4/4/97

The Emergency

He learned one thing that day: If you know what's good for you, avoid hospitals.

    "Ow."
    "Shaddap, will ya? I'm reading."
    "Ow. Dammit, ow."
    She put down her book and glared at him. He wasn't breathing. "So get an aspirin," she snarled. Then she picked up her book, slammed it down, glared at him again, but fiercer. "Well thanks a lot, I've lost my place."
    Fighting for life, he forced some air into his lungs, choked on it, gurgled and then vomited. His legs gave way and he fell to the floor on his face, raking his ear. He lay there, writhing, gasping, sweating and shivering, white as death. The hyperventilating stopped only when his left hamstring became seized with a vicious cramp.
    She whammed her book shut. "Ya couldn't wait til I finished the chapter? The prince was just about to rescue her, all very romantic-like. Hell, I should be sniveling right now, not you." 
    "Help."
    She had an idea. "Maybe you should go to the hospital."
    The thought cured him. "No. No hospital. I'm fine. Don't make me go there. No, I'm alright, really," he said, forcing a smile. Then he passed out.
    The smell of vanilla air freshener in the taxi revived him. Moolie the driver had apparently been conversing with him for a few blocks already. "So when our doctor came Yankele was looking just like you look now. Then the doc pulled out this huge needle and rammed it into his tusik. Knocked him out like that. Turns out he had gas. Can you believe it?"
    Moolie steered into the wrong lane to cheat the bottleneck ahead of him. "So now there's going to be peace with the Arabs but so what, it won't solve anything, we're still going to have traffic jams and bad roads and manyak drivers. I'd like to see Rabin stand on the White House lawn and shake hands with the transport minister, that would really be something. I tell you, we just can't trust --"
    "Don't take me to the hospital," he whispered from the back seat. "Please, have pity on me."
    "You're afraid? A big guy like you?"
    "No, I'm not afraid. I can take the pain. I can take dying, even. I just can't face the cure. I can't face the hospital. That's no place to be unless you're in perfect health or in a coma." And then he said "Ow!" And the driver stepped on the gas.

"NAME?"
    He told her.
    "So what's your problem?"
    He told her.
    "I.D. number?"
    He tried to tell her. "Four three nine -- no; three nine four... Uh, nine --." He wasn't breathing again, and he spewed up a small amount of yellow bile on the Admissions clerk's typewriter.
    "Go home, get your I.D. and then come back. Next?"
    "But --"
    "Look, that's the rule here. You don't got a number, you don't get in."
    Doubled over in agony, he shouted: "Four three nine six eight eight four stroke six!"
    She completed the form and gave him four copies plus a set of stickers with his name and made-up I.D. number on it. "Now listen," she said through a mouthful of sardine sandwich. "Take the first copy to the third office around the corner on the left, the second copy and one sticker to the first station down the corridor on the third floor and two stickers and the third and fourth copies to the head nurse's assistant's replacement in room four-two-three two flights down in the west wing. Then wait."
    He began to feel a lot worse.
    A kindly doctor found him curled up on the second-floor stairwell, and dragged him to a nearby ward where a huge needle was administered to his tusik. When he was able to stand up straight again, he continued on to the first station on the third floor corridor. Which was closed. A janitor patiently explained in Amharic that the station was being redecorated and had been moved temporarily to behind gastroenterology. 
    When everybody in the medical business had received a copy of his form and a sticker, he headed back to the emergency ward but got lost and found himself on the roof.
     He located Emergency by following the sound of many people groaning in pain. He took his place among them. Every seat was taken. About a dozen people were moaning from a standing position and another seven or eight were doubled over in the hallway. Two were in a fetal position, one of them not groaning at all.
    Michal was a pretty nurse who did not seem to mind the misery about her. She went from one to the other pushing needles into everybody and drawing out blood. She was like a vampire in a pine tree.
    Michal could tell he was new in the ward because there wasn't a cotton swab in the crook of his arm. She jabbed him. The needle scraped bone. It hurt like hell. "Oops," she said. "I'll try again."
    Then she gave him a plastic cup and said: "Fill this."
    But he didn't feel nauseous anymore and told her so.
    She laughed at him. "Pee-pee," she explained, pointing the needle at his appropriate appendage.
    He blanched. "But I just made."
    Then a doctor entered the area and everybody groaned louder. Doctor Aparatchikov said to Nurse Michal, "Well, what have you got for me?"
    She rattled off the cases. "That one's got a herring bone stuck in his throat. That guy was hit by a blue Mitsubishi, got his foot squashed. She was punched in the mouth, he's got a tooth stuck in his knuckle, the girl in the pink lost her voice, the fat fellow's been scalped, God knows how, the kid in the corner has a chick pea in his ear, this married couple attacked each other with super glue, there's a couple of broken legs, a priapism, three with palpitations and this fellow appears to be giving birth. Oh yeah, and I have a headache."

