Doing It the Hard Way

Washington D.C. today is not the Washington that David Greenberg remembered when he was growing up.  No indeed! The Washington of the 40’s and the 50’s was a red neck town full of southerners from Virginia to Texas working at meager and mundane government jobs. Most people tried to hang on to their culture and traditions. It was a city where American Blacks could not eat, drink, go to school or ride on buses with white people. But if a black person from an African nation wore a dashiki and had a foreign accent,  he could do all the things a Caucasian could, but not if he was an American. David dreamt of his youth when he could take a bus downtown and go to the Army Medical Museum which was on Independence Avenue in a huge Quonset structure from WWII days.  He recalled the grotesque figures of the premature babies on exhibit, the man with Elephantitis, the iron lung with a mannequin in it and the anatomy of nude women that he loved to look at secretly,  but always feared people would stare at him and know his most secret yearnings.

The Nation’s Capital was part of the South, a town with “colored folk” who somehow disappeared except during the work week when they were allowed to clean the white peoples’ dirt.  He could remember only one colored youth a little older than he, Whitey who lived in the basement of an apartment building adjacent to his own.  Whitey was bigger and stronger than David and David looked up to him.  Whitey’s father worked as the janitor in the building where the family lived and did odd jobs.  David remembered Whitey running to protect him when Thomas Biggs (God how could he remember the name.  That was so many years ago. He must have been about seven or eight years old, maybe younger.)  and a few of his bullying cronies decided to beat up on David because- “You killed Christ, you Jew or “Your mother doesn’t have a husband.  You must be a bastard.”  Where did they learn all stuff? Well Whitey will protect me from those guys. They can’t hurt me. David spent a lot of time in the past awake or asleep.

“David, David, Wake-up. You’ve been dreaming again.  It’s time for your rehab with Joyce. She’s waiting for you.”

“I wasn’t dreaming.  I was thinking with my eyes closed Lillian.”

“Whatever- Come on now.  I’ve got to work with Mr. Janokoski and Mrs. Cohen before your group session this afternoon.”

This nursing home wasn’t as bad as some David had seen as a paramedic.  Some were dirty, smelled of urine and feces particularly the further you got away from the central admitting area or nurses’ station.  Couldn’t have the relatives and government inspectors complaining too much or better yet retching due to the smells.  Maybe, that was as good a test as any.  No bad, musty, fowl, feces and urine smells to gag on -pretty good.  The walls were a nice off white, the pictures on them not too offensive- some impressionists and a few modern pieces, all cheap prints, of course. There was always some kid running around trying to get the patients excited about some damn activity or another.  Bingo, Jeopardy,  religious services, all of them.  Or from time to time a group of kids came into the home to sing for the “old folks”.  David thought the kids looked fearful.  He imagined they were afraid they might look like him and the others some day. It seemed they were always taking blood pressures, temps, pulses, or sticking something up his rectum .  It was like a hospital, but David didn’t mind.  There were no urine or feces smells.  So that meant that the staff did keep the place semi-clean. They even did a pretty good job with the ones who slobbered over themselves or had to be hand fed like infants.

Rehab consisted of trying to get the use of his arm and leg back. The stroke wasn’t

the worse and they got the thrombolytics in on time to save him from more brain damage than he had. He still had his mind and his ability to speak even if it did take a little longer to get his sentences out, and the doctor felt, with time and patience, he could be back to his old self whatever that was. But the physical therapists were trying at least.  His stroke had affected the left side of the brain.  That meant that the right side was weakened, but not totally paralyzed at least. 

“What did we call them?  Cerebral Vascular Accidents or CVA’s.” He could never figure out why they were accidents.  They didn’t call heart attacks accidents. And the medical community was trying to get the paramedics and the people who taught trauma emergency medicine to stop referring to MVA.   Motor vehicle accidents weren’t accidents at all.  They were incidents. So call them MVI’s. 

“David, David wake up now.  It’s time for your bath.” But he wasn’t sleeping then either.  He was thinking about Washington or was it Heidi.  He couldn’t remember what he was thinking about or was he maybe really sleeping.  But being nearly 80 years old and having this debilitating stroke didn’t help either. His memory wasn’t so good anymore.