Sensing Light

by Mark A. Jacobson

  Larry awoke in an alcove, unable to remember falling asleep or being moved. A curtain, more like a negligee, covered the top half of the doorway, blocking only the torsos and heads of people walking by. Larry gathered from bits of passing conversation that the doctors’ shift was changing. One group was telling another about the patients they were handing over. They paused outside the curtain.

  “In here’s a twenty-seven year old male prostitute who’s had three months of fever, drenching night sweat, and weight loss. Claims he doesn’t shoot drugs.”

  There were hums of interest.

  “Arterial oxygen was fifty before we gave him the nasal prongs. Lungs are a white-out on x-ray. Nothing on the sputum stains, so it’s not likely bacterial pneumonia or TB. Medicine’s put in the paperwork for an ICU bed. If he gets any worse, he’ll have to be tubed.”

  “So what’s the diagnosis?”

  “Nobody knows. It’s the mystery case of the day.”

  “Did anyone consider semen aspiration?” someone giggled.

  There were a couple of guffaws, and they moved on to the next patient.

  Remarks like this were water off a duck’s back for Larry, nowhere near as hurtful as the vile things people had said to him as a boy in Fort Worth—including his own devout parents, an often out-of-work teamster and a housewife dependent on her secret stash of vodka. To block those memories, he thought about his prejudice wisecrack and grinned.

  The curtain slid open. Kevin entered and immediately noticed Larry was smiling.

  “Feel better with the oxygen on?” he asked.

  Though the air flowing into Larry’s nose was reassuring, any activity elicited hunger for more than he could breathe in. He had no idea what was happening to his body or why it had betrayed him. The uncertainty implicit in Kevin’s question, well-meaning as it no doubt was, didn’t inspire confidence. No one had explained to him why needles were being stuck in his veins and blood removed in glass vials, what the doctors were listening for with their stethoscopes pressed against his chest, what the x-ray or the phlegm he had coughed into a cup had shown, or what the fluid inching down a plastic tube into his arm was supposed to do.

  He needed to believe that someone here had the inclination and ability to help him, and this doctor was the only person Larry had met who remotely seemed to care.

  He decided to drop the cool, cowboy façade.

  “While I’m lying still, the breathing’s OK. But soon as I move, even talk, I’m short of breath again.”

  “We’re going to move you upstairs. I’ll be the one responsible for your medical care there.”

  “Jesus,” Larry exploded, “It’s a god damn relief to know someone’s in charge.”

  “At your service,” said Kevin, giving a little bow.

  Grateful for the attention, Larry read the name on the ID badge and inspected Dr. Bartholomew’s long, thick, wavy red hair, a shade between auburn and strawberry blond, and his freckles, splayed like a layer of rice grains across his cheeks.

  If this guy worked out, Larry thought, and replaced that gut and flabby ass with a six-pack and studly buns, he’d be hot. As his eyes roved over the doctor, Larry saw him stiffen. Is he embarrassed, Larry wondered. Maybe he’s in the closet. I’ll play along if he can get me out of here alive.

  “I think you have pneumonia,” Kevin said evenly, “But not the sort of pneumonia we usually see. You’re pretty sick, so I’m going to put you in our intensive care unit.”

  He looked directly at Larry and waited. Surprised to be sounded out for a reaction by someone wearing a white coat, Larry didn’t respond until the implications of what Kevin had just said sank in.

  “Are you telling me there’s an infection in my lungs that could kill me, and you don’t know what it is?”

  “It might be an infection. Or it could be some other type of disease. I don’t know yet.”

  “Can’t you give me something?”

  “There’s already an antibiotic going into your blood. But to be honest, I can’t be sure it’s the right medication, and we have a lot to choose from. I’ve asked a specialist to do a procedure tomorrow. It’s called bronchoscopy. He’ll pass a little tube down your throat and into your lungs to take a tiny piece of tissue that we can look at under the microscope.”

  “Ouch!”

  “You’ll get a sedative. You’ll hardly be awake. It’ll be over in a few minutes.”

