Kingdom of the Sick 3

It was clear from the moment I was wheeled into St. Vincent's emergency room that I had entered a new world. There I was, lying on a cot, being fed medicine intravenously, surrounded by numerous other patients, many even sicker than me.

I lay there for hours, alternately terrified and bored, attempting to grasp what was happening. It was suspected I had leukemia, and that seemed to me unbelievably portentous, like I could die at any second. Despite my fears, as the hours passed into late afternoon, I grew increasingly hungry, for I'd eaten nothing that day. Finally, at 5, the kind nurse who had been taking care of me offered to go outside to get me something to eat. Her generosity made me feel infinitely better.

Still, it was an extremely alienating experience. I was cut off from all that was familiar, dressed in one of those horrible hospital gowns that never fit properly, with tubes in my arms that made movement difficult. I was given pills round the clock by frazzled, overworked nurses, some gentle and compassionate, others cold and distant.

I was most disturbed by the behavior of some of the night nurses and nurses' aides. I remembered a story about the late photographer Mark Morrisroe who, suffering from AIDS, was repeatedly hospitalized near the end of his life. One night he was convinced he was going to die and so, infuriated by the brusque behavior of many of those tending him, scrawled on a slip of paper, "The night nurses are killing me." Then he stuffed it up his ass, hoping his nemeses would be blamed if the worst occurred.

I knew just how he felt. There was one aide, "Mrs. Jasper," who particularly offended me. She'd come into my room to take my temperature, change my bedpan or give me pills, invariably greeting me with a clipped, coldly unpleasant, "Mr. Flesh!" I dreaded her shifts.

I had a roommate who was dying and was usually sleeping or drugged. One night he soiled his bed twice. The second time, Mrs. Jasper entered our room and furiously shouted at him, "Mr. Rodriguez!" before pushing him aside with a snarl and churlishly changing his linens. Mr. Rodriguez only groaned.

"You realize," I told her when she came to my bed, "that we're human beings who just happen to be sick." She gazed at me with ill-disguised hostility, saying nothing.

The next day Mr. Rodriguez mentioned that he'd heard what I'd said and was grateful. I felt better, too, knowing that such gestures of defiance were necessary if I were to make it through all the shit coming my way.