The View from the Vue (27 page)

A trifle less subtle than the Crow was a visitor to B-3, the primary habitat of the L.O.J.L.’s. One evening I was sitting in the doctors’ dining room when I heard a stat page for me come over the loudspeaker. The word stat is an abbreviation of the Latin
statim
, meaning “at once.” Thus it signifies an emergency, and when you get a stat page, you don’t bother to answer it by phone—you just get your ass to your ward posthaste. You may have to resuscitate a patient, or contend with a similar catastrophe.

Swallowing a mouthful of spaghetti, I took the three flights of stairs two steps at a time and charged down the corridor. Even before I turned the corner, I could hear a fearsome commotion. It sounded as though there was a riot on my ward.

Arriving at the entry to B-3, I found that to be literally the case. The place was in an unparalleled (even for The Vue) turmoil. At first glance, it looked as though every lady on the ward who was not totally bedridden was on her feet in the middle of the room—hitting, clawing, biting, and screeching at an old man who was ineffectually trying to defend himself. As one of the ladies spat directly into his face, another let loose a bone-shatterer of a kick directly to the shin. The old man unleashed a blood-curdling howl and began to sink slowly into the west.

“What the hell’s happening here?” I hollered. Remembering Mr. Harris’ prostitute, I wondered whether this was a dirty old man who had tried a similar practice in reverse. So to speak.

Both the nurse and the aide shrugged. They had seen the man come onto the ward, but had just assumed he was somebody’s visitor. He had, however, proceeded directly to the center of the ward, from which point he had announced that the Jews were a race accursed, one inevitably doomed to spend all eternity in a warm, humid, sulfurous locale other than New York City. Therefore, by the power somehow or other vested in him by the Lord Himself, he had come to offer salvation to the Jews via the mechanism of conversion.

It was then that I realized that all the rioting females were L.O.J.L.’s. The gentile patients were still in their beds.

Apparently, at first, the L.O.J.L.’s had been mildly amused by their would-be savior’s offer. However, when no one came forth to take the cure, the man became impatient and began to berate his Semitic audience for their stiff necks and foolhardy pride. At that point, all traces of tolerance vanished, and the nurse and the aide realized that mutiny was in the air.

The preacher man looked around him. In those days, the name cards on the foot of each bed were color-coded according to the religion of the patient. Blue was the Jewish color. The eyes of the Right Hand of the Lord fell on the combination he had been looking for: a blue card and an unconscious lady. He moved with alacrity to Sarah Goldkin’s bedside.

Mrs. Goldkin had been felled by a stroke a few weeks previously. She hadn’t moved since, and furthermore, she would not move again until the sound of Gabriel’s trumpet echoed through the boondocks. The man licked his chops and announced her salvation to the residents of B-3. This set off a buzz of angry muttering, and the nurse moved to get rid of the guy. Before she could, though, he sprinkled Mrs. Goldkin with some water from a container he pulled from his pocket. With that, all hell broke loose.

The majority of the old women on B-3 had emigrated to America as girls or young women in order to escape the anti-Semitic pogroms of eastern Europe. On the Lower East Side of New York, they had found freedom from fear, which all their lives had remained their most precious possession. Now, the sight of this
meshuggener
, this crazy
goy
, trying to separate their helpless sister from her faith, aroused in them all the fear and hostility that had lain latent all these years. In a body, they attacked.

I looked the situation over and decided that if I waited to call the guards, the angry old Jewish ladies might well have their victim dismembered before the militia could arrive. It was obvious that prompt and direct action would be necessary.

I plunged into the action and snaked my way toward the center of the furious
yentes
. As I had hoped, the sight of my white coat and pants cooled them off sufficiently for me to be able to drag the scuffed sidewalk preacher out of their midst and to the front of the ward. As we neared the entry way to the corridor, he scrambled to his feet and wrenched free from my grip. Then he turned to face the crowd of women still standing in the middle of the ward.

All pretense of religiosity had left him, and the pure hatred of the frustrated bigot blazed from his eyes. “Kikes!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “Mockies! Dirty, lousy sheeny bastards! You’ll all go right straight to hell, ‘n’ you kin see if I’ll care. Serve y’all right, too.”

