Ms. Etta's Fast House Page 13

  Unfortunately, not even Clay could do a thing about the dressing room conditions during the first couple of days, so at the end of each evening, after studying the procedure book, and jogging miles for conditioning, the training class divided into two groups when retreating to their lounging areas. Since it was unacceptable to wear the soiled academy sweats home, they were expected to change into street clothes before leaving for the day. And, at the end of every evening, Henry’s friends were heckled unmercifully and degraded by veteran officers hiding behind their badges while refusing to see the black men as equals. “You coons are smelling up the place” and “Go back to Africa, you filthy animals,” were commonly shouted without fear of reprisal, while the other six cadets went home freshly showered and presentable. Smiley quickly tired of stomaching the systematic racism they experienced on a daily basis. He promised to look for a way to get even and it didn’t take long to find one.

  On an unseasonably warm afternoon for early spring, the training class was on its regular three-mile hike on the city road circling the academy, when someone rolled past on a pickup truck and hurled insults along with a huge bucket of pig excrement at them. Although the foul substance was meant for the black men particularly, it managed to splatter everyone, including Clay, who reeled off a tempest of dirty words, spewing contempt for such a heinous act. He ranted violently until running out of breath.

  Steaming mad, Henry rested with his hands on his knees. He watched the truck roar up the road. It was actually getting easier to look past the hatred and see hilarity. For once, all of the men were treated as one and it took a mean-spirited racist to bring it about. Two of the white cadets vomited from the odor. Henry laughed even harder then and so did they, eventually. Before that moment, blatant divisions existed among them as the colored men felt the whip of degradation. Afterward they became closer as a cohesive group, a crap-scented tribe forced to band together as outcasts, as one.

  When the funky bunch approached the facility, Smiley discovered a way to cause a major headache. He ran ahead a quarter mile and searched until he located the main water valve to sabotage it. Shutting off the water pipes rendered the training facility helpless. That afternoon, the entire building had to be evacuated because of the stench. Subsequently, every trainee went home smelling the same, like they’d bathed in a hog pen. Henry was still amused when he entered the academy on the following morning, discovering a notice posted by Clay Sinclair and signed by the Chief of Police. It ordered all cadets to shower before leaving the premises. Having been forced by Roberta to scrub from head to toe in clothes detergent and then banished to sleep on the basement rollaway bed was a small price to pay for an ounce of equality, a very small price. Staying alive during the next phase of training was certain to cost him a lot more. The five thousand dollars yearly salary wouldn’t amount to much then if he was dead.

  15

  SOUL SALVATION

  It was as if the world started spinning out of control and wouldn’t let anyone off until tragedy struck.

  “Nurse, get another doctor in here now!” ordered the white obstetrician on loan from famed Washington University Hospital. “Hold on, miss, we’re going to get the baby out,” he assured the frightened teenage patient. “Just breathe slowly.”

  Nurse Sue Jacobs dashed from the room as instructed. Delbert was sipping coffee from a paper cup when she stumbled upon him. “Come on, Dr. Gales, we need another pair of hands.”

  “What’s going on?” he asked, alarmed by the nurses expression. Typically unflappable, Sue was noticeably shaken.

  “Dr. Stanton is here from Wash-U and has signed on for a whopper,” she answered. “Come on, he’s waiting.” Delbert set the cup down at the nurse station and followed Sue. He didn’t know what to expect but an experienced white doctor was clamoring for help. He didn’t want to imagine what that meant for the patient. “Dr. Stanton, I found Dr. Gales out in the hall,” she informed him. “He’s an intern. A good one,” the nurse added, when the white man questioned her selection with a piercing glare.

  “Well, I guess you’ll have to do,” he said finally, with a look of concern decorating his face. As the young girl in a world of pain lay on the delivery table, with her mother looking on, Delbert slipped into a surgery smock and scrubbed in. “Dr. Gales, what’s your familiarity with pre-term births?” the senior physician asked hurriedly.

  “Sir, I’ve seen a few of them in Texas. Assisting mostly.” Delbert was looking at the girl. She had medium brown skin and her lips were dry and ashy, with her hair stretching out every which way. He couldn’t help thinking how inconceivable it seemed for her to be giving birth when he hadn’t been able to talk a grown woman into having sex with him.

