The tests for the diagnosis

Almost led me to psychosis

I knew I was sick

But doctors are slick

And testing is their schtick!

Medicos are bright, some are young.

They made me stick out my tongue

Are they looking for color or looking for texture?

What does one get from a lingual conjecture?

The days turn into weeks

And more doctors put their beaks

Into my mouth, ears, and nose

I wonder what this torture shows.

They use words I do not understand

My life hanging by a strand

Another expert is needed

And therefore treatment impeded

One more doctor says too long we have tarried

That treatment and I are about to be married.

She writes the insurance man who then approves

And schedules chemo/immune moves.

It takes hours for a session – blood test - wait and wait

And then after you qualify, they measure up your weight.

Then they stick in the needle and leave you for hours

While alarms wake you up from dreams of Elysian bowers.

Sit still, we’ll shoot another infusion

Into your arm to create that illusion

That all is well and never you mind

We’re testing all these chemicals blind.

And then the bills begin to flow in

They make no sense, no logic therein.

A bandaid costs $200 smackers.

The MRI $5 like saltine crackers.

I’ll soon go bald and then reveal

How my bumpy scalp tends to peel

They gave me a turban like the 1930s

The look is Myrna Loy and not real flirties.

Is there a reason I am enduring this hell?

Any chance it will make me well?

As I stirred, there was no car sound. No refrigerator knocks. No ball bouncing on the wall next door where the autistic child struggles to survive. Am I deaf? No. Suddenly, birds burst into their morning song. I leap out of bed and look out the window. What used to be the filthy sidewalk outside my building is pristine. The sky is a brilliant blue. Was it my night wish? I had dreamed I could promote love, stop war, and make the world a better place. Has it happened? And if so, how could it possibly be the literal realization of my dream?

After all these years, it was so simple. Just believe, wish, and dream. The rest is love.

When I woke up in the hospital I was quite confused. I am a doctor and I had never been a patient before. There were machines beeping in my room that I could not identify but otherwise, the environment was the familiar pristine and sterile white that I had worked in, yet something seemed to be different.

As I gathered my thoughts I remembered volunteering to be undergo a cryogenic freeze. How long had I been frozen? A nurse came in dressed in a pair of pajamas and orthopedic shoes. This made her look more like a martial arts teacher than a medical professional. She seemed quite young. Her hair was pulled back loosely and carelessly in a soft ponytail. She seemed of Asian descent and I was surprised to hear her speak English with no accent.

“Oh, so good to see you awake, Dr. Bondurant,” she said with convincing sincerity.

“How long was I in cryogenic suspension?” I asked.

“I am not sure, but I will get Dr. Berkowitz to come examine you and he will have a more extensive file. He will be in in about an hour. In the meantime, I would like to have you try to drink some liquids to rehydrate. We have been giving you a solution with electrolytes since you were brought out of suspension. That’s why you have the IV.”

“What is today’s date?” I asked, I was so curious to find out more, but it looked as if she had been instructed not to give me any information.

“Dr. Berkowitz will give you every detail when he comes in. Will you try to sip some of this water? Hydration is vital to you, especially now.” She lifted a cup to my lips.

I had trouble even sipping and dribbled some on myself. She seemed not to be surprised.

“It will take you a while to get your muscles back under control. I want Dr. B. to come look at you before we start you moving. We have had therapists massaging your legs and arms for the past three days and your muscles are responding, but they are weak. Do you feel any pain?”

“I haven’t noticed any, “ I responded. It felt so strange to be the patient. I had never been sick a day in my life – which was why I was chosen for the experiment. She pulled out a small rectangular machine from her uniform pocket and seemed to use it like a hand-held radio to contact her colleague and ask for someone to stay in the room with me in case I needed help with anyone.

In a few minutes, a large colored man in an orderly uniform opened the door and came in.

“Dr. Bondurant, I am Adam Johnson. I am an orderly who can help you get around when the time comes.” His gleaming skin was a beautiful deep brown and he had shaved his head bare of any hair. He had a very kind face and deep brown eyes.

He didn’t sound colored. He spoke like me in accent, but had a resonant baritone sound to his voice. Having a colored orderly in a hospital for whites was surprising, too. Was this an anomaly or had society changed so quickly? If so, things might be changing for the better.

Adam helped me do learn simple exercises to help me get my toes and fingers moving again. It was hard going because I was quite weak. But I was satisfied that I would regain movement after seeing that my synapses were identifying my muscles. I laughed at my spasticity a bit, finally relaxing into the role of patient.

After about half an hour, a giant of a man came in. He must have been over six feet tall. He came towards my bed with the unmistakable compassion of a doctor.

