The chit has my name on the top, the Commander’s signature at the bottom, and the words sickbay and pain scrawled on the lines between.
No one is at the reception window. Inside, three corpsmen sit around a table playing cards, with rock music blaring. Along the far wall I see what I presume to be patients in three of the eight double-decker racks. One of the corpsmen looks my way, then turns his attention back to the game.
I wait.
The card game grinds on round after round, the players hooting profanities and slapping their cards on the table, until, amid moans and accusations, cards all spent, it ends.
One of the corpsmen gathers the cards into a single stack. Another pushes back his chair, glances my way, screws up his face in obvious annoyance and shuffles toward the window.
“Chit,” he says holding out his hand.
He reads the chit and asks, “Where’s your pain?”
“I’d rather talk to the doctor about that,” I reply.
“Suit yourself,” he replies, opens the door, points to a chair, hands me a clipboard and adds, “Fill this out and wait here.” With that he leaves the room.
I fill in the few blanks at the top of the sheet with my personal information. The corpsman returns with three cans of Coca-Cola, sets them on the counter near the window, and takes my blood pressure and temperature.
“When will the doctor be coming by?” I ask.
“Pretty soon,” he answers, logs my numbers on the sheet and hangs the clipboard on a peg across the room.
The card game resumes.
I wait, seated in my assigned place for more than an hour, when, as if by premonition, the music is turned off, the cards disappear and the corpsmen fix their attention on the door as the doctor enters. He approaches the table. They are on their feet. Greetings are exchanged and one of corpsmen hands the doctor the clipboard and gestures my way.
“Well, Landerman, I’m Doctor Antolini. What seems to be the problem?” he asks studying the paper on the clipboard. He is a slight man with finely chiseled features and a voice to match. His uniform is impeccably pressed and there is a kind of rehearsed grace in his walk and gesture.
“Commander Anderson sent me here because I have pain,” I begin.
“And where is your pain?”
“In my ass, sir.”
“In your ass?” The doctor squints at me and leans forward.
“Yes, sir,” I answer, staring him down.
“Well, let’s have a look,” he replies as he opens the door to the examining room.
The doctor approaches the examination with a contrived cool, reminding me of the kind of feigned nonchalance intended to intimidate competition. I imagine it as a disposition acquired in the throes of medical school. Or maybe not that at all. It could be related to my condition. Maybe, projecting a level of detachment is appropriate when examining the more private parts of a patient’s body.
In an attempt to put the examination in context I stretch for a point of reference. I need to do that with new experiences, wrap them in the familiar, if possible. I call to mind the long lines of draftees and recruits in boot camp, naked, except for socks, as we progressed through a gambit of inoculations in one shoulder and then the other, then back to the other, over and over, and then in the buttocks, wham, wham, followed by long periods of sitting naked in rows at attention on a gymnasium floor, waiting and dreading whatever the next part might be. This could not be as bad as that.
A couple of painful pinches, and the embarrassing probing is over. The doctor steps across the room, pulls off his rubber gloves, hangs up his smock, and begins writing. I sit quietly, watching my examiner write a paragraph, then another. I guess he is in his late twenties, probably working off medical school debts through military service. By what set of chance circumstances are examiner and examinee brought together in this awkward moment? Conscription is conscription. A very wide net drawing disparate individuals together into an unlikely reluctant camaraderie.
I have a bad case of hemorrhoids, something I know little about. The doctor inquires about my recent activities and concludes the problem is the result of a weekend of bouncing around on the back seat of O’Hara’s Vespa. The ship is in port, and we took two days off to motor up and down the coast of Baja, drinking sangrias, swimming in the surf and sleeping on the beach. It was a glorious departure from the shipboard slog.
I expect to be on my way with a few pills and a little advice, but the doctor drops my record folder on the table in front of one of the corpsmen, says, “Give this man a rack,” and leaves.
I am dumb with disbelief as my clothes are taken, I am issued a hospital gown and assigned a rack, a top rack. The climb up is painful. I notice one of the corpsmen look my way, say something to the others, turn away and laugh.
“Assholes,” I mutter. The vulgarity stirs an unexpected reflection on my recent examination. For the first time since my arrival I am gripped with an undertow of low-level fear.
A fellow, who seems to be asleep, occupies the rack below, and in the lower rack next to him another patient is lying on his back reading a magazine. I don’t recognize either of them. It’s a big ship.
