The View from the Vue (23 page)

She looked up. “Oh no, I work in the office three doors down.” She began to wail again.

“Well, was he a…er…a…friend of yours?”

“No, no, no, I never met him in my life. But he’s dead, he’s dead. Why the hell are you asking me all these questions, anyway?”

I unpried her from my collar and wondered why the hell I
was
asking her all those questions, anyway. I had heard of people who made a hobby of going to funerals, but I had always assumed that they were little old ladies with tennis sneakers, long black coats, and scraggly gray hair. I still wonder about this particular woman and her display of grief. Did she lead such a lonely, drab life that the opportunity to exhibit an emotion—any emotion at all—was irresistible? Maybe she just took John Donne a bit too seriously. In any event, we dispensed tranquilizers all around and told the women it might be well for them to go home. The hysterical interloper went back to her own office, and the other four women (all of whom had worked for the deceased) ran and hid in the ladies’ room while we carried out the corpse. I’ve never been able to quite figure out why people do that, but they always do. I’ve asked psychiatrists about it, but since they all give me different answers, I don’t think they really know either.

Another time that I was called out to care for a dead man, I ended up at a ritzy midtown restaurant. Here there was much less commotion. It was lunch hour, and the place was packed. The owner met us at the door and quickly and quietly ushered us in. It really was a first-class joint. The music was coming through the speakers at just the right volume so as not to disturb the muffled, genteel conversation.

Right from the beginning, the owner aroused my hostility. He was a thin little guy with a bald head and a monk’s fringe. He wore a tuxedo and a pair of shoes that had a mirror-like shine. As he led me through by the least conspicuous path, he chattered incessantly at me in a stage whisper which he periodically interrupted in order to kowtow to one customer or another. It went like this:

“Oh, Doctor, I am so glad you are here. Yes, so very, very glad. Terrible—Yiz, Mrs. Jackson, so glad to see you again, my dear—terrible, terrible thing, the poor—Why, Mrs. Stanley, I see you’ve ordered the boeuf bourguignon. A very wise choice. Enjoy it, my dear—poor fellow, just keeled right over, and there was nothing—Good afternoon, Mrs. Danbury. Your presence honors my establishment—nothing at all to do, nothing at all. Could faint—Bon appetit, Mrs. Allison, heh heh heh—could just faint, Doctor.”

Could just vomit, Owner, I thought. Fortunately, at this point, we had reached our destination. My little guide had led me to a table in a rear corner of the restaurant. It was sheltered by a screen; he pushed me behind it, and then followed me.

Three men were at the table. They were elderly, and very distinguished looking, all wearing dark suits with vests. Two of them were alive. The third was slumped in his chair, and he was very dead. Even in that condition, his face had a kindly look on it. Suddenly, I got an uncomfortable feeling, one of uncertain recognition. I pulled the man’s wallet out of his pocket and looked inside. I had indeed recognized him. He was one of the older clinical professors at the medical school, at the time semiretired, and held in the highest regard by the faculty and students.

All the while, the owner had been standing behind me, wringing his hands and whispering how terrible, terrible this all was, really. When I straightened up, he took hold of my sleeve and stood up tall on his hind legs, so he could whisper conspiratorially into my ear. “I say, Doctor, I do hope you will be able to take him out the back door.” He pointed out past the kitchen, into a narrow little alleyway, filled with garbage barrels and lined with broken glass and empty wine bottles. “We just can’t have him going through the restaurant, can we? I’m sure you understand.” He punctuated his request with his extra-special, deeply concerned expression.

“Sorry,” I said sharply. “The stretcher won’t fit out that way.”

“But, Doctor, perhaps your attendant could just drag him…”

“Shut up,” I answered, “and get out of the way.”

I suppose I really should have gone out the back door—some of the diners did turn a little pale as we went along. But the good doctor did not leave the restaurant with the garbage, and I thought that was as it should have been.

A call I remember very well took me to one of those apartment houses between First Avenue and the East River, in the seventies. For the information of those who may live west of the Hudson River, that happens to be very expensive territory. The doorman let us in, told us the apartment number, and indicated the elevator to us. His tone and manner let us know what he thought of allowing Bellevue personnel into
his
building. Shithead, I thought, I know where you go when your belly hurts—and it ain’t Harkness Pavilion.

