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Three
Sketches, Some Outlines And Additional
Notes
Leonard
Feeney, S. J. Sheed
and Ward, 1939
If
you wish to meet Mrs. Nolan, you must go to the Babson Memorial
Hospital between the hours either of ten and eleven in the morning, or of
three and five in the afternoon. I suggest that you go in the afternoon:
first, because the visiting period is longer, and, second, because Mrs.
Nolan’s windows have a westward exposure, and — supposing it to be a pleasant
day — her room will be filled with sunlight when you enter. For although it
is a delightful experience to meet Mrs. Nolan at any time of day, I am in favor
of your seeing her for the first time when she is at her best, which is
between the hours of three and five, when her bedroom is brightest, when
there are flowers on her medicine table, and when the nurse has just finished
grooming her for afternoon callers. Mrs.
Nolan is a young woman, only twenty-eight years of age, but is afflicted with
spinal trouble. A dozen doctors have examined her but none has been able to
declare just what sort of spinal trouble it is; not even two medical
specialists who were imported from a great distance and remunerated with
extravagant fees for not being sure that Mrs. Nolan is not suffering from Paraplegic
Syringomyelia. Following this examination, which was long and painful,
Mrs. Nolan collapsed, and it was feared for a few hours that she would die;
whereupon her confessor was summoned, and he successfully absolved in Latin
her who had failed to be successfully diagnosed in Greek. But
I am presenting Mrs. Nolan to you altogether too abruptly. Although you are
meeting her now only in your imagination, I insist that you suppose yourself
going through the preliminary annoyance of trying to get to Babson Memorial
Hospital by trolley-car, on a hot summer’s day. First,
I should like to have you stand in Central Subway Station for twenty-five
minutes, waiting for a car marked Upsala Street. Central Subway
Station in mid-July is a perfect oven; and while you are walking up and down
the platform, mopping the sweat-band of your hat, and having plush collisions
with fat persons (who seem always attracted to the most congested areas
during a heat wave), you may amuse yourself by speculating on the correct
pronunciation of Upsala Street. Has it second-syllable emphasis like La
Scala, umbrella, vanilla? One would think so. But no. The trolley starter who
calls out the names of the cars as they swing around the loop into Central
Subway Station, is indignantly in favor of giving “Upsala” a violent stress
on the antepenult. “UPSala!” he shouts, as though he were urging a Japanese
balancing artist to take a jump, or saluting with a hiccup the sacred prophet
of the Mohammedans. When
you board the Upsala Street car, you will be sure not to find a seat. A crowd
of expert rushers, shovers and elbowers will have managed to get all the
vacant places ahead of you. Avail yourself immediately of the leather straps
which are supplied for the support of the standing passengers. I advise you
to get hold of two of these straps, one for each hand, because the journey is
long (three-quarters of an hour), and the day (remember) is hot. You can make
the trip seem less tiresome by looking down with pity on the seated
passengers, rigid, tight, uncomfortable, who may not sway to and fro as you
do on your leather trapeze. Or, if you prefer diversions which are on a level
with your eyes, the Upsala Street car contains some tenderly solicitous
advertisements concerning throat ailments, a splendid lithograph of a tomato,
and an incontrovertible argument in behalf of floating soap. You
get off the Upsala Street car at Harrison Square; and if you cross directly
in front of the car before it starts again, you will be standing beside the
open-air pulpit of a traffic policeman. “Where is Babson Memorial Hospital?”
you will say to him, or words to that effect. He will not answer you. He is a
pointing policeman. He will point up the hill at your right. “Thank you” you
say; and as you proceed to follow the conjectured direction of his index
finger, a motor truck will almost knock you down in mid-street, because you
will have made the mistake of thinking that, having just spoken to a
policeman, you were entitled to cross to the sidewalk before the traffic
lights changed color. The
sullen policeman will quickly become articulate upon his whistle; but there will
be no sense in trying to go back to him again. Instead, some magnificent
profanity on the part of the truck-driver will speed you to the curbstone,
and several of the bystanders will giggle. One of them will kindly retrieve
your straw hat, which has fallen in the gutter; and while you are attempting
to thank him, it will be well to ask again: “Where
is Babson Memorial Hospital?” “Right at the top of the hill” he will answer;
“This is Highland Street — the hospital is right at the top of the hill.” (It
is so nice to have directions repeated twice; and it is so vulgar to point.) You
are now on Highland Street, climbing the hill, very tired and very nervous,
for you have not as yet met Mrs. Nolan, and you have no idea how much she is
going to refresh you after all this weariness. On your way up the hill a
small dog will run up and sniff you and bark gently. Your humiliations thus
far have made your brain so bewildered that you will be tempted to stoop and
pat the dog and ask: “Am I right? Is this really the way to the hospital?” He
is a friendly little animal, and will know how you are suffering, and will
seem to tell you with his tail that you are on the right road at last. Babson
Memorial Hospital is a non-sectarian institution, excellently constructed,
clean, airy, efficient — defective only in the quality of its architecture.
