Larry Karp - The View from the Vue

THE VIEW

FROM THE VUE

Larry Karp

FOR MYRA

The View from the Vue
All Rights Reserved 1977, 2013 by Larry Karp

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the author.

First Edition published 1977 by Jonathan David Publishers. This digital edition published by Koi no Otosan Books c/o Authors Guild Digital Services.

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ISBN: 9781625360977

One day in the autumn of 1958, I went for an interview to New York University School of Medicine. N.Y.U.s major affiliated teaching facility was (and still is) Bellevue Hospital. During the course of my interview, the Dean asked me why I wanted to go to medical school. I told him:

I want to be a doctor because then Ill have an acceptable excuse to talk and listen to unusual people for the rest of my life. I want to come to Bellevue because I think thats where they have more unusual people than anywhere else in the world.

The Dean cleared his throat, and I jumped out of my chair. But then I saw the corners of his mouth flickering upward, and I heard him say:

You know, we get pretty weary of hearing one applicant after the other say he wants to become a doctor so that he can help suffering humanity. You are either terribly honest or terribly inventive. Either way, youre so far out I feel you cant help but succeed.

I thanked the Dean and went home. My letter of acceptance arrived three days later.

So, I went to Bellevue. During the next six years, as medical student, intern, and resident physician, I watched in gratified amazement as great giant hordes of peculiar individuals acted out their scenes before me. I had been right: there seemed to be something in those dingy wards and hallways that brought out the exceptional in the inhabitants, whether they were patients, relatives, or hospital employees.

When the new Bellevue Hospital, twelve years in the building, finally opened a few years ago, alumni throughout America sighed in relief and offered the opinion that life at The Vue would henceforth be very different. But I knew better. It didnt matter that the physical structure was new, because the hospital would continue to be inhabited by the very same cast of characters who had always caused Bellevue to be a singularity, and who always will.

This is a book about the singular people of Bellevue Hospital.

L AURENCE E. K ARP

We called it THE VUE, and without a doubt that was the most complimentary nickname Bellevue Hospital ever had. More than once I heard someone call the place Bedlam Hospital, after the infamous London madhouse. Other sobriquets were even more derogatory. In the process of interviewing an internship candidate, one of the residents referred to his place of employment as Satans Little Acre. And one day, as I got up to debark from a bus pulling to a stop in front of Bellevue, the driver sang out, Foist Avnoon Twenty-six Street. Noo Yawk City Slaughterhouse.

There existed many reasons for the plethora of nasty names. Throughout its very long history Bellevue has traditionally dispensed free medical care to the needy, and people generally feel that anything free is worth no more than the price. Bellevue has long been associated with medical schools; hence it became known as the place where innocent patients were butchered by students while learning their trade. Then too, The Vue possessed a well-earned reputation as an outstanding research center which, unfortunately, gave rise to the belief that if you were lucky enough to escape the blunders of its medical students, some nut in a long white coat would turn you into a guinea pig. Nor did certain of Bellevues component parts help its image; for any huge general hospital which also happens to contain within its walls both a major psychiatric institution and the city morgue is more likely to inspire trepidation than adulation in the minds of the local populace.

Perhaps as much as anything, Bellevues very appearance was responsible for its lack of charisma. Many of todays medical centers, especially those seen on television, are soaring glass-and-concrete architectural triumphs, designed to lead people to imagine that the gods of healing truly do reside there. In contrast, Bellevue appeared to have been constructed by a man whose mother had been frightened by a Picasso drawing of a toad.

Set down on a rectangular plot bordered by the East River Drive, First Avenue, Twenty-sixth Street, and Thirtieth Street, The Vue was a dreadful mlange of squat buildings of dark red and dirty yellow brick. The various edifices were put up between 1904 and 1940, each part a seeming afterthought, connected to the others by endless mazes of hallways and subterranean tunnels. The entire complex was surrounded by a black iron fence. An uninformed visitor to New York City, on seeing the hospital, would most likely have assumed it to be a prison built especially for the detention of the most despicable and miserable sorts of criminals.

If such a visitor were sufficiently courageous to set appearances aside and walk into the hospital, he would have been even more dismayed. Entering through the main door, hed have found himself in a large lobby, consisting of a wide walkway running past a line of information cages, whose bars reinforced the general prison-like appearance of the institution. On the other side of the walkway, and occupying most of the lobby area, hed have seen rows of brown wooden benches. Most of the seats would have been occupied by as colorful a representation of the lower socioeconomic classes as one could possibly find anywhere on earth.

Bowery bums would have been scattered here and there, mostly sitting hunched forward, staring at the floor. Perhaps one, his head wrapped in bandages and gauze, would have been lying on his side, his knees drawn up to his chest and his mouth hanging slackly open. Nearby, but at a discreet distance, an old woman with a shawl over her stringy gray hair might have been sitting with a shopping bag between her feet, her eyes darting back and forth as though on guard against an imminent assault. Three benches away, there could have been a junkie, nodding off to sleep. Around them all, large numbers of ragged little children of all sizes and colors would have been charging back and forth, playing tag and chasing each other between the benches. Occasionally, the old woman would have become irritated and shooed some of them off. Theyd have laughed at her and continued their games. The visitor would have wrinkled his nose against the stench of unwashed bodies and exhaled alcohol.

Proceeding past the lobby and through the labyrinthine halls, the visitor to New York would have come upon one or another of the patient areas. Private rooms were a rarity at The Vue, the few that existed usually being reserved for sick doctors or nurses who chose to be treated on their home grounds. Open wards were the rule; they contained anywhere from twenty to forty beds in two or three long rows stretching the length of the room. Curtains could be pulled around the beds at the sides of the ward, but privacy was impossible to the inhabitants of the center row.

Everything in the place was in disrepair. Cobwebs and dirt hung in the corners between the high walls and the ceilings. No wall was without its region of peeling paint or plaster. The hands on the flyspecked clocks stood motionless, except for the occasional pair that zoomed through hours in seconds, giving off a buzzing noise as they did. Lighting was dim throughout, and dark shadows that moved slowly across the walk, floors, and ceilings produced an atmosphere of depression which continually affected the mood and behavior of the inhabitants.