House of God (24 page)

‘Angel?'

‘Roy.'

‘Roy!'

‘Angel.'

. . . Hope you are your usual self and not working too hard . . .

‘I thought I'd'—gesture toward sky—'thank you for'—gesture toward curtain—'sending me'—gesture toward floor—‘the Runt.'

So she did, by moving up and down and making little noises that I didn't hear too well and as she sat up and grabbed the springs of the underside of the top bunk she said with gestures more than with words how this was like making love on a night train in Europe, and she bounced around like a kid in a jungle gym, and then she stopped.

‘Whats the matter?' I asked.

‘I think there's someone'—gesture toward heaven—‘up there.'

We listened, and sure enough there was:

‘Oh Jesu Jesu Chuckie HAAY-ZUUUU—'

Thunder Thighs untied me, and as soon as my arms and legs were free I wrapped every one of them around her with me inside her and outside her all at once and then like a gomer who'd gotten the Ponce de Léon Rejuvenation Treatment—Fat Man scenario?—I rolled her over on her back and really started doing what a crude person might call fuck and as I bashed away like a Leon I thought of smashing the Leggo in the nose and then Angel started groaning and saying something that sounded, without gestures, like Fuck my cunt baby fuck my cunt and the BLEEPS shot off the scale again and my coronary arteries got all pinched and protesting and BAM BAM BAMMmmmm there it was again.

. . . Hope you are well and we will get to see you soon . . .

Later, with all of us more or less huddled and humming nice tunes and Chuck singing ‘There's a moone out too-night' while we hummed the ‘Dooo-wahhs' there was a knock on the door.

‘A raid!' screamed Hazel.

But there were two more knocks, and there was Selma, who said, ‘Sorry I'm late, kids,' and joined in.

Things melded. I remember seeing the Runt cuddling in Selma's lap, and also Molly and Angel and Selma snuggling together, and as I floated in a sea of friendly genitalia feeling this and poking that, I thought that the third toothbrush could have been male or female and that these women were more liberated than any of us and more fun, and right at the end we all remarked upon what a nice party and sang in a sort of tickertape
dulcissimo
:

WHAT A GRAND GOOD-BYE, TO THAT COLORFUL GUY

THE SEXUAL* * * MVI * * * DOCTOR ROY G. BASCH.

10

‘. . . floozy.'

‘Huh?' I asked.

‘Roy, don't you ever listen to me?'

It was Berry. Where were we, who knew? I was eating an oyster. I hoped I was in France, in Bordeaux, eating a Marenne oyster, or in England, in London, eating a Wheeler's oyster, but feared that I was in the United States, eating a Long Island oyster, fearing America because America contained the House of God, and most of the time the House of God contained me, and the times I was out of the House were more unbearable now, for their succulence, than the times I was in. I said to Berry that I did ever listen to her.

‘I saw Judy the other day, and she said that whenever she sees you out with anyone else, it's with some floozy.'

An American floozy, an American oyster.

‘What the hell,' I said, ‘they're American oysters, aren't they?'

‘What?' asked Berry, looking at me strangely, and then, realizing I was elsewhere, turning sympathetic eyes on me, saying, ‘Roy, you've developed loose associations.'

‘Not only that, but according to Judy, I've got floozies, too.'

‘It's all right,' said Berry, putting the tines of her fork through the juiciest part of an oyster, ‘I understand. It's all primary-process stuff.'

‘What's primary process?'

‘Infantile pleasure. The pleasure principle. The floozies, the oysters, even me—any pleasures at all, and all pleasures at once. It's all pre-Oedipal, a regression from the Oedipal struggle with your father and your mother, to earlier, infantile concerns. I just hope there's enough of the secondary-process Roy left to include me in his narcissism. Otherwise, it's curtains for us, for sure. See?'

‘Not really,' I said, wondering if she meant that she knew about Molly. Should I bring that up? Things with Berry had reached an uneasy equilibrium bound by what she called ‘limits,' and floating on an unspoken shared acceptance of the other one's freedom, for now. I wouldn't say anything. Why should I?

‘Where do you work next? What's your next rotation?'

‘Next rotation?' I asked, seeing myself as an asteroid, rotating around Venus. ‘The Emergency Ward, tomorrow. From November first until New Year's Day.'