The piped music is again playing loudly, and the corpsmen resume their card game, hooting and laughing. I decide to try to doze off anyway. Closing my eyes, I review the whirl of circumstances that brought me here. I should have played things differently with the Commander. Had I known that he would decide so quickly to send me to sickbay, I certainly would have. It was walking in late that drew attention to my problem. There was probably a little hesitation in my step, and I might have winced at the pain. That’s what gave me away, and the Commander, with his big thing about the Tijuana girls and venereal disease, picked right up on it. That’s what did it. He thinks I have VD, as he would say. That’s why he sent me straight to the doctor. If I had been in the office early and at my desk when the commander arrived, no one would have noticed, and I could have just taken it easy, and likely things would have improved on their own. How stupid. But that’s history. I’m stuck here, at least until I can talk to the doctor about getting out.
Searching for a point of reference, I look over the edge of my rack at the fellow below. He’s awake, and I make eye contact. “How long have you been in here?” I ask.
“I came early this morning.” The fellow’s neck is obviously swollen, and his voice is raspy and faint.
“Did you see the doctor?”
“Yeah, he looked at me before they took me in.”
“Do you have any idea when he will come back?”
He shrugged and shook his head.
“I’m Landy.”
“Miller.”
“What are you here for, Miller?”
“Tonsils.”
“Rough,” I sympathized and roll back onto my rack before he can ask about my ailment. Miller doesn’t know any more about how the place operates than I do.
I look over the edge of my rack again, “Does the loud music bother you?”
Miller shrugs his shoulders as if he hadn’t noticed, and I roll back.
A pureed lunch arrives, almost inedible, and one of the corpsmen brings pills for me. I take the occasion to ask if the music could be turned down a bit. The corpsman doesn’t answer, and the music is not turned down.
The same pill routine follows the evening meal of indistinguishable mush, and I ask again if the music can be turned down. This time the corpsman answers, “It’s regulation, and you better stop complaining, or you might find your shot records coming up missing. Got it?”
“Got it,” I answer.
As the corpsman takes the meal trays away, he escorts Miller to what I overhear is a “bath.” But I and the other patient are not invited to have a bath, and there is no explanation, like “You will be able to have a shower in the morning” or “Would you like a shower now?” or “Are you at all comfortable?” or “Are you still alive…?” Nothing.
Evening comes. By my wristwatch, it is after 9:30. The lights are not dimmed, and the loud music continues. The night shift corpsmen come on, and the others leave. One of them takes a quick look at the records hanging on the end of each rack and glances at each patient.
I give it another try. “Is there any chance the overhead lights could be turned off and the music turned down for the night, so we can sleep?”
The corpsman shifts his eyes toward me without turning his head. “It’s regulation,” he says and walks away.
I lean over the side of my rack. “It’s regulation? What kind of bullshit is that?” I ask Miller.
Miller shrugs.
What circle of hell is this? To what level have I descended? The reinforcements are in place, the gaming resumes, the music blares and the lights stay bright. I have to get out of here. If I get caught leaving on my own I would be busted big time, and I can’t even chance that without finding my clothes, and I have no idea where they are. They have it all figured out.
I pull my blanket up, put my pillow over my head and begin rehearsing my plea to get released the next time I see the doctor. When he comes I will say that I am feeling a lot better and tell him that I was unable to sleep because of the noise and the lights, so I need to go to my regular quarters to try to get some sleep. That will work, and I will be out of here.
The place reminds me of everything I hate about the Navy. I’m an artist, drafted out of my life of serenity and beauty and plunged into this hell, where I have to fight for air to breathe, where the only things keeping me going are the trips south with O’Hara and the weekly letters from my girlfriend Noleen.
Dear sweet Noleen. Only a few months ago we were sitting in white wicker armchairs in my studio, listening to music, sipping wine and discussing the partially completed painting on my easel. We clinked glasses, and she said, “Chopin with chardonnay, it doesn’t get any better than this.” I leaned over, kissed her soft lips and added, “No, it doesn’t get any better than this.” Will I ever see her again? Are there still white wicker armchairs out there? Do people still sit in them sipping chardonnay and listening to Chopin? Will the Navy nightmare ever end? Will I ever get out of sickbay hell?
The corpsmen are louder than ever now, bouncing dice against the floor and the bottom of the wall across the room. They groan and hoot, and money changes hands following each toss. The scene brings to mind the soldiers in the scripture story at the crucifixion of Jesus, throwing dice to see who will win his tunic, a consideration which momentarily lends a relieving perspective to my ordeal.
