House of God (23 page)

‘You know,' said the Leggo, waving my C. V around in the air, ‘you look great on paper, Roy. When I punched your name into the computer to watch you for this internship, I was happy. I thought you could be a leader of the interns and of the residents, and even, someday, Chief Resident.'

‘Yes, sir, I understand.'

‘Say, you've never been in the military, have you?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Yes, I knew that, because that's why you call me “sir.” “Sir” is the military form of address, do you see?'

‘I don't get it.'

‘People who have been in the military never call me, “sir.”'

‘Oh? Why not?'

‘I don't know why not. Do you?'

‘No, I don't. Except it seems to fit.'

‘It's the strangest thing. I mean, you'd think it would be the other way around, right?'

‘What does it mean?'

‘I don't know, do you?'

‘No. It's the strangest thing. Sir.'

‘Yes, it's the strangest . . .'

As he trailed off out the window, I fantasized about him: his life had been lived with a vow never to be as cold as his own pop, and yet, like Jo, the Leggo had become a victim of success, had slurped his way up, and had become so cold that his own son must already be in treatment to work out his revulsion for his cold pop and his longing for his cold pop to be as warm and loving as his pop's pop, his grandpop. The Leggo had spent his whole life living for that electric moment in medicine when a concept cleared away the stench of a disease, and when this concept would be warmly applauded, as his cold pop never had applauded him. The Leggo was hell-bent on producing these electric moments in medicine. He thought that by being a kind of Van der Graaf generator in the House of God, he could get his boys to love him.

‘You know, Roy, at the other hospital, the City, my boys loved me. They always—do you understand always—my boys always loved me before, we shared some terrific moments together, but here at the House . . .'

‘Yes, sir?'

‘Do you know why they don't?'

‘Perhaps it has something to do with your attitude toward medicine, especially toward the gomers.'

‘The what?'

‘The chronically ill, demented, geriatric-nursinghome population, sir. Your idea seems to be that the more you do for them, the better they get.'

‘Right. They have diseases, and by God we treat them: aggressively, objectively, completely, and we never give up.'

‘Well, that's just it. I've been taught that the treatment for them is to do nothing. The more you do, the worse they get.'

‘What? Who taught you that?'

‘The Fat Man.'

The words plowed two furrows in the dry man's brow, and he said, ‘Surely you don't believe the Fat Man, do you?'

‘Well, at first I did think it was crazy, but then I tried it out for myself, and, surprisingly, it worked. When I tried it your way—Jo's way—they developed incredible complications. I'm not sure yet, but I think the Fat Man had a point. He's nobody's fool. Sir.'

‘I don't understand. The Fat Man taught you that to deliver no medical care is the most important thing you can do?'

‘The Fat Man said that that was the delivery of medical care.'

‘What? To do nothing?'

‘That's something.'

‘Ward 6-South is the best ward in the House, and you mean to tell me it's from doing nothing?'

‘That's doing something. We do as much nothing as we can without Jo finding out about it.'

‘Even placement?'

‘That's another story.'

‘Yes, well, there are enough stories for today,' said the Leggo, perplexed and haunted by the Fat Man, whom he'd thought he'd farmed out to the Mt. St. E. ‘So all this looseness that Jo talks about—IF YOU DON'T TAKE A TEMPERATURE YOU CAN'T FIND A FEVER—that's really trying your hardest to do something by doing nothing, right?'

‘Right.
Primum non nocere
with modifications,' I said.

‘
Primum non
 . . . But then why do doctors do anything at all?'

‘The Fat Man says to produce complications.'

‘Why do doctors want to produce complications?'

‘To make money.'

The word ‘money' hit the Leggo hard, and he was reminded of something else, and said, ‘That reminds me: Dr. Otto Kreinberg said that you're abusing his patients: bruising them, hypnotizing them, raising their beds to dangerous heights. He's quite a little guy, Otto, was in line for the Nobel, years ago. What about that?'

‘Oh, that wasn't me, sir, that was Bruce Levy.'

‘But he's your BMS.'

‘So?'

