NEWSLETTER

A laboratory technician arrived with his little box of test tubes and siphoned off a blood sample from the old man’s skinny left arm. I was surprised to see the black blood in the glass tube. The nurse’s aide returned with a glass of orange juice, and for the rites, the priest pulled the curtains closed around the old man’s bed.

I could hear the mumbling of the priest behind the green curtains, faint “aie”s from the old man, and occasional softly spoken phrases in Spanish from the Cuban nurse. The ancient nun, however, left the ward when the priest closed the curtains.

The daughter, her sister-in-law, and the two husbands were shut out, and they stood about awkwardly in the narrow aisle. I pointed out my metal chair to the daughter, but she shook her head and looked away from me. All of the relatives made a studied effort not to look at me, but because all of the activity had helped to keep my mind off my own problems, I would not close the curtains around my own bed. Besides, I thought, I was in the ward first; if anything, they were intruding on my privacy.

A middle-aged nurse’s aide came into the ward with the mimeographed luncheon menus. She handed one to me, with a pencil, and another to the daughter.

“You’d better fill it in for him,” the aide said, jerking her head toward the closed curtain. “There’s two or three choices for the different meats and vegetables. Just make a check-mark beside the one he wants.”

The young woman looked puzzled and distracted, although she understood the directions in English. Her husband took the sheet and pencil away from her and, with his companion (brother?), retreated to the windows to discuss the menu in Spanish. I checked off my menu, ordering apple juice, iced tea, and cream of mushroom soup. Finished, I signaled the husband and showed him my sheet. He checked off the same items for the old man and said, “Thank you.” He bobbed his head and smiled with very white teeth. “Thank you very much.”

“De nada,” I replied. The middle-aged nurse’s aide smiled at me as I handed her both menus. I had solved the problem for her.

An intern and an orderly arrived with the rack and the upturned bottle of glucose water. The priest, having finished with the rites, or whatever it was he was saying, pulled the curtains back, and the two technicians went to work on the old man. He kept lifting his skinny arm, and they finally tied the arm down to the bed rail with strips of gauze before they could get the needle into it.

The old man’s doctor arrived in the ward. He glanced cursorily at his patient as the intern worked with the tube from the glucose bottle, trying to get the flow started, and shook his head. The doctor was a personification of Shell Scott: Clipped white hair, powder-blue linen suit, ocean-blue button-down shirt, with a white knit tie. He wore black-and-white oxfords, however, indicating an ambivalent personality. He was ageless, and could have been either 35 or 55, because of his deep Florida tan.

The four relatives silently crowded about him, looking with terror at his face, and he backed out of the ward as the doctor clutched his right arm and the sister-in-law grasped the coat sleeve of the left. The two men followed closely on the heels of their wives as the doctor backed to the doorway before holding his ground.

“When you took him home six weeks ago,” the doctor said with an exasperated, raspy voice, pulling his arms out of the women’s fingers with a backward jerk, “I told you then I couldn’t do any more for him if he was my own father. Everything that can be done is being done.”

The women clutched his arms again, staring up into his face, and he backed down the corridor out of my sight. “If he were my own father,” he said again, “I couldn’t help him.”

The women returned to the ward; both of them weeping. Their husbands hovered nearby without touching them, their faces expressionless.

“He’s dead now,” the Cuban nurse announced suddenly in Spanish.

The husbands led their wives out of the ward. The Cuban nurse called in the two nurse’s aides, who helped her remove the intravenous tube from the glucose bottle, and the two hooked tubes from his nostrils, that continued to hiss as they released oxygen. The aides, following the nurses, carried the glucose-water rack out of the ward, and for a moment I was alone with the silent old man. Two orderlies with a cart, together with the oxygen crew, arrived at about the same time. The tanks were wheeled out, and the “No Smoking” sign was peeled off the door. The orderlies rolled the old man onto the cart, covered him with a blanket, and wheeled him out. The two nurse’s aides returned with clean sheets, and began to make up the bed as the Cuban nurse supervised them from the doorway.

Before they finish making up the bed, I thought to myself, setting up an arbitrary deadline, I will piss. Hurry, you do not have much time. I watched the awkward nurse’s aides intently; they were putting the crisp bedspread over the clean sheets, tucking in the bottom folds with what we used to call in the Army “hospital corners”… and a tiny trickle began to flow into the aluminum duck, and then a freely flowing stream. Finally it stopped.

“Here,” I said, taking the duck from beneath the sheet, and holding it up for the nurse.

She took the duck into the bathroom and measured the urine. She put the empty duck down on the bedside table and smiled with heavy lips.

“Sixty cc’s, sir,” she said. “That is very good.”

“No hay de que,” I said, shrugging, and reached for my cigarettes.

CHARLES WILLEFORD


Here’s a little interview we did with Charles Willeford’s widow, Betsy Willeford.

Vice: Is this story true? Did Charles Willeford really have this surgery and was he really next to a dying Cuban man?

It’s all true. I had just met him then and am not the wife he refers to in the book, so I can’t attest to every detail.

Why did he initially self-publish this story?

He sent it to some magazines but it was rejected because it was an awkward length. So he decided to publish a small edition himself.

How did you two meet?

We worked together on the Village Post, a magazine in Coconut Grove.

What was his writing routine like?

Well, he told his writing students to write a page a day before going to the bathroom. If their bladders held out, they’d have a 365-page manuscript at the end of the year.

What was he like in person?

Even better.

Thanks for talking to us. For the record, we think Charles Willeford was one of the best novelists ever, anywhere, for all time.


From A GUIDE FOR THE UNDEHEMORRHOIDED | 1 | 2 |

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