  “Good, every little bit helps because this baby’s breached. It hasn’t turned yet and has a mind to back its way into the world.” He glanced at Delbert, then at Nurse Jacobs. Her eyes fell toward the floor. When the thirty-five-year-old soon-to-be grandmother noticed the quiet exchange among the medical staff, she spoke up for the first time.

  “Uh, doctors. What’s all that mean for my Sadie and her baby?” she asked, her eyes stricken with panic.

  “Not to worry, ma’am,” Dr. Stanton said in the most affirming manner. “We’ll get the child turned, but it’ll take some doing. Now, I’m going to need you to step outside with your husband. We’ll take care of your daughter,” he said, saying nothing about the baby.

  Reluctantly the woman clutched her pocketbook, scooted outside of the room and headed down the hall to the waiting area. She nearly turned back when her child began screaming, “Maaaama!” at the top of her lungs but she wiped her eyes and kept on going.

  “You wasn’t calling for me when Junior Miller was climbing on top of you,” the mother said to herself, to lessen the pain of hearing her only daughter coming unglued.

  “Just relax, Sadie,” Sue said, wiping her forehead and lips with a cool damp towel. She wanted to make the girl comfortable, because a world of heartache was coming down the line.

  “Dr. Gales?” the white physician said quietly to get his attention.

  “Sir?”

  “I have no doubt we can bring the baby here, but do you know the procedure for premature births at twenty-eight weeks?” Delbert nodded slightly, remembering that was barely the third trimester. “Good, what is the protocol?”

  Delbert took a deep breath, traveled to the recesses of his mind and came up with the correct answer, a gloomy one. “First, reposition the fetus, secure the delivery and then ...” he started to say before looking into the young girl’s eyes. “I understand Dr. Stanton.”

  “You shouldn’t have a problem following it to the letter? Then let’s begin.”

  For the next two hours, both doctors and Nurse Jacobs worked feverishly. Delbert massaged the girl’s stomach, to irritate the fetus into turning on its own, otherwise Dr. Stanton would have been forced to take more drastic measures. As luck would have it, the fetus flipped inside the womb after being bothered continually. The terrified patient smiled eagerly when she saw Delbert’s face brighten.

  “Is it time?” she asked innocently. “Is it time for my baby to come?”

  “Yes, Sadie,” Dr. Stanton said, with his hands positioned to receive it. “You’ve done a fine job. We’re almost done. Now give us one ... good ... push.”

  As the girl bore down, the crown of the baby’s head emerged. Delbert tried to be happy for her, but he’d learned not to look past the criterion for a healthy life-sustaining birth. In 1947, at twenty-eight weeks, it wasn’t possible.

  “Push, Sadie,” the nurse instructed, “it’s almost here.” Again the teenager groaned noisily. Soon after a timid little baby boy introduced himself. He screamed and flailed, while his mother looked on with amazement. Nurse Jacobs cleaned the child with a warm sponge and Dr. Stanton passed the honors to Delbert, who was partially disturbed when cutting the umbilical cord. Knowing what lay in store, it almost seemed pointless to do so. As Sadie held her first-born
, cooing and touching his fragile body, the medical personnel observing the union waited for the inevitable. Then it happened. The infant slipped into respiratory distress. He began to cough and gasp, then eventually stopped breathing altogether.

  “Nurse, take the child to recovery,” Dr. Stanton ordered. “Sadie, we’re going to do everything we can to get him breathing again. Sit tight.” The white physician looked at Delbert. “Dr. Gales, stay here until the nurse returns. I’ll meet with you later.” Sue cradled the baby and hurried outside of the room before he started crying again, which typically happened once or twice as pre-term infants fought for dear life.

  Delbert languished behind, reading his wrist watch as often as he read Sadie’s face. She was afraid to ask and he was praying that she stayed that way. There was no perfect time to tell a mother that little chance existed for her baby to survive past a few minutes, because he came into this world before his lungs had been properly developed. There was nothing to be done, as current protocol clearly stated: Do not resuscitate as death was imminent. Finding it difficult to take it standing still, Delbert excused himself and struck out looking for Sadie’s baby boy. He caught up to Sue exiting the storage room behind the newborn nursery. “Where is he?” Delbert demanded.

