Samuel Shem - The house of God

"Fine, fine," said Chuck.

"And you, Roy," said the Fish, pointing to the cigarette I'd just lit up, "enjoy that, because it will prove to be three minutes off your life."

I saw red. The Fish slid off down the corridor to the colloquium. A morbid silence coated us. The Fat Man broke it, spitting out, "Jerk! Now, just remember this, Potts, if you want to end up like that jerk, you'll believe him. If not, you'll listen to me: THE PATIENT IS THE ONE WITH THE DISEASE."

"Are you really going to dress better?" I asked Chuck.

"'Course not, man, 'course not. In Memphis, we don't even wear neckties to funerals. Man, these gomers are sumpthin' else. None of my four admissions so far believes I'm really their doctor. They all think am the hep."

"Hep?"

"H?e?1?p. Hep. The colored hep. See you later."

Staring out the window, Potts muttered to himself something about how he should have given the Yellow Man the roids, but the Fat Man stopped him, saying, "Potts, go home."

"Home? Charleston? You know, right now my brother?he's in construction?he's probably lying out in a hammock on Pawley's Island, sipping a fizz. Or maybe upcountry, where it's all green and cool. I never should have left. The Fish is right in what he said, but if this was the South, he never would have said it. Not like that. My mother has a word for him: 'common.' Guess I made my choice, though, didn't I? Well, I will go home. Thank God Otis is at home."

"Where's your wife?"

"She's on call tonight at the MBH. It'll be just Otis and me. That's just fine, 'cause he loves me, too. He'll be lying there on the bed with his balls up in the air, snoring. It'll be good to go home to him. See you tomorrow."

We watched Potts stumble on down the hallway. He came to the colloquium, outside the room containing the Yellow Man. Without looking in, as if ashamed, Potts slunk past them and out the door.

"This is crazy," I said to the Fat Man, "this internship is nothing like what I thought it would be. What do we do for these patients anyway? They either die or we BUFF and TURF them to some other part of the House."

"That's not crazy, that's modern medicine."

"I don't believe it. Not yet." "Of course you don't. You'd be crazy to. It's only

your second day. Wait till tomorrow, when you and

me are on call together. Well, I'm going home. Pray

for the Dow Jones, Basch, pray the fucker stays on up"

Who cared?

I finished my work and walked down the corridor toward the elevator. The crowd around the Australian expert was breaking up, and out of it rolled the Runt. He looked a lot worse. I asked him what was going on, and he said, "The Australian said we should do an exchange transfusion, where you take all the old blood out and replace it with new."

"That never works. The blood still has to go through the liver, and there is no liver. He's going to die."

"Yeah, that's what they all said too, but since he's young and was walking around yesterday, they think it's worth a try. They said I had to do it, tonight, and I'm scared stiff."

Screams came from the room. The Yellow Man was flopping up and down on the bed like a hooked tuna, screaming. A member of Housekeeping ambled up, pushing two huge carts laden with linen, gowns, operating?room garb, and large polyethylene bags labeled "Danger?Contaminated." The head nurse told the Runt that the blood would be ready in half an hour and that there was only one nurse to assist, since the others were scared of sticking themselves with a needle and catching the fatal disease. They refused to work in the room. The Runt and I watched the nurse walk away, and watched Housekeeping, whistling, disappear into the down elevator. The Runt looked up at me with terror in his eyes; and then put his head on my shoulder and cried. I didn't know what to do. I would have volunteered to help, but I was scared of catching whatever bad thing it was that had you walking around chatting up the Tit one day and convulsing like a hooked tuna the next.

"Do one thing for me," said the Runt. "If I die, take the money in my trust fund and donate it to the BMS. Make a prize for the member of the class, who first realizes the insanity of this business and drops out to do something else."

I helped him on with his sterile operating?room garb, his gloves, face mask, hat. Like an astronaut, he launched himself with an awkward shuffle into the room, up to the bed, and started the procedure. The bags of fresh blood began to arrive. With a lump in my throat I walked out, down the corridor. The cries, smells, bizarre sights riddled my head like bullets in a nightmare war. Even though I hadn't touched the Yellow Man, I went to the bathroom and gave myself a long surgical scrub. I felt terrible. I liked the Runt, and he was going to poke himself with a contaminated needle, catch this liver?ripping hepatitis, turn yellow, flip like a gaffed fish, and die. And for what?

As if in a tankful of water, I listened to Berry while I read my father's latest letter:

. . By now you must be in the middle of your work and it will settle down to a routine. I know that there is so much to learn and you will be immersed in it. Medicine is a great profession and it is a wonderful thing to be able to heal the sick. I played eighteen on Saturday in the heat and it was made bearable by a gallon of iced tea and a birdie on number . . .

Unlike my father, Berry was not as interested in preserving an illusion of medicine as she was in understanding my experience. She asked me what it had been like, and although I tried to tell her, I realized that it had not been like anything, and I could not.

"But what made it so hard? The fatigue?"

"Nope. I think what made it hard was the gomers and the Fat Man."

"Tell me about it, love"

I told her how I couldn't decide whether or not what the Fat Man taught about medicine was crazy. The more I saw, the more sense the Fat Man made. I had begun to think I was crazy for thinking he was crazy. As an example, I told Berry about the gomers and about how we'd laughed at Ina in her Rams helmet socking Potts with her purse.

"Calling old people gomers sounds like a defense."

"Gomers aren't just old people. The Fat Man says he loves old people and I believe him, because he gets tears in his eyes when he talks about his grandmother and her matzoh balls that you eat sitting on ladders scraping them off the ceiling."

"Laughing at this Ina is sick."

"It does seem sick right now, but it didn't then."

"Why did you laugh at her?"

"I don't know. It was hilarious at the time."

"I'd like to understand. Try again."

"Nope. I can't."

"Try to snap out of it, Roy, please?"

"No! I don't want to think about it anymore."

I shut up. She got mad. She couldn't have known that all I wanted then was to be taken care of. Things had moved fast. Two days, and already, like swimming in a strong current, I'd looked up and found my life an eternity farther downstream, the near bank far gone. A rift had opened. Up until then, Berry and I had been in the same world, outside the House of God. Now, for me, the world was inside the House, with the Yellow Man my age and the Runt both about to Grump, with the dead father my age who'd popped an aneurysm playing baseball, with the Privates, the Slurpers, and the gomers. And with Molly. Molly knew what a gomer was, and why we'd laughed. With Molly, so far, there had been no talk, there'd been only the straight bendovers, the clefts and the round full hollows, the red nails and blue lids and panties splashed with flowers and rainbows, and the laughter amidst the gomers and the dead. Molly was the promise of a breast against an arm. Molly was recess.

Yet Molly was recess from much that I loved. I didn't want to laugh at patients. If it really were as hopeless as the Fat Man said, I'd give up now. I didn't like this rift with Berry, and so, thinking to myself that the Fat Man really was bananas after all and that, somehow, if I believed him I'd lose Berry, I said, "You're right. It's sick to laugh at the old people. I'm sorry." For an instant I saw myself as a real doc rushing in and saving lives, and Berry and I sighed together and snuggled together and got undressed together and were together in love together tight and warm?wet, and that portending rift sealed over again.