Jane

Jane

Copyright © 2020 Michael S. Kochin

All Rights Reserved

Jane and I sat down at a window table in the doctors' cafeteria.  We had been up all night, gotten through rounds, but neither of us could sleep, so we went down for an 11:00 brunch.  The food, as usual, was unspeakable, but the winter sunlight was a welcome change from the fluorescents in the halls or at the nurses’ station. 

Jane and I had been friends since our first year of college.  Two young women first-years, both pre-med, though I majored in biochemistry and Jane majored in Russian Literature.  We both won early admission to the University of Chicago medical school, and both of us had chosen to stay for our residencies.  Jane had stayed because of her boyfriend, now her husband, a fifteenth-year graduate student in the Committee on Social Thought.  I, because..., well, when you are a fourth generation Hyde Parker, it just never occurs to you to leave.

We talked about various things, rounds, the attending physicians, most of whom had propositioned me, many more than once.  We also talked about Mr. Robardsun, an old philosopher retired from the University, who was dying of cancer, or so his doctors said.  The trouble is, at ninety-two everything takes a long time, including dying of cancer.  Robardsun, who had nobody to take care of him, had been admitted from the nursing home nine months ago.  Every week or so he'd have a crisis, which would keep him from being discharged, but was never quite enough to push him over the top.  What was most amazing was that he was still working, even while groaning in mortal pain.  Or at least, he would work when he wasn't entubated.  His magnum opus, demonstrating finally that only mind was real, and that body and pain where only illusions.  He had been working on the page proofs since 1947, since shortly after he'd received tenure.  And he was still at it.  As his pain had gotten worse he had taken to adding new footnotes, trying to prove to himself ever more desperately that his sufferings were only illusory.  The struggle was no doubt what was keeping him alive.

Then Jane said, "Ellen, I have the best thing to tell you."

"What?"

"I haven't had severe menstrual pains in four months."

Now you have got to realize that Jane always had the worst periods. Heavy flow, terrible cramps before and during.  She had started taking birth control pills in College, even when she wasn't in a relationship.  The pills had kept her from turning green and fainting during her periods, but had done nothing for the pain.  And she was off the pill, because she and Rick were trying to conceive.

Jane's pains were bad, well beyond the reach of Motrin or Tylenol.  "That's great, Jane," I said, "what the trick?  Chinese herbs?  Or are you trying to tell that you are four months pregnant?" I asked, straining to see her belly from across the table.

"No," Jane said, "I'm not pregnant, unfortunately.  But I have finally found a drug that works for the pain.  And would you believe it, I heard about it from an ER patient, an uneducated crack whore on welfare with three kids paid for by the state."

"You ain't smokin' crack, is you, girlfriend?" I asked.

"No, I haven't tried that," Jane said.  "But you see, this patient, a thirty-two-year-old Black female with a history of drug abuse, as we say, gets sent to me when I was covering the ER."

"'What's wrong?’ I asked her.

"'Doctor,' she said, 'I have got the worst pains in my belly'.

"So I go through the diagnostic, and get her to describe the pain.  Then I ask her, 'have you ever felt pains like this before?'

"'Yes Doctor, every time I get the monthlies.'

"'Every time,' I said.

"'Every time,' she said, 'since my last little girl was born.'

"'Do you take anything for them?’, I asked.'

"'Well, Doctor, I used to take smack, but the Judge said, last time I was in Court, that if I tested positive for smack again when I was picked up, she would revoke my probation.  And then who would take care of my babies?   So I came in to see if you could give me something.'

"I gave her some aspirin and got her out of there.  But it set me to thinking.  Heroin was out of the question, but maybe some other opiate?  So I tried codeine, but that only helped a little.  Then a while later I was walking by Mr. Robardsun's room, when I heard him shout, "Damn fucking pills, damned if I ever take any of them!"  I went in.  'Is something wrong, Mr. Robardsun?' I asked."

"Robardsun's whole being was shriveled with pain.  He did his best to collect himself, then he said, 'I dropped some pills on the floor.  Could you pick them up?'  Sure enough his morphine dose was on the floor.  I assumed that he had knocked them off his tray, somehow, since the cup of water the nurse had given him had spilled too.  When I bent down to pick up the pills, though, I noticed that his bureau drawer had a hundred of them."

"He noticed my surprise, and understood what I had discovered.  I said, 'Mr. Robardsun, are you taking your morphine?'"

"'No,' he said.  'Mind your own business.  But since you figured things out, you just take them all out of the drawer and throw them away.'"

"'Mr. Robardsun,' I said, 'the pills will relieve your pain.'

"'Pain is an illusion,' he snapped.

"'Mr. Robardsun,' I said, 'does your doctor know that you aren't taking your pills?'

"'Hell no!' He shouted.  When I told him I didn't want any of his quack "Pain"-killers he kept sending those goddamned psychiatrists to me.  They kept asking me whether I wasn't taking the pills because I was depressed.  And when I told them that I wasn't depressed, they told me I should be depressed, since I was a ninety-two-year-old man without any family who was dying of cancer.  So I decided that I would tell my doctor that I was willing to get the pills.  But instead of taking them, I just throw them in drawer.  I just happened to drop right before you came in.  But why don't you take them.  Flush them down the toilet, give them to the kids with hangnails, just get them out of here!

"So I did.  And when I next got my period, I took one, as needed.  The pains went away immediately.  And the stress too.  You know, in the last year, every time I get my period I get upset.  Another chance of getting pregnant blown.  But the morphine takes the blues and sends them on an all-expenses paid weekend in Maui."

"But Jane, you are going to get caught, and lose your license."

"Nah, nobody knows how I get them.  Robardsun doesn't know my name.  And everybody thinks he's taking his pills.  There is one thing that worries me, though."

"What's that?"

"If I get pregnant, I won't get my period.  And then I won't have any excuse for taking morphine."

"You are completely insane," I said, but I could hardly conceal the admiration in my voice.  So U. of C., and so Jane.