A Private Detective Walks Into A Children’s Hospital

“There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.” – Raymond Chandler, ‘The Long Goodbye’

November means noir at the Shipwrecked Sailor Blog. I usually like to do columns about The Way We Live Now (shitty). Like Howard Zinn’s concept of the unreported resistance. Or what it’s like fighting ICE. Or my weird experiences with shaving subscription services. Not to be the guy who gets all soft when he has a baby, but I am turning away from doom and gloom today.

In “The Simple Art Of Murder,” noir demigod Raymond Chandler describes the fictional ideal of “the private eye” (very different from a regular private eye) like this:

“But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks—that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.”

Maybe it’s just me, but it doesn’t seem like a stretch for a lot of people to imagine themselves as Phillip Marlowe—an imperfect person, sure, but the last sane and dignified person in a world gone mad. Feels like that’s a very American view to take, honestly. 

Follow the news and the world has gone mad. 70% of the country hates fascism, yet we have a fascist government. Democrats sweep congressional elections, but can’t get enough people to show up to work to impeach Pete Hegseth. Climate change gets addressed in Digger and not really anywhere else. Police departments nationwide remain funded. War continues all over. Elon Musk gets to keep making stuff, the AI industry gets to keep up its war on humanity. Scroll any social media feed and it’s bad news.

There is a place, though, where technology isn’t used purely for profit and Earth-death. There’s a place where people do good, honest work, and where meaningful advancements in human knowledge are being made. I’m talking about children’s hospitals, and yes, I recognize that maybe the first image you have is of some terminal cancer-ridden kid Making-A-Wish. Children’s hospitals can be home to the cruelest, harshest bits of bad luck. No child deserves a trip to the hospital, in-patient or out-patient. Unfortunately, I’ve had to spend some time in children’s hospitals lately, and I’m starting to have a less bad view of the 21st century.

Before personal experience, a few developments: in the time between my children being born, they’ve developed a maternal RSV vaccine, which protects both mom and baby if given during pregnancy. In my lifetime, IVF has gone from punchlines about “test tube babies” to relatively commonplace. When my friend got cancer, a refrain I kept hearing was some variation of “we’ve come a long way since the 90s.” Human knowledge is expanding for the better, just not in ways that make headlines.

Onto personal experience: both of my children were born at Prentice Hospital, and I just can’t say enough nice things about the staff there. Competent, friendly doctors. Nurses who make you feel like everything’s going to be alright. Pleasant administrative and custodial staff, great food. Both kids needed time in the NICU, never did we ever feel remotely like the sky was falling. At the same time as this new baby is coming into the world, my oldest is dealing with some health issues. It’s not not serious, but it’s not life-threatening. It is a disease that requires ongoing outpatient treatment. And I just can’t say enough nice things about everyone who works at Lurie’s Children’s Hospital. I can’t say how grateful I am to live in an era where people understand and accept neurodivergence—more than they did in the 90s anyway—and that as my son has been undergoing tests and treatment for this disease, he’s had help from people who get how his brain works. As much as one can, anyway. And the thing he’s got? Who knows what the future holds, but one of the docs we’ve been talking to has said “I wouldn’t be surprised to see this cured in his lifetime, we just don’t have it now.” When was the last time you heard a professional person have optimism without trying to sell you something?

Everyone I know is looking for a job or bemoaning how awful work is. Management bullies everyone into adopting AI, diminishing returns be damned. The whole economy is propped up by guys like Jensen Huang, wearing studded leather jackets and falling for honeypot traps in their 60s. The internet gets worse and more cynical, gambling conquers sports, supplement salesmen conquer the podcast space. Nothing seems right. 

But I dunno, dudes. I started teaching guitar and bass lessons, and I see middle and high schoolers thriving in a meaningful third space at my workplace. I take my kid to Lurie’s and I see the multitudes of good people it takes to make a hospital work. I watch maternal and pediatric medicine get measurably better in the eight years between both my children being born. I’ve sung the praises of my kid’s public school on this blog before, and I’ll do it again. Every time I go to a poetry reading, the world feels more worth living in.

If you’ll forgive a somewhat saccharine ending, the meaningful work is out there, my dudes. You have to look harder than you should. But there’s worthwhile stuff to be done. 

Sorry you got an email,

Chris