“Dr. Bondurant, I am Jonathan Berkowitz, the head of the cryogenics department at the University of Pennsylvania. You look pretty good to me. How are you feeling?”

“But wasn’t it Jacob Steiner who was in charge of my suspension?” I asked.

“Yes, it was, and I am glad you remember details like that so accurately. We weren’t sure about your brain functions when we ended the suspension. You are the first patient we have revived successfully.”

“How long was I suspended?”

“67 years.”

“That means this is the twenty-first century. No wonder so much has changed. I hardly recognized any of these machines,” I said, trying to point at the beeping monitors, but I had trouble raising my arm.

“Your physical recovery is remarkable and there will definitely be an adjustment to skipping two generations of living. Remember, if you had not been suspended, you would be 102 years old and all of the changes would have been gradual. We want you to have some mentoring for adjusting to all the changes that occurred while you were in suspension soon, but I would like to concentrate on restoring your muscle tone and strength and slowly trying liquids and foods.”

“So Jacob Steiner must have died.”

“Yes. He worked many years in our department and I am sorry he did not witness your successful resuscitation. We have developed a slower method of warming which includes intravenous fluids which we feel may be the key. I hope you will also join the team in reporting on your health when you feel up to it.”

“Ah, I will need a bit of time to adjust. How long do you need me in the hospital?”

“We want to have you up and about as soon as possible, but there are considerations like immunities to consider.”

“Immunities to what?”

“Well, certain influenzas, for example. You might be pleased to know medical science has manage to pretty much eradicate poliomyelitis from the entire planet, but there have been contagious diseases which spread quickly. You see, we think nothing of taking a plane to another country or continent now, which has obvious implications for the spread of infections. I would like to keep you here and have you make increasingly larger forays into the world while we can monitor you. And, of course, I hope you will agree to be observed by our team. Since you are part of a research project, our program will pay the medical costs. The cost of medical care is prohibitive in 2019.”

“2019 sounds so far in the future.”

“I am sure you will catch up, but none of us expect it to be easy for you. Take your time.”

“Dr. Berkowitz, I presume my fiancée has also died?”

“Yes, I am sorry to say that. It was she who asked us to keep you in suspension until we could figure out how to safely resuscitate. I never met her, but I can imagine it was a very hard decision for her to make.”

I was stunned to think of Mary realizing that we would not see each other again. Then it hit me that she must have already been old when she made that decision. The time lapse was overwhelming me.

“I am sorry about the news. A lot of this will be difficult to comprehend. I want you to know we have NOT let the press know about your case at this point. Let’s get you up and at least walking before we make any of those decisions. “

“Yes, I would like to start working my limbs and getting to move a bit.”

“Adam has done a lot of physical therapy and rehabilitation. He is strict, but it pays off.”

Adam smiled broadly. “Don’t worry, Dr. Bondurant, we will start slowly.”

We spent the next hour just trying to get me to sit up, grasp objects. I felt both exhausted and relieved. Adam seemed fairly well educated and I asked him if he would mind if I asked some blunt questions.

He smiled. “Don’t worry. I know how my people were treated when they put you under.”

“Would you say things are better now in terms of getting jobs for colored people?”

“Well, first of all, I should tell you that no one says “colored” people now. We say ‘black’. Even though blacks were granted to right to vote in the 15th Amendment of 1870, so many obstacles prevented them from voting that we had to establish the Civil Rights Act of 1965 to be able to vote – and, even then, it wasn’t easy. But, to my amazement, in 2008 we elected the first black President and re-elected him by a wide margin in 2012.” He paused as if expecting me to react, and then he continued.

“In some ways, getting jobs and going to college has become better, but the income for blacks is way below that of whites. Fewer blacks own houses. And, another thing is that police keep killing black men and boys without provocation.”

“Like the lynchings in the South.”

“Yes, it is lynching. You can be stopped just for driving and a policeman just might shoot you dead and then say you threatened him. It causes a lot of tension. My mother was always frightened when I left the house. I guess she still is.”

“But I presume that having a col….black President for two terms has changed things radically.”

“Not as much as you would think,” Adam said thoughtfully. “President Obama could not really favor blacks while he was in office. And a growing resentment from unemployed and uneducated whites fueled quite a backlash, especially among poor whites in rural areas. Now we have the most racist, Fascist President since Woodrow Wilson.”

“But looking from the standpoint of having just left 1954, it seems that the fact that black people are getting advanced degrees and working in what used to be exclusively white-dominated fields is an improvement, however modest.”

“No, you are right. My grandfather could not have worked in a hospital for whites. And hospitals are no longer segregated. However, in spite of my science background and education, no one ever suggested I enter medical school. So I am an orderly rather than a doctor.”

