The Care of Strangers

by Ellen Michaelson

  A woman in an ankle-length brown dress set a large bowl of potatoes and onions covered in plastic down on the floor. Immigrant families often brought bowls of food that smelled of home. She elbowed the man standing next to a very old woman.

  “Trymayte yiyi,” she said. Hold onto her.

  “I’m Dr. Kahn,” Mindy said. “Does anyone in the family speak English?”

  A little blond boy with a cowlick squirmed up close to Mindy. He reached into Mindy’s jacket pocket. One of the babushkas grabbed him by the arm and yanked him away.

  Mindy folded her arms across her chest. “We need a translator,” she said.

  “Sima here speaks their language,” Miss Armstrong said to Mindy.

  “You’re Polish,” Mindy said.

  “Ukrainian and Polish are similar,” Sima replied.

  She couldn’t look at Mindy. She couldn’t bear to look at Mrs. Shtrom or the rest of the family. “The words are a little different, but we can understand each other.”

  Miss Armstrong lead the family to the Isolation Room, where they moved patients with contagious diseases, the only area with any privacy. There was a single bed with an un-sheeted mattress, no pillow, and one chair at the far end away from the door.

  One family member huddled to the next.

  Sima scanned the clan. The room felt like a coffin.

  Mindy stationed herself against one wall. Her hands gripped the ends of the stethoscope hanging around her neck. “Tell Mrs. Shtrom her husband had a very bad heart.”

  Sima’s first words came out too loud. “Twoj maz mail slabe serce,” she said in Polish. Your husband had a bad heart. She wasn’t a doctor but she knew: first do no harm.

  When Sima stopped talking, Mrs. Shtrom’s mouth wrinkled into a hole.

  “Bad heart?” the woman in the long brown dress said, in broken English. Sima noticed the embroidery down one sleeve of the dress. Red and green with tiny threads of blue, hand sewn. Their eyes met for a long moment. Sima nodded to confirm.

  The daughter squeezed her mother’s arm. She put her free hand up to her chest and struck it. “Bad heart,” the daughter said. “Yah.”

  “Tell her he had a heart attack at the other hospital,” Mindy said.

  Miss Armstrong pulled the chair out from the wall. “Let Mrs. Shtrom sit down,” she said.

  “Twoja matka powinna usiasc,” Sima said in Polish to the daughter. Your mother should sit down.

  The sleeve of the daughter’s dress brushed up alongside Sima’s bare, weary arm. She leaned into the softness for a moment, caught the eye of the daughter. Then she moved closer to one side of Mrs. Shtrom, closer to the smell of boiled onion, and helped the daughter settle her mother the way she and Miss Armstrong had not been able to do with the old man in the CCU.

  Mindy bumped into the unmade bed and the bed knocked against the wall. The sound of creaky metal wheels on hospital tile jolted everyone in the room.

  The daughter leaned in toward Sima. “Moze sz mi powiediec o mojm ojou,” she said. Tell me, please, about my father. Sima felt her own heart beat quicken. Her own father, she could see his face. And then the cowlick boy stepped out. He grabbed hold of the finger of the rubber glove sticking from Mindy’s pocket and pulled on it. Snap, snap, snap.

  Mindy stood there, a sullen face on. “He should have stayed at the hospital in New Jersey,” she said. “Why didn’t he stay there?”

  Miss Armstrong glared at Mindy. “Dr. Kahn,” was all she said.

  Sima yanked the glove out of Mindy’s pocket and handed it to the boy. “Serce Waszego ojca był zły przy innym szpital,” she said to the daughter. Your father’s heart was bad at the other hospital. First do no harm.

  The child held the glove up to Mindy.

  Mrs. Shtrom and her daughter talked back and forth to each other. “Zły szpital,” Mrs. Shtrom said. Bad hospital. Bad hospital. The daughter looked at Sima. “My balismy sie tam. Nikt mówił nasz język,” she said. We were afraid there. No one spoke our language. “No stay.” First do no harm.