I got hold of the man’s elbow with one hand and his collar with the other, led him to the elevator, put him on, and advised him that it might be better in the future were he to confine his activities to street corners. So much for the Lost Souls of Bellevue.

I thought that was the end of the episode, but I was very wrong. Upon my return to the ward, the entire body of L.O.J.L.’s met me at the doorway. Literally wailing, they were pulling their hair and gnashing their teeth. At first I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what was upsetting them so, but finally, the more-nearly composed of them led me to understand that they were concerned for Mrs. Goldkin’s well-being in the afterlife, should she die a
goy
. It helped not in the least to explain that Mrs. Goldkin hadn’t accepted the unwelcome sacraments, that, in fact, she probably hadn’t even been aware they were being offered her. The only thing that mattered to her wardmates was that, willing or not, she had been baptized. In the end, we had to call a rabbi up to the ward; he conducted the proper decontamination ceremony and the other patients went back to their beds content. A few days later, Mrs. Goldkin went to her rest, secure in the faith of her ancestors.

Undoubtedly the most embarrassing experience I ever had with a Bellevue visitor was the time I played host to Dr. Burleigh-Toft It happened one November night during my stint as a gynecology resident.

About seven o’clock in the evening, as I was sitting in the gynecology examining area, waiting for the inevitable flood of referrals from the Admitting Office, in walked a man dressed in an expensive gray woolen suit. At The Vue, this in itself would have been sufficient to attract attention, but in addition he was wearing a dark bowler hat and sported an impressive waxed mustache. Without the least hesitation, he walked up to the desk, extended his hand in greeting, and said, “Dr. Karp?”

I acknowledged that that was indeed my name.

“Ah, delighted,” said the man, removing his hat and placing it on the desk in front of me. “They told me I’d find you here. My name is Burleigh-Toft—Dr. Charles Burleigh-Toft. I’m a gynecologist from Liverpool, England. I’m touring the States, and am to give a talk to your group tomorrow about the bacteriology of pelvic infections in Great Britain. But since I’ve nothing particular to do this evening, I thought I might drop by and just visit informally a bit. You know, Bellevue Hospital is famous ‘round the world, and I’ve always wished for the opportunity to see it in action, as you might say. Wouldja mind terribly if I were to tag along with you as you do your work?”

Dr. Burleigh-Toft’s voice absolutely dripped London fog. Would I mind if he were to watch me work a bit? I was flattered silly. It was heady stuff for a mere first-year resident to be asked to provide the evening’s entertainment for a visiting fireman. I told the doctor that it would be my pleasure.

Since nothing was happening at the moment, he pulled up a chair and began to ask me questions about the sorts of patients we were accustomed to treating at The Vue. I was in the middle of telling him about the grisliest of our cases of infected abortion when the aide from the A.O. wheeled in a young woman who was arranged in a side saddle position in a wheelchair.

The nurse came from the ward to help, and I introduced Dr. Burleigh-Toft to her. Then she put the patient up for examination. As my British visitor and I walked into the examining cubicle, the reason for the lady’s peculiar posture in the wheelchair became painfully obvious. She was suffering from a Bartholin-duct abscess, a type of boil on the vulva. I whistled.

“I say, that
is
a nahsty one,” said Dr. Burleigh-Toft.

I ordered a sedative for the patient, and then, using every ounce of ham in me, I demonstrated my magnificent technique of incision and drainage. The Englishman watched closely over my left shoulder.

“That should make her more comfortable,” I said.

“Oh, indeed,” said Dr. Burleigh-Toft. “Very nicely done. Very nice.”

The next patient to come in had a pelvic infection. Since this was Dr. Burleigh-Toft’s area of special expertise, I was delighted to have him examine her with me. He performed an extremely long and careful pelvic evaluation, during which he wrinkled and unwrinkled his brow several times. Then he asked me whether I had noticed the thickening at the sides of the uterus.

“No,” I said. “Honestly, I can’t really say I did.”

“Gonorrhea,” said Dr. Burleigh-Toft. “When you feel thickening around the uterus, you know it’s gonorrhea. Other bacteria don’t cause that.”

“I don’t remember seeing that in any of my textbooks,” I blurted out, and immediately wanted to gnaw furrows in my tongue.