  “Dr. Gales, I wrapped him up and put him in the back,” she answered, as if he should have known. “That’s where we keep them, until ... you know, they pass on,” she explained.

  Without another word, Delbert darted past her to break protocol. Sue hated to report him but she had no choice. She struck out in the opposite direction, searching for Dr. Stanton. Instead, she came across her boss and Nursing Director, Geraldine Robinson. When they found Delbert, he was hovering over the child, sweating profusely, administering mouth to mouth with abbreviated breaths and slight one-finger compressions to the baby’s chest, careful not to fracture his ribs. Nurse Robinson had seen this many times before but it was typically new nurses she had to pull off dying children.

  “Dr. Gales, I’m going to ask you to step away from that baby!” she declared firmly, as Sue Jacobs looked on. “There isn’t anything you can do for him now, Delbert. Sure, he’ll get to breathing and then he’ll stop again. It’s his time to pass on.” Initially Delbert ignored her orders. Nurse Robinson placed her hand on his shoulder and appealed to his sense of kindness when playing her trump card. “Dr. Gales, you took a Hippocratic oath to do no harm. That poor baby is oxygen deprived, son. His brain is mush, Delbert. Let him go,” she pleaded. “It’s the right thing to do. That’s the medical protocol we have to abide by, all of us.”

  Delbert, exhausted and torn, broke down and wept silently as the boy grew tired of trying to breathe on his own. He took two quick gasps and drifted away. The seasoned nurse was right, Sue was right and so was the protocol prohibiting manual resuscitation. Delbert knew it in his heart and had to make peace with it. And, after Dr. Stanton read him the riot act for abandoning Sadie shortly after her baby was whisked away, he was reprimanded again by his mentor and the Chief of Surgery, Hiram Knight.

  “Knock off for an hour or so and get your head on straight,” Dr. Knight ordered. “We’ll see more of those here, Dr. Gales, and the same goes for hospitals across town. That’s the way it is and until God says different, that’s the way it’s going to be. Shake it off, doctor, there’s lots of work to be done for those who have a shot at living.”

  After the long day shift ended, M.K. returned to the residence quarters and found Delbert lying on his bunk and staring up at the ceiling. “What’s up, Tex?”

  “Long day at the office,” he replied quietly.

  M.K. collapsed on his bed, next to Delbert’s, and then kicked off his shoes. “Whew, I never thought I’d see you whipped. It must have been a doozie to get you down.”

  Ollie entered, wearing the same tired expression M.K. had when he came in. “What’s the matter with y’all?” he asked, out of genuine curiosity.

  “Ole Delbert got his butt whooped today, as far as I can tell,” M.K. answered promptly. “Me, I’m just spent from burning the candle at both ends. After Ruth Anne practically wore me down to a nub last night, I ran into that nursing student who’s been following me.” When Ollie leered at him, waiting for an answer, he wasn’t disappointed. “Like you would have turned your back on the fine brown frame if you was me.”

  “If I was you, I’d get myself tested for the clap, the heebie-jeebies and smallpox,” Ollie joked. “Just be glad none of you ain’t me. All day I’ve been checking up places nobody should be made to look at and examining more rusty peckers than a picky prostitute. Man, I didn’t sign up for this. Bill, Claude and Charles are spending more time lounging than the law allows while I’m busy getting propositioned by one sissy after the next. The last one left a message with a nurse for me to call him.”

  M.K. laughed but Delbert didn’t have the energy to join in. “Dont know Ollie, you’s a pretty man,” M.K. teased playfully. “A honey-boy might get mixed signals while you got both hands tugging at his package.”

  “The onliest signal I got for sausage smugglers is a stop signal,” he argued loudly.

  “So, that mean you ain’t gone dial him up?”

  “Hell, naw, what do think this is? If you wasn’t so damned big, I’d head over yonder and bust yo’ ass.”

