All these were just expedients to hold a lung still so it could get well. In artificial pneumothorax they shove a hollow needle between your ribs so that the end is between rib wall and lung wall, then pump the space in between full of air; this compresses the lung like a squeezed sponge.
But the air would be absorbed after a while and you had to get pumped up again. Every Friday morning those of us on pneumo would gather in the ward surgeon's office for the needle. It wasn't grim - lungers
are funny people; they are almost always cheerful. This was an officers' ward and we treated it like a club. Instead of queuing up outside the surgeon's office we would swarm in, loll in his chair, sit on his desk, smoke his cigarettes, and swap lies while he took care of us. Four of us that morning and I was the first.
Taking the air needle isn't bad - just a slight prick as it goes in and you can even avoid that if you want to bother with skin anesthesia. It's over in a few minutes; you put your bathrobe back on and go back to bed. I hung around after I was through because the second patient, chap named Saunders, was telling a dirty story that was new to me.
He broke off in the middle of it to climb up on the table when I got off. Our number - one ward surgeon was on leave and his assistant was taking care of us - a young chap not long out of school. We all liked him and felt he had the makings of a great surgeon.
Getting pumped up is not dangerous in any reasonable sense of the word. You can break your neck falling off a step ladder, choke to death on a chicken bone. You can slip on a rainy day, knock yourself out, and drown in three inches of rain water. And there is just as unlikely a way to hit the jackpot in taking artificial pneumothorax. If the needle goes a little too far, penetrates the lung, and if an air bubble then happens to be forced into a blood vessel and manages to travel all the way back to the heart without being absorbed, it is possible though extremely unlikely to get a sort of vapor lock in the valves of your heart - air embolism, the doctors call it. Given all these improbable events, you can die.
We never heard the end of Saunders' dirty joke. He konked out on the table.
The young doc did everything possible for him and sent for help while he was doing it. They tried this and that, used all the tricks, but the upshot was that they brought in the meat basket and carted him off to the morgue.
Three of us were still standing there, not saying a word - me, re-swallowing my breakfast and thanking my stars that I was through with it, an ex - field - clerk named Josephs who was next up, and Colonel Hostetter who was last in line. The surgeon turned and looked at us. He was sweating and looked bad - may have been the first patient he had ever lost; he was still a kid. Then he turned to Dr. Armand who had come in from the next ward. I don't know whether he was going to ask the older man to finish it for him or whether he was going to put it off for a day, but it was clear from his face that he did not intend to go ahead right then.
Whatever it was, he didn't get a chance to say it. Josephs stood up, threw off his bathrobe and climbed up on the table. He had just lighted a cigarette; he passed it to a hospital orderly and said, "Hold this for me, Jack, while Doctor" - he named our own surgeon - "pumps me up." With that he peels up his pajama coat.
You know the old business about sending a student pilot right back up after his first crack up. That was the shape our young doctor was in - he had to get right back to it and prove to himself that it was just bad luck and not because he was a butcher. But he couldn't send himself back in; Josephs had to do it for him. Josephs could have ruined him professionally that moment, by backing out and giving him time to work up a real case of nerves - but instead Josephs forced his hand, made him do it.
Josephs died on the table.
The needle went in and everything seemed all right, then Josephs gave a little sigh and died. Dr. Armand was on hand this time and took charge, but it did no good. It was like seeing the same horror movie twice. The same four men arrived to move the body over to the morgue - probably the same basket.
Our doctor now looked like a corpse himself. Dr. Armand took over. "You two get back to bed," he said to
Colonel Hostetter and me. "Colonel, come over to my ward this afternoon; I'll take care of your treatment."
But Hostetter shook his head. "No, thank you," he said crisply, "My ward surgeon takes care of my needs." He took off his robe. The young fellow didn't move. The Colonel went up to him and shook his arm. "Come, now Doctor - you'll make us both late for lunch." With that he climbed up on the table and exposed his ribs.
A few moments later he climbed off again, the job done, and our ward surgeon was looking human again, although still covered with sweat.
I stopped to catch my breath. Jones nodded soberly and said, "I see what you mean. To do what Colonel Hostetter did takes a kind of cold courage way beyond the courage needed to fight."
"He doesn't mean anything of the sort," Arkwright objected. "He wasn't talking about Hostetter; he meant the intern. The doctor had to steady down and do a job - not once but twice. Hostetter just had to hold still and let him do it."
I felt tired and old. "Just a moment," I said. "You're both wrong. Remember I defined 'bravery' as requiring that a man had to have a choice ... and chooses to be brave in spite of his own fear. The ward surgeon had the decisions forced on him, so he is not in the running. Colonel Hostetter was an old man and blooded in battle - and he had Josephs' example to live up to. So he doesn't get first prize."
"But that's silly," Jones protested. "Josephs was brave, sure - but, if it was hard for Josephs to offer himself, it was four times as hard for Hostetter. It would begin to look like a jinx - like a man didn't stand a chance of coming off that table alive."
"Yes, yes!" I agreed. "I know, that's the way I felt at the time. But you didn't let me finish. I know for certain that it took more bravery to do what Josephs did.
"The autopsy didn't show an aft embolism in Josephs, or anything else. Josephs died of fright."
The Answer: I'll bury this in other words to keep your eye from picking it up at once; the shortcoming is that this is a true story. I was there. I have changed names, places, and dates but not the essential facts.
FOREWORD
You may not be old enough to remember the acute housing shortage following World War II (the subject of this story) but if you are over six but not yet old enough for the undertaker, you are aware of the current problem of getting in out of the rain... a problem especially acute for the young couple with one baby and for the retired old couple trying to get by on Social "Security" plus savings if any. (I am not suggesting that it is easy for those between youth and old age; the present price of mortgage money constitutes rape with violence; the price tag on an honestly - constructed - if you can find one - two - bedroom house makes me feel faint.)
In 1960 in Moscow Mrs. Heinlein and I had as Intourist courier a sweet child named Ludmilla - 23, unmarried, living with her father, mother, brother and sisters. She told us that her ambition in life was for her family not to have to share a bathroom with another family.
The next aesthete who sneers at our American "plumbing culture" in my presence I intend to cut into small pieces and flush him down that W.C. he despises.
Any old pol will recognize the politics in this story as the Real McCoy. Should be. Autobiographical in many details. Which details? Show me a warrant and I'll take the Fifth.