The house of God

by Samuel Shem

  "Nope. I really don't, Roy."

  "It's incredible," I said. "you're so beautiful and so sexy and so much . . . fun and so free it's just hard to believe. I didn't know someone like you could really exist. I care about you a whole lot."

  "Well, I kinda love you, Roy, even if you do see me as some dumb nurse and that's all."

  "You're not some dumb nurse."

  "Nope, I'm not. I'm just a fed?up Catholic who's had it up the kazootie with the nuns, and I'm making up for lost time. And now I'm gonna play."

  "I'm not a bastard to you?"

  "Oh, Roy boy, stop it. You and I are just going to have fun, OK?"

  Well, sure it was OK, I guessed, and I gathered her up into my arms and kissed her and Toni and Sue and that hot moist and hairy thing whose name I hadn't caught who could squeeze Oscar as only twenty percent of vaginal vaults can, and she kissed me and we kissed everybody, and with warmth and kisses and the tiepin and everything getting aroused all over again and saying good?bye, it was a miracle that I and big Oscar could walk at all, much less walk out, into the slushstorm and down to the House of good old God.

  And wasn't it on just such a night that my great-great?uncle Thaler, denied the chance to be a sculptor, had snuck into the barn, stolen the best horse, and ridden away, never to be seen or heard from again?

  13

  But that was it. That night shift was the fulcrum of my stay in the E.W. The fun was over. The abuse had begun.

  It started when I walked through the waiting rooms and saw Abe rocking in his corner, alone, a pair of silk women's panties on his head. He was abusing those waiting, and they were beginning to abