Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [203]
AT OUR LADY, we pulled every-other-night call. I had no time to be homesick. My typical day started in the early morning, when I made rounds with my team leader, B. C. Gandhi. Then my team and the other surgical teams came together to make formal rounds with Deepak Jesu-dass, the Chief Resident, at 6:30 a.m. On operating days, which were Tuesdays and Fridays, we interns manned the wards and the emergency room. We worked till early evening. Then if I was on call, I simply worked on through the night admitting patients from the emergency room while caring for my existing patients and those of the interns who were not on call. Our chances to assist or even to operate as interns came when we were on call. It was rare to get any sleep on call nights. I didn't even try. The next day we kept going till the late afternoon, when I was finally off. For my off night all I could do was fall on the bed in my quarters and sink into a deep sleep. The next morning, the cycle started again. My senior resident, B. C. Gandhi, asked me late one night when we were both punch-drunk from lack of sleep, “Do you know the disadvantage of every-other-night call?” It was an imponderable question. I shook my head. He smiled and said, “You miss half the interesting patients.”
The schedule was brutal, dehumanizing, exhausting.
I loved it.
At midnight, when the corridors became deserted, there were places in the hospital where the lights dimmed and where I could see traces of Our Lady of Perpetual Succour's past glory; it showed in the gold filigree work above the archways, in the high ceilings of the old maternity wing, in the marble floor of the administrative foyer, and the stained-wood cupola of the chapel. Once the pride of a rich Catholic community, and then a middle-class Jewish community Our Lady of Perpetual Succour went the way of the neighborhood: it became poor in catering to the poor. B. C. Gandhi explained it to me: “The poorest in America are the sickest. Poor people can't afford preventive care or insurance. The poor don't see doctors. They show up at our doorstep when things are advanced.”
“Who pays for all this, then?” I asked.
“The government pays with Medicaid and Medicare, from your taxes.”
“How come we can afford a helicopter and a helipad if we're so poor?” The bull's-eye atop the newer four-story part of Our Lady, with the blue flashing perimeter lights and the shiny helicopter that came and went, seemed incongruous for our setting.
“Salah, you don't know about our claim to fame? Our number one industry? Sometimes I forget you just got off the boat. Man, that helipad was paid for by hospitals that are the opposite of ours. The helicopter is really theirs, not ours. Rich hospitals. Taking care of the wealthy, the insured. Even if some of them take care of the poor, they have a big university or a university private practice to underwrite their costs. That kind of ‘taking care of the poor’ is noble.”
“And our kind of taking care?”
“Shameful. The work of untouchables. Those rich hospitals up and down the East Coast got together and paid for our helipad so they can fly here. Why? Ischemia time! You see, what we have here in our neighborhood is an abundance of guns, ABMs, and ALMs—Angry Black Males, Angry Latin Males, and actually angry males of all stripes, not to mention jealous females. The man on the street is more likely to carry a gun than a pen. Bang! Bang! Chitty! Chitty! And so we wind up with too many GPO patients—Good for Parts Only. Young, otherwise healthy, but brain-dead. Pristine hearts, livers, and whatnot. Under warranty to keep going long after your pecker droops. Great organs. Great for transplant. Transplants which we can't do. But we can keep them alive till