We went up the elevator and down the hall, and then I had my one and only firsthand exposure to the way the really rich live in New York.

We walked through the door, and as we hit the carpet, I jumped. You’ve heard of the kind of rug you sink into up to your knees? Well, when I looked down, I literally could not see my shoes. Besides the entrance foyer, the place had a living room, a formal dining room, a bathroom, and a bedroom. You walked from the entryway down into the living room or up into the bathroom. I still can’t fathom the significance of that. The floor in every room except the bathroom was covered with the same thick, green carpet, and the bathroom had ceramic tile. All the rooms, including the bathroom, were covered with that three-dimensional wallpaper that is supposed to be more expensive per unit weight than platinum. Crystal chandeliers were all over the place. The furniture looked like the stuff in museums that has cards on it and ropes across it to keep people from sitting down. And the bathroom fixtures: the sinks were genuine marble, and I thought the faucet handles were brass. That is, until I saw the little 14K marker engraved on each one.

The owner of this assortment of trinkets and baubles was sprawled across her bed which, by the way, was a super-king-size affair with an ornate brass headpiece, all mounted on a semicircular elevation in the middle of the bedroom. She was as cold as a flounder. She had on an expensive nightgown that made me think of Chantilly and
peau de soie
and words like that. It contrasted weirdly with her false teeth, which were dangling halfway out of her mouth. She must have been in her seventies, Sir Somebody-or-other’s widow. A picture of a young man in a recent-vintage army suit stood on her night table, and right next to the photo was a bottle of nitroglycerin tablets, prescribed by one of the Park Avenue specialists. This time, the pills hadn’t worked.

While I was checking her over, the attendant was slowly going from room to room, taking it all in with a gaping jaw. Like me, he had never before seen a place like this. Finally, he came into the bedroom and let out a low whistle of awe alloyed with respect. “God damn, Doc!” he stage-whispered. “These people sure as hell die in style, don’t they?”

The omega to the aforegoing alpha was my call to a run-down building in the mid-forties where we were met by the palest pair of policemen I’ve ever seen. “The guy on the third floor, looks dead in bed,” one gasped. “Sure don’t envy you.”

“Whatsa matter?” I asked.

“Oh, Doc,” said the other cop, wide-eyed. “I ain’t never smelled nuthin’ like that in my life.”

I smiled condescendingly. Smells had never made me ill, and I assured them I’d be okay. They shook their heads and I galloped up to the third floor.

When I entered the room, I couldn’t believe my senses. I gagged, and then retched. Quickly, I clamped my handkerchief over my nose. The best way I can describe the odor would be to ask you to imagine an airtight room in which a thousand dead armadillos had been left for a year with large numbers of appropriate putrefactive bacteria. There were piles of junk all over the place, and in the far corner was what looked like an eighty-pound Rip Van Winkle lying in a bedspring. I said in, not on, because he was totally entangled in it. As I looked at him, he went, “Oooooeeeeeeeeaaaaahhhhh,” and feebly waved one hand in the air.

I beat it out the door and stood in the hallway, bracing myself against the wall. When I recovered sufficiently to go back downstairs, the cops were very nice. Neither one made a wisecrack, and they both asked me if I was all right. I said I was, and then choked out, “He’s alive.”

The cops turned pale all over again, and one asked whether I were certain. I said I had heard the old man groan and had seen him move.

“Well,” opined the older cop, “you sure as hell can’t work on him there.”

I allowed that I was in total agreement.

Without another word, the officers went down to their car and returned a minute later, each wearing a gas mask. They picked up the old man, bedspring and all, and carted him down the three flights of stairs to the sidewalk. There, we tried to get him out of the bedspring, but we couldn’t. To this day, I have no idea how that poor old man had managed to get himself so entangled in that bedspring. Finally, the cops got a couple of pairs of wire cutters and snipped the prisoner out. We loaded him into the meat wagon, and off we went to The Vue.

The old man died the next day. He had widespread tuberculosis and God knows what else. I called the super in his building to see whether he had a next of kin.

