Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

"Whenever any of us felt bad, Mother would say, 'Now, now, children, back into your Happy Boxes!' I grew up thinking there really were these boxes! It was horrible! I never for one moment felt that anyone really loved me! I couldn't bear to live anymore. I decided to kill myself, tonight."

Her story felt complete. I said, "It's time to stop."

"Wait a sec," Malik said. He asked her a few questions about wanting to kill herself: how she'd thought to do it, whether she'd gotten pills and written a note, etc. She did have a bottle of pills-Xanax-which she handed me with the letter she'd been clutching, a suicide note. I'd failed to ask the one obvious question: Is she really suicidal or not?

"But maybe I'm not so bad?" she said. "All this doom and gloom. Maybe I shouldn't come into the hospital at all? Isn't it a sign of weakness?"

"Coming into a hospital on your own," I said, "is a pretty strong thing to do, don't you think?"

Silence, one of Watch Basch Destroy All He's Achieved.

Zoe turned to me. Her mouth was open, like a dazed sleepy child, her eyes puffy and red. Her red teddy, too, seemed dazed and sad, staring out at me from the fortress of her arms. "Are you just starting your residency?"

Thinking, Don't be an asshole, I said, "Yes."

"My cousin is too, in Texas. Will you be my therapist?"

"Sure."

Back in the office, Malik distributed fresh Stim-U-Dents to Primo and me. I was shaking. "Is it safe," I asked, "to leave her alone in there?"

"Now it is. So." He settled back. "You almost blew it."

"You mean when she started to leave?" "Uh-huh." He worked an incisor. "Think back. Why'd she wanna leave?"

I thought back. "When I-because I asked about her mother?"

"Yop. She says she wants to kill herself, you ask her about her mother! Earth to Basch: 'Where are you?' Dincha feel the 'click,' when everything got still and you and her connected?" I nodded. "But then you ran like hell?" "I didn't know what to do for her." "For her pain? You thought you had to do something?" "Yeah, to help her." "Did it help her?"

"Oh yeah, Malik," I said sarcastically, "it really helped her." "Exactly." He sighed. "It's so fuckin' hard to just face the pain. We get a hit of pain, we go, 'It's her fault, or my fault, or my mother's fault or my father's fault or God's fault,' and we try to do something to it, to fix it-it all happens in a second! Pain-" He snapped his fingers."-judgment! Push away that pain! Fight that suffering as if it'll destroy us, when the truth is, if we stay with it, it'll heal us."

"Like they say, Doc," Primo said, pointing his soggy Stim-U-Dent at me, " 'Don't just do something, stand there.' Key principle of Misery Security."

"Shit. It all seems so obvious now." "Don't feel bad, Doc," Primo said. "The one thing I learned, in all these years in Security with all youse young docs? If there's one obvious thing that any man on the street woulda asked a patient about, you can be sure that's the one thing the first-year resident will not ask about" "Even Malik, when he was first-year?" "Malik was for shit." "At best," Malik said, "for shit" "So how'd you stop being for shit, Malik?" "I was so for shit, I had a lotta room to learn. First, I got sober. Then, I married an Israeli. She was a doctor in the Israeli Army. Is she tough?' He and Primo rolled their eyes.

"Like the sweet pain of a toothpick," Primo said, "against a tender gum."

"It's all so clear," I said, "I think I've got it now." "No you don't," Malik said.

"Well, I've got something."

"You got the idea that you got something. Remember that 'click,' kid, 'cause you may not feel it again for a long long time."

"Why not?'

" 'Cause when you're with patients from now on, you're gonna think about how to make that 'click' happen again, and if you're thinking about it, you can't be there with it and it won't happen. You're gonna psych yourself out. So listen up: just hi case you do get to be Zoe's therapist, I'll do the physical. Once you lay your hands on a patient, therapy's over."

"What do you mean 'in case' I am?"

"She's rich. Even as we speak the Rich Patient Referral Network is humming-the worst shrinks in the world are gonna try to steal her. I'll do my best 'cause you'd be good for her. Put her on five-minute checks-she's at risk."

"Think we can help her?"

"Help her, hell," he said excitedly. "Cure her!"

"Cure? In psychiatry? Come off it, Malik, you can't-"

"No joke. People think that in medicine you can cure people and that in psychiatry you just foozle around. Fact is, it's the reverse. You don't cure heart disease or kidney disease, you palliate it. With a basically healthy young woman like this who wants to kill herself, if you can connect with her right now, at this shit-moment in her life, she'll probably never try to kill herself again! If that ain't cure, what is? I'm heading home. I live five minutes away. You'll do okay, long's you know when to ask. Ask for help."

"I can't believe I didn't ask her the main thing-'

"Lotta room to learn, Basch. See if you can do it without marrying an Israeli." He rolled his eyes. Primo rolled his eyes. I rolled mine.

"But it's like there's a whole other world," I said, surprised to see all at once how this work relied not on what I'd always been educated to do-think logically and analytically to solve problems, to chop up the world into either/ors or if/thens-but on "ands," on subtle, intuitive hunches and senses, on messages sent from uninhabited regions, acted upon in realms beyond words or even beyond actions themselves. "Like

there's a whole other way of being with people. Is it the world of the kishkeesT

"L'intestini e testiculari," Primo said. "You get me, Doc?"

"Starting to."

Beaming like a proud parent, Malik sang to me, " 'Had an angel of mercy to see me through all my sins…,'" and walked off, totally into Aerosmith.

While doing Zoe's write-up I took many phone calls, including one from a man saying, "Yuk yuk I'm a duck quack quack quack," another from a woman convinced that her cat was wearing a fur coat and fur gloves, and then my beeper went off and out came Viv's voice, for an emergency:

"Emerson Two, stat, Cowpoke. I'll hold your calls, good luck."

As I ran down the road, my heavy black bag tugging at my arm socket as if it wanted to get away from what awaited it, I felt a rush of cool wind swooping up the hill and saw a jagged knife edge of lightning, and I counted the seconds till the crack of thunder-six miles off and coming fast. I ran into Emerson and up two flights and opened the door.

"Dickheads to the Rescue!"

"Fuck off!" I screamed back, losing it completely.

"Dickheads Lose It Completely!"

"What the hell is wrong with you?" I asked. He fell silent.

"Roy! Over here!" Jill said, down the hall, in the doorway of Mary Megan Scorato's room. I ran there and went in. Blood was splattered on the bed, the walls, soaking the towel that Jill and the night nurse were holding to Mary's wrist. Mary seemed dazed, glassy-eyed, a little twitchy. Somehow, despite being off sharps and on five-minute checks, she'd gotten a razor. I unpeeled the caked towel from the wrist. The blood started oozing-not spurting, which to my relief meant vein, not artery-and the sight, to my surprise, made me feel queasy. Having seen so much blood and gore in the past two years, why would I feel sick at this? I probed the wound, Mary jumped, nudging Jill up against me. I felt Jill's shoulder, her hip, and sensed a body that was big and pliant and strong. Our eyes met.

"You work nights too?" I asked, hungry for contact with sanity.

"The money's better. What a mess. How're you doing?"

Thinking, You are incredibly attractive, how 'bout we go out for a drink and talk? I said, "Fine, fine," and tried to focus on the blood. Jill and the nurse left. As I sutured, I asked Mary why she'd done it. She said nothing. Knowing her grief, I felt for her. How could you call this her fault? If I had been born her, I might not have done as well. Do people by nature do their best?