  “See there, I told you, Ollie, mixed messages. That’s what that fella wants you to call him up for. He might even cook you a nice dinner beforehand. You never know.”

  “Delbert, do something about M.K. before I try my luck upside his head. That’s how rumors take flight. Next thing, I’ll have a line of ’em trying to feed and frolic me. No, siree, I’m done discussing it. Shoot, I’m liable to up and quit, that’s what I’m liable to do.”

  “Hush up, Ollie, you ain’t gonna do nothing but keep your crack to the wall and your dukes locked and ready. It’s all part of the deal, paying the piper.”

  Suddenly Delbert sat up on his elbows as other interns and residences dragged themselves into the suite hosting eight twin beds. “M.K., you ever feel real bad after a patient’s death?” he asked. His colleagues overheard the question and listened closely to see how it played out.

  “I knew something was gnawing at you, Delbert. You didn’t do something stupid today, did you?”

  “Nah, I had a baby die on me earlier,” he told them, while reliving the tragic event. “This teenage girl came in ready to deliver but the baby wouldn’t turn. I massaged her abdomen until it did. At twenty-eight weeks, that raisin-colored baby boy may have just as well been stillborn. I went against proper procedure and tried to keep him going. It was foolish I know but ... I couldn’t help myself. I’ve seen babies pass on due to infection, but nothing like this.”

  Silence loomed ominously in that room until M.K. offered a valuable perspective. “When I was here before, there was a little girl who couldn’t have been more than twenty-four weeks in the womb. The mother got killed when a truck smashed into her car at a traffic light. Dr. Knight did what he could to extract the fetus and the baby came out clawing and whining. She wasn’t any bigger than a puppy. I ran and hid in the laundry room. I must’ve cried for two days after she took her last breath. Still think about that baby sometimes, but ain’t no use in crying no more. I put that one on God and on Him alone.”

  Delbert was forced to agree with M.K. because no other answer made sense. “Do you think babies get into heaven?” he asked as an afterthought.

  “If they don’t, none of us will,” M.K. replied, contemplating his own soul’s salvation.

  “Amen to that,” someone seconded from the fringes of the conversation. “Amen.” It was difficult to watch an infant pass away. Being a doctor didn’t change that for any of them so they left it at that and concentrated on the living.

  Early Sunday, Delbert was up and out of the residence hall before the others awoke from their Saturday night carousing. He tried to shake the visions of the dead child from his mind but found it more difficult than he anticipat
ed. At church, sitting in the back pew, Delbert listened attentively to the minister’s sermon on forgiveness and felt good about his decision to forgive God. If the Lord held him in the same regard, he was two for two. M.K.’s words rang in his head as the service ended, “Ain’t no use in crying no more,” and M.K. was right.

  With an uplifted spirit, Delbert exited the church and relished the fresh air he’d taken for granted every single day of his life until he saw how priceless it was. “Dr. Gales,” someone called out from behind him. “It’s me, Sue Jacobs.”

  Delbert flashed a cheeky grin when finally recognizing her without the long starched apron, marshmallow shoes, unflattering uniform and standard white cap. “Hey, Sue, boy, do you clean up nice,” he complimented, taking in her rose-hued sundress, matching shoes and bag.

  “You don’t look so bad yourself, doctor.”

  “We’re not on the Homer Gee clock, so Delbert will do just fine,” he said, actually delighted to see her in less formal surroundings.

  “I like that,” she replied, with smiling eyes. “Delbert, that’s a nice name. It fits you. Oh, yeah, I don’t want to pry but I was wondering if I put you in a fix after ... you know?”

  “Not anything I couldn’t handle, but you did what the regs called for. I was out of line.”

  “Maybe so, but I respect you for doing what you felt was right. You have no idea how many times I lacked the courage to do the same myself,” Sue admitted. “You’re a good man, Delbert Gales, and you’re becoming a very promising physician.”

  “Does that mean you’ll go out with me sometime?” he asked, wishing she would comply.

  “Nope, I don’t cozy up to doctors.”

  “Do you cozy up with very promising physicians?”

  “Uh-uh, them neither.”

  Delbert couldn’t help but laugh. “I heard you were a tough nut to crack.”