  “Hey, I’m all for finding out why I can’t breathe.”

  “Then you’ve come to the right place. I think we can make you better—once we figure out what’s causing the problem.”

  Larry took note of Kevin’s New England accent. He suspected frankness would go over better than good-old-boy palaver. He offered his hand, and Kevin shook it.

  “Save me, Jesus!” pierced through the emergency room. None of the doctors or nurses seemed to notice, though Kevin did roll his eyes. Shrieking must go with the territory here, Larry supposed, like the Baptist church his parents had sporadically dragged him to.

  He recalled the day before he turned sixteen. His father had made him meet with their pastor.

  Wouldn’t that bastard love to hear me screaming “Save me, Jesus,” he thought. Well, fuck him.

  Larry could still see the scowling, weather-beaten face, the knobby finger poking his chest. He still remembered the man’s exact words.

  “Sodomy is a mortal sin, son. You’ll be condemned to eternal damnation in hell unless you accept Christ and pray for forgiveness.”

  The next day, Larry bought a one-way bus ticket to San Francisco.

  III

  ON THE OTHER SIDE of the ER, Kevin checked in with the nurses and reviewed notes and orders. He found his two interns had risen to the occasion and were competently managing the team’s other six admissions, which left Kevin free to call the Haight-Ashbury clinic.

  “Dr. Howard?” Kevin said, once connected to the physician Larry had told him about. “This is Kevin Bartholomew. I’m a medicine resident at City Hospital.”

  He liked the cheerful, rich alto voice that replied without condescension, “Call me Gwen.”

  She recognized Larry Winton’s name instantly and lost her good humor on hearing he was being admitted to intensive care.

  “Shit! I just saw him two weeks ago. He was complaining of cough and night sweats. I sent him to City Hospital for a sputum induction and x-ray. He never came back. Does he have TB?”

  “Chest film doesn’t look like it, and the AFB stain I did was negative.”

  “So what do you think is going on?”

  “Don’t know yet, but I’m covering him with antibiotics.”

  “How bad off is he?”

  “With nasal prongs, I can barely get his arterial oxygen to seventy.”

  “Oh, no,” she moaned, her voice nearly breaking.

  Was she going to cry, Kevin worried. He chewed his lower lip and punched the plunger of his ballpoint pen, waiting for her to calm down. He guessed she wasn’t much older than him. Perhaps a dyed-in-the-wool hippy? She did work in Haight-Ashbury.

  “I’m coming over to see him. Damn! No, I can’t today. I have to pick up my kid in an hour. I’ll be there tomorrow morning, OK?”

  “Sure. Don’t worry. We’re on it. He’s going to the ICU. The pulmonary attending will bronch him in the morning. It’s gonna be pedal to the metal here.”

  “Oh my God...”

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized, concerned he may have come across as condescending. “I didn’t mean…”

  “I know you’ll do a full court press,” she interrupted. “This is my screw-up. I should have found out what happened when he didn’t come back to clinic.”

  Kevin was astonished. He had never heard anyone senior to him give a mea culpa like this. And there was no way Winton’s predicament could be her fault. If he followed up on every patient who didn’t return to his continuity clinic, his sleep debt would quickly become incompatible with life.

  “Thanks for going
the extra mile to call me. You’re probably getting slammed with admissions if it’s anything like my residency at City Hospital was. I mean internship—I didn’t complete residency. Anyway, please tell Larry I’m rooting for him. I’ll definitely come to see him tomorrow.”

  “Absolutely. Oh, I forgot to ask about his medical history.”

  “Not much there. No prior hospitalizations I know of, certainly no underlying lung disease. He was doing speed when I first met him but cleaned up his act years ago. He mostly saw me for gonorrhea and syphilis—he hustles men for a living. Though now that I think of it, something was going on before the cough and night sweats started. He used to lift weights and wear boutique clothes from North Beach. All that stopped about a year ago. He came to clinic looking disheveled, stressed out, thinner. Maybe it was drugs, but he said he was clean, and he’d never lied to me before.”

