Presbyterian, and he’s the only one I’d trust to do any drastic surgery on me. Why don’t you get in touch with him?” I readied myself to hear them reply that the funds for paying the consultants were depleted for that fiscal year, but I instead heard Doctor Delagi say, “That won’t be necessary. Doctor Moore is also a staff consultant at this hospital, and is available to our patients six months a year, Let me check with the chief of surgery to arrange for an appointment for you.”
My hope temperature was high again, and I couldn’t wait for the good doctor’s visit. He looked a little older than when I had last seen him, but that didn’t affect my confidence in him in the least. After going over my chart and giving me a cursory examination he said, “Joe, there’s nothing I can possibly do for you.” I quickly tried to reply, “But, Doc! Why not?” Before backing away he added, “Because you can’t possibly stand seven or eight hours on the operating room table. You’ll have to get somebody else to kill you; that’s not my kind of work.”
It was the same old story repeating all over again. It was easy to have the operation done, but not by any of the good men. I was to return to my diet of ground up soups, and continue looking about the ward to see what new gimmick the boys were cooking up as a source of fun. It wasn’t really a new one that they were using, but just a revamped model of an old stunt which had worked ever so successfully before. They were back picking on Earnest Autry again, and taking advantage of his phobia for slimy creatures. The plot this time in order to work properly could not be crudely enacted as had the previous stunt, but had to be carefully planned and timed. The first stage of our mischievous plan depended on Autry himself, for we could make no move when he was in the room whether he was asleep or not. Fortunately not all the schemers attended the movie that night, but Autry did, and so our golden opportunity presented itself. The idea once the time was right was to place a baited mousetrap under the radiator, which was in back of the head of his Stryker frame. After the trap was positioned it was everybody’s job to wait with his big mouth shut.
Autry bedded down about ten that evening, and it was an effort to keep from laughing and giving away the secret. Finally the lights went out about twelve, but nothing happened. It was an effort to try and listen for something to happen as we lay there on our restful beds, and so the comfort put the majority of us to sleep. It wasn’t much longer when a mouse took the bait, and the trap snapped awakening almost everyone instantly. Anyone who was not awakened by that noise found himself being rudely shaken out of his sleep by Autry’s painful wail. It was going to be a long time before we again tried any further experiments with midnight practical jokes. The loss of a good night’s sleep was a heavy price to pay for one belly laugh.
We may have temporarily run out of choice patsies for our playful minds and might have become annoyed at running into that dead end, but we suddenly found a different subject to occupy our attention. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we spotted rolling up the corridor towards us a youngster whom we at first glance took to be twelve or thirteen. One of the gang said, “Look at what is coming at us; a baby paraplegic.” No one laughed, for being sentenced to a wheelchair life at that young age just isn’t humorous. Another of the boys asked, “What’s he doing here; he’s too young to be a veteran.” The third chimed in, “It’s simple, dopey; he’s either here to visit someone or else he came to watch our so-called rehabilitation, so he can learn how to do it for himself.” As he had fairly covered the field of conjecture no one else had any comments.
We were just on the verge of rolling to the canteen so that we wouldn’t be overtaken with sympathy for the latest unfortunate creature to enter our miserable world when we overheard the nurse telling him the number of the bed that he was to occupy. That stopped us dead in our tire tracks, and the taste of the hot dogs that they sold in the canteen was not enough to compensate for our nosiness. This called for a wheelchair investigation, for there was something rotten in Denmark right there. The kid was lonely in this strange new world and easy bait for company. I didn’t take any effort to start him speaking about himself or his misfortune.
He started to tell the story that none of us could appreciate. He claimed that he had been a member of the National Guard, and had been on maneuvers when his officer goofed, and ordered aim to advance in the wrong direction. Instead of finding the enemy, he walked into a machine gun bullet. That was more than we could take from the teenager, so we decided to end the farce by checking his story with the charge nurse. She didn’t bother to look at his chart before she answered us. She simply gave us a quizzical stare and said, “What’s the matter with you dopes? Haven’t you ever seen anyone who is seventeen years old before?” It was not the kid who was to blame. The years had passed so rapidly that we never took time out to find out what the new generation looked like around the age when we were wounded.