Fortunately, my foreign visitor didn’t appear to be insulted. He laughed lightly. “Quite right,” he said. “It’s not in any text. But I’ve noticed it repeatedly over the years, and I’ve really very little doubt that it will one day be accepted as a standard diagnostic sign.”

I gratefully let the matter drop, and we went on to examine the next patient, an older woman with a prolapsed uterus. After that, we helped a patient complete her miscarriage. It turned into a busy night, and Dr. Burleigh-Toft followed me from cubicle to cubicle, watching interestedly, and now and then offering a comment. More than once, I remarked to myself how nice it was to see someone who had been able to maintain such obvious enthusiasm for his work.

About ten o’clock, Dr. Burleigh-Toft glanced at his watch. “As much as I hate to, I think I really must be going,” he said. “But I’ve had a
most
enjoyable evening, and I thank you. And by the way, I shall certainly commend you to your chairman tomorrow.”

That reminded me. “What time is your talk?” I asked him. “I wouldn’t want to miss it.”

He shook his head. “I’m not quite certain,” he said. “Sometime in the morning. I expect they’ll announce it over the ’speaker.” We shook hands, he gave me a hearty slap on the arm, and went out the door.

Morning came and went, but there was no loudspeaker announcement. Nor was there any break in the usual work routine. I began to feel some nasty vibes. At lunch, I casually asked the senior resident at what time Dr. Burleigh-Toft was scheduled to speak.

“Who?” he asked, without much interest.

“Dr. Burleigh-Toft,” I said. “From Liverpool. I thought he was scheduled to give a lecture today on pelvic infections.”

“Never heard of him,” said the senior resident.

“Oh,” I said. “Isn’t he visiting the department?”

“I’ve never heard of any gynecologist named Burleigh-Toft,” said the senior. “And I know there’re no departmental visitors right now. In fact, there haven’t been any for weeks. Where’d you get that idea from?”

“One of the interns mentioned it to me,” I said, and quickly changed the subject to our surgical case of that day. I may have been stupid, but I wasn’t dumb enough to tell the senior resident that I had given the world’s champion Peeping Tom the greatest keyhole he’d ever had.

Traditionally, the stepchild of every hospital in the world, Bellevue included, has been its blood bank. This is the perpetual crisis spot, always hanging on at best by a slender red thread. Then, every so often, some guy will come wheeling into the Emergency Room, shot through the liver or the spleen. Before he finally dies, he’ll receive thirty or forty transfusions, thereby causing the blood bank to suffer a shortage of blood as severe as his own. As a result, everyone starts screaming, a drive is hastily mounted, and the deficit restored before the supply runs totally dry.

At that point, with his blood pressure a few points higher and the lining of his stomach a few microns thinner, the director of the blood bank goes wild and makes pronouncements. He cancels elective surgery for patients without blood donors. Emergency cases who require transfusions are hounded, along with their relatives. Some especially astute hospitals, understanding full well the road to an intern’s heart, recompense each house officer fifty cents or a dollar for every donor he sends to the bank. These few institutions, may I add, rarely have blood bank difficulties. Anemic visitors, yes. But anemic blood banks, no.

However, in most hospitals, it’s all over in a week or so. The blood bank director takes his tranquilizers, the rules get stretched to the point where they finally rupture, and everyone goes back to S.O.P. until the next nightmarish Emergency Room crisis.

The director of the Bellevue Hospital blood bank in the early 1960’s was Dr. Arthur R. Stephenson, a renowned hematologist. He was a tall, spare man with the stooped shoulders that come from thirty years of staring down into microscopes, and a countenance which one would expect on someone with a duodenal ulcer or perhaps bad hemorrhoids. The man appeared to be perpetually in pain. Which he may well have been. The directorship of the Bellevue blood bank was a job I wouldn’t have wished on my worst enemy. Out of sheer pity, we always tried to get Dr. Stephenson and his workers as many donors as we could.

One day, however, the chief resident of obstetrics and gynecology called me up and told me that our blood replacement efforts were not up to snuff.

“What do you mean?” I asked him. “Last month our service got three more donors than we used transfusions. You know we work at it. Why doesn’t the blood bank beat on the surgeons—they were short 156 pints last month?”