The Hospital Page #4

You know, Brubaker...

last night I sat in my hotel room,

reviewing the shambles of my life...

and contemplating suicide.

I said, "No, Bock, don't do it.

You're a doctor, you're a healer.

"You're the Chief of Medicine

at one of the great hospitals of the world.

"You are a necessary person.

Your life is meaningful."

Then I walk in here, today,

and I find out that one of my doctors...

was killed by a couple of nurses

who mistook him for a patient...

because he screwed a technician

from the Nephrology Lab.

- Hematology...

- Now you come to me...

with this gothic horror story in which

the entire machinery of modern medicine...

has apparently conspired

to destroy one lousy patient.

How am I to sustain my feeling

of meaningfulness in the face of this?

I'll tell you something.

If there were an oven around here,

I'd stick my head in it.

What was the name

of that guy from Farkis Pavilion, again?

Ives, sir. Elroy Ives.

- Somebody ought to ream his ass.

- I'm going to ream his ass.

I'm gonna break that Welbeck's back.

I'll defrock those two cannibals.

They will never again practice

in this hospital. I'll tell you that.

What about the girl? She says

we have no right to stop her...

from taking her father out.

She's willing to sign an AOR form.

Let him go...

before we kill him.

Get me Dr. Gilley.

I want to talk to him right now.

Put him on page, if you have to.

I don't care if he's operating.

You get me some monkey named Ives.

L-V-E-S. First name, Elroy.

He's in the Farkis Pavilion.

I want to talk to you, Joe.

Come in my office, please.

You got some punk rotating

in your department, named Ives?

Also, I want to ask you

what kind of dialysis room you're running.

Excuse me.

Gilley? Bock.

Didrt you tell me a few months ago...

you were gonna cut off all privileges

for that assassin, Welbeck?

Welbeck, yes! He just butchered

another one of my patients!

The mars a buccaneer.

I want him brought up

before the Medical Executive Committee.

He's in your department, not mine.

He's putatively a surgeon!

I'll be here.

I think you should know

you've got some research guy named Ives...

in your department

who's doing some dubious biopsies.

We're having enough problems

squeezing grants...

- out of the Nixon Administration...

- Ives is dead. That's why I'm here.

- What do you mean?

- I mean he's dead.

He had a heart attack

in the Emergency Room.

He had a heart attack

in the Emergency Room?

What is this? Some kind of plague?

Where is he now?

They were just taking him

down to Pathology.

...the next thing anybody knew,

three hours later...

Mrs. Cushing said there was a dead man

in the holding room.

You don't find anything

a little grotesque about all this?

- What do you mean?

- I mean, at 8:
30 this morning...

we meet over a doctor

who's killed intravenously...

and here we are four hours later,

with another doctor...

who's died of a heart attack

in the Emergency Room.

What are you suggesting?

You think we have a mad killer

stalking the hospital halls?

Presumably, Dr. Ives died of a heart attack,

and Schaefer in a diabetic coma.

People do die of these things.

It's all coincidental,

but I wouldn't call it grotesque.

How long are they gonna be

on Schaefer's post?

- I don't think you'd like to call next-of-kin?

- No, thanks.

God, I need a drink.

Mr. Mead?

I have an injection for you.

What the hell is going on in there?

Honey, we got a witch doctor in 806...

and you better go in there.

You know that Indian that was sitting

in 806 all night? He's still there.

And the girl's there,

and they're doing some voodoo in there.

- And I ain't kidding!

- What're you talking about?

I mean that Indiars in there,

half-naked, going...

...with a little bag.

You just better get in there, Mrs. Dunne.

You wanna see something, baby?

You just come here.

It's a perfectly harmless ceremony.

It's nothing to get excited about.

It'll be over in a few minutes, anyway.

Mr. Blacktree is a shaman

who gets his power from the thunder...

and it's imperative he conclude his ritual

while the storm is still going on.

Visiting hours were over at 9:00.

All that's going on in there

is a simple Apache prayer...

for my father's recovery.

The markings he's made

on my father's arms...

are from the pollen of the tule plant.

The twigs have no significance,

except they've been struck by lightning...

and are consequently appeals

to the spirit of lightning.

It's all entirely harmless.

A religious ceremony, not a medical one.

You don't seriously believe

all that mumbo jumbo's gonna cure him?

On the other hand, it won't kill him.

- Okay. Go ahead.

- Thanks.

- You still gonna take your father out?

- I have to arrange an ambulance.

- Is there a phone here I could use?

- Use my office.

Thank you.

Hello. I'd like to arrange an ambulance.

I'd like to arrange an ambulance

at 1:
30, tomorrow afternoon.

Drummond. First name, Barbara.

I'll pay cash.

You're to pick up my father,

Drummond, Edward...

at the Manattan Medical Center,

Holly Pavilion, Room 806.

It's a stretcher case.

I presume you provide the stretcher.

He's to be taken to American Airlines...

Kennedy Airport,

Flight 729 to Yuma, Arizona.

I'll accompany the patient. Thank you.

- You believe in witchcraft, Miss Drummond?

- I believe in everything.

- You like a drink?

- Yeah.

My father, you should know,

was a very successful doctor in Boston.

A member of the Harvard Medical Faculty.

He was a widower, and I was his only child.

He was not an especially religious man,

a sober Methodist.

One evening, seven years ago...

he attended a Pentecostal meeting

at Harvard...

and found himself speaking in tongues.

He sank to his knees at the back of the room

and began to talk fluently...

in a language which no one

had ever heard before.

This sort of thing happens frequently

at Pentecostal meetings...

and began happening regularly to my father.

It was not unusual to walk into our home

and find my father sitting in his office...

utterly serene, happily speaking to the air

in this strange, foreign tongue.

I was, at that time, 20 years old...

having my obligatory affair

with a minority group.

In my case, a Hopi Indian,

a postgraduate fellow at Harvard...

doing his doctorate in aboriginal languages

of the Southwest.

One day, I brought the Indian boy home...

just as my father was sinking to his knees

in the entrance foyer in one of his trances.

The Indian wheeled in his tracks,

and he said, "I'll be a son of a b*tch!"

You see, my father

was speaking an Apache dialect...

an obscure dialect, at that...

spoken only by a ragged band

of unreconstructed Indians...

who had rejected the reservation,

and gone to live in isolation...

in the Sierra Madre Mountains

in Northern Mexico.

What do you say to that?

What the hell am I supposed to say to that?

I'm sitting here boozing,

and you come in and tell me...

some demented story

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