The new generation was coming up all right, and it was sending us more recruits than the hospital could dare to care for. Being new to the club may make for a paraplegic still having a good deal of his strength if he hasn’t been put into his chair by enemy action, but it doesn’t exempt him from coming down with the worst of our complaints. A retread who had survived the second war and volunteered for Korea soon found himself terribly regretting his decision. He came down with a urological infection, and within two days was critically ill.
Kingsbridge being the poorly constructed affair that it was in those days presented the doctors with the terribly complex problem of ministering properly to the patients’ needs in an unhospital-like domiciliary ward without having him transferred to another ward where silence was the law while its personnel were not too familiar with paraplegia or its problems. What our ex-GI needed was a private room, and we didn’t have a single one on the ward.
Our wing of the building was supposed to have been constructed not too many years ago by accredited hospital architects, but somewhere in the maze of federal bureaucracy and red tape somebody zigged when he should have zagged; no provision was made for including a private room in our section. The nurses presented the problem to the doctors who replied that they had been worrying about such an occurrence many years before this latest illness. I don’t think that the nurses swallowed that story, for there was always the question; if you were thinking about it then why didn’t you do something about it. There was no longer time to argue, or send in work orders for a new construction. The doctors moved lock, stock, and barrel out of their office, and that became our very sick boy’s temporary sick room.
While this quadriplegic was lying in that office at the east end of the ward desperately fighting for his life with a Levine tube going down his nose and a transfusion roaring into his arm another quadriplegic was at the west end enjoying himself, and building up a delusion of grandeur by trying to play the big political boss in the small political game that went into making up the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association. He didn’t pass out any cigars, for the simple reason that he couldn’t afford to on his small pension, but his burning ambition kept him on the go trying to sway our minds to his way of thinking. He was out to dethrone the leadership of the organization at that time; one resorted to a combination of rhetoric and white lies in an attempt to achieve his end.
Taking a lesson from the book of professionals he brought in healthy friends from the outside whose job it was to push the Stryker frames and quadriplegics down to the recreation hall where the voting was to take place. He was determined to prove to the rest of us that he was as good as any ward boss. The politicking worked, and he returned that night from the meeting flushed with victory. There’s a paradox to this story, for though he was able to politic himself into what he believed was to be what he wanted most dearly a few years later he committed suicide. He didn’t know it at first, but he lacked the most important ability of all. He had the knack to politic for his own personal happiness, and he had the nerve to want to be our leader.
He took his illusion of grandeur very ignobly to the grave with him, but we who chose to remain here on earth were forced to continue to come back to the mysterious miracle called life when in rolled my old bunk mate from the army days at Halloran, and I thought that I was seeing another and very real sort of miracle. Five years before when I was down in Tennessee and still in a tolerant enough mood to let Doctor Hughes and his underlings practice medicine on me I received a letter from my brother-in-law’s sister in which she stated that my fellow columnist from “The Glue Factory” which we published at Halloran was dead. She hadn’t bothered to include in her letter any of the details. She only went on to say how she had met one of the boys from Halloran by accident, and he had told her of Charlie’s death. After having read the letter and having no reason to question it or doubt what she said I tucked the story into the back of my memory, and let it go at that.
There at the far end of the hall but very plainly to view was Charlie Kreuse real and very much alive. I said to myself that it was an error, and only a case of remarkable coincidence when I noticed an inimitable trademark, which could only be Charlie’s. His left foot was bared, and his big toe was jutting into the air for all to see. If that weren’t enough to convince me I heard Doctor Weiss call out to an elderly woman who was standing by his office, “Mrs. Kreuse, won’t you please come in?” Again the old truth proved itself. The three fastest means of communication are telephone, telegraph, and tell a woman. I suppose it’s not fair to blame that girl, for common sense and reason dictate that the creator of that rumor had to be one of the paraplegics from Halloran. I tried to tell Charlie that he was dead, but the poor dope wouldn’t believe me.
For a while there after seeing Charlie’s strange reappearance I was treated with a new conversation piece whenever I met one of the old-timers from Halloran. Instead of telling each other the latest news about a death in the old gang I was able to report a victory for our side; a pseudo reincarnation. With Charlie’s coming back to life we may have given death a temporary setback, but we still had to contend with one of death’s strongest allies; the morale destroyer. Living under the dull and ever so repetitious hospital life the way we did put our morale in a delicately balanced position, and it didn’t take but a little push in the wrong direction to trigger it down the hill into a state of melancholy.
