Death is a letter never sent.

The Mentor

Pediatric oncology is a bitch. Until you’ve seen a tumor ulcerating through the nostril of a 12-year old, you can’t imagine the horrors of cancer. Dr. Jesus Rodriguez (I’ll call him) was a Pediatric Psychiatrist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center where I took a job soon after college. “Mees Lighton,” he called me. He never used my first name.  A transplant from Spain in a publish-or-perish profession, Dr. R. hired me as a kind of scribe and secretary. Thus began my experience with a mentor.

He was a short guy with the kind of self-confidence often ascribed to men of small stature. He had the power of personality, and he used it well. I saw Dr. R. take on the head nurse of the Pediatrics unit who thought Psychiatry was voodoo. His deftness in turning her into a fan was fun to witness. He helped her run a therapy group for her nurses, and with his guidance they learned to vent their feelings about the most dreaded question … “Am I going to die?”

Physicians were less likely to hear it. But nurses had daily contact with young patients, and when the question arose, they often delivered a knee jerk, “No.” Or, “we’re doing everything we can….” This was dissatisfying on both sides; the patient sensed avoidance and the nurse felt like a fraud.

I was present at a weekly mental health meeting when a nurse asked, “What do I tell a child who asks me, ‘Am I going to die?’”  Dr. R.kept it simple. “You say, ‘I don’t want you to die, and I am going to be here for you…that’s a promise.”

“Nobody asks that question,” he added, “unless they’re ready to talk about it.” His lack of fear when it came to difficult topics is what made him such a popular figure. But he had a dark side that one day pounced…on me.

Every August, Dr. R. took his wife and kids back to Spain to visit family. During one of those sojourns, I got a call from the department head’s secretary. Dr. Murray oversaw Pediatrics. They were preparing a show-and-tell for visiting physicians from Russia. One of the topics was play therapy, a practice that our department had pioneered. The request was straightforward; they had six images of kids engaged in play with therapists and they needed me to write captions for a slideshow. Of course I said yes. The captions were one-liners; things like “Young patients use storytelling and play to work through anxiety.”

When Dr. R. returned, he learned about the event, and what followed was ugly. I suspect he felt snubbed because he didn’t know it was happening. Regardless, when he found out that foreign physicians had been invited and that I had contributed, he went postal.

The man wasn’t a shouter; he was too controlled for that. But the rage was in every muscle of his face…the bulging veins in his neck. He stood in front of my desk and leaned into me with a glare so intense…so menacing I remember thinking, “I’m not going to survive this.”

 “Mees Lighton” came out like the hiss of a coiled snake. “It has come to my attention that you gave away secret information to the Russians.” I was dumbstruck. “What?” I said.  It went downhill from there.

“Write a memo,” he said.  “Address it to Dr. Murray and copy the other 5 attending pediatric physicians.” These were people I barely knew but saw on a daily basis. They were the A team in the world of pediatric cancer, and I was nobody. The memo called out my craven breach of ethics. It said in effect that “Ms. Lighton submitted highly confidential information. She seriously overstepped the bounds of professionalism.” I wanted to counter, “Do you think they give a shit??” But I said nothing.

He instructed me to type out each of the letters and address the envelopes. Then he took it too far. He leaned in and said … “Now you will make one more copy and hang it over your desk.” Without hesitation I reacted, “No, “ I said, “that’s inappropriate” We had patients and families in our office all the time. I wasn’t going to sit there wearing a dunce cap over my head.

“Then you’re fired!” He spat it out, purple rage flushing his face.

I picked up my coat and my purse. I was numb, hurt. For some reason I will never understand, I also picked up the letters, and on my way out of the hospital dropped them in the inner-office mailbox.

The next morning I went to work. Dumbstruck by what happened, I still didn’t believe that he meant it. Dr. R. was scheduled to be out of town that day; I didn’t expect anyone to know about our fight. So when Dr. Murray’s administrator walked into my office before I had a chance to take my coat off, I was surprised.

“What are you doing here?” he sniped, “I thought you were fired.”

This guy was around 28, just a few years older than me. I think his name was Brad or Buckley. He was a new hire right out of grad school and it was obvious that he was enjoying this first chance to sink his teeth into a problem…me.  I asked him, “Why am I being fired?” Without hesitation he replied, “Because you refused to do what your boss told you to do.” Hmmm. I wondered if we weren’t on the same page. “Can you be more specific”? I asked. “If your boss tells you to lick the toilet seat,” he said, “then you lick the toilet seat.”

Even back then, that was crossing the line. And I knew it. All of a sudden, I thought I might have some leverage. “That’s not what I was asked to do,’ I replied. “I’m going to HR.” By the time I arrived in human resources, I could tell the word was out. I was told to wait for the head of the department who would be talking with me.

Here’s where things entered the Twilight Zone.

The woman who headed up human resources was, herself, a cancer victim. It had happened recently and was progressing with ferocious speed. The rumor about her condition had spread as fast as the cancer that was killing her. When I took a chair facing her, I saw the devastation. She’d lost half her body weight. The skin stretched thin across the bones in her forehead. I could feel the fear. And when she raised her sunken eyes to me, her face was fixed…angry.

I said, “I’m here because I don’t understand why my employment is being terminated.” She said, “Your boss told you to write letters and you refused.” I thought I couldn’t be hearing her right. I asked again. “Why am I being fired?” She actually rolled her eyes. “It’s not complex,” she said. “You were told to write letters to Dr. Murray and the other pediatric attending’s and you refused.” I knew I had her. “Can you please call Nancy in Dr. Murray’s office and ask her to look at today’s mail?” I asked politely.

A confused look crossed her face, and she did something astonishing — she picked up the phone! The call went something like this…”Hello Nancy, this is Ms. Richards. Do you know if Dr. Murray received her mail today?” A brief pause followed by, “I see, can you see if there is a letter from Dr. Rodriguez?” Another pause. “Please read it to me.”

Her face was rigid. But her eyes flitted back and forth considering what to do. I didn’t give her a chance. MSKCC vigorously fought the formation of unions. So to appear fair, they had a grievance process. Employees who found themselves in situations like mine could take a case all the way up to the head of the Institute, Lawrence Rockefeller. That morning I said this to the dying Ms. Richman. “I will be starting a grievance process today, and I will take it all the way to the top until I receive an apology and reinstitution of my job.”

The whole affair came to an end that day. Neither the institute nor Dr. R. provided an apology, but my job was reinstated. The rude young administrator did say, “Perhaps I spoke out of turn.” A few months later, I applied for a job with the head of the breast cancer department and got it. I worked at Memorial Sloan-Kettering for another three years.

Who threw me under the bus? I think the lion’s share goes to Dr. Murray, who asked for my help and then didn’t stand up for me. Dr. R. was just the instrument. As for Ms. Richards, she died a few weeks later. I suspect I may have been her last official act. I wish it could have been anything else. But I bear her no grudge; she was under the bus with me.

In The Intimate Chronicles of a Beat Writer Peter Olofsky quotes his lover Alan Ginsburg as saying, “Death is a letter never sent.”

Indeed.