Sheehan syndrome

Dearest M., I understand that you don't come out any more, so I am bringing some of my voyages to you through photographs. As someone who has spent much time in waiting rooms myself, I strongly suggest that you try to make the break, now that it has been a good three years since Dr. K. summoned us from the waiting room into the hallway to talk to us.

How long can we go on with this unproductive vigil? When we last spoke, before my world cruise, you were here. Now, after all this time, I return and still find you here. I have adopted your children into my home. I have absorbed your cats and dogs into my yard. Your ming ferns trace a soft green connect-the-dots picture in my sewing room. Your oldest son is getting into Duke on a football scholarship. Kukla had puppies.

All of this lush continuance awaits you, if you would only choose it. But in the meantime, here is a tuna on rye, two pickles, a very small wedge of cheesecake (the night supervisor told me you should be dieting), and a banana for later. And I'll leave you photos of the outside world to seduce you. (I'm sure you'll agree it's in your best interests).

By the way, I also heard that you started a walk-in exercise clinic four days a week for the other waiting relatives. I was very pleased to hear this, and felt that perhaps it was one step closer to the door; but then, I had, quite frankly, a disappointment. I heard that more and more relatives who lose their loved ones are staying on in the waiting room, reading, sobbing and exercising for weeks, and now, I hear, for months at a time, after the dreaded pronouncements are made. At length, without adequate air, food and the stimuli and intrusions of the daily world, they themselves sometimes take sick. The orderlies who come in to get the phone or bring news or a pill will notice a relative in an irregular state, and within a few moments a stretcher will carry that tired vigilante down the hall to intensive care.

That evening, a new flock of relatives will come, like clans of refugees flocking to the terminal shore of short-term healing. The orderlies keep bringing more and more chairs from the fourth, fifth, and seventh floors.

Needless to say, there is some comfort to be taken in the closeness this setting provides. When one waiting relative has a birthday or anniversary, all of the waiting room turns from its collective anguish and someone brings in a radio and some salami or cannoles. When Mrs. Boschwitz's husband was in intensive care on their anniversary, Admiral Sheehan, whose wife had been delirious for twelve days, took Mrs. B. out for the evening to the fourth floor cafeteria, to the eighth floor solarium, to the reading room for coffee, and then to the lobby gift shop for a box of chocolates. There they were in the lobby. They were fifty feet from the turnstile next to the front door, but they could move no further. Others came and went as the Admiral and Mrs. B. watched hungrily, getting a glimpse of the front lawn every time the door opened. Some reporters observed that they looked smug and officious, like personnel officers who will never attain an executive post, but who are authorized to decide who else should be passed over.

An orderly noticed that they were gone for an inordinate amount of time and, to appease the other relatives, reported it to the nursing station. A few minutes later the night nurse went down to fetch them. When they arrived back in the waiting room they were greeted like marines coming back from the war zone. Chocolates were passed around and the waiting room was glowing and animated. No one can deny the appeal of this ambience.

Well, I must be leaving now, M., but I will leave my photos with you, with each one clearly marked as to where it is. Maybe you will recognize Tunis and Recife from your past trips, and there's one that alternatively seems to be Uruguay or Agadir.

Frankly, I am annoyed at your insolence, but I fully understand what I have come to think of as the Sanitorium Syndrome.

It's simple enough. The chocolates are delicious, the coffee and hot chocolate so handy, the atmosphere so tense, tearful and supportive, the doctors so strong and knowledgeable, the nurses so patronizing and primly soothing. I remember it vividly. The joyful moments are so poignant when high news of a breath, a blink, a beat or a pulse emerges from the dense, awesome, precise, machinated chambers of the narrow, ship-like foyers; the pillows and quilts brought in by the volunteers so inviting, the visits of the clergymen on their evening rounds so comforting. Maybe I'll just stay on for a few more moments and explain the photos to you in person.

Mireille Duras (Geneva, Switzerland) is an American living in Geneva, of Russian, Eastern European, Brazilian, French, and Irish ancestry. By day she is a writer on human rights, humanitarian issues and conflict prevention for international organizations including the UN. After dark she turns into a fiction writer, and has been deeply influenced by the work of Paul Bowles, Jorge Amado (Tent of Miracles), Lawrence Durrell, Milan Kundera, and the early stories of Anais Nin.

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