“6:30,” I told him, since my phone had told me it was
Montalvo, and he tends to dislike formalities.
“No,” he replied.
A twenty-two year old refusing dinner?
“I’m having surgery! They’re transferring me to Centro Médico right now.”
So I went back home to take a shower, and to inquire if Mr.
Fernández, my fellow parent, wanted to accompany me to Centro Médico. This he
declined to do, citing the urgent necessity of getting a haircut.
Right, so it was only I stuck between the completely
disparate worlds of extended and extreme adolescence and what was, at times,
healthcare in name only.
“I cut my fuckin’ hand opening a goddamn bottle of wine at
10:30 this morning,” explained Montalvo to me via his brother in Spain, who had
called to wish him well.
“And was there a corkscrew in the house?” I asked
There are times I sound just like my father.
Montalvo peered intently at the television, and completely
disregarded me.
There are times he acts just like me.
So there I was with the two of them, since Montalvo’s
roommate Alexis—a somewhat bland gay pre-med student, currently more interested
in marijuana than school—were both sitting / lying around wondering if the
ambulance would show up to take them from one hospital to Centro Médico. Both
stared happily at me….
“Who’s your nurse?”
“How the fuck should I know! Shiiit, they sent so many damn
people in here, I don’t know nothin’ from nobody! Damn.”
He’s in pain, but he also in a teaching moment, so I point
out to him—learning someone’s name and being nice can get you places, such as
Centro Médico in an ambulance.
“That’s their JOB, man!”
Right—so now it’s my job to go find the nurse, identify her
and call her “Ivette,” and learn that the ambulance is en camino, or “on the way.”
“From where, Mayagüez?”
That was Montalvo, and Mayagüez is on the other side of the
island.
So the ambulance arrives, and we go the place I had been
dreading: Emergencia, alias The
Anteroom to Hell. Remember that famous Russian Medicine? Well, we do it worse.
It started with the nurse, who successfully did an intake on
the patient without actually seeing him: The nurse was at his desk, shouting
questions at Montalvo, lying on the stretcher. Then we got the doctor, who
spent even less time, but who did drop the news that nothing could be done
today—Saturday—but perhaps Saturday? Or maybe, Monday—who knows?
“Motherfuhhh—that dude just blew in and dropped that shit on
me and blew out? Fuhhhh!”
“Listen, Montalvo, it’s Saturday afternoon, and in a couple
of hours the gun shot wounds and the stabbings are going to start rolling in,
and do you think anybody wants to have an operating room being filled with a
kid who cut his thumb?”
“Man, I sliced my tendons! You could see ‘em wiggling around
in there, when they cleaned it up!” Actually, everybody could see them, since
Montalvo had taken a video on his cell phone, and was sharing it in person as
well as social-medially.
Right, so we went to “overflow 4,” since there were no
curtained-off areas in the ER available, so that meant that Montalvo was lying
in a cart in the hall. Actually, it wasn’t a bad place to be, since it was a
bit like being in a really bad reality show: A woman was sobbing at the nurse’s
station, the nurses were completely oblivious to anything going around them
though they were vigorously chatting, the doctors were walking through the unit
with unseeing eyes. There was, however, one gentleman interacting with
patients, whom I had noticed while filling in the intake questionnaire with
Montalvo.
“Religion,” I asked him.
He gave me a long look.
“Look, why the hell does that even matter? Dammit—just leave
that question blank! I mean, how is that gonna help heal my thumb?”
So I returned to the “business office,” which featured a
worker as spectacularly indifferent as she was inefficient—though not so
inefficient that she refused to admit Montalvo into the system, since she
didn’t have his insurance information, located on a card located in the pocket
located in the wallet located…
…at Montalvo’s house.
“Well, he can’t be here,” she told me.
“Yes, he can, and where is he going to go? Are you going to
put him out on the curb?”
“I need the insurance card.”
Right, so I call Alexis, who is sounding vaguer than ever
and has sought relief—I begin to suspect—with the help of a substance perfectly
legal in Colorado. But he has the wallet, and would be perfectly happy to bring
it to the hospital, if only Montalvo hadn’t smashed up and wrecked his car,
some three months ago.
“Look, can I just give you the numbers and stuff?” I ask the
lady.
“I have to examine the card myself….”
So we go down a road that ends up in a place called
Compromise, which is that Alexis will photograph the card, front and back, and
send me the photo by text message. Which he does, and which, of course, arrives
as a thumbnail which I have no idea how to magnify or open. So I hand the phone
over to the woman—so young that it was her grandmother who taught her
modern telephony, and she pinches and expands the photo—success!
So I had passed the only interactive person on the Emergency
Unit, and then I had noticed that he had had his thumb on the patient’s
forehead. OK, as I was chatting with Montalvo, I monitored the man’s progress
through the unit—and whatever he was doing, he was doing a lot of it. At last
he was at “Overflow 3.”
“En el nombre del
padre, hijo, y espírito santo…”
Could it be?
Well, he came, announced himself as the chaplain, and then
placed his thumb—anointed with sacred oil!—smack dab on Montalvo’ forehead, and
started to give him, as he had the rest of the Emergency Room…
…Last Rites!
At least, that’s what I presume he did, comprehension being
difficult, since his mouth hosted only one tooth.
“Listen, Montalvo, are you good with this?” I asked, in Half
Rite. Montalvo, however, believes in good energy, however toothlessly
delivered, so he closed his eyes and nodded.
So then it was time to get some food into Montalvo, since
yes—there is a cafeteria, and presumably even a meal coming on a tray, but the
reviews coming from Nico, Lady’s husband
and visitant after her operation in the same hospital two months ago, were
hardly stellar.
“The cafeteria is down this long, dark corridor in the
basement. It’s on the left, on the right is the morgue…”
“I won’t be eating that,” said Montalvo, who anyway is a
vegetarian. But fortunately, the problem is instantly solved, since there is
also a food court, and absolutely all of the health care personnel—since it had
now turned five—were carrying little sacks of Burger King and KFC and
super-sized drinks, some of which were in super-sized containers, some of which
had settled onto the thighs and bellies of their occupants. Oh, and did I
mention that virtually all of them were smoking cigarettes as they made their
way to the fast food?
Well, he got lucky, my son, and was transferred to a room in
the middle of the night. Then the pain got bad, so he got on his call light,
and guess what?
“Those bitches were takin’ care of the guy in the next room
all night, and did they ever take care of me?”
So his solution?
“I started makin’ these crazy-ass noises…”
He produced something like an Indian war whoop produced by
an amplified Canada Goose, and did that attract attention? Certainly, in the
form of Security.
“So the security guard says I can’t be makin’ all this
noise, and I’m goin’ well, what else am I gonna do it they don’t bring me my
pills! So he says I can’t make noise, and I tell him to get some pills, ‘cause
the pain is really intense, and that’s when the doctor arrives and tells
me the surgery is today, and tells the nurse to get the pills.”
Well, he had his surgery in one corner of the operating
room, since the other corner was with a guy who had been in a bar the night
before and had been hit in the right eye by a ricocheting bullet.
“So the doctor is telling him, ‘I gotta remove your eye,’
and the guy just loses it and starting wailin’ and all…”
So I’m glad it worked out, though I was well-prepared for
any outcome, since what was being advertised on those many signs peppering the
campus of Centro Médico?
Cremations--$550!