It was no news to us that the war was a long time over, for we could see it in our everyday experiences, and in the conversations with the people to whom we spoke. We knew that Christmas that year wasn’t going to be too much, and so we braced ourselves for another disappointing Yuletide season, but we didn’t expect anyone to rub it in. The rub came when one of the volunteer organizations passed out as Christmas gifts beautifully holiday wrapped surplus army gloves. It was the same old vexing problem all over again. We still hadn’t been able to penetrate the heads of the healthy, and convince them that we had the ability to think plus emotions the same as everyone else.
I could afford to let the glove incident annoy me, but by no means or stretch of the imagination could I permit it to upset me. Many years before a female paraplegic by the name of Betsy Barton wrote a book entitled, “Oh, To Live Again”, but before I could join her feelings or worry about olive drab gloves I had to first concentrate on my story which was, “Oh, To Swallow Again”. The doctors must have been busily reading my mind, for without giving a word of notice an appointment was made for me with a doctor whom I had never heard of before. When I asked the ward physicians for the reasoning behind my forthcoming appointment I was told that Doctor Flood was a very highly rated gastro-intestinal man from Presbyterian Hospital. This didn’t make too much horse sense to me, for anyone can tell you that the esophagus is not the stomach or the intestine, but hadn’t I already had a chest man, and a throat man, so why not try and have a stomach expert take his chance to learn?
I kept my appointment with Doctor Flood, which consisted of a question and answer session dealing with my case history followed by the passing of a rubber pipe as far as it would go without passing through the strictured area. An appointment was then made for me to meet him at Vanderbilt clinic in Presbyterian Hospital for a dilation. With the aid of one of Uncle Sam’s slightly used vehicles and a sloppy chauffeur I found myself being driven to a type of hospital which I had forgotten existed. It was a clinic where poor people pay a token fee for excellent professional services. It was an eerie feeling to sit there, and watch as my chauffeur lined up at the cashier’s window to have my card stamped, so Presbyterian Hospital could bill the government for two dollars and fifty cents.
After the necessary preliminaries I found myself in the clinic treatment room with Doctor Flood. He started by placing the same rubber pipe down my esophagus as he had at the Bronx, so I thought that I was in for further examinations when he yanked the pipe out, and I found remaining where the pipe had been a long thin steel wire. I didn’t feel too much discomfort, and being hardened to gagging I said nothing. As best as I could see he then slipped a thin steel pipe over the wire, and then catching me off guard slid it right past the strictured area of my esophagus into my stomach.
The unexpected pain caused by my being unaware that he was going to dilate me made me shudder, and I let out an agonizing moan. Though he then immediately pulled out the wire and pipe combination leaving me completely free. The impact of that sudden agony knocked me off balance psychologically, and as I yelled, “Good-bye, Doctor,” I made a dash for the elevators. After our return to the Bronx I said nothing about what had occurred to anyone, but secretly promised myself that there were to be no more of those damned miserable visits to Presbyterian Hospital any more.
As I was sitting in the corridor brooding to myself over letting the doctor put that dilator down my esophagus the ward physician came up to me with his hat and coat on and said, “You’re wanted in the Chief of Medicine’s office.” I looked at my watch and replied, “You’re certain there is no mistake? It’s a quarter to five.” He then added, “He called me to send you up right now.” I was a little leery about expecting to arrive at that government doctor’s office so close to quitting time and still find him in, but having nothing better to do I complied.
The Chief of Medicine was alone and preparing to leave as I rolled into his office. He put his hat and coat down and said, “Come here I want some words with you.” It sounded as if I was in for a friendly scolding, but I was mystified as to the reason why for I had never met this man in my life. He sat down, I braced myself, and he began. “I just received a phone call from Doctor Flood, and he seems to be under the impression that you have no intention of ever going back. I retorted, “Doctor Flood must be a very smart man; I don’t intend to.” He interrupted, “You’re damn right; he is a smart man. He’s also a member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and to top it off he’s a professor of gastrointestinal medicine at Columbia University. In plain language he knows his business. He’s also all upset about your leaving the way you did, and being deeply humane he wants you to come back to his clinic.” I told him that I would only go back if they medicated me, so the rest of the treatments wouldn’t hurt as the first one did. He agreed to speak to Doctor Flood, and all future treatments were taken without incident.
