At age nineteen I volunteered at the Montreal Youth Clinic on Ste Famille St. in Montreal. I did screening and counseling for young people who came to the clinic for healthcare.
I would discuss contraception, STIs, and other issues. Sometimes I would translate, often I would chaperone the moonlighting residents who made up the majority of our medical staff during intimate exams. How I had the chutzpah to do this at my age and with my lack of training, I don’t know.
We were a strange group working at the clinic. There was Viola, another staffer who never talked to any of the other women working there, but flirted with the male doctors all the time. There was Estella, the receptionist and her boyfriend who was supposed to have a job but I never figured out what it was, because all he seemed to do was hang around Estella’s desk and flirt with her. There was Jimmy, who worked as the janitor, cleaning and stocking the rooms. Sometimes we would sit and chat. I did not know him really well, but he seemed like a sweet guy, although he was chronically stoned. Of all of us, Jill was the most legit. She was a social work student, doing counselling and psychotherapy for our motley group of patients.
I learned a lot working there. I learned about medical interviewing. I became adept at talking to different kinds of people and dealing with the unexpected. One of our jobs was to do STI contact tracing. We would call the index case, ask them to call or give us the phone numbers of their contacts. We would then bring people in for testing and treatment. It was the early 70s, in that golden moment after the birth control pill and before AIDS and there was a lot of free and easy and not very careful fooling around. Sometimes it was very like that old shampoo commercial where our waiting room would fill up with people as each one “told two friends.”
One time, we had about 30 people coming in together in a tangle of sexual contacts all beginning with a touring rockstar. It was very civilized as the group laughed and gossiped while waiting to be swabbed and stabbed. Not all our patients were the hairy, horny hippies, though.
I remember a case where a very young and naïve couple came in to talk about their infertility problems. They had been married for over a year and having unprotected sex. “Why?” they asked me, could they not get pregnant. I was sitting in the lab when the doc opened the door of his office. “Excuse me,” he said, looking back into the examination room. “I’ll be right back.” He then came into the lab, opened the door to the linen closet, buried his head in the sheets, and started convulsing with laughter. When I went back into the room with him, we had to explain to the couple that the penis did not go into the bellybutton, as they had both believed. We then explained how to have sex. Using a mirror, we showed the two of them where the good parts were. “I never really enjoyed it,” the young woman said, looking down at her slightly chubby belly, “but my mom told me that I wouldn’t.”
It was at the clinic that I acquired my lifelong coffee addiction. As the only member of the clinic staff who didn’t smoke, I could not take advantage of the delay that taking a drag on a cigarette could give you during a patient interview. I could, however, take a sip of the rot gut coffee that was always on the go in the waiting room. When a patient would say something like “I was raped last night” I would take a slow sip while I collected myself. “Oh, my! Would you like to talk about it?” I said.
I left the clinic when I started medical school, but I heard that Jill had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. This was shocking! She was incredibly young, and had a young baby.
One day I ran into Jimmy on the street. We chatted for a while. He told me that Jill had died. He described a tragic scene of her in the hospital, her husband by her side, her baby wailing as she breathed her last. I left in tears. “How sad, how tragic, to die so young!” I thought. I brooded over Jill’s death for a while but then the demands of school pushed it from my mind.
A few years later, I was doing my clerkship. One day I was at the Jewish General Hospital, running around in my short white coat, my pockets bulging with pens, my stethoscope, reflex hammer and the Washington Manual. I was standing in front of an elevator in a group of people when the doors opened. Suddenly, I came face to face with Jill! She was standing in the elevator, very much alive, dressed in a lab coat with the logo of the hospital’s “Hope & Cope” cancer advocacy volunteers. She looked up at me, waved cheerily and said “Hi, Perle.” The door then closed. I was standing there rooted to the spot. I think I almost fainted. “What just happened?” I was confused, “Isn’t she dead?” I thought.
Every year, our Christmas season is launched by a brunch given by my daughter’s in-laws, Jane and Bob, and their best friends. A whole group of family and friends gather, eat brunch and chat. The rule is that you have to move seats between courses so that you get to speak to different groups of people. At one point I found myself sitting next to Jill. When my daughter married her husband, I was surprised to learn that Jill was one of Jane’s best friends. They met in prenatal classes and have been close friends ever since. It was nice to see her again and we always meet at the Christmas Brunch.
Jill and I are telling the story to the others at our table. “How did that happen?” I asked her. “Where did he get that story? It sounded so real, so detailed. I really believed you were dead I don’t understand how it happened.”
“It’s a mystery” Jill shrugged. We giggled and clinked our Mimosa glasses in a toast to Jimmy, to Christmas and to the fact that over 40 years later she is still alive and well.