‘So, damnit, you're responsible for him, just like Jo is responsible for you and Dr. Fishberg is responsible for her and I'm responsible for him. Levy is your responsibility, understand? Talk to him. Straighten him out.'

Thinking that I'd better not ask the Leggo to whom he was responsible, I said, ‘Well, I tried to do that, sir, but I failed. Levy said that I couldn't take responsibility for his actions and that he had to take responsibility for them himself.'

‘What? That goes against all I've just said.'

‘I know, sir, but he's in psychoanalysis and that's what his analyst keeps telling him and he keeps telling me,' and I found myself wondering who—when both Agnew and Nixon got thrown into the slammer at the same time—who would take responsibility for the rich pageantry that was America.

‘And you're telling me you believe what the Fat Man said?'

‘I'm not sure, sir. I've only been an intern four months.'

‘Good. Because if everyone felt the way he does, there wouldn't be any internists at all.'

‘Exactly, sir. There'd be no need. Fats says that that's why internists do so much, to keep medicine in demand. Otherwise we'd all be surgeons or podiatrists. Or lawyers.'

‘Nonsense. If he were right, why in the world would sensible men like me and all the other Chiefs believe in medicine? Eh?'

‘Well,' I said, seeing Dr. Sanders oözing his blood from his nostrils into my lap, ‘what else can we do? We can't just walk away.'

‘Right, my boy, right! We cure, do you hear, we cure!'

‘Four months here, and I haven't cured anyone yet. And I don't know anyone who's cured anyone yet, either. Best so far is one remission.'

There was an ugly pause. The Leggo turned back to the window, took a few deep breaths to blow the Fat Man from his nose and oropharynx and lungs, and satisfied that he'd proved something turned to me again: ‘Dr. Sanders died, and you didn't get the post, why not? Did he ask you not to have a post done on him? Sometimes people—even physicians—are squeamish.'

‘No. He said I could do a post if I wanted.'

‘Why didn't you?'

‘I didn't want to see his body ripped to shreds downstairs.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘I loved him too much to have his body dissected.'

‘Oh. Well, you don't think I did too? You know Walter and I were buddies? First Nigro in the House. We were interns together. Gosh did we have times. Those electric moments in medicine, you know? When a warm thrill goes right on through you. Fine man. And with all of that,' said the Leggo, turning to me with a papal humility, ‘with all of that, let me ask you, do you think I'd be afraid to get the post?'

‘No sir, I don't think so. I think you would get the post.'

‘Damn right I would, Basch, damn right I would.'

‘Can I say something, sir?'

‘Of course, my boy, shoot.'

‘Are you sure you can take it?'

‘I didn't get where I am by not taking it. Fire away.'

‘That's why your boys don't love you.'

We loved them, and since I was leaving ward 6-South in a week to start my new assignment in the Emergency Ward, we decided that the only thing to do, given the third toothbrush, was to show them our love, and to do it in the bastards' House. And so Chuck and I and that four-dimensional sex fiend the Runt—who by that time was assaulting everything in skirts, including a pubescent Physical Therapist with the face of a chubby eight-year-old and the body of a chubby fifteen, whom he enticed by ordering PT six times a day on his gomers and whom he fondled amidst the parallel bars and artificial limbs while she was distracted by trying to teach his gomers to walk—ruminated on how in the world we could show three big women like Angel and Molly and Hazel and maybe even another big woman like Selma how much we loved them and how we appreciated their part in making us into dynamite terns on a dynamite ward of the House.

It was colorful and it was illicit. In an on-call room of the House where we were not supposed to be, the Runt and I awaited the others. Halfway snickered on bourbon and beer, dressed in a House nightie with a wig to make me look like a gomer, I lay on the bottom bunk while the Runt babbled about pubescence and hooked me up to a cardiac monitor. As the monitor flashed its green BLEEP into the red-lighted room, I thought that all we'd need was a yellow blinker and Chuck would think he was back home on a street corner in Memphis. When I'd told Berry that Dr. Sanders had died, she'd asked, Where is he? and I'd said, He's only in us, and I'd thought of how his life had fluttered round me like a butterfly in dying autumn, chilled, beating against my lashes, frantic, calling me to still the birth of winter. What had been in my father's latest letter?

