You don’t know me. I’m a patient across the hall. Only some polyps removed. Now that I’m here they’re giving me the round of tests. I only wanted to pop in when nobody was around to wish all the good luck to you. And also to say you got one raw deal and have every right to sue. Not that you’ll collect a cent from suing hospitals. Though you will get the satisfaction knowing they might think twice about being as careless with the leg of someone else.
This must seem so very silly to you. My writing a letter like this almost a week to the day after I wrote a similar letter about almost the exact same thing. What’s different this time is that instead of using a pen I’m typing on my machine. The portable I treated myself to ten or so years ago and which has almost never been touched, which accounts for it being so stuck, though it’s probably also in need of a cleaning. Somehow the dirt must have seeped into it through the portable case. I’m typing to you because I have to. I can’t read and writing by pen is too slow and games like solitaire and needlework and talking to strangers here just won’t help. I suppose I’m making a lot of noise. Not noise like complaints but typewriter noise. Sitting here in the visitor’s lounge on Jay’s floor, I’m sure it must only be my mind where I think they can hear me in the patients’ rooms and hallways and at the nurses’ station, though the nurses have assured me they can’t. And there are closed doors to this room and the walls are padded with soundproof squares and the typewriter is supposedly a silent. I haven’t checked with any of the other patients, though Jay I know can’t hear me as last time I looked he was fast asleep with enough drugs to keep him that way for a while. The only visitors in here I’ve asked said go ahead, type all you want. As you know from your experiences with Abe in hospitals, people here are much more tolerant and kind. The typewriter is on my lap. It doesn’t weigh more than six pounds. The way I’ve balanced it I can type without discomfort and with ease. The children, thinking the worst had come and gone with their father, had gone back to their individual homes. Jay has done it again. This is the story. He tried killing himself again. He’s recovering now. I caught him as I had the last time. This time lying on the floor instead of in the bed, tubes winding every which way around his arms and legs, and a needle from one in his hand with which he just managed to give himself a pinprick. I had got this strange feeling about him as I had before. I called his floor. The nurse said she couldn’t check since she was the only one on duty, but when she looked during her rounds the hour before he was doing fine. I begged her to check again. She said all right, maybe she would. Everything is still fine, she reported back to me, he’s sleeping well. But like the last time I couldn’t take her even rechecking him as a suitable enough answer, and certainly not since that last time, and I took a cab over. It was around 4 A.M. The woman at the hospital reception desk asked what did I want? I said I only wanted to wait in the waiting room on the first floor till the regular permitted visitor’s time, which is 10 A.M. She said do as you like as long as you don’t go upstairs before. I waited for about five minutes. She couldn’t see anything that was happening behind her except through a small mirror. Then when she wasn’t looking I climbed the five flights. A nurse followed me down Jay’s floor asking what did I think I was doing going to his room? There he was. She knew now what I had come for. Saved again. He looked at me crossly. If he could have spoken I’m sure he would have insulted me and scorned. Not for long though, as they soon gave him sedatives to sleep. The nurse and I lifted him onto the bed. The tubes and needle were easy for her to replace and stick back in and the hand wound just took a band-aid. The doctors were called, but it wasn’t that necessary. All they did was strap his wrists to the bedrails with bandages and assign an orderly to his room as a guard. Jay at first refused all sedatives by mouth, so they had to give it in his veins. He had done it by taking down the bed rail and rolling off the mattress onto the floor. I can understand how he feels. But the doctors told him what about your wife if you try it again or were even successful at it one of the last two times? I think he understands now. He promised to everyone he’ll never try it again. But who can say? What’s a promise worth these days? But once he’s medically released from here I’ve been told to institutionalize him for life. In a nursing home or a good asylum if there’s one. The government will pay the whole cost or close to it I’ve been told. Doctors, nurses, my friends and his few old friends and even his own children have urged me to do it. They’ve said mom, you can’t handle that man. It’ll be too much for you and ruin your own health. He has to be watched all the time. And you have the authority now, everybody tells me, as his past two attempts gave you that. But I could never be that cruel.
OUT OF WORK
An ad in the Equity newsletter says a South Dakota college has an opening for an acting coach and stage director of several workshops and Theater Arts Department plays at associate professor’s pay. The position is for three years starting this September. “We are seeking a working actor, not the typical theater teacher who is teeming with worthwhile erudition but deficient in performing experience.”
I send my résumé and also write: “I expect because of your Equity ad you’ll get 700 to l000 applications, many from people with a lot more stage and movie experience than I and also more experience in Theater Arts departments (mine’s been limited to being a substitute teacher for the N. Y.C. Bd. of Education and taking over junior high school play productions when the regular Language Arts teacher who also dabbled in Drama was sick). But I’m applying anyway, as I need the job, feel I qualify (if you’re serious about wanting a ‘working’ actor), and want a change of scenery. In fact, I’ll probably need to have a change of scenery, since once I saw your ad I did my criminal best to stop circulation of the newsletter to every New York actor and actress I could think of who might better qualify. That ought to be some indication of my industrious nature and ability to act.”
The chairperson of the Theater Arts Department writes back saying: “Initially I was put off by your efforts to stop distribution of our ad. But after receiving close to 800 applications so far, coupled with the enormous sadness of learning in one ‘felt’ swoop that so many gifted theater performers are out of work, I am much beholden to you to say the least, and to say the most, shamelessly overjoyed. It has taken me weeks to go through all the applications, and finally reaching yours brought a much-needed levity to the task. Perhaps because of your sense of humor and certainly because of your past active experience in the field, two accomplishments that are in short supply in our department, I would like to pursue your application further, despite your lacking the M.F.A., which we hoped for in all our candidates and which the printer left out of the ad.”
A few weeks later she writes: “The three year position you applied for has been cut to two years because of a reduction in our department’s funds. In this college, which is run (I might say was saved) by an ex-textile salesman who rose to the top of his field (no mean accomplishment either), the Arts take third best to Business Administration and Custodial Science, the latter having the most extensive catalogue in its category in the Midwest, and is consequently the school’s main source of state and corporate aid. If you’re still interested in the position, it might be helpful to know that you’re now one of 32 candidates out of the original 1048 still competing for the job. Some of the more attractive candidates have since eliminated themselves for stage or screen work or positions at other colleges and universities; about a thousand applicants were rejected outright or after deep consideration for a variety of reasons; another hundred applicants applied after the stated deadline; and two of the original 34 final candidates have since died. If you become one of the five finalists, would you be willing to come here to be interviewed?”