Mr. Babson, when he lived, was one of those vague, though not unlovable,
Christians called philanthropists, who believe that suffering is very bad for
people and leave money in their wills in order to have it exterminated. All
diseases, Mr. Babson maintained, could be done away with if folks would only
take themselves in hand, cooperate with the hygienists, get enough fresh air.
The idea of some form of sickness being inevitable to human nature he scouted
most vigorously. He himself had lived to the ripe age of seventy-nine without
an ill or an ache. Why couldn’t everyone? And as for appendicitis, that
mainstay of hospitals, and in its heyday when Mr. Babson died, he had dreams
of a time when science might grow babies who had no appendices, just as
Burbank had grown oranges which had no seeds. It might even have been a fond
hope of his that one of the first sans-appendix infants might see the light
of day in one of the B.M.H. delivery rooms, and be promptly opened,
inspected, affidavited, and reported by telegraph to the American Medical
Association. Mr.
Babson was a kindly man, but there was no nonsense about him. He had a horror
of incurables. He wanted people who insisted on getting sick to get well, and
get well quickly. If this purpose could be achieved, he was willing to treat
them generously, solicitously, antiseptically, within the walls of an
institution which he had erected as a perpetual monument to his own good
health. With such a motive behind it, it is not strange that Babson Memorial
Hospital failed to achieve a notable architecture. It always felt too sorry
for itself for having had to be a hospital at all. Upon
entering the main corridor of the building, you will go immediately to the
information desk, behind which are: a) two bookkeepers drowsing over their
charts; b) a telephone operator, with assiduous elbows, pulling electrical
snakes out of a rack and pushing them head first into small electrical
tunnels; and c) the hospital superintendent. Let us not neglect the hospital
superintendent. She
is a woman of about forty, distinguished in bearing, but without a touch of
warmth in her manner. She is dressed, half as nurse, half as laywoman, her
main professional emphasis being a puckered white cap, shaped like an
inverted teacup and circumferenced at the bottom with a strip of black
velvet. She has squirrel-gray eyes, and a sharply pointed nose that looks as
though it felt very cold; and she continually purses her lips so as to seem
always on the verge of expectorating a fruit pit. When
you first see the hospital superintendent she will be patrolling up and down
behind the counter, obviously waiting for some problem to arise over which
she may exercise her authority. Her air of proprietorship in the place makes
one believe that she is more than an official: possibly a grandniece of Mr.
Babson’s, for the philanthropist died in 1919, and it would not be wrong to
accuse him of having left his affairs in charge of his descendants.
Furthermore, one feels it would be very much to his taste to know that the
institution is now in charge of this ominous, germ-proof lady who might be
counted on to perpetuate the Babson theory of illness: “an unnecessary,
economic nuisance” (I quote from the old gentleman’s address to the Kiwanis
Club) “afflicting the thoughtless members of our community, and which ought
to be got rid of as thoroughly and expeditiously as possible.” (Loud
applause, cheers, etc.) If
you happen to be a Catholic priest (and I hope for the moment you are not),
your first encounter with Miss (?) Babson (?) will not be pleasant. She does
not like Catholic priests. Doesn’t she? Or am I too sensitive on this point?
Why do I seem to be able to tell whenever anyone looks at me whether or not
they have aversions for my religion and profession? I am not good at
suffering for the Faith. I thrive on affection, and can never cope with a
smoldering enemy. When I am disliked I lose all powers of social intercourse.
