Joseph Levy Escapes Death. Rick Strassman

usual hearing-impaired, distracted, but concerned and astute self. He glances at the nasal prongs and doesn’t like what he sees. He listens to Levy’s chest.

      “Your lungs don’t sound too bad. But you’re in luck, the x-ray tech is here from the hospital. Let’s take some films right away.” There being no x-ray department in the clinic.

      He shows Levy the images. There is haziness at the bottom of the left lung.

      He says, “You’ve got pneumonia. I want to admit you. It will be easier to treat you in the hospital.”

      “Will you be looking after me?”

      He snorts. “No. The hospital only has full-time hospitalists. Once we hand over patients, that’s it.” A lopsided sympathetic smile. “Sorry.”

      Levy says, “How about just writing the admitting orders? My head and back are killing me. How about ordering Vicodin that I can take around the clock in the hospital? Five mg would be fine.”

      Levy’s out of his mind. He doesn’t know what he’s asking for. It’s outlandish besides ill-advised. Narcotics suppress respiration. Everyone knows that—that’s how people die from an overdose. I just want to sleep through all this, he mutters to himself. I’ll wake up healthy and won’t remember anything. He likes Vicodin. When he’s needed numbness, a half-tablet has always worked. And he loves Vicodin sleep: it’s deep, painless, still, and relaxed.

      Thompson’s voice stirs him from his fantasies of blissful opiate stupor. “You’ll need to talk it over with your inpatient doc.”

      Before leaving the office, oxygen tank in tow, Levy looks back at the x-rays. Mustering a chortle, he cracks a medical school joke about terrifying films. “I’ll bet you’re glad that’s not your x-ray.”

      Thompson looks up from writing in the chart. “You’re right.”

      Leonard and Levy sit side-by-side in the waiting room, waiting. Levy begins to pray. Lacking the energy for Jeremiah’s plaint, he remembers Moses’s prayer for Miriam, his sister. It’s the shortest prayer in the Bible. The circumstances calling for his prayer are odd, and the Bible recounts them in Numbers, chapter 12. Moses’ brother Aaron and Miriam grouse about Moses’ preferential treatment by God. Then God afflicts Miriam but not Aaron with a horrible skin condition, usually translated as “leprosy.” Levy switches the object from “her” to “me.”

      “Lord, please heal me now.” It covers all the bases. Whom he’s asking (God); it supplicates (“please”); there’s a request (“heal”); it says who it is for (“me”); and when (“now”).

      Lucy smilingly glides through the double door with a wheelchair. Levy sits down in it, watching out for the foot rests. She says, “I sure am glad you could come in today.”

      He doesn’t say, “Your lazy ass kept me from care for more than 24 hours. God knows how many brain cells I’ve lost because of you.”

      Keeping his mouth shut, he instead channels his remaining energy to not falling off the chair. As Lucy wheels him through the clinic lobby, Leonard takes over, and guides him across the parking lot to the hospital. They leave his wheelchair behind and take the elevator up to the second floor.

      FIVE

      WALKING SLOWLY DOWN THE HALL toward the nursing station, Joseph Levy notices several empty single rooms. The nurses put him in one with a roommate: a bloated sweaty Hispanic man, likely in his 50s. He’s apathetically delirious. Dimly aware of his mental state, he plays it safe by staring straight ahead, neither moving nor saying anything. Better not to give himself away by speaking nonsense and non-purposefully flailing, which he’d be doing if he were home with his family. Levy glances at his enormously grotesque swollen abdomen and diagnoses liver and kidney failure; by the looks of it, due to alcoholism. The ruin of one major organ feeds back onto the ruin of the other. Fluid accumulates in the abdominal cavity with nowhere to go, pressing outward, seeking release.

      The TV blasts a cops and robbers drama downward from high up on the wall between their beds. Squawking radio dispatchers, men shouting at each other, police and fire sirens blaring, exploding guns, squealing tires, pulsing music. Chaos ricochets off the blank walls and hard linoleum floor and fills the room. Leonard asks the roommate to lower the volume, which he finally figures out how to do while fumbling with the remote.

      The room smells worse than it sounds. Like a sick hungover alcoholic: stale, sour, humid, cloyingly sweet, and feverish. The air barely moves.

      Levy asks himself: Why did they put me in this room when there are open single ones? He answers: It’s easier to take care of two patients in one room than two patients in two rooms. The first glimmerings of fear stir. His welfare ranks lower than the staff’s ease.

      What can he do? There must be something he can do. He sees where this could lead if he doesn’t exert control. When in trouble, do something. If he can’t, have someone else do something. In fact, one of the reasons Levy became a physician was to impose his decisions on those around him. A childhood filled with following others’ irrational and dangerous decisions surely plays a role.

      The noise. It’s bad. He can control that. It’s too noisy. His roommate is oblivious, and Levy can’t count on him to keep the volume low. Within a few minutes he’ll wonder why he can’t hear the TV and reach for the remote. Despite lowering the volume, it’s still a din, just a quieter one. It’s auditory chaos and threatens to unhinge him.

      Levy has an idea. He says to Leonard, “How about going to Radio Shack and picking up some noise-canceling headphones?”

      At the same time, he begins to pray. Prayer must accompany Joseph Levy throughout this episode, wherever it leads and however long it turns out to be. If he dies here, he wants Hebrew words passing through him at that moment. He’ll even keep his lips moving with no sound escaping, when he can remember.

      Leonard leaves and returns in a half-hour. Levy puts on the headphones. There’s little change. He turns to his friend and says, “These don’t help. How about packing them up and returning them when you have a chance?”

      “No problem,” Leonard says agreeably, acknowledging his friend’s tenuous hold.

      I need to get out of this room, Levy thinks. The noise, the smell, and the sight of my roommate. It’s an assault surrounded by a nightmare.

      Again turning to Leonard, he says, “I need a single room. Could you ask the front desk about putting me in one of them?”

      “That’s a good idea.”

      Leonard walks out to the nurses’ station. A respiratory therapist enters and says hello. Strangely, she doesn’t treat him before leaving. Did she forget? Or are there no orders? He’s got pneumonia.

      “See you later!” she chirps cheerily.

      The nurse comes in, introduces herself.

      “What do you do?” she asks.

      Without thinking, and almost desperately, he answers, “I’m a physician.”

      Why the pressure to say it so quickly? One reason is that it’s true. Another is his naïveté. Levy wants to establish a relationship with the staff. They’ll interact as peers, or at least members of the same guild. He’ll understand medical terminology, their shared language, and thus contribute to his care. We’ll cooperate as professionals, he thinks, working together for my speedy and full recovery.

      Lastly, and in full awareness, he wants to control his care; that is, their behavior. He expects them to treat him according to his standards. They have already failed once, in their room assignment. He needs to take firmer control, and right away.

      The nurse laughs when he tells her he’s a psychiatrist. “Oh, I could use some help. We all could use some help on this floor.” Ha ha.

      Her first attempt at starting the intravenous line is successful.