Tom Schreck: On the Ropes

I also liked Hymie because he liked me. He was a fight fan, knew the game inside and out, and loved to talk about it. A lot of people don’t know that Jews, along with the Irish, dominated boxing in the twenties. Throughout its history, boxing has been dominated by whatever minority was experiencing the most oppression or prejudice at the time. It probably has to do with being hungry, tough, and angry. When a minority group rises in the social order, they usually drop out of boxing dominance. It helps explain why there aren’t a hell of a lot of WASPs with fine pedigrees in the game, which is another reason I like boxing. As far as I am concerned, golf and WASPs deserve each other.

As a fighter and a student of boxing history, I’d kibbutz with Hymie about the fighters of his era, especially the greatest Jewish fighter of all time, Benny Leonard, a lightweight who remains one of the best pound-for-pound fighters ever.

Hymie also got a kick out of an Irish Catholic Polish guy like me mixing some Yiddish into our conversations. I’d greet him with a big “Shalom aleichem,” making sure I rolled the “ch” as much as I could. I’d also give him an “Abi gezunt,” a Yiddish expression that meant something like, “Go with good health.” Hymie loved it and would come over and pinch my cheek and say something like, “Do you hear this goy? Can you believe him? He could sell gefilte fish in Brooklyn!”

Claudia hated the fact that Hymie liked me, partly because she hated me and partly because he had little use for her. Hymie knew about helping people and he knew about administrators. He knew Claudia was a blowhard administrator and he saw her as a necessary evil. His dislike for her probably wasn’t enough to ever save my job if it came down to it, but she sure sensed he didn’t like her.

Despite my respect for Hymie, having the rest of the board in was a pain in the ass. Claudia had recently formed a subcommittee board group to oversee quality assurance. It was a perfect vehicle for her to point out to the board my poor paperwork and how it put the agency at regulatory risk. She was laying further groundwork to can me and this subcommittee would utilize the power of the board to justify my firing. The place would be so much better if she only put a similar amount of effort into actually doing something for the clients.

Regardless of the bullshit, regardless of my hangover, and regardless of Al’s objections to the contrary, it was time to go to work. I grabbed a stack of files to start to work and, as luck would have it, opened up the Abermans’ chart. The only thing in all of life that could possibly approach doing a couple’s session with the Abermans on the boredom meter was having to write notes about it. I was trying to think how to write the psychobabble term for chronic nag when the phone rang.

“Duff, it’s Rudy.” In addition to being my landlord and co-conspirator when it came to bullshit disabilities, Rudy also made rounds at Crawford Medical Center, which everyone called CMC.

“What’s up, Rude?” I asked.

“I wanted to give you a heads-up,” Rudy’s voice was all business, which wasn’t like him. “You’re Mikey the gay guy’s caseworker, aren’t you?”

“Is he in detox again?” The way these guys went in and out of the hospital made me crazy.

“No, Duff.” Rudy got quiet. “Somebody worked him over pretty good. He’s in ICU.”

“Worked him over?”

“Somebody beat him to within inches of death. He’s not conscious,” Rudy said.

“Holy shit…”

“Yeah, I know,” Rudy exhaled hard. “He doesn’t have anybody, does he?”

“No, the family deserted him a long time ago.”

“Look, Duff, with the way things are here, it would be nice if someone showed Mikey some attention.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The administrator here, Broseph, is a real bastard. With someone like Mikey with no insurance or crummy Medicaid, the hospital is likely to lose a ton of money. He’s been all over my ass to discharge guys no matter what shape they’re in.”

“You just said Mikey was in rough shape,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter.” Rudy raised his voice just a little. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The last time I kept a guy like Mikey longer than Broseph wanted me to, he wrote me up-I’m on thin ice here. He hates anyone with bad insurance.”

“That’s fucked, Rudy,” I said. “I’ll be right up.”

I started to put the files away and felt myself slam the cabinet drawer hard enough that it got Trina’s attention.

“Hey-are you all right?” Trina asked.

“No,” I said.

I’m not a big believer in peace and love and all that shit, but I don’t understand it when people cause harm to someone who isn’t even bothering them. Every now and then some assholes go into Jefferson Park with the idea of “rolling fags.” Fuckin’ cowards hurt people for no other reason than because they hate gay people. Another fuckin’ way of labeling people so that they have no value, only this shit is another step into evil. The fact that once a guy got the shit beat out of him his health depended on which insurance plan he signed up for was beyond ludicrous. This Broseph asshole sounded like a real charmer.

I was getting ready to leave when the phone rang again. It was Dr. Gabbibb. Dr. Gabbibb was a piece of work. He’s Indian, five foot two, and very dark. It’s very difficult to understand him, and because he’s so fucking arrogant, he refuses to repeat himself. He also has some sort of Tourette’s-like affliction, so when he’s talking, he’ll suddenly blurt, “DAT, DAT, DAT, DAT, DAT, shit.” After each one of those episodes, he’ll say, “excuse me,” like he just had a tickle in his throat or something. I had to talk to him frequently because the detox sent us lots of cases and the conversations would go something like this:

“Allo, Doofy? Dees is Doctor Gabbibb at the datox.”

“Yes, doctor,” I’d say.

“I dave un clynt to send at you for treatment now,” Gabbibb would say.

“Excuse me, doctor,” I’d say.

“DAT, DAT, DAT, DAT, shit!.. excuse me,” he’d say and hang up.

I just got in the habit of agreeing to whatever he said and then calling his secretary to find out what was up.

Gabbibb worked a ton of hours because he was a research oncologist in addition to his duties as the detox medical director. Technically he may have been very good, but his social skills and bedside manner were the worst. I don’t know if it was a cultural thing or what, but I never met a more condescending man in my life. The hospital gave him whatever he wanted because he headed the cancer research at the medical school. I guess if you can cure cancer, people will put up with a lot of shit.

I was hoping I could keep Gabbibb’s phone conversation short and uneventful.

“Doofy? Dis homosexual patient in here is on your responsibility caseload?”

“What?” I said.

“DAT, DAT, DAT, DAT, shit… excuse me.” The doctor was going on his roll.

“I’m on my way up there, doctor,” I said, hoping to get off the phone quickly.

“No rush, Doofy. Dees man is not worth time,” he said and hung up.

It was probably a good thing he hung up, because I was about to go off and I don’t know how many DATs he had in him.

They let me in to see Mikey for fifteen minutes in ICU. His head was swollen to twice its normal size, he had a tube taped to his nose, his face was mostly purple from the bruising, and he had five different sets of stitches. He was surrounded by computerized machines with little red and green lights and something that checked his heart rate.

I felt cold and sick to my stomach, and though I couldn’t quite identify what it smelled like, I hated the hospital smell. Mikey was unconscious and when I touched his hand there was absolutely no response. I’m not really a religious guy, but I didn’t know what else to do, so I said a quick prayer. I said, “Hang in there, Mikey” out loud and felt foolish, but I had heard somewhere that it was good to try to speak to people in comas.