Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1987. január-június (41. évfolyam, 1-25. szám)
1987-01-08 / 1. szám
Thursday, Jan. 8. 1987. AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ 11. JÓCSÁK AND SON My elbow bent and the cadaver slid off the stretcher. It sailed through the air, landing in the courtyard below, with the sheet torn off and the body on its back. The whores sunning themselves on a nearby deck had a picnic shouting racy phrases. My west side of Dayton neighborhood was rough and I knew all the raunchy language there. Those unfortunate ladies of the street in Houston introduced me to some new, choice language that would embarrass sailors. When no nurses were available, I was drafted for work that only a registered nurse should do. Having a seventeen-year- old boy, virtually untrained, do instrument count in serious operations, partly describes the poverty of that hospital. "If this keeps up, I'm going to work as a midwife when we get home," I told Vic, after assisting at many births. Twice I prevented a merchant seaman, hooked on drugs, from committing suicide. Missing him from bed, I searched the wards and finally saw him on the fourth floor fire escape, one leg over the rail and ready to jump. I grabbed him and was pushed off. I knelt down and put an armlock around his thigh and an iron railing. He couldn't move and I screamed for help, which came quickly. Under heavy sedation he seemed all right when we talked the next day. A week later he was missing again. This time I found him in a bathroom where he had cut his wrists and was sitting in a tub full of warm water waiting to bleed to death. He was from Cleveland, Ohio, and had a horrible personal situation, with nor further desire to live. For weeks I spent hours talking with him about Ohio, the Depression, golf, the sea and travels. When he checked out, he told me he would never again try to solve his problems by suicide and thanked me for helping him. This helped make up for the long hours and one dollar a week pay. One day off work, I was shaving in the men's room near the office when the doctor walked in. The mirror on the wall was long gone and there I was shaving blind with a sharp German straight razor. "Do you always shave without a mirror?” the doctor asked. "Only when I don't have one," I replied. "But why a straight razor?" he asked, moving to look at it more closely. "My father owned a barber shop and a number of barbers left without paying rent, leaving tools behind. This German blade was one of the best." "I have seen you around the hospital, but what exactly is your job?" "It's supposed to be an orderly, which I do part of the time. Other times I do anything and everything except surgery. If I stay here long enough, they'll ask me to do that." The doctor laughed and said, "Talent like yours should not be wasted. Effective immediately, you will be doing operation prep. And bring your own instrument." This turned out to be mainly shaving older ladies, mostly whores, scheduled for surgery the next morning. With my steady hand and fine straight razor I never nicked one. If they had a sense of humor it was also fun and sometimes our jokes cracked up a whole room. I would tease about cutting a new part of their anatomy* with suggestions from nearby patients that should not be printed. I always made a point to check with my prep patients after their surgery, and made many friends 1 as a result. It was pleasant and rewarding to be helpful to so many people. They appreciated it greatly. Being terribly short of staff, we literally ran through the wards. It was as if Ring Lardner, Jr. had written M.A.S.H. in a South Houston hospital during the Depression, the difference being that M.A.S.H. had better equipment and facilities and a lot more staff. I must confess to two mistakes. A Mexi- can-American older man was in a hall bed, in poor condition with cancer. When I was on duty one night, Mr. Gonzalez kept buzzing and asking for the "doc". We were under strict instructions never to get the doctor at his house next door except for the most serious emergency. Each time I went to Gonzalez' bedside, he begged for the "doc". Knowing he was very ill, I went next door and got the doctor up about two o'clock in the morning. I waited for him to put on a robe and walked back with him. "Tell me John, what is the emergency and what is the difference in Gonzalez' condition tonight?" asked the doctor. "If I could diagnose his problem I'd be making more than one dollar a week. I just know he's never called for help so much before and when he started screaming I knew it was an emergency that needed your help." There was another emergency light on, so I did not see the doctor take care of Gonzalez. We met later at the nurses' station, where he gave me a stern lecture on the need to listen carefully to a patient's needs. Gonzalez did not want the "doc". He wanted the "duck" - a common term for the men's portable urinal. "He must have been desperate," I said. Another time I made my weekly trek to Houston, and donated my one dollar weekly pay to the poker game. When I got back to the hospital after midnight, there was no going to sleep in that Texas heat. I went up to my ward to talk to the orderly on duty and try to be helpful for a while. One patient buzzed, complaining that the man next to him was making horrible noises and keeping him from sleep. "I'll check it, you all need to be sleeping." The noisy patient was in poor condition, but I did not know why he was propped high on pillows. To help the complaining patient, I removed two of the pillows of the very sick man. In the morning, a nurse told me that taking away the two pillows flooded the man's lungs and killed him. I rushed to the office to confess the murder to the doctor, so it wouldn't seem like ducking out. . "Because Of my snap judgment with such a terrible result, I offer to resign immediately." "The patient was extremely ill and could hardly have lived more than a few hours longer. At worst, John, your action only hastened his inevitable death by a short time." At first this did not ease my guilt or wish to give up hospital work. However, he explained it again at great lenght, adding four examples where he knew I had saved lives. He paid me the tribute of being the hardest-working person on the floors and When I was an organizer for the U.E. urged me to stay on and help him in his impossible task. For weeks I saw little of Vic since we were on different shifts. Nothing was ever said about our leaving our hospital jobs, until the surprise news one morning. (Your friend was caught in the diet kitchen with a nurse, screwing night on the table," an orderly told me with a smirk. "They were probably just giving each other a massage," I said. I went to Vic's room to find him packing his meagre belongings. So it was more than a massage. He said he was fired and was taking off to New Orleans for the Mardi Gras, where there had to be plenty of jobs. "Give me a few minutes for some coffee and I'll go resign and catch the Mardi Gras with you." This made him smile. I invited him to join me for coffee so we could discuss our plans. He wasn't shy about using the diet kitchen for a toss in the sack, but hated to face co-workers because of this scandal. In the office the administrator said he was expecting me and wanted to talk about my plans. Ignoring my resignation, he paid me one of the highest tributes I heard in my life. "John, you are the best orderly in the hospital, fast, efficient, always willing to work overtime in emergencies and often doing double shifts. Above all, you care for every patient. I respect your loyalty to a friend. However, John you must think of your own future," he said. I'm really homesick, Doctor, and wondering how my father is getting along. It will soon be a year since I've seen my family." Then I was totally stunned by his next remarks. "John, you are not aware of the fact that you would make a fine doctor," he said slowly in his crisp German accent. I scolded myself afterward for thinking he might be buttering me up to stay because of the woeful shortage of help in his horribly over-crowded hospital. Because he next said, still slowly and deliberately, what I would have never dreamed. r'Go home for a few months, John. See how your father is doing and spend some time visiting your family and friends. Be sure to come back here before July and we will have you entered in pre-medical school at Baylor University." "Impossible!" i said. "I've been claiming a high school education in order to get white collar jobs like this one. Before that VIII.
