Visit to the sick

NANCY HALE

A story indicating the slightly differing attitude of the patients in a hospital and the ladies of the visiting committee

Dr. Feinstein, the director of the hospital on the East Side of New York, rushed

out on the marble steps as the buses came up the drive. He stood there smiling and blinking, bald-headed under the bland sun, nervously pressing and unpressing his hands, waiting for Mrs. Ottenbaum, the Chairman of the Ladies' Inspection Committee, to alight from the foremost bus. He kept licking his lips, his mouth all ready to begin talking to the ladies.

There were six buses, all jammed with the ladies, and there was a special police escort, who now rested upon the saddles of their motorcycles, their black leather legs dangling lazily and their feet dragging on the cement drive. They were Irish. The ladies had been excited about having a police escort and about the sirens.

From all six buses the ladies now came pushing and pressing out, and Mrs.

Ottenbaum marched ahead of them up the steps to shake hands with Dr. Feinstein. She was all in white. She had a tiny white straw hat on, and a string of white fox furs around her neck, and a white bouclé suit and little expensive white shoes. She held up the front of her skirt and climbed the shallow steps with heavy energy, holding up the other hand to meet Dr. Feinstein's. The ladies came after her, in a rich, chattering, perfumed crowd.

"Doctor," Mrs. Ottenbaum said, breathing, "I hope you have everything in readiness. We're all here now, I believe. We are all so anxious to see what the funds have accomplished in the hospital."

"Why, yes, Mrs. Ottenbaum," Dr. Feinstein said. His mouth was all dripping with smiles and words, and he pressed Mrs. Ottenbaum's hand and put his other hand under her elbow to prove his feeling of gratitude and hospitality. "Why, yes, we're all ready and waiting for you, ladies. The patients are all so excited, except, of course, those on the danger list. Why, yes, Mrs. Ottenbaum, the nurses are waiting to show you ladies around." After she had withdrawn her hand, Dr. Feinstein clasped his together again, and began to move nervously, impatient to begin showing the hospital.

But Mrs. Ottenbaum was not quite ready. At the top of the steps she turned to the heaving, pressing female crowd behind her, and raised one hand magisterially. They were, at once, silent, pushing softly against one another's furs, and waiting for the word from Mrs. Ottenbaum.

"Girls," she said, "we all know of the $60,000 that was raised through the unassisted efforts of the Ladies' Committee this past year. What we don't know is what became of that $60,000. $60,000 is a lot of money, as I don't have to tell you, and why we are here today at the hospital and with Dr. Feinstein—" she bowed and he bowed— "is to see just what it and he have done with those dollars we raised ourselves. Dr. Feinstein assures me that those $60,000 have done a lot of good for the hospital and for everybody in it. I'm going to let Dr. Feinstein tell you about it himself."

"Ladies," Dr. Feinstein began urgently.

He stepped forward and let one foot stay planted ahead of the other, his weight forward; his hands were clasped before his chest. "Ladies, let me tell you, you've done a lot. Why, there isn't one patient in this hospital that doesn't know that for the wonderful care they're getting and the wonderful equipment and the food and the wonderful medical staff which is second to none in any hospital in the city, why, they've got the Ladies' Committee to thank. There isn't one patient in this hospital that doesn't know that you ladies are coming here today to inspect the hospital, and they're all sitting up in bed, feeling fine, waiting to give you ladies a smile of gratitude as you pass by. Right inside this door the nurses are all ready to show you around, and if there's anything I can do to help or explain anything, why, I'll be right around, so please call on me."

"Girls," Mrs. Ottenbaum said, with more authority and less unction, again stepping forward, "I guess we can go right along in now. And if there's any way in which any of you girls think the hospital falls short of what it should be with what we've done for it, just speak to me about it and I'll pass it on to Miss Rosetree of the Investigation Committee."

Dr. Feinstein held open the handsome plate-glass and metal door, and the ladies rushed by him, all deep in furs, all soft and fat and odorous with perfume. They chattered as they rushed. The nurses met them as they came into the main reception hall, and herded them down the center corridor toward the children's wards.

Mrs. Ottenbaum was here, there, and everywhere. She was no visiting stranger to the hospital. She was almost a director, she had so much to do with what was what in the wards.

"Look, girls," she said, raising her voice above the feminine babble, "this right here is the kiddies' playroom—for the tots who are a little bit stronger, and a little bit happier, and can get up and play. See the cute little chairs and tables. You can feel you bought those little chairs and tables with your own money."

She led the way further down the corridor to a door marked "Girls' Ward." Then she stood up on tiptoe, and put her finger to her lips, and whispered, "These poor little girlies are really good and sick, girls, so be mousy-quiet when you go in, and don't jar their beds or anything."

The whole soft, jostling crowd of women tiptoed in after Mrs. Ottenbaum, whispering and looking eagerly, curiously, from side to side. Twenty little girls, in two rows of high white beds, raised their pale faces and stared with feverish eyes at the whispering, perfumed mass of women that pushed down the aisle between the rows of beds. One little girl, near the door, held a bunch of sweet-peas tight in both hands. None of the girls seemed over ten, but that might have been merely because they were such small children.