THE DOCTOR rammed a finger up under his rib cage and said: "Does this hurt?" (Try that on a perfectly healthy person and see if it doesn't hurt.) "I'll want an x-ray," said the doc. "And an IVP."
    Nurse Michal unsheathed another needle and made another hole in his arm. Then she pulled out his vein and attached a plastic cap to it. "First make pee-pee. Then go back to Admissions. They have to sign for the x-ray."  
    He didn't know if he could urinate for quite some time still, but he was willing to wait it out in the bathroom. He'd be safe in there.
    Presently he was able to give the pretty nurse what she really wanted. He carried the wonky cup back to her, embarrassed that anyone else should see what it was. She took the cup. It was empty. "Oh my," she said. "Look. There's a little hole in it." She gave him another cup to fill, and a man with a mop was summoned.
    At the X-ray Department he met up with several groaning people he'd seen in Emergency. They nodded at each other. "Who's last in line?" he asked. A makeshift tribunal was formed that concluded it was the bald man with the purple toe. "Soccer," the man explained. "Scored in my own net so I kicked the goalkeeper."
    The x-ray technician was very friendly. "Pull down you pants," she said. "On your side. Push your leg up. Twist your right shoulder. More. Lift your left buttock. Curl your toes. Tuck your lung under your liver. Don't move until I tell you. Good. Now, don't breathe... breathe. Don't breathe... breath. Don't breathe...." The phone rang. It was for the x-ray technician.
    "Hi, what's new?"
    "Nothing. How's by you?"
    "OK. What's doing?"
    "Not much. How's everything?"
    "So-so. What's up?"
    "The usual. Busy?"
    "Like always. Everything OK?"
    "You know. And you?"
    "The same."
    Then she remembered. "... breathe."

HE HELD his breath once more while she inspected the x-rays. "Good," she said.
    "Great!" he said. "Now where do I go?"
    "Sit. You have to wait again. For your IVP. The nurse has to prepare the formula."
    The formula was a sort of molten lead they injected in him that made him feel like he was going to spew boiled blood. It was the first time in his life he ever felt his aorta sweat.
    For all the time he spent in hospital, for all the misery, the agony, the waiting, the stickers, it was all worthwhile for that one magical moment of revelation when he delivered the x-rays to the doctor, and the doctor studied them and spoke that most reassuring of palindromes: "Aha."
    What savagery was happening inside his wracked body to wreak such havoc? What monstrous deadliness could it be? How long did he have? What exotic name did Medical Science bestow on such a sufferance?
        "A stone," said the doctor. "In your kidney. About the size of an ant egg. Not more than a speck of dust, really."
    And that was it.
    Or was it?
    "The doctor will write you a letter. Then go to Admissions and wait in line to release yourself. Tomorrow, go to your doctor and give him the letter and get a note to give to Kupat Holim to pay for this treatment which you return to the hospital with the bill you will get, and take this prescription and go to the pharmacy and get the medicine, then go back to your doctor to get the same prescription and go back to the pharmacy to get a refund. Your doctor will send you back to the hospital to get the x-rays. Go to the X-ray Archives on the third floor west wing and get a note to give to the X-ray Cashier on the fifth floor northeast wing and give them money, then take the receipt and go back to the Archives and get the x-rays which you take back to the doctor so he can agree with our doctor that what you have is what he said you have, then bring the x-rays back to the hospital and go the Archives and get a receipt which you take to the Cashier to get your money back and drink a lot of water and then in two weeks come back for more x-rays so we can see if you have to come back to register for further treatment and go through the entire procedure all over again."