Dinner brought me back to the world of the living, as it
always does, and then we settled in to watch Netflix. Sometime around nine PM,
the phone rang: it was my internist. And the concern jumped over the telephone
wires.
“Marc, you have to go, first thing in the morning, to the
lab, pick up your MRI results, and go directly to Centro Médico.”
Centro Médico is famous on the island: it’s the teaching
hospital for the University of Puerto Rico. The great thing about it is that
the doctors there are often the finest in their field. The worst thing about
it? It can take days or seemingly weeks to see those excellent doctors.
I was an innocent, the first time I had dealt with Centro
Médico. I had called a friend, Clark, early in the evening, and was startled
when he answered: he was howling with pain.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I just fell,” he told me, “running to get the phone…”
“We’ll be right there,” I said, and we drove to his
apartment. Unfortunately, the pain was so severe that he couldn’t get to the
front door to open it or even buzz us in.
It was in the early 90’s, in those quaint days before we had
cell phones, and so I wonder now—how did we know that Clark had called his
landlord? And so it was a wait for him to arrive, a wait for the ambulance to
arrive, and then it was off to one clinic that was in his catchment area. All
well and good—except that the X-ray machine was broken. So then we went to another
facility, had the X-ray taken, and returned to the first facility. There, the
resident took the X-ray, held it up to the light, and told the ambulance driver
to take Clark straight to Centro Médico.
It was then about three or four in the morning: we had seen
the orthopedic surgeon, and Clark was settled and stable. But what was he
doing, lying on a gurney in the hall? Worse, it seemed that lying on gurneys in
the hall was the norm, since there was a hook that the nurse casually hung
Clark’s IV bag on. I had worked in hospitals for about a decade, and had I ever
seen such a thing? No, and I was appalled.
It was very early in the morning—about five—when I left the
hospital: how would I get home? I stumbled around in the dark, looking for a
bus stop, which I never found. I did, however, see the little público as it emerged from the fog and
the night: there was a distinctly Harry Potter feel to the whole thing.
So I clambered onto the público—essentially the first half
of a school bus that had been decommissioned, sold to an enterprising
Dominican, and converted into a little bus. (What had happened to the rest of
the bus, I used to wonder—what is home for the Dominican? Nor have I ever found
out….) Scorned by everybody who has a car, the públicos are hot, noisy, and
always crammed—not to mention unpredictable. I virtually jumped in front of it,
so desperate was I to escape Centro Médico. But I went back later in the day,
to check on Clark.
He was in the same place.
And he was wet, since he had held his urine as long as he
could, until he could no longer.
I was horrified: Clark was in his fifties, hardly
incontinent, and where were the nurses? All he needed was a urinal…..
“They told me I had to provide my own urinal,” Clark told
me. “And since I don’t have any money on me….”
I inquired further—had he eaten? Had he seen any other
doctors? What about pain meds: he had a broken hip, and must have been
suffering.
In fact, nothing had been done: he was simply lying in the
hall, in his own waste, and nobody had paid any attention to him. Intuitively,
I did the right thing.
“I’d like to speak to the nurse caring for Clark. I’d like
to speak to the charge nurse, the nursing supervisor, the ER resident, the
orthopedic resident, and the orthopedic attending—in no particular order. Oh,
and I’d like to speak to the hospital attorney….”
Who was I talking to? I have no idea, to this day. But
beyond proving that I knew hospital hierarchy, I was also speaking English,
since I knew little Spanish at the time. Did that make a difference? Probably.
I had asked, as well, for a basin of warm water, soap, and a
washcloth. I got instead wet—though warm—paper towels. So we were doing the
best we could, when some white-coated person approached us, and told us we were
ready to go.
“OK!” said Clark, who had been told there was no room on the
orthopedics ward—nor did they expect there to be for several days. So where
were we going, I asked.
“To your room.”
Since that experience, I have learned: every Puerto Rican
has a Centro Médico story, and none of them are good. Nor was there any reason
to believe that things were better: Montalvo, our adopted son, had six months
ago been engaged in trying to make a wine bottle into a flower vase for his
mother, in honor of her birthday. Instead, what had he done? Cut himself badly
on his right thumb, severing the tendon. And so I had gone first to one
hospital, and then to Centro Médico—and it was clear that nothing had changed.
Lady had called me earlier in the day, and very nicely
chewed me out. Why didn’t she know that I had needed to go to the doctor? Why did
she only find out when Lord (her brother, since if she is Lady, what else could
he be but Lord?) dropped a remark casually? Dammit, Marc—keep me in the loop!
And so I called Lady, and asked her to find someone to take
me to the lab and Centro Médico in the morning. We settled on ten AM—still
early enough, but late enough for Mr. Fernández to sleep.
One of us, at least, should get some rest…..