With the question of my dilations appearing to be at least temporarily settled I found myself enjoying a truce with my ward doctors. Taking advantage of this cessation of hostilities I would many a time roll into their office without their consent as if it were a natural phenomenon. I’ve done this quite frequently only to find them out or too busy with their paper work to shoot the medicinal bull with me. I’ve always enjoyed these tete-a-tetes with my ward physicians, for it was sort of a game; not so much to educate myself to their black magic, but to enjoy hearing the doctors vehemently contradict one another.
It wasn’t many days later that I rolled into the office only to find that there was no one there, but the last one in the room had left an open medical journal lying on the desk. That was when the fun began. Picking up the book and looking inside made me hesitate as to whether or not I had read the cover correctly. Doctor is such a dignified sounding title, but inside that journal the hucksters’ handiwork could readily be seen. Each company was trying to outdo the other in attempts to sell your doctor on the idea of experimenting or using, as they call it, its new drugs on you.
The whole story is either a regular circus or a rat race, which instead of using nude females or some other form of cheesecake as a come-on employs skinless females. (No relationship to skinless sardines or frankfurters of the same name; I think.) The question that always bothered me after having made one of those snooping tours was, “Did I choose a good doctor, or was I fortunate enough to select a member of the profession who was a lucky ad reader? One of the fellows suggested that the doctors selected our medicines by first standing an open book on its edge on top of a desk and against the wall. Then by throwing darts at the ads the final prescription choice was made.
It was fun to toy with those medical giants and their clannish catalogs, but we always received a greater thrill from building than destroying leaving me no alternative but to go elsewhere for my source of amusement. The fellows at Kingsbridge always prided themselves in being indifferent if not downright snobbish toward the recreation department’s pleas that they build wheelchair and litter floats to enter in the annual Labor Day Carnival. I also tried to remain aloof to the campaign to get out the floats, but I found myself giving in to the baiting of the seventeen year old that I supply him with an idea for an entry.
His Dad may have been an engineer, but he didn’t inherit any of his characteristics leaving me to wind up with the actual work needed to place his entry into the field. He may have been old enough to find his way into the National Guard and have himself collect a bullet in his spine, but when he returned from the Carnival parade still dressed as Casey Jones on his litter, which we had decorated to resemble a train engine, he acted like a little child when he waved his five dollar second prize money for all to see. Aside from being the newest member of our paralyzed family he was also the youngest, and that brought the motherly instinct out in all our nurses. There were those who disagreed with the theory, which claimed that the nation was no longer on the gold standard, for that five-dollar bill brought out the gold digging lust in those females.
While the girls were busily chasing our Diamond Jim Junior for his loot the guard who had greeted me at the gate the night that I arrived was hotly in pursuit of a smuggler in a wheelchair who had committed the unpardonable sin of sneaking a bottle of the precious spirits past him at the gate in a taxi. This wasn’t the first time that one of our wheelchair culprits attempted such a crime, but the guard was also looking for plaudits that would land him the chief guard’s position at the newly opened Veteran’s Hospital in Manhattan. Even a blindfolded detective could trace a bottle of whiskey that was being sneaked in in a wheel chair, and so by following his big nose the aroma led him directly to my room where he was all set to make the proverbial federal case out of it.
The patient in question over the years had accumulated enough dishonors to merit him a firing squad, and so the rest of the gang rallied to his defense. The argument that was favored by the majority of us was that ours was a full time occupation, and that we didn’t take weekends off to go home the way the ambulatory patients on the other wards did. The guard was all set to become a second Simon Legree when we threw in a plea asking him how he could be so heartless as to put the patient in a position where the lousy doctors would throw him out into the street. The guard soon gave in to the moans and groans of the hoi polloi, but not before he extracted a promise from the villain not to do it again. His promotion fortunately came through shortly after that, and it was a good thing, for he missed catching our boy breaking his sacred vow by only a few days.