Charles Bukowski - Ham On Rye

The school must have advised my father. At the end of that term I was withdrawn from school. I went to bed and my parents covered me with ointments. There was a brown salve that stank. My father preferred that one for me. It burned. He insisted that I keep it on longer, much longer than the instructions advised. One night he insisted that I leave it on for hours. I began screaming. I ran to the tub, filled it with water and washed the salve off, with difficulty. I was burned, on my face, my back and chest. That night I sat on the edge of the bed. I couldn't lay down. My father came into the room.

"I thought I told you to leave that stuff on!"

"Look what happened," I told him. My mother came into the room.

"The son-of-a-bitch doesn't want to get well," my father told her. "Why did I have to have a son like this?"

My mother lost her job. My father kept leaving in his car every morning as if he were going to work. "I'm an engineer," he told people. He had always wanted to be an engineer.

It was arranged for me to go to the L.A. County General Hospital. I was given a long white card. I took the white card and got on the #7 streetcar. The fare was seven cents for four tokens for a quarter). I dropped in my token and walked to the back of the streetcar. I had an 8:30 a.m. appointment.

A few blocks later a young boy and a woman got on the streetcar. The woman was fat and the boy was about four years old. They sat in the seat behind me. I looked out the window. We rolled along. I liked that #7 streetcar. It went really fast and rocked back and forth as the sun shone outside.

"Mommy," I heard the young boy say, "What's wrong with that man's face?"

The woman didn't answer. The hoy asked her the same question again. She didn't answer.

Then the boy screamed it out, "Mommy! What's wrong with that man's face?"

"Shut up! I don't know what's wrong with his face!"

I went to Admissions at the hospital and they instructed me to report to the fourth floor. There the nurse at the desk took my name and told me to be seated. We sat in two long rows of green metal chairs facing one another. Mexicans, whites and blacks. There were no Orientals. There was nothing to read. Some of the patients had day-old newspapers. The people were of all ages, thin and fat, short and tall, old and young. Nobody talked. Everybody seemed very tired. Orderlies walked back and forth, sometimes you saw a nurse, but never a doctor. An hour went by, two hours. Nobody's name was called. I got up to look for a water fountain. I looked in the little rooms where people were to be examined. There wasn't anybody in any of the rooms, neither doctors or patients.

I went to the desk. The nurse was staring down into a big fat book with names written in it. The phone rang. She answered it.

"Dr. Menen isn't here yet." She hung up.

"Pardon me," I said.

"Yes?" the nurse asked.

"The doctors aren't here yet. Can I come back later?"

"No."

"But there's nobody here."

"The doctors are on call."

"But I have an 8:30 appointment."

"Everybody here has an 8:30 appointment."

There were 45 or 50 people waiting.

"Since I'm on the waiting list, suppose I come back in a couple of hours, maybe there will be some doctors here then."

"If you leave now, you will automatically lose your appointment. You will have to return tomorrow if you still wish treatment."

I walked back and sat in a chair. The others didn't protest.

There was very little movement. Sometimes two or three nurses would walk by laughing. Once they pushed a man past in a wheelchair. Both of his legs were heavily bandaged and his ear on the side of his head toward me had been sliced off. There was a black hole divided into little sections, and it looked like a spider had gone in there and made a spider web. Hours passed. Noon came and went. Another hour. Two hours. We sat and waited. Then somebody said, "There's a doctor!"

The doctor walked into one of the examination rooms and closed the door. We all watched. Nothing. A nurse went in. We heard her laughing. Then she walked out. Five minutes. Ten minutes. The doctor walked out with a clipboard in his hand.

"Martinez?" the doctor asked. "Jose Martinez?"

An old thin Mexican man stood up and began walking toward the doctor.

"Martinez? Martinez, old boy, how are you?"

"Sick, doctor… I think I die…"

"Well, now… Step in here…"

Martinez was in there a long time. I picked up a discarded newspaper and tried to read it. But we were all thinking about Martinez. If Martinez ever got out of there, someone would be next.

Then Martinez screamed. "AHHHHH! AHHHHH! STOP! STOP! AHHHH! MERCY! GOD! PLEASE, STOP!"

"Now, now, that doesn't hurt…" said the doctor. Martinez screamed again. A nurse ran into the examination room. There was silence. All we could see was the black shadow of the half-open doorway. Then an orderly ran into the examination room. Martinez made a gurgling sound. He was taken out of there on a rolling stretcher. The nurse and the orderly pushed him down the hall and through some swinging doors. Martinez was under a sheet but he wasn't dead because the sheet wasn't pulled over his face.

The doctor stayed in the examination room for another ten minutes. Then he came out with the clipboard.

"Jefferson Williams?" he asked. There was no answer.

"Is Jefferson Williams here?"

There was no response.

"Mary Blackthorne?"

There was no answer.

"Harry Lewis?"

"Yes, doctor?"

"Step forward, please…"

It was very slow. The doctor saw five more patients. Then he left the examination room, stopped at the desk, lit a cigarette and talked to the nurse for fifteen minutes. He looked like a very intelligent man. He had a twitch on the right side of his face, which kept jumping, and he had red hair with streaks of grey. He wore glasses and kept taking them off and putting them back on. Another nurse came in and gave him a cup of coffee. He took a sip, then holding the coffee in one hand he pushed the swinging doors open with the other and was gone.

The office nurse came out from behind the desk with our long white cards and she called our names. As we answered, she handed each of us our card back. "This ward is closed for the day. Please return tomorrow if you wish. Your appointment time is stamped on your card."

I looked down at my card. It was stamped 8:30 a.m.

I got lucky the next day. They called my name. It was a different doctor. I stripped down. He turned a hot white light on me and looked me over. I was sitting on the edge of the examination table.

"Hmmm, hmmmm," he said, "uh huh…"

I sat there.

"How long have you had this?"

"A couple of years. It keeps getting worse and worse."

"Ah hah."

He kept looking.

"Now, you just stretch out there on your stomach. I'll be right back."

Some moments passed and suddenly there were many people in the room. They were all doctors. At least they looked and talked like doctors. Where had they come from? I had thought there were hardly any doctors at L.A. County General Hospital.

"Acne vulgaris. The worst case I've seen in all my years of practice!"

"Fantastic!"

"Incredible!"

"Look at the face!"

"The neck!"

"I just finished examining a young girl with acne vulgaris. Her back was covered. She cried. She told me, 'How will I ever get a man? My back will be scarred forever. I want to kill myself!' And now look at this fellow! If she could see him, she'd know that she really had nothing to complain about!"

You dumb fuck, I thought, don't you realize that I can hear what you're saying? How did a man get to be a doctor? Did they take anybody?

"Is he asleep?"

"Why?"

"He seems very calm."