that he had only us by his bed .
We took more admissions , neurological ones and renal ones . We pronounced two people dead on our ward , and I dispatched Willie to the other subspecialty wards twice for the same thing , one whom he coded unsuccessfully and one who clearly had been dead for some time . The Baptist guys who always came and sang on Sundays appeared in the halls in the early afternoon , and harmonized on hymns . Families in their church hats began to appear , and several brought sweet potato pie ; one brought biscuits already buttered . I fought off waves of homesickness all afternoon , brought on by the smell of those still-warm biscuits ( one of us always had the sworn duty of Not Letting Mother Forget the Rolls ). Willie ducked his head when I asked him about being homesick . We agreed it was the very worst part of leaving home .
We took more admissions , GI ones , and neurological ones , people with strokes . They were disheartening . We wished we were elsewhere . We missed watching the Lions play . We argued over whether we missed pumpkin pie more than dressing , or the smell of wood smoke over the smell of burning leaves . It was quite companionable and we motored along until about 0200 , when the night Admitting Resident beeped me again .
“ Do you speak Spanish ?” I said no . “ Does your intern ?” He said no . “ Great . Get down here anyway , come see me .”
What Dan had was a tiny Equadorian man who had a lung mass and what smelled like a lung abscess , to boot . He had a short little daughter who was at least 50 and very round and very tired and looking grim . She did not speak English either . I thought to myself , why is this not a C-D hit and Dan saw that in my face and said ,
“ They got slammed and you haven ’ t yet and you know it will be your jurisdiction anyway .”
The patient was named Mr . Arturo , and we examined him in sign language , and took him upstairs . Willie did not think any Spanish-speaking interns were around . I called the operator and asked her if she had paged anybody who answered with a Spanish accent , and she sent me to the surgical ICU where I found Dr . Perez , a thoracic fellow who was completely uninterested in translating , once he heard the guy had lymph nodes . But the aide up there , Jorge , was from Puerto Rico and he came with me to help . He understood that I did not want the guy to get coded , especially with his daughter there , but could not even tell him his diagnosis ( such as it was ).
Jorge was great . They understood about the growth ( smoked since childhood ), the pneumonia , and the no getting on respirators , and the meds to help till we could get a definite name for the mass . But Jorge was puzzled about the straw .
Mr . Arturo ’ s lips got dusky when he talked , so I got anxious . I turned up his O ’ s . He was trying to explain something about straw . It was not a drinking straw . We said straw like horses eat ? Yes , it was that . He talked some more . But it caught fire ? He got frustrated . Yes , it was straw , and they put it on fire on purpose .
I wondered if he had brain mets , or was trying to explain some past tragedy , but no , he seemed to be wanting us to set straw on fire . His daughter was crying . At length , we understood that you made a straw man and set him on fire , and his daughter said that was at Christmas . But he wanted to do it now , and we all realized he thought he would die before Christmas .
( continued on page 18 )
DECEMBER 2016 17