‘What will that be like?'

At that, my mind turned back to England, to one of the heightened moments in my formless ‘loitering years' at Oxford. That first summer of Mary Quant's miniskirt, I was idling on a busy street corner when suddenly there was a flurry and then the WEE-AWW of an ambulance approaching. The world stopped, curious and apprehensive, as the ambulance raced by, giving each of us a glimpse of the drama inside. Life or death. Chilling. And I'd thought, ‘Wouldn't it be great to be the one at the end of the ambulance ride?' That thought had turned me around and had gotten me back to America with its oysters and Mollys and BMSs. And Houses of Gods. Although that thought remained intact, to Berry's question I could only say, ‘In the E.W., I don't think they can hurt you as bad.'

‘Poor Roy, afraid to hope. Go ahead, have as many as you want.'

With each new Watergate bombshell, Americans were realizing that Nixon's ‘Operation Candor' was one terrific lie. On the day that Leon Jaworski was appointed special prosecutor to replace Archibald Cox, just about the time that Ron Ziegler was rejecting Kissinger's suggestion that Nixon make a speech of contrition by saying ‘Contrition is bullshit' I entered the House through the E.W. automatic doors. The waiting room was empty but for a sharp-eyed old buzzard standing in one corner rocking, a bulging shopping bag at his feet. Good. Only one patient to see. The stillness of the circular tiled E.W. was peaceful but ominous. A happy buzz, sprinkled with laughter, was coming from the central nursing station, where several people sat: the Head Nurse, named Dini; a black nurse named Sylvia; two surgeons, the uppermore, the resident, a gum-chewing Alabama native named Gath, and the lowermore, the intern, named Elihu, a tall beak-nosed Sephardic Jew with a frizzy Isro-Afro, rumored to be the worst surgical intern in the history of the House.

Gilheeny and Quick, the two policemen, also sat, and as they saw me come in, the redhead boomed out, ‘Welcome! Welcome to this little bit of Ireland in the heart of the Hebrew House. Your track record for the naughty upstairs ward has preceded you, and we know that you will amuse all of us with stories of passion in the long chill nights to come.'

‘Am I about to hear another story about the Irish and the Jews?'

‘And with the High Holy Days just past, I heard a wonderful tale,' said Gilheeny, ‘a story about the Irish maid coming to work in the Jewish household, do you know?'

I did not.

‘Ha! Well, this fine Irish woman sought employment at this Jewish household about the time of the Rosh Hashonah, the New Year, and asked the doorman what the employment in the house was like. Well, said your man, it's all right, my darlin', and they celebrate all the holidays, for instance during the New Year there's a large family dinner, and the head of the household gets up in front of them all, and in gratitude blows the
shofar
. So your woman the maid's eyes light up and she says, He blows the chauffeur! Ach, mon, but they do treat the help well here, now, don't they?'

When the laughter had died down, I asked whether the patient with the shopping bag in the waiting room was surgical or medical.

‘Patient? What patient?' asked Dini.

‘Oh, he means Abe,' said Flash, the E.W. orderly. Flash was a dwarfish young man with a harelip and a scar that started at his lip and disappeared down into parts unknown. He looked as if he had suffered severe chromosomal damage as a child. ‘That ain't no patient, that's Crazy Abe. He lives out there, that's all.'

‘He lives in the waiting room?'

‘More or less,' said Dini. ‘His family gave big bucks to the House years ago when they died off, and now he doesn't have a home, so we let him stay here. He's OK, except that he doesn't like the waiting room to get too crowded, and he goes a little apeshit around Christmas.'

How kind, to let a poor old man live in the waiting room. The two policemen, their tour of duty over for the night, arose to leave.

‘Being policemen of the night,' said Quick, ‘spending much of the dark cold night in this light warm room drinking coffee, safe from the dangers of the night, when our shifts coincide, we will meet again. Good morning and God bless.'

Leaving, Gilheeny said, ‘Soon you will meet the resident in psychiatry, Cohen. A Freudian.'

‘A textbook in himself,' said Quick as the door closed behind them.