“I dunno,” said the super. “Lived here ‘bout twenny years, an’ never saw nobody with ’im. Fact, ain’t seen ’im at all for the las’ two months. After y’ left today, I went up an’ searched ‘is room—y’ know, I figgered maybe he was one a them ol’ guys with a million or so stashed away—”

“How did you stand the smell?” I asked.

“Din’t notice no smell,” he answered. “Anyways, din’t find nuthin’ but ol’ magazines ‘n’ lotsa junk. So I t’rew it all out.” He paused a moment, and then added brightly, “Say, Doc, y’ know someone wants an apartment I’d appreciate y’ sent ’im over.” Before I could answer, he added, “An’ oh yeah—if y’ do find a relative, wouldja tell ’im the sonovabitch owed me t’ree months rent?”

All the time I was going on ambulance calls, I kept waiting for an obstetrical emergency. By that time of the internship year, I had decided to go into obstetrics, and I was just itching to deliver a baby in an ambulance. During my last week on ambulance runs, the call came. We sped down to the Lower East Side, where a young girl had telephoned that her mother was having strong labor pains.

We arrived to find a Puerto Rican woman who weighed at least three hundred pounds writhing and rolling around on a bed in a one-room apartment. There were six kids clustered around her, and the oldest, who identified herself as Teresa, informed me that there were four more outside somewhere. She also said that her mother’s pains had begun two hours before, and that they had become progressively worse. I sent the kids out into the hallway and examined the woman vaginally; it was apparent that she was not about to deliver. Somewhat disappointed, I told her we’d go to the hospital.

“No, no. No hospeetahl,” she said.

I quickly painted pictures of hemorrhage, infection, seizures, death, and other terrors of unattended deliveries. Between mental and physical coercion, the two attendants and I got her up and ready to go. We called the public health nurse to look after Teresa and the other nine kids, and off we went. We got as far as the hallway when our patient squatted, pushed, and dropped a load of liquid stool on the floor. “Ay, bendito,” she moaned, as she clutched her belly.

Christ, I thought, she must be about to deliver. So I checked her again. Still no sign that the baby was coming.

As we were getting into the ambulance, she clutched her abdomen, doubled over, cried, “Ay Dios mio,” and decorated the street. We hastily pushed her into the ambulance, and I repeated the examination. Still no baby.

I was beginning to get concerned. I felt her abdomen to see if the uterus was showing signs of labor abnormalities, but she was so fat I couldn’t feel the uterus at all. Shortly before we arrived at The Vue, she dropped Act Three in the ambulance. Another pelvic exam was as unrevealing as the others.

We rushed her onto a stretcher and zoomed up to the labor room. I hurriedly repeated my story to the obstetrical resident, and he examined the patient. Then, slowly turning to face me, he said wearily. “She’s just got the shits. Her uterus is normal size; she’s not even pregnant.

I began to splutter. “But…but…her daughter said—”

The resident put his hand on my shoulder. “Listen, you stupid bastard,” he said quietly. “When it comes to pregnant women, I’d have hoped you’d know a little more than a fourteen-year-old kid.”

Where to live was a major problem for most of the Bellevue house officers. The neighborhood around The Vue was in flux, and the choice of accommodations lay pretty much between a new apartment, which was well beyond the means of the average intern, and a rattrap in a building at least as old as Bellevue, which one of the justly renowned New York landlords might permit a young doctor to rent for $150 a month.

Some Bellevuers solved the dilemma by floating loans to be paid back when they entered practice. Others commuted an hour or more from New Jersey or Long Island. To a large number of the house staff, though, the answer was Stuyvesant Town.

Stuyvesant Town was (and still is) an apartment complex bounded by First Avenue, Avenue C, Fourteenth Street, and Twenty-third Street. It was built and maintained by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The apartment units were large, clean, and light. The grounds were well kept, and had real grass and trees. In addition to this, the rentals were ridiculously low, ranging from about $80 to $125 a month.

Considering these facts, Stuyvesant Town was a popular place. New Yorkers by the droves sent applications for apartments, and then literally spent years on a waiting list. When and if they made it, they stayed. I met a man who lived there with his wife and teen-aged daughter; he told me that he figured he finally had it made, since his wife and he would be able to spend the remainder of their days in Stuyvesant Town. The thought made me feel nauseated, but this guy was beaming as befitted one who had been given the keys to his kingdom.