Interruptions occur in my digestion. I become rigid, cautious, frightened,
ungrammatical. If
you happen not only to be a Catholic priest, but are, in addition to that, a
coward, you will resort to a subterfuge when the hospital superintendent
approaches you with that machine-gun look in her eye. In order not to be shot
down in cold blood, you will try to pretend by your manner that you are some
sort of Evangelical minister. And how is this done? The method is twofold:
feign deafness, and put on your pince-nez glasses. I have not the slightest
notion why this formula works, but it does. I am not aware that the
Protestant ministerhood is conspicuously deaf; I know many Catholic clergymen
who are addicted to pince-nez glasses. But this juncture of afflictions will
completely protect you against the hospital superintendent, especially if you
embellish it with a cultured air of absent-mindedness and begin turning over
the pages of the hospital register with the blithe insolence of a child. “Can
I help you?” the hospital superintendent will snap as she eyes with annoyance
the liberties you are taking with the hospital register. “I
beg your pardon?” (Stop fiddling with the hospital register and put your hand
behind your ear like a shell.) “Do
you wish to see one of the patients?” “Yes,
it is. But it’s nice and cool in here just the same. “What
is your business? What do you want?” (Her voice becomes refreshingly feminine
when it is pitched high, and makes one believe that in her youth she may have
taken singing lessons and have been a very charming little girl.) “Is
this the Babson Memorial Hospital?” (Remove your pince-nez glasses and begin
to clean them.) “Yes.
Whom do you wish to see?” “Oh,
excuse me. I thought you were one of the nurses. “One
of the nurses! I . . . am the hospital . . . superintendent!” This
last statement, dictatorially enunciated, has reminded her that if she lets
this situation get out of hand, it will hurt her prestige before the rest of
the personnel at the information desk. Whereupon, she wheels about and says
sharply to the telephone operator: “Miss Lyons! Take charge of him, please;
and find out his business here!”; and then clicks her heels and disappears
defiantly into an adjoining room. The
telephone operator now takes “him” in hand and approaches smilingly. “Can
I help you, Father?” (Disguises henceforth will be useless. There is a
kinship of spirit between Catholics and an almost instantaneous recognition.
There is not the slightest danger of your being mistaken by Miss Lyons. You
might as well make the Sign of the Cross and give yourself away.) “May
I see Mrs. Nolan, please?” “Certainly,
Father. She is on the fourth floor, room number forty-six.” “Thank
you. And by the way — is that lady’s name Miss Babson?” “No,
her name is Miss Fussfield,” and, in a whisper: “She’s a Ku-Kluxer, Father,
if you ask me.” “I
see.” (It’s marvelous how you can hear whispers when you want to.) On
your way up to Mrs. Nolan’s room, you will have no trouble with the elevator
boy. As
you alight from the elevator and walk quietly along the fourth corridor, you
will pass a pantry out of which will come floating a nurse, appareled like a
white butterfly. She is not Mrs. Nolan’s nurse — Mrs. Nolan’s nurse is absent
for the moment, having gone to the supply room for bandages and other
paraphernalia — but she will be glad to confirm your remembrance that number
forty-six is the room you are seeking. Mrs.
Nolan’s door is open. Evidently she has been prepared for visitors.
Stealthily you approach the threshold and look in. Your
first reaction to Mrs. Nolan’s predicament will be one of horror. Everyone
is, somehow, frightensome in a hospital. We wear our bodies so lightly when
we are in good health that we often fail to notice what grotesque substances
they are, until we see one like this, stretched on a bed and dejected with a
disease. For what could be more grotesque than an exhausted animal with long
hair . . . five feet eight inches in length . . .
partially paralyzed in its movements . . . wrapped in sheets and
propped upon a pillow . . . the daily subject of experiment by
puzzled doctors who are endeavoring to correct defects in its mechanism and
overcome poisons secreted in its chemistry? Can
this wretched object be Mrs. Nolan, whom one has been anticipating so
eagerly? Has this tragic makeshift the power to laugh, sing, dream, pray?
Does it possess qualities like intelligence, innocence, patience, reverence,
resignation? Is it conscious of Mrs. Nolan’s personality, and does it answer
to her name? Look!
Those light-blue mirrors under its forehead have unveiled and are regarding
you with attention. Those delicately structured instruments at the ends of
its arms are beckoning. Those waxen features are achieving a unity, assuming
an expression, asserting their spirituality. Some mysterious lightning has
flamed behind that oval mask and suffused it with a sudden loveliness.
Thought — abstract, angelic, undimensioned — has taken place inside that
gracefully turning head. It opens its mouth. It speaks. “Good
afternoon!” “Good
afternoon!” “Won’t
you come in?” “Certainly.” (There
is a pause.) “Are
you Mrs. Nolan?” “Yes,
I am.” Let the materialists take this miracle to their laboratories and solve it as they may. |