He paused and said, “There is a lot of adjustment for you ahead. I am more than happy to answer your questions as we get you fit again. But for now, I am going to let you rest. I will come back in the afternoon and see if we can get you to stand.”

I was able to walk on my own after a few days of straining to stand. I began to eat solid foods and my digestive system seemed to work. Finally, after several days of walking up and down the halls of the hospital, Adam proposed that we walk outside. They gave me a pair of blue jeans and a polo shirt, the sort of outfit someone on a farm might wear. I wore some ridiculously loudly colored tennis shoes that everyone called track shoes. When I finally got outside and began to observe other men my age in the park nearby, I realized that I was dressed fairly neatly and did not stand out among the athletes who were wearing even fewer clothes as they ran through the park.

Almost everyone we saw had earphones attached to rectangular machines like the one the nurse used as a radio. Adam was so easy to talk to that I kept pestering him with the questions that popped into my head.

“Why don’t people greet us when we walk by?” I asked him.

“It’s not customary in a big city. Although Philadelphia is pretty friendly as big cities go. In New York, nobody talks on the subway or the bus.”

“I feel convinced we used to at least nod if we passed someone on the street. Also, I wore a suit and hat everywhere, so I tended to tip my hat to ladies as I passed by.” I felt hopelessly old-fashioned although they had successfully dressed me so I could blend in. I needed to realize no one would know or even believe I was technically 102 years old.

’There are businessmen who dress up like that, but hats are rare among white men. Black men still favor hats. Lawyers are definitely the types who wear suits these days. And politicians, too, but they rarely wear hats.”

“I am struck to see how many women wear pants.”

“Yes, I hadn’t thought about that. They have been wearing pants almost all of my lifetime, but I am only 32.”

A morbidly obese woman trundled by wearing a horribly clingy pair of stretch pants, which might have even been underwear. It looked disgusting as it clung to her folds of fat. She was so fat, she even had trouble walking.

“Wow. I keep seeing obese people. I don’t remember that in the fifties. I mean, some people were fat, but not like that.” I kept my voice down, but it was perhaps still indiscreet of me to make those comments aloud.

“Yes, obesity is a national problem. There are many additives in our food which seem to have an adverse effect. The synthetic food is cheaper, so poor people tend to become really fat. The rate of heart disease is also extremely high.”

“I am starting to get used to 2019. There are some things that are great, but others seem terrible. Everyone we pass in the park is so involved with their earphones and little rectangular machines that they don’t pay attention to each other.”

“Rectangular machines?” Adam asked.

Just then someone came by talking into their rectangle and I squeezed his arm.“Oh, those are called cell phones. They are telephones that work through wireless transmission.”

“Everyone seems so wrapped up in them. Cell phones. Do people ever take a break from their phones? They seem obsessed and self-absorbed. And so many people wear earphones as if they wanted to block out everyone else.”

In response, Adam took his phone out of his pocket and smiled. “You are right. I had not thought about the antisocial side of cell phones and earphones. I will try to cut off my cell phone when I am with you. Our exchange can teach me some things, too.”

It wasn’t long before I became more used to the new world I had awoken to, and I was glad to have had a patient person like Adam as my guide. It took another month for me to be released as a patient. I took a rental room near the hospital and accepted their offer of a stipend for my work analyzing my own case. After multiple tests of my physical health and circulatory system, we concluded that I was physically about forty – having ‘aged’ about five years during my cryogenic state.

My mental health was seemingly acceptable. It was hard for me not to think about old friends. After 67 years, I found almost everyone I had known in 1954 had died and it seemed to be more tortuous seeking them out than letting it drop. After all, even if I found someone I remembered, it would be hard to pick up our friendship with the strange chasm of my failure to age with them.

I realized that the assembling of a report on my progress could not possibly take longer than two months. I had to decide what to do with myself after that. To work as a general practitioner would require me to pass the medical boards again. Dr. Berkowitz said that he could arrange for me to be tutored, but he felt that there would be little difficulty in my passing the boards, so I decided to follow his suggestion.

There were so many overwhelming issues in medicine, too, like genetic manipulation and CRISPr that I felt I could not judge with any objectivity. However, I was so drawn to medicine that as soon as Dr. Berkowitz told me that poliomyelitis had been conquered, I read everything I could find about the vaccination programs and the latest theories of herd immunity in the hospital library which I had permission to use for my report work.

I started tutorials and was signed up for the medical boards a few months hence. It seems I would be able to qualify in epidemiology after a fairly brief training program at Penn. Once I was certified, I could start looking for jobs. It seemed in the fall of 2019, epidemiology was a growing field.

Perhaps I would be lucky enough to be able to combat the next pandemic.

When I came to, it took a long time to realize what had happened. The sky was dark and it seemed to be night. There was black soot everywhere. I tried to figure out where I was, but could not see well enough to recognize my surroundings. Then I remembered the big boom.