  Kevin sighed, disappointed by the lack of clues. The range of diagnostic possibilities in such a sick patient was way too wide for his comfort zone.

  “So, are you a second or third year resident?” Gwen asked.

  “Third year. Four more months, and I’m done.”

  “Then what?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe an ID fellowship. When were you here?”

  “1969, just before they built the new hospital.”

  “Been at the Haight clinic long?”

  “Seven years. I only work three days a week.”

  “That sounds nice.”

  “It is. Not much money, but I can have a life… Well, at least my daughter can have me in her life.”

  Kevin imagined a child who would yell “Daddy” and hug him when he came home—a pleasant fantasy.

  “How tough is residency these days?” she asked.

  “Call is every fourth night, not every third like the days of the giants when you were here.”

  “Days of the giants?” she laughed. “When I was at City Hospital, the attendings said that same bullshit about how much harder they had it than we did.”

  “The sleep deprivation is still bad. When I’m on call here, I’m lucky to get half an hour in bed. It’s better on the Hill, but they give us a ton more autonomy here.”

  “Interesting!”

  “Is it? Why?”

  “I’m thinking about coming back to finish residency.”

  “All right! Page me when you get here tomorrow. I’ll show you around.”

  “That’d be great. Thanks, Kevin.”

  IV

  “MR. WINTON?”

  “Mr. Winton?”

  The short, obese young man who had woken him—or was he a teenager, Larry wondered—wore a white jacket two sizes too small. His pockets overflowed with tongue depressors, penlights, and cotton swabs. A mask covered his mouth and nose, drawing attention to the pimples dotting his forehead.

  He introduced himself as Dr. Bartholomew’s medical student and rolled up his sleeve, revealing columns of tiny words scribbled in ink on his forearm. Reading from the list, he asked Larry about a host of symptoms, ranging from nausea and diarrhea to numbness and tremor. As Larry answered, the student made notes on a sheet of paper full of strange diagrams.

  “Mr. Winton, can you tell me today’s date, day of the week, and year?”

  “Today….”

  Larry searched his mind. He wasn’t sure. It must be the middle of March.

  Frustrated by the interminable questions, he said, “Saint Patty’s Day, m’boy.”

  The student stared at him.

  “Never caught a Texas leprechaun?” Larry asked in an Irish brogue. “Ask me where my oil well is.”

  The student checked his notes against the words on his arm. Dispirited by his failed attempt at humor, Larry closed his eyes. He thought of the mysterious diagrams on the student’s clipboard, as inscrutable to him as those in a horoscope he had acquired in 1968.

  When Larry got off the bus from Fort Worth, he was met by a middle-aged woman wearing dark eye shadow and a paisley caftan. She dangled a paper template of collapsing circles, radial lines, and arcane symbols. I’ll predict your future for a pack of cigarettes, she offered. Just tell me exactly when and where you were born. Larry had liked this idea of a predestination absolving him of any responsibility for his own fate.

  By the time Larry arrived in San Francisco, the city’s “Summer of Love” was over. There was more “speed”—methamphetamine manufactured by local biker gangs—being sold on Haight Street than LSD. Larry soon sampled all the available drugs. One LSD trip was enough. He wanted to empower his self, not transcend it. Although the pleasure of heroin easily matched that of a good orgasm and lasted longer, he saw what it did to people—the scars and open sores, the degradation addicts were willing to submit to for another high. Speed, on the other hand, wasn’t overtly self-destructive. He could listen to music for hours, dance for hours, have sex for hours.

  Larry fell in with a tribe of homeless speed freaks, an honorable society compared to heroin addicts. However, surviving in the city with a drug habit required money. Occasionally, he resorted to petty theft, until he learned about the Castro.

  Larry discovered he was irresistible to the older, well-off, gay men who had settled in a neighborhood known by its main commercial street, Castro, at the end of World War II. He packaged his lean, six-foot frame into a tight pink tank top and blue jeans worn low to display his flat belly. His cheeks, chiseled by methamphetamine, and a scar on his chin completed the erotic bait. He set the hook with a cowboy persona, half vulnerable, half rugged, brazenly bootlegged from James Dean.

