Good Neighbours
by
Fred Narvey
My neighbor's wife asked me to come over to their place and speak to her husband. "He's suffering from depression," she said.I explained to her that I wasn't a psychiatrist but merely a retired commercial traveller and I doubted very much whether I could help him.
"Come talk to him," she said. "You were a salesman, you must have known how to talk to people. Please come over."
How could I refuse? Hymie is a good neighbor. He has "golden hands" and is always ready to help, whether it is carpentry, electrical work, plumbing - you name it. On the other hand, I am so talented that it takes me two days to knock a nail in a wall to hang a picture. I knock plaster off the wall and the picture never hangs straight. If something has to be done around our home, my wife always says, "Call Hymie". That can be very annoying, you know. My answer usually is, "First, I'll try, then we will call Hymie!" "Now it's your turn to help him," my wife said. So I went.
I found Hymie sitting in the living-room and staring straight ahead through the large living-room window. He didn't turn his head when I entered. "How are you doing, Hymie?" I asked. No reply. "What do you say we go for a walk? When we come back, you can come over to our place and fix our leaking toilet." Hymie spoke to the window. "The whole world is going to the dogs. Let your toilet leak, who cares?" I tried again. "Let me tell you what happened to me, Hymie, and you'll forget all about the world's problems.
"I took ill in Palm Springs last winter and landed in the hospital. My haemoglobin was so low that they had to give me five units of blood. A lady from the administration office came to see me. She gave me such a beautiful smile that I thought she was bringing me good news about my blood. "We charge $2,000 a day for this room," she said sweetly. Naturally, I wanted to leave immediately, but I was attached to a bag containing blood that was dripping into my vein, one drop at a time. It seemed to drop more slowly after the lady made her announcement."
Hymie addressed the window again. "I'm afraid to go for a walk. Muggers are walking around with baseball bats." I pretended I didn't hear him. "After two days, the doctor wanted to take more tests to determine why I was losing blood, but I declined with thanks."
"They handed me a bill for $4,204.60. What was the extra $204.60 for? you might ask. That was for the doctor who came in to see me and suggested that they take more tests. Suggestions don't come cheaply in California."
Hymie spoke softly. "They murdered two guys in town last week. Maybe I'll be next."
I wondered whether he had heard a word I said, but I continued, "When we arrived back in Winnipeg I went to see my family physician. He determined that there was blood in my stool, but he didn't know where the blood was coming from, so he sent me to see a gastroenterologist. That's a big word, but that's what they call a plumber with a medical degree."
I thought that would get a rise out of Hymie. I was wrong. Hymie's bulky body seemed to have turned to stone. "Nothing but drugs and crime, crime and drugs," he whispered.
I could see that I wasn't getting through to Hymie, but once I got wound up I couldn't stop talking. I was beginning to wonder who needed a psychiatrist more, Hymie or me.
"The 'plumber' inserted tubes into me," I continued. "And reported to my doctor that he couldn't find any leaks. 'I'm frustrated,' my doctor said. You hear, Hymie, I was getting transfusions every three weeks, and he's frustrated!"
"They stole our car," Hymie said, and tears rolled down his cheeks. By this time, so help me, I forgot what I was supposed to be doing at Hymie's and continued to give him a medical report.
"My doctor decided to send me to a haematologist. These doctors know all about blood. When I asked the haematologist why I was losing blood, he replied that that was not his department, but he discovered that I didn't have any iron in my bone marrow. It seems that when you lose blood, you also lose iron. So he started pumping iron into me."
Hymie turned around and looked at me for the first time. He looked me straight in the eye and said, "Go home, neighbor!" I left without saying another word.
"How's Hymie?" my wife asked.
"He's not depressed anymore," I said, "now he's bored, and I'm depressed!"
A week later, Hymie showed up at our place. You would never have known that he had ever been depressed. He was smiling broadly and his brown eyes twinkled. "Hello, neighbor!" he shouted, "I've come to fix your leaking toilet."
"How are you, Hymie?" I asked. "You weren't feeling so good the last time I saw you."
"Oh, that," he replied. "Forget it. The police found my car. They figure that a couple of 'good kids' swiped the car just to go for a joyride. The car didn't have a single scratch on it! Come, tell me the rest of your story while I attend to the plumbing."
"My doctor sent me to four specialists," I said, as though I had never stopped talking to Hymie at his place. "The specialists examined me, fore and aft, and couldn't figure out why I was losing blood, so they continued with the transfusions."
"Our daughter, who happens to be a doctor, phoned from California and said that she heard of certain technology that doctors have in Toronto and Vancouver, which is not available in Winnipeg. Fortunately we have a niece in Toronto who is a nurse and is married to a doctor. He knows all the specialists in this particular field."
"I see that you are almost finished with the job, Hymie, so I'll make a long story short. The doctors at the Wellsley Hospital in Toronto discovered that I had three bleeding ulcers in my small intestine, and they were getting ready to operate on me. In the meantime, there happened to be a convention in Toronto of 300 gastro-enterologists from all over the world. A doctor by the name of Jaimie Barkin, from Florida, arrived at the convention with a brand new machine that they had never seen in Canada. They set up a huge screen in the convention hall so that the doctors could see how Dr. Barkin worked on me. (I would have charged admission, but I was fast asleep.) Using this machine, Dr. Barkin cauterized my ulcers, and I didn't need to have surgery! My haemoglobin count went up from 44 to 148 in a few months, and I'm feeling fine."
Hymie wiped his hands, sighed deeply, and said, "One has to have 'mazel' (good luck), and that's all. Your toilet is fixed. Go in good health!"