Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

Gimme a break! is what I wanted to say, but instead, sensing its lameness as it came out, I said, "You shouldn't kill yourself."

She stared at me in disbelief. "You're not doing anything

for me." She picked up her handbag. "Because you're a cold fish!" She got up to leave.

"See you next week."

"You wish!" She grabbed the doorknob. "I am going to kill myself!" She walked out, slamming the door, and the room echoed with angry black-on-blond.

I sat there for a few seconds, and then I jumped up, opened the door, and found myself face-to-face with Arnie Bozer, another first-year resident, standing in his doorway across the hall, staring after my fleeing patient. I ran down three flights into the hot damp day, shouting, "Christine! Christine!" and caught up to her at the tennis court. She stared at me with contempt. "Are you all right?" She shook her head no. "I'll call you tonight."

"You better not. I'd rather talk to a mortician." She walked away, slwish slwish, around the corner. My heart sank. What if she did kill herself?

"Oy geva.lt."

With a sinking feeling, I turned around. Schlomo Dove. Still in his crumpled suit, he was wearing aviator sunglasses, carrying a tennis racket, and peeling a banana.

"She said she was going to kill herself. I followed her down here."

"You did what!" he cried, as if I'd just told him I'd converted to Islam.

"Followed her down to the tennis court. Because she-"

"You shouldn't even think that, much less do it! Get yourself an analyst, bubbula, fast." He finished peeling the banana. "Now Schlomo Dove will eat a banana, for Schlomo's heart." Chewing, he danced off up the path.

And Cherokee's going through hell about this! Maybe the cure would be to introduce them. Get a little reality testing going, why not?

Feeling bad about Christine, I headed back toward Emerson. What if she did kill herself? How bizarre. In any other setting I'd've been able to talk with her, easily, naturally, but in this setting, designed for talk, I was on an Alice in Wonderland trip where the smallest, most trivially natural things had become gigantic, laden with criticism, shadowed by the threat of death. "A cold fish," she'd said. Hey, she was right. She'd

been the one able to feel things, and talk about them. Was she more normal than me?

"SO MAYBE SHE 75 more normal than you," Solini said, sitting in Emerson 2 with me and Malik at the end of the day. "So big shit."

"So I don't know what I'm doing." I glanced at Malik, sitting there poking a wooden toothpick, a "Stim-U-Dent interdental cleaner," in and out of his teeth pensively. "I was trying to do what you said, Malik, act human, but-"

"Be human. I said be human. You wanna act, try Hollywood. Here we do real. C'mon, c'mon. Tell me about it."

Malik talked me through my session with Christine. He was curious about what had happened, asking good questions, nodding, giving me feedback on what had gone on. He tuned in not only to Christine, but to me, seeming to sense what I'd been feeling. Behind those tinty lenses, those eyes got it. Attended to intently, I recalled just about everything, word for word. I felt understood-the same feeling I'd had in my first interview with Ike White.

"Look," he said, "the thing that pissed her off was your not responding to her-not telling her where you went to school, that you'll be supervised in your work. Why didn't you?"

"It seemed unprofessional. I can't be totally open with her, can I?"

" 'Course not."

"So how do I know whether to tell her things about me or not?"

"Use the 'Asshole Criterion.' Key concept. When you're with a patient, to decide whether to tell her something, you make the decision based on whether or not you'd be an asshole if you didn't." We laughed.

"But she said she was going to kill herself." "Her 'doorknob' comment? Nah, I don't think so." "How do you know?"

"Same as you. Use the 'Corner of Your Eye' and the 'Afterimage.' What'd you see with Christine out of the corner of your eye? Quick."

"She was sizing me up, and was cool about it. Cool and calculating."

"And her afterimage? Quick."

"Intense. At the tennis court, really intense. Her eyes."

"See? That's real. Authentic. Her intensity scared you, she felt your concern, she got it. Low risk, okay?"

"And what about Ike White? Quick."

"Eyes off somewhere else. Not here. I never got to real with him, and boy did I try." He blinked. "I never realized that before, I mean that I never asked myself about his afterimage. That's good, Basch, to ask me that, yeah. You did good. Why doncha go home."

"Yeah, in a little while," I said. "Henry, I want to ask you a favor. Will you tell your patient Thorny to stop calling me a dickhead?"

"No problem. Let's do it." We walked out into the living room.

"Achtung! Putzkopf!"

"Hey, man, stop calling my buddy Dr. Basch a dickhead, okay?"

"Fuck you, you faggoty midget."

Henry's other patient, Split Risk, hearing this, limped off to his room. We walked after him. Solini and I entered the room. Harrison backed into a corner and crouched, shouting, "Are you guys gay? You crucify Dee White and now you wanna fuck me up the ass? Do you? Answer me!"

I froze, then turned to Solini, figuring that, as the therapist, he should have first crack at answering this. He too had frozen.

"Hey there, Harrison," I heard Malik say casually, and felt his hand on my shoulder, parting Solini and me. "Jill wants to talk to you, okay?"

A tall woman with long light hair came in. Outside the door were three big guys. They and Jill were "mental health workers."

'These two fags are negotiating to fuck me up the ass."

"Harrison," Jill said, "can I talk to you?"

"Only if you get these two fag doctors out of here."

We stepped out of the room. Jill, alone facing Harrison, said, "You're a little out of control, and you've got to take these meds, okay?"

"Who says?"

"I say, and Dr. Malik, who you know is a good straight guy, says. Here." She moved slowly to him and handed him the pills and water.

He started to take them, but suddenly Solini started coughing, big bulletlike coughs. With a scream Harrison threw Jill aside and charged. Solini and I ran. The three big guys covered Harrison with their bodies, but as easily as a housewife snapping the dust from a blanket, he lifted and scattered them. Jill ran out, her face bleeding. Again the goons pounced. This time, while they held him down, Malik pulled down his pants and gave him a shot in the butt. They sat on him until the trank took effect, then carried him away to the Quiet Room.

Malik led us back to the nursing station. Jill's scalp had been cut, and I volunteered to sew it up.

"Homosexual panic," Malik said. "People don't get more enraged than that. If you're male, you gotta stay away. Why didn't you ask for help?"

"He seemed friendly," Solini said.

" 'Friendly' don't mean shit around here. Any doubts, ask for help. The problem ain't not knowin', it's not askin'. Especially for us guys, like not askin' directions even when we're lost Repeat after me: 'Ask!'" Henry and I looked at each other. "Go on, say it: 'Ask!' "

"Ask," Henry and I said, kind of embarrassed. "Ask."

"Louder!" Malik yelled. "Ask!"

"Ask!" we yelled out. "Ask!"

"LOUDER!"

"ASK! ASSSSSSSK!"

"AWRIGHTl" Malik said, giving us high fives. He opened up the sports section of the Times, working his Stim-U-Dent.

I did a slow, neat job on Jill's scalp, the light blond hair falling silkily away from the gash. From my position above her I was looking down at the swoop of her breasts, a long cleft descending, widening, blossoming to a fullness, the tan summer skin arrested by shy white skin above the peach-colored lace of her bra. Even the wound itself, the inner lips of tissue flaring a pulpy red, was sensual, an O'Keeffe iris, closing gradually under my fingers as I placed the sutures, first the subcutaneous amber catgut, then the black silk, and pulled it up into a healing pucker.