"Well children," Mrs. Ottenbaum addressed them in a loud whisper, "here are the kind ladies that Dr. Feinstein told you were coming to see how you were today. They are the kind ladies that have done so much for you, so as you've got these nice beds and your dinners and everything. Now I know you are not well little girls, able to shout and run around, but I want you, every one of you, to give the ladies a big smile, to thank them for what they've done for you. Now, all together, kiddies!"

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All the pale little girls smiled feverishly, anxiously, raising their dark, damp little heads and peering. They looked from face to face among the mob of women, finding some one face at which specially to smile. The little girl with the flowers held them out to Mrs. Ottenbaum.

"For me?" cried Mrs. Ottenbaum, taking them. "Oh, how pretty!"

"Mrs. Ottenbaum, they are a present from the Girls' Ward in gratitude for all you and the members of the Ladies' Committee have done for us who have so little," the little girl recited.

Mrs. Ottenbaum made a curtsey and all the other ladies murmured appreciatively. "Thank you, dear," Mrs. Ottenbaum said. "Thank you all. You are good little girls, and I'm sure we all are glad that you are such grateful, nice little girls. Now we are going to see the poor men who are learning to use their hands again, and so, goodbye, until another day."

"Good-bye!" all the ladies whispered, and tiptoed out, their silks rustling softly.

As they came into the occupational therapy laboratories Mrs. Ottenbaum let her voice out into its natural tones.

"Now here, girls," she said, "we have one of the finest things the hospital is doing with the funds, the work with crippled and paralyzed people. The doctors just give them these things to do, weaving and basketry and dollmaking and such, and pretty soon they get so they can move a lot better. I want you all to realize how fortunate you are, that you can move around and everything."

One of the old women could only shake her head incessantly and move her mouth as if jabbering. She stared up almost imploringly at the crowd of soft, chattering women.

They passed on to a table behind which sat a queer-looking man making dolls out of pieces of wood. All the dolls he had made sat up in a row along the table.

"Look, aren't they funny?" the nurse asked Mrs. Ottenbaum, smiling ingratiatingly up at her. "He's made all these in just the last few months. We lined them all up here for you to see. We think they're real good."

All the ladies gasped and exclaimed over the strange dolls. "Aren't they odd?" they cried, and "Oh, goodness, look at this one!"

But the man behind the table glared at them with a dreadful, toothless snarl. He had not a hair on his queershaped skull, and his eyes were little sunken things in his shiny face. He kept muttering something under his breath. After a while they understood.

"Get outa here, get outa here, get outa here, get outa here," he kept mur-

muring under his breath. The ladies started and stepped back when they made out his words.'

"Doctor!" Mrs. Ottenbaum called to Dr. Feinstein. The doctor hurried over, pushing gently, with apologies, past the large, soft, befurred women who stood and swayed between him and Mrs. Ottenbaum.

"Doctor," she said, deliberately, "tell me, why is this poor man so— well, ungrateful and impolite? I don't think it's quite nice for an inmate of this hospital to have an attitude like this toward the lady benefactors of the hospital, do you?"

"I'm so sorry," Dr. Feinstein apologized breathlessly. "He's always kind of funny like that. A year ago you should have seen him."

"Nevertheless," Mrs. Ottenbaum said, "I don't think it's a very good type to have in the hospital. An attitude like that can sort of infect the other patients, if you see what I mean, and I've noticed, Doctor, throughout the hospital only the nicest and most grateful spirit, I must tell you that."

"Thank you so much, Mrs. Ottenbaum," Dr. Feinstein said. They turned slightly away, to examine the work of a fat man who was making boats out of metal, and giggling and smiling and bobbing at tbe ladies.

"Now, girls," Mrs. Ottenbaum announced, lifting her voice, "we're going to see the machines they use for stretching the limbs of paralyzed people. To us they may look like almost Spanish Inquisition kind of instruments, but I'm telling you, girls . . ."

All the gaping, fat, perfumed women stood still and listened to their chairman. A few of them let their eyes stray over the curious wrecks of beings who sat mouthing in chairs all around them. But most of them stared admiringly at Mrs. Ottenbaum.

"And I want you to feel," she was saying, "that this is your hospital, and that you are responsible for the wonderful healing that is being done on every side. Because it is, really."

At the door to the stretching room Mrs. Ottenbaum stood with her head thrown back, looking almost inspired. Her massive figure was all the more imposing in its pure white garments.

"Doesn't she look just like a bride, in all that white?" one woman whispered to another. "And what she does for all these people. . . !"

The bald man was still muttering "get outa here, get outa here," back in his corner. He peered after the women with his queer sunken eyes, and snarled toothlessly.

All of a sudden he swept the careful row of his dolls from the table before him, with an awkward thrust of his bent arm. They fell to the floor with a confused clatter. "Get out—get outa here!" he cried, and his voice rose to a strange, dreadful shriek.

All the fat women glanced apprehensively behind them to see what had caused the noise. Then they hurried, pushing against one another's silken fat bodies, out of the room. They were gone in another minute.

"Not the right attitude," Mrs. Ottenbaum murmured. "Not the right attitude at all. Something will have to be done—something . . ."