  As the gay scene grew exponentially, he graduated from doing tricks on the street to being a kept lover in an elegant furnished apartment. He usually had two or more sugar daddies, discretely scheduled so as not to meet one another. A few were married, had children, and lived in the suburbs. Collectively, their support covered his living expenses, including the upkeep for a pristine, white Thunderbird convertible.

  After the medical student left, Larry saw he was being scrutinized by a male nurse. Not examined objectively like a patient would be but sized up on a scale of desirability. The man’s layered, shoulder-length hair and thick mustache were familiar. Of course, Larry realized, the nurse was a regular in a Castro Street fern bar where he had done some higher-end hustling. The man had approached him once and suggested a tryst. When Larry explained what he charged, the man was furious. Must picture himself too hot to have to pay for it, Larry had thought.

  He watched the nurse amble to the central ER hub of telephones and chart racks and whisper to a butch-looking clerk he recognized from a down-scale, South of Market leather bar. The clerk’s mutton chop sideburns were the same. Just his suspenders and chains were missing. Larry recalled being hit on by him with a similar outcome.

  Larry had learned early on that such misunderstandings were a professional hazard. One had to cast a wide net in making seductive eye contact. Sometimes a potential client misread the situation. Thrilled that this young stud was attracted to him, the unsuspecting target would strike up a conversation and become hostile on finding out Larry was interested only in commercial transactions.

  The two men sneered at him. They seemed to be enjoying his misfortune. Larry was indifferent. His pretense of vulnerability had always been a bigger act than the ruggedness. He still lived the mantra he first heard as a homeless teen in the Haight— “Don’t let other people’s shit bum you out.”

  Though there had been one exception to this rule. In 1973, while cruising Haight Street in his T-Bird with the top down, a muscle-bound, blond farm boy from the Salinas Valley hopped into the car and offered to sell him speed. Larry countered with an invitation to lunch. They quickly became lovers and stumbled into an arrangement that permitted intimacy without sacrificing too much pride. Larry helped pay Chris’s share of the rent in a lower Haight crash pad. Whenever Larry’s apartment was free of clients, Chris stayed over.

  After a year, Chris was chafing at his financial dependence. Wanting par
ity, he escalated from dealing small amounts of speed on the street to bigger buys and distribution. One evening, Chris borrowed the T-Bird to close a deal in Hunter’s Point. He didn’t return. A week later, a policeman notified Larry that his car, stripped of its tires, doors, and radiator, had been abandoned in an empty parking lot. A body was never found.

  Larry quit using drugs and started lifting weights as an outlet for his grief. The change in his physique increased his professional value which led to the most lucrative arrangement of his career, servicing and keeping house for a trio of international airline stewards. Their short layovers in San Francisco allowed Larry the free time to take junior college classes. He even developed an exit strategy for when his marketability declined—obtaining a real estate license.

  Then the loss of appetite and fatigue began. Larry went to the Haight Street clinic, but penicillin injections for gonorrhea and syphilis didn’t help. He stopped lifting weights at the gym. Soon he was too thin for the airline stewards’ taste. They let the apartment lease expire. Larry had to move into a shared flat in the Haight. He worked the streets again—a higher volume at a lower price. Each night, he awoke drenched in sweat. The coughing became constant. He returned to the clinic where Gwen urged him to get a chest x-ray and his sputum tested. He put it off until he couldn’t walk a half a block before halting to ease the panting and the pummeling his heart was giving his ribs. Finally giving in, he hailed the cab that brought him to the city’s brand new public hospital.

  V

  HERB LEFT HIS OFFICE at six. Fifteen minutes later, he parked in the driveway of his Tudor home in San Francisco’s upscale Forest Hills neighborhood. Inside, his wife was making a salad in the kitchen. He kissed the back of her neck. Cecilia gave him a perfunctory peck, without lingering.

  Not my lucky night, he thought. He suppressed the desire aroused by touching her smooth skin, still flawless by his standards.

  “Martin needs a poster board for his history project,” she said. “Can you get one this evening?”