I had been walking down Arch Street and had just reached 6th Street and crossed into the large mall opposite the Constitution Center when I heard the big blast. That was the last thing I remembered before waking up. I didn’t recognize the mall and there were absolutely no streetlights. I could hear people milling around, some yelling, some crying, but it seemed best not to approach anyone until I learned more.

I felt for my handbag and found the strap still around my shoulder. Not that it would do me much good, but some thread of normalcy was welcome. The brick wall bordering Fifth Street was still standing. I sat and leaned against it for a minute, trying to decide what to do.

“Me puede ayudar?” called a woman’s weakened voice from nearby. I had no idea if she could see me or not and didn’t want to volunteer an answer if she had not. She touched my shoulder and it frightened me.

“Me puede ayudar?” she repeated. My Spanish is very weak, but I managed to ask what she needed.

“Mi hijo esta herido,” she said, holding the limp baby to her chest protectively.

“No soy medico,” I replied, hoping that was the right word for doctor. I started to wander across the street to see if the food court and she followed. There was nothing but rubble – and it was hard for me to tell where things had been. We scavenged and found two bottles intact: orange juice and milk. I didn’t want to look any closer as it was obvious that some people had been crushed in the rubble.

The road was sort of intact from what we could see and we proceeded down towards the river. I had no idea if my partner had survived the blast, but there was no way to find out. If this were a nuclear bomb, there would be few survivors. How the three of us had made it, I didn’t know.

We trudged southward for the next two days – slowed down by the baby who seemed to have recovered slightly. Because of the cold, the three of us slept as close together as we could – both for warmth and for fear of strangers. We encountered very few people and no one seemed interested in us. We found some wild mushrooms and ate them without even hesitating to think about whether or not they were poisonous. Hungry, tired, cold, we kept on going until we reached Darby.

A journey that would have taken about 20 minutes on a commuter train had taken us three days. The young woman’s name was Philomena. She had no idea where her husband could be and assumed the worse. Like me, she had concluded that looking for her partner would be an exercise in futility.

We found the town full of debris, but some buildings were still standing. We ran into two other women who invited us to join them in an abandoned basement they had requisitioned. It was good to have others around, but I had been slightly wary of other people, but the prospect of having a shelter was too tempting so we accepted.

They had built up a stone hearth where they could boil water and cook. It was much more appetizing to eat boiled leaves or grass than raw and I felt a little safer having things cooked, anyway. My concept of dietary caution had changed drastically in the last few days. Any acorn on the ground went right into my mouth these days.

Weeks went by and the sky began to clear slightly, but there seemed to be no sign of any organized authority or police or much of a presence of other humans. How long were we going to survive at this rate? At least Sally and Charlotte seemed to be good at improvising. Philomena and I both tried to contribute what we could, but she had her hands full with the baby who seemed to be rebounding from whatever wound he has sustained. (I never saw what it was.)

I tried to remember what I had read about nuclear winters to think of how we could find food. We were not going to survive on the meager diet we had managed to pull together. It was hard not to think about what would happen in the coming weeks and months, but it was a futile exercise.

I learned to focus on the continued walks to search for food of any kind and we all brought back various knickknacks. By the time a month had passed, we had a steady routine. Two of us would stay with the baby, and two would go out to find whatever we could – mushrooms, nuts. We finally found a bucket with which we fetched water from the nearby creek – hoping against hope that the water was not too heavily contaminated.

I kept expecting something to happen, but everything seems the same three months later. There is a bit more light, but everything seems grey and depressing. It was time for me to realize that I should stop thinking of the future.

The future is now.

Does anyone think it is fair

for shrinks to diagnose without care?

It is my life that has been changed

because some quack says I’m deranged.

This judgment leads me to despair.

A genius in the making e’er

I saw my mother standing there.

her death had made us quite estranged.

Could I be schizophrenic?

I told my wife I was aware

of Mama’s presence in our lair.

She stiffened with abruptness strange

when I told her of our exchange.

Was Mama’s presence just a chimer’?

Or am I schizophrenic?

O, sister, my dear, why have you decried

The monstrous deeds that tormented our past?

Unearthing the muck does leave me aghast,

But still I pledge to remain by your side.

Bring down the hypocrite’s halo of pride,

Gather the evidence we can amass,

Take down the villain and have him outcast.

Turning these stones will certainly shatter,

The lives of his family, mine, and yours

And scandal will rock the world of our youth

While the naming and shaming endures

But the final result of the matter

Is the relief that we gain from the truth.

No more lies and no more hate.

My victory we shall celebrate.

You shall have schooling, food and care.

And the rich will pay their share.