  Polish words came out of Sima’s mouth, and Ukrainian words came back at her. Papa this and Papa that, Papa the same in any language. Back and forth, the foreign words filled the air, Polish, Ukrainian, broken English.

  “They want to see Mr. Shtrom,” Sima said. And then she wanted to tell the daughter that Mindy had just lost her father too. It was a doctor’s job to attend to strangers, to put aside the pain of dead fathers and persecution for the moment and yet connect with it all at the same time.

  “That’s all they said?” Mindy sank back into the bed.

  The boy put the glove up to his mouth and blew.

  Sima surveyed the room—Mindy, the motley troupe of family members standing quietly now, the old woman, the daughter. The boy breathing hard the only sound in the room.

  She knelt beside the daughter on the floor by Mrs. Shtrom. They were two young women without fathers. Her own Papa lost to six-year-old Sima long before he died. Something in Sima let the Old Country fall away. She looked up at Mindy, then back to the daughter. They were three. Not Ukrainian, not Polish, not American.

  “Ja też stracił mojego ojca,” Sima said to the daughter. I too have lost my father. “Doktor po prostu stracił jej ojca. Rozumiemy.” The doctor just lost her father. We understand.

  The boy continued blowing into the glove, the fingers stretching bigger and longer. Everyone in the room watched the boy’s cheek puff out as he blew. He took another breath, and then he lost his grip. The air inside the glove farted back into his face and the glove shot out of his hands. It shriveled to the floor. The boy laughed with his whole body.

  “We gave him medication for his chest pain,” Mindy blurted out over the laughter.

  The daughter reached for Mindy. “Die?” she said. “Papa die?”

  Mindy nodded, her face a blank.

  The old woman raised her eyes to Sima, who was kneeling still alongside her daughter. She put a hand to Sima’s face.

  Sima took the old woman’s hand and held it between her two hands. She nodded. “Twoj maz nie zyje,” she said. Your husband has died. She nodded to the daughter. Your father is dead.

  Mrs. Shtrom’s head tilted back, her eyes closed. She leaned into her daughter who was standing by the side of the chair.

  “Ne Pravda!” This can’t be. The old woman rocked back and forth in her seat. The chair shifted off center, threatening to tip.

  “Mama,” the daughter said. She put her arms around her mother, both of them wailing. Then the little boy began to cry. The daughter reached for the hand of the boy. She pulled him toward the chair, enclosed him in with her mother. The little boy’s cries were muffled in the clothes of his elders. The other family members stepped in closer.

  Miss Armstrong leaned toward the old woman. She smoothed the sweater bunched at the widow’s shoulders. “Let’s get her onto the bed,” she said to Sima.

  Over her shoulder, Sima saw Mindy leaning back against the bed, her face pale, the face of her mentor, her friend. She glanced at the family, the daughter holding her mother and the boy, and up at Miss Armstrong.

  “We can handle this,” Sima said.

  “Yes,” Miss Armstrong said. “I believe you can.”

  13

  No Mangoes for Mindy

  Sima saw Mindy emptying her pockets onto the counter at the laundry, handing in her dirty white jacket. Mindy turned and walked away. Sima was close enough to hear the laundry lady shout, “Hey, you forgot your clean jacket!”

  Sima stepped up to the counter. “I’ll give it to her.”

  She clutched the clean white intern cloak, still warm from the laundry, and trotted down the tunnel hallway past the mummy pipes. The meeting with the Shtrom family had been two days before and she hadn’t seen Mindy since.

  She tapped her on the shoulder. “You forgot your jac
ket.”

  A brown paper bag in one hand, her head down, Mindy walked on.

  “They were looking for you to sign the death certificate on Mr. Shtrom yesterday,” Sima found herself shouting to Mindy’s back.

  “I signed it.” Her words were measured, careful, calm. She kept moving down the tunnel.

  Sima could barely keep pace. “Could you slow up a minute?”

  Mindy stopped at the elevator to A-building. She clutched her bag to her chest.

  “What’s in the bag?” Sima reached her arm out. “Here’s your clean jacket.”

  Mindy turned away. “You’re the big hero now,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Mindy’s wire rims were crooked, her hair disheveled as if she was post-call.

