"No airline will allow her to board, no doctor will give her permission, and no insurance company will insure her in the condition she’s in"
“My wife needs to go to America with our daughter in a week and a half, for our daughter’s surgery,”
Gedalya tries to explain to the doctor.
“Your wife isn’t going anywhere except home and to bed,” Dr. Schechtman informs him in a heavy Ukrainian accent. She feels she’s put herself out a great deal already by staying ten minutes overtime for this patient, and has no patience for niceties. She hands them a referral to the emergency room, just in case. “She can get up and walk around the house a little — to the table, to the couch. But no exertion, no lifting.”
“If she stays seated for the whole flight, would that be all right?”
“What flight? Where?”
“To California,” he says faintly.
The doctor shows no mercy. “I see you’re having difficulty understanding me,” she says, then pronounces the next words with exaggerated emphasis. “She-cannot-fly-anywhere-in-her-condition. Is my Hebrew not good enough?”
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