Dini took me and Elihu on a tour of the premises. Although she was attractive, there was something disturbing about her. What was it? Her eyes. Her eyes were hard blank disks showing nothing in back of them. She had worked this beachhead for twelve years. She showed us the different rooms: gynecology, surgery, medicine, and then, last, room 116, which she affectionately called ‘The Grenade Room.'

‘Dubler named it, years ago. Grenade Room Dubler. The worst of the screaming gomers get put there. One night, with three of them in there, Dubler called us around, took a grenade from his pocket, opened the door, pulled the pin, tossed in the grenade, and waited for the explosion.'

Elihu and I looked at each other, incredulous.

‘Relax,' said Dini, ‘It was a dud grenade.'

We returned to the nursing station, where there were many clipboards containing the names and complaints of many patients. Having had a hearty breakfast and a second cup of coffee, the ‘emergencies' had begun to amble in. The waiting room was full. Crazy Abe, feeling crowded, was getting more agitated. There was no telling what would happen when Abe got really agitated. Gath had gone to the front line to triage those crowding Abe. The nurses had turned the people into patients in their hospital costumes, had taken their vital signs, and were once again sitting down. Dini turned her hard blank disks toward Elihu and me and said, ‘So you're all set now. Do it.' Elihu and I went to do it.

I stood outside the gynecology room and read my first clipboard: Princess Hope, sixteen, black, pain in the stomach. I went blank, like during the first weeks of the ternship. What did I know about pain in the stomach? I'd had pain in my stomach, yes, but in a woman it's different: too many organs, and the same pain can stand for a decomposing tuna sandwich or a decomposing ectopic pregnancy that will kill in half an hour. I paused outside the door.

‘Go on in there,' yelled Sylvia, ‘she ain't got nuthin'.'

I went in. Nine times out of ten in that room it would be small-time: V.D., vagitch, urinary, or tuna. This time, I thought it was big-time: appendicitis. I went back out to the nursing station and Sylvia said, ‘If you take that long with one, you'll only see about ten a day, and Abe will kill you.'

‘I think she's got appendicitis.'

‘Damn! Would you listen to this? Get me my scalpel, honey.'

Hearing the word ‘scalpel,' Gath was at my elbow. Eager yet skeptical, he listened to my diagnosis, and walked into the room. Nervous about my reputation, I retreated to the toilet. After a few minutes an Alabamacracker voice outside the door yelled:

‘Basch, boah? Hey, boah, you in theah?'

‘Yes.'

‘Can we'all come in theah, boah?'

‘What for?'

To congratulate you. In the opinion of Dr. Dwayne Gath, surgical resident in this E.W., we got a keeper. Hotcha!'

‘What's a keeper?'

‘Keeper? 'Pendix. You go in theah with a steel blade, find 'er, and keep 'er. Listen heah: THE ONLY WAY TO HEAL IS WITH COLD STEEL. Basch, you gave some hungry surgeon a chance to cut, and A CHANCE TO CUT IS A CHANCE TO CURE. We gonner cut on ole Princess, quicker'n yesterday.'

Wiping the sweat off my brow, I opened the bathroom door to the beaming eyes of a Good Ole Boy who'd just given a surgical buddy of his a chance to cut on human flesh.

Feeling better, I began to see other patients. I began to get bogged down with the lonely horrendomas, the LOLs in NAD and the gomers with multisystem disease, often the severity of which, according to textbooks, was ‘incompatible with life.' I began poring over them, doing things I'd done on the wards—taking a history, doing a physical, putting in IVs, feeding tubes, Foley catheters, beginning to treat, to start them on their way back to dementia. After I'd seen about three of them, I came back to the nursing station to find the clipboards wristdeep on my desk. I was overcome with a sense of futility. I saw no way that I would be able to dent the collection of bodies. How could I take care of all of them? How could I survive?

‘You wanna survive here?' asked Dini, pulling me aside.

‘Yes.'

‘Good. Two rules: one, treat only the life-threatening emergencies; two, everything else, TURF. You know TURF?'

‘Yes, the Fat Man taught me.'

‘Oh? Great. So you're all set. Like he says, ‘BUFF 'n' TURF'. It's not easy to separate emergencies from turkeys, especially in the Holiday Season, and it's even harder to TURF so they don't BOUNCE. It's an art. If they're not emergencies, we don't handle 'em. Now, get back in there and BUFF 'n' TURF like crazy!'