Interlude Two
From The New York Times, September 1, 1966.
JOKERTOWN CLINIC TO OPEN ON WILD CARD DAY
The opening of a privately funded research hospital specializing in the treatment of the Takisian wild card virus was announced yesterday by Dr. Tachyon, the alien scientist who helped to develop the virus. Dr. Tachyon will serve as chief of staff at the new institution, to be located on South Street, overlooking the East River.
The facility will be known as the Blythe van Renssaeler Memorial Clinic in honor of the late Mrs. Blythe Stanhope van Renssaeler. Mrs. van Renssaeler, a member of the Exotics for Democracy from 1947 to 1950, died in 1953 in Wittier Sanatorium. She was better known as “Brain Trust.”
The Van Renssaeler Clinic will open its doors to the public on September 15th, the twentieth anniversary of the release of the wild card virus over Manhattan. Emergency room service and outpatient psychological care will be provided by the 196-bed hospital. “We’re here to serve the neighborhood and the city,” Dr. Tachyon said in an afternoon press conference on the steps of Jetboy’s Tomb, “but our first priority is going to be the treatment of those who have too long gone untreated, the jokers whose unique and often desperate medical needs have been largely ignored by existing hospitals. The wild card was played twenty years ago, and this continued willful ignorance about the virus is criminal and inexcusable.” Dr. Tachyon said that he hoped the Van Renssaeler Clinic might become the world’s leading center for wildcard research, and spearhead efforts to perfect the cure for wild card, the so-called “trump” virus.
The clinic will be housed in a historic waterfront building originally constructed in 1874. The building was a hotel, known as the Seaman’s Haven, from 1888 through 1913. From 1913 through 1942 it was the Sacred Heart Home for Wayward Girls, after which it served as an inexpensive lodging house.
Dr. Tachyon announced that the purchase of the building and a complete interior renovation had been funded by a grant from the Stanhope Foundation of Boston, headed by Mr. George C. Stanhope. Mr..Stanhope is the father of Mrs. van Renssaeler. “If Blythe were alive today, I know she’d want nothing more than to work at Dr. Tachyon’s side,” Mr. Stanhope said.
Initially the work at the clinic will be funded by fees and private donations, but Dr. Tachyon admitted that he had recently returned from Washington, where he conferred with Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. Sources close to the Vice President indicate that the administration is considering partial funding of the jokertown clinic through the offices of the Senate Committee on Ace Resources and Endeavors (SCARE).
A crowd of approximately five hundred, many of them obvious victims of the wild card virus, greeted Dr. Tachyon’s announcement with enthusiastic applause.