I believe the Navy is survivable. Bleak, disturbing and, by some measures, sinister, but survivable. There are fleeting moments of transporting serenity, like a sunset across an open sea with colors playing on clouds rising and rolling forever across the vast horizon, or the burst of fluorescent algae, exploding blue in the night over the ship’s bow in a heavy sea. But these moments are rare, and truthfully have nothing to do with the Navy. They are about sea and sky and color; any credit to the Navy is purely accidental, like birdsong lilting across a battlefield between shell bursts, beautiful, but purely an accidental counterpoint to the carnage and mayhem, which is the real plan of the day.
I’m exhausted, and no longer have the strength to escape into memories or analysis. I need sleep. Pulling my pillow more tightly over my head, I give it another try.
The next morning I awake with a start. A corpsman announces breakfast and hands me a tray of mush, a drink, more pills and a note from O’Hara, who came to visit while I was asleep. The note reads: “What’s up with all this? I’ll be back tomorrow. Be careful, O.”
Checking my watch, I realize that I actually slept four
hours.
The music is turned down, and the cards and dice are out of sight. The doctor is coming.
As he enters the room, he greets the two corpsmen on duty and immediately turns his attention to the patients. Grabbing the record file hanging on the end of my rack, he glances at it momentarily and asks, “So, how are you doing today?”
The doctor is in a hurry, but I start with my planned speech anyway. “I’m feeling better, but I’m really tired. I can’t get any sleep in…”
“You look better. How does your throat feel?” the doctor interrupts, looking back at the chart.
“My throat?” I question.
“I don’t see here that you’ve had your morning gargle,” the doctor says.
Gargle? I puzzle. I know enough about human physiology to know that gargling for hemorrhoids is ridiculous. More than ever, I need to get out of here.
“Corpsman, why hasn’t his man had his morning gargle?” the doctor asks.
“I was just getting to it, sir.”
“Well, see that you do.”
“Sir,” I try again. “I’m feeling a lot better, and I can’t get any sleep here. I would like to go back to my regular quarters where I can sleep.”
“We’ll see,” the doctor replies, hangs the chart back on my rack and turns his attention to Miller in the rack below.
“How are you feeling today?” the doctor asks.
“Not so good,” Miller answered in a whispery voice.
“Holy shit!” the doctor says, glancing at Miller and then back at his chart.
“Damn it!” he exclaims, grabbing the chart from my rack. “You idiots!” he shouts at the corpsmen. You mixed up the charts on these two men. He looks again at Miller’s swollen neck. “Damn it!” Then he turns to me and asks, “What medication have you had?”
“Some pills. They came with each meal.”
“No baths?”
It is time to get even with the corpsmen. “No, sir. Miller, below me, has had the baths.”
“Idiots!” The doctor shouts again at the corpsmen. “These men have not had their correct medications for 24 hours. Now look at this man.” He says, staring at Miller.
“They’re both going to the hospital. You guys screwed this thing up so badly. I want a vehicle, and I want these men on their way to the hospital in thirty minutes. You got that?”
“Yes, sir,” the corpsmen answer in unison.
“Do you think you can handle that without screwing it up?”
“Yes, sir.”
The doctor begins writing something on each chart. “Idiots!” he says again. “And see if you can give the right chart to the right man when they get to the hospital. And give Miller his antibiotics before he leaves. Do you think you can handle that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thirty minutes. I’ll be back, and they better be on their way.” He throws the charts on the table and stomps out.
Hospital? I shudder. What circle of hell is that?
Leon Kortenkamp is a San Francisco Bay Area writer and artist who lives with his wife, Ginny, in Belmont, California. They are the parents of five grown children. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. His work has been exhibited, published and collected throughout the United States. His story, Memorial Day, was recently published in Curbside Splendor and his painting, Filoli Landscape, was featured on the cover of Ploughshares. His recent exhibitions feature crossover works on paper, which include writing with imagery, paintings and mixed media assemblage.
He grew up in rural Iowa, and memories of those formative years are often reflected in his work. His work features a consideration of constrained emotion lurking in the mundane, reflecting his conviction that ordinary objects and everyday events are deeply charged with spiritual reality.
He is a deacon in the Archdiocese of San Francisco, and a professor in the art department at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California.
His email address is: leonpk@comcast.net
Image credit: Leon Kortenkamp
Crux Literary Journal 