While flat on my back, I learned there’s hope for the country

Nobody likes to be in the hospital, but my recent five-day stay gave me important insights. Surprisingly hopeful lessons came from lying flat on my back.

I recently went into the emergency room at Presbyterian Santa Fe Medical Center for shortness of breath and was taken by ambulance to the bigger facility in Albuquerque early the next morning to treat a pulmonary embolism and get emergency surgery.

One thing I noticed immediately is that hospitals look like America, in all its multiethnic complexity. Of the half-dozen physicians who attended me, three were women. Two had last names suggesting their families came from India. Doctor Chen was presumably East Asian. My night nurse Sarita was African American, as was the tech who did my echocardiogram.

The two “candy stripers” who finally wheeled me out the door were young white guys from Idaho and Georgia, doing six months of volunteer work as part of their church’s young adult ministry. It wasn’t a perfectly egalitarian society. The EMTs who took my vitals and drew blood were earning $15 an hour, like burger flippers at McDonald’s. But neither did the hospital resemble a plantation model in which white, male doctors ruled the roost with women and people of color assigned to menial chores. It made me think our country really has made progress in the last century.

The second thing I learned was that I could get along with my roommate — though he was a Republican and conservative Catholic, while I’m a Democrat and theological liberal. Gary was born in 1947, six years before me, but Gary was a popular name back then and one we shared.

We had other things in common, too. We agreed that the food service pizza was pretty good, that our wives were gems and that getting old was not for sissies. We could encourage each other to get out of bed and use our walkers and laugh about racing each other around the nurses’ station. On the first day, I told Gary I thought our country would be better off if the average citizen were thrown into a room with a complete stranger and forced to be civil and polite for a while. He agreed with that.

We agreed New Mexico had problems with political corruption and that neither party had a monopoly on cronyism.

Gary did have some funny ideas about Roswell and aliens, but we steered clear of more contentious topics and managed to keep things friendly. I wondered if our nation couldn’t do the same.

The third thing I learned (which my wife pointed out) was that I could leave my wallet and wedding ring in a duffel by the side of my bed for 120 hours unmolested. I was asleep, drugged and helpless most of that time, but my valuables and personal items were as safe as if in my own home. Most people really can be trusted to do the right thing, most of the time.

It was initially hard to find a room at the big hospital in Albuquerque. It has been slammed with COVID-19. But I must have been an urgent case because I was admitted, and the staff gave me as much caring attention as if I were the only patient in the vascular ward.

Here’s my takeaway: There seems to be a sickness in our body politic. Americans are angry and out of sorts. We are diseased and despondent about the prognosis for our democracy. Maybe we need a collective visit to the hospital to restore our better, healthier selves.

The Rev. Gary Kowalski works as a volunteer firefighter in Santa Fe and is pastor to the Unitarian Congregation of Taos.