. . . Winter is coming and you are undoubtedly becoming accustomed to the hours and the stresses. You have a great opportunity to learn medicine and start dealing with people . . .

There was a knock at the door, and then two more, which was our code. There, in nursing uniform, were Angel and Molly. I watched Thunder Thighs throw her arms around the Runt and kiss him. He seemed embarrassed, and she said, ‘Hi'—gesture toward the Runt—‘the Runt. Howthebellareya?'

‘Hello, Angie Wangie,' said the Runt shyly.

Angie Wangie took his hand and put it under her skirt, cupping it around her stormy ass. The Runt looked at Molly, wondering how she would take this openness. Molly went behind him and started to kiss his neck and run her hands up and down his front between his clavicular notch and his crotch. In a gomer falsetto I wailed HALP NURSE HALP NURSE HALP and they came to me. They flung back the curtain covering the lower bunk and bent over me, and the fronts of both their dresses were open, showing four elastical fantastical breasts in a sea froth of lace with two clefts in between. Oh, to nuzzle there, to lay my angry grieving head nuzzling in there and nuzzle and guzzle like a thirsty dumb horse muzzling water. To suck. One two three four nipples. When I tried to do that they pushed me back down and decided that I was a gomer and that since GOMERS GO TO GROUND I needed to be restrained, and they began to work hard to do it.

. . . You will look back on this period of hard work and the experience will stay with you for life, for who else but man would do it? . . .

Restrained, struggling, I was to be given an alcohol sponge bath. I struggled enough to rip open Molly's dress almost to her waist, and I reveled, as they pushed me down again, in her glossy yet transparent French bra that flowed like silk over iced nipples, the kind of bra that lets breasts jiggle as they stroll down the Champs Elysées so the horny Americans can gape. Asking how long were her nipples, I began to be a gomer with an erection. They started to sponge me, with Angel discreetly covering my risen rod and my happily bounding balls. I saw both the Runt and Angel ogling Molly's breasts, and I thought that the third toothbrush might just be Molly's, why not? The stimulation was intense—tied down, helpless, with two half-naked women bathing my hot in vaporous alcoholic cool that rolled me back toward the fevers of childhood. My BLEEPS rose like a skyrocket to about 110, and with my impending explosion the Runt dragged Angel away.

Heaven. Molly sponged me up and down, kissing me lightly but not letting me out of the restraints, and every time she came near I'd make a motion to get at her, and my BLEEPS went to 130. She passed the damp sponge up and down against the
corpus spongiosum
, the erectile tissue on the underside of my penis, and then began to nibble and nip and
nosh
and suck, cradling my testes like eggs in a velvet glove. I begged her to let me out of the restraints, but she kept giving me these little bites and fondles. Well, that was it. Up and down and bites and boobs, and just before I blasted off she slipped out of her dress, took down her panties, straddled my face, her lips on my penis again. My olfactory lobe seized up and our machine, spewing camshafts hubcaps and. racheted gears slammed out into the wild blUE YONDERRR!!

. . . Political news is overwhelming with Nixon a maniac liar and I hope he will get it but good . . .

We lay with each other until the bleeper had detumesced down onto the scale and was breathing a bit easier, and then she got up. She kissed me and slipped out through the curtain. She came back and I asked her to let me out of the restraints now for Chrissakes. Saying nothing, she started back in on my cock and soon it wasn't weeping anymore but standing up straight singing a good Old Testament-fashioned Maccabean Army Song and she straddled me and took the tip of it and put it against that midget helmsman in her rowboat, her clitoris. Electric sparks slashed the dark and her snuggling
labiae
embraced me and let me squishy-squish on in. At that point I decided, Oh, what the hell, if I'm going to be a gomer, except for my
putz
I'll be a gomer, and I relaxed. She moved around on me slowly, rhythmically, as only women, laced into their own rhythms, can move, and then, starting to go off, bent down to me.