  “Sima, the translator.”

  “All I did was talk to a few Ukrainians,” Sima said.

  “But you didn’t put your arms around that old lady until Miss Armstrong made you pick her up off the floor.”

  “I was doing my job,” Sima said. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s none of your business.” Mindy punched the up button on the elevator.

  “Why is it none of my business?”

  “The way I walk, the way I talk, my hair. It’s always your business. Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

  “I thought we were friends,” Sima said. She held out the jacket like a white flag.

  “Friends don’t make each other look bad.”

  The elevator door opened.

  “You better get up to the ward,” Mindy said. “They’re waiting for those labs you got.” Sima stepped in, Mindy didn’t follow her. The doors closed.

  * * *

  —

  A FRUIT BASKET SAT ON the counter at the A71 Nurses’ Station: mangoes and papayas and plantains, all shades of yellow. Island fruits like so many of the nurses and aides ate for lunch every day. It was the first time Sima had seen a fruit basket delivered to the wards. She had never touched a mango. The skin was smooth.

  “Them mangoes is not for you, Sima.” Miss Parker, the ward clerk, slapped Sima’s hand. She stood straight in her brown polyester skirt suit, ID dangling from a silver beaded chain around her neck. She put her arms around the basket as if it were alive, scooped it to her chest, and walked into the Doctors’ Charting Room. Sima followed with the labs slips.

  Steinberg, future ophthalmologist, his tortoiseshell horn rims halfway down his nose, was buried in a chart. He rocked into his text as if he were studying a passage from the Talmud. Dr. Long, ex-surgical intern, had his feet up on a chair with an open chart in his lap.

  Miss Parker marched in and placed the fruit basket in the middle of the counter. She slapped Dr. Long’s leg. “Maybe you sit that way in your house,” she said, “but not in mine.”

  Dr. Long stood up and returned his chart to the rack. “I didn’t know you could walk, Miss Parker.”

  “This here fruit is from Mrs. Sampson, the lady with breast cancer,” she said. “It’s for Dr. Kahn, but since she won’t be around for a while, I’m sure Mrs. Sampson don’t want it to go to waste. All you doctors take care of her when you’s on-call anyway.”

  Miss Armstrong brushed by Sima with an armful of charts. She elbowed the fruit basket to dump them next to Steinberg. Chief Danielson stepped in behind her.

  “Rounds in ten minutes. We’ll reassign Dr. Kahn’s patients.” The chief nodded at Steinberg and Dr. Long.

  Miss Armstrong rested a hand on Sima’s shoulder. “You did good with the Shtrom family,” she said. “You could make a career for yourself translating. They pay people to do that in some hospitals.” She turned to leave, then added, “Chief Danielson wants to talk with you before rounds.”

  Everyone left the room.

  Chief Danielson sat down at the counter. He pulled a large envelope from under his arms and spread the contents out before them. He flipped through pages of pink progress notes, then landed on the last entry: Death note. “What do you think of this?”

  Sima kept a small spiral notebook when she was invited on rounds with the medical students. The Chief told her to take notes and later asked her what she had learned. He had never reviewed a chart with her. She sat down and stared at the page. She had no idea what he wanted to know.

  “Please read it,” he said.

  Sima didn’t need to read the note but she took a few minutes to scan the words, now a blur. Nothing is inaccurate. But she wasn’t a doctor, she had no authority to know.

  “Were you there when Mr. Shtrom coded?”

  “Yes,” she said. Miss Armstrong saw her hold the nitroglycerin pill under the man’s tongue. What else had she told Chief Danielson?”

  “Do you know who is responsible for this note?”

  “Dr. Kahn,” she said. That was not inaccurate. She wasn’t going to say anymore.

  Chief Danielson collected the loose pages of the chart back into the large envelope. “There’s going to be a case review,” he said and headed for the door. “You’ll be expected to attend.”

  14

  Visiting Hours

  Visiting hours were over and Mrs. Sampson needed another X-ray. It should have been Mindy’s order, her night on-call, but Chief Danielson had decided she needed more time to get over the death of her father: Mindy was on a leave of absence. Sima worried Mindy had messed up so badly with Mr. Shtrom and the family that she might not be allowed to return. Talking with the family, Sima was doing something no one else in the room could do. She’d stepped up, Miss Armstrong said. She’d make a good translator, Miss Armstrong said. Maybe she should listen to her mama and just aim for “a more better job.” Maybe the Chief knew more, maybe he was disappointed in her too, and she wouldn’t be invited on rounds anymore.

  Outside the six-bedded Female Room, Sima heard voices. A figure in black stood by Mrs. Sampson’s bed. Her hair was matted as if she’d worked a double shift wearing a hairnet instead of a hat, which would have made more sense now in December in New York City. She wore a long black coat and, peeking out from the sleeves, Sima could see her bony wrists. Out the bottom of the coat where it was unbuttoned were stick-straight legs devoid of any muscle, almost as skinny as her wrists and covered in fishnet stockings below a miniskirt.

  The woman tapped her foot on the floor, and then walked to the night table by the bedside where Mrs. Sampson’s cloth bag of sewing things rested. She bumped her thigh into the bed, which jostled it a bit.

  “So where is it?” the woman said to Mrs. Sampson.

  “Mrs. Sampson,” Sima said, “they want you downstairs for an X-ray.”

  The woman didn’t look up. Suddenly she was focused on the sleeve of her heavy coat. She picked at a white spot, scratched at it. She reached into the sleeve and pulled out a tissue. She scrunched her nose, then sniffed, and blew into the tissue, then stuffed the ratty material back into her sleeve.

  “She ain’t going nowhere till she tells me where it is,” the woman muttered.

  “Visiting hours are over,” Sima said. She moved the wheelchair to the side of the bed closest to the door; the woman stood on the other side, her arms crossed over her chest now.

  “We ain’t having no visit,” Mrs. Sampson said.

  Mrs. Sampson’s face was drawn, long. Her eyes were half closed. Sima stared at those eyes, as if looking at them would make them open fully so she could get a hint at what the old woman was feeling about this no-visit visitor.

  The woman in black sniffed again. “Ain’t got all day,” she said. Her words were defiant but her tone was sad. She kept her head down, her chin almost onto her chest. She stood there like a petulant child, refusing to engage, the way Sima often stood against her mother.

  Sima said to the woman, “You’ll have to leave now.”

  Mrs. Sampson raised her arm and swatted the air in the direct
ion of the woman. “Go back to your own world,” she said. She picked up Sammy’s shirt from her lap and began to fold it.

  “You still sewing,” the woman said. “You was always sewing.” She reached over the bed toward the button edge of the shirt. “You never sewed for me like that.”

  “I sewed for you plenty when you were his age.” Mrs. Sampson pulled the shirt in closer. She smoothed out wrinkles with her hands and folded the shirt a second time.

  Sima thought she saw Mrs. Sampson begin to look up at the sorry woman standing by her bedside but then Mrs. Sampson’s head bent over further, her chin into her chest the way the woman’s had been.

  The woman reached toward the shirt again, and this time she grabbed it from Mrs. Sampson. She held the small shirt out in front of her, touched the buttons, the collar. Then she put it up to her face, rubbed the cloth against her cheek. “I can smell him, my boy.”

  “It’s too clean for you to smell anything.” Mrs. Sampson’s eyes widened. She leaned forward to retrieve the shirt but the woman stepped back from Mrs. Sampson’s reach. “You never put a clean shirt on him.”

  “I had to take care of myself. Wasn’t no one else to do it.”

  “You wouldn’t let anyone take care of you.”

  Sima’s own mother accused her of the very same thing. Suddenly she was back in the dining room of their apartment at the open drawer of the china cabinet, her mother’s hand landing on top of Sima’s with a hard slap.

  “Why don’t you show her Sammy’s photograph?” Sima said to Mrs. Sampson.

  “You got a picture of him? Give it to me—you owe me that much.”

  “I don’t owe you nothing when it comes to Sammy.”

  “He’s my son, not yours. My flesh and blood. You didn’t birth him.”