Losing my mind in New York and then finding it

The Column: 05.20.24

I went into a Manhattan ER last Saturday out of concern about incidental memory loss (name of primary physician, for one, name of building I live in, a vagueness about the previous two weeks) and if you need an ER, Manhattan is the place to be. My sweetie was in St. Paul playing viola in an orchestra. I took a cab, walked in the door of New York-Presbyterian, and a few minutes later I was peeing in a plastic container and ten minutes later a neurologist was asking me what year it is, what date, date of birth, name of spouse or loved one and had I recently ingested marijuana or cocaine or anything of the sort, and the answers were 2024, May 18, 8/7/1942, Jenny Lind, and no and no. (Had this been Fargo, North Dakota, she might’ve asked for the name of my wife and left off the “anything of the sort” but this is New York and there are all sorts of that sort of thing.

It’s a fascinating drama, beepers beeping, pagers, men and women in blue quickstepping about their jobs, the occasional wacko screaming, the various souls you and I have no wish to deal with, but what is most dramatic is the kindness, the sheer kindness, the unrelenting gentleness and politeness, the doctor’s gentle pat on the shoulder when the interlocutory is done. Do they teach this in Med School? I guess so. Everyone, even the orderly who pushes your gurney, tells you their name and calls you by name. Nobody is anonymous. A woman is crying in the next alcove: a nurse says, “I’m coming to help you, dear.” The woman says she is in terrible pain.” The doctor is on his way, sweetheart.” Two doctors query two young men about drug usage — marijuana? coke? — and the young men hesitate and the doctors say, “I’m not here to judge. Was it meth? Was it fentanyl? Do you not know?”

I am not in pain, thank you, but memory loss worries me because I am in the business of doing unscripted monologues from memory in front of paying audiences, sometimes for two hours and if I can’t do that anymore I’ll have to go to Shady Pines and play bingo. A woman wheeled me into X-ray (it’s called Imaging now) — “I have a very poor self-image,” I said so she’d know that I’m funny and my life is worth saving. She laughed. She was Black, with a definite French accent. “Haiti,” I said. “Oui, monsieur,” she said. I asked if life will ever get better in Haiti. She said, “I hope so. It is a very beautiful country.” Black/French accent — Haiti: I seize the chance to demonstrate brain function. I tell my orderly, Raphael, “This is an exciting place you work in.” “Every day, something you’ve never seen before,” he says.

But in the midst of my vagueness, I have a clear memory of the novel I’m writing, a novel that thrice in the early morning hours, I’ve awakened with clear ideas about, one for the general structure, then that it’s a novel about a happy marriage, and then a clear vision of the ending. This hospital is going into that novel. People need to hear about kindness happening in New York.

And then around midnight a woman walked in, a civilian, no blue on her except her eyes. She was a Unitarian minister, making rounds, saw my name and remembered a column I wrote back in the Bush era saying what a terrible mistake the Iraq War was. My one good protest column and she remembered it all these years later. I told her I’m Episcopalian and that I’ve read Emerson and decided not to come forward. “We never give up hope,” she said. “This building, the George F. Baker Pavilion — he went to my church, so you’re one of us,” She was very funny. She said, “We think of Episcopalians as people who write thank-you notes after orgies.”

“That’s high church; I’m low church.”

She said, “Just don’t kick the bucket because if you die in the George F. Baker building, you go to a Unitarian paradise and that’s a series of committees planning paradise and designing the gates and deciding who all will speak at the dedication.” I said, “You identify as Unitarian and you took the hormones but underneath you’re Episcopalian.” She reached down to pull up her skirt but she was wearing jeans.

She said, “You’re quick. You ought to go into radio or something.” I said, “God bless you.” She said, “I’ll tell her you said so when I see her.”

And now I’m back home, feeling fine. Not a bad column for a demented man. Don’t send flowers. But be kind to any Unitarians you meet. Google “Unitarian jokes” and keep one on hand. Every thirty or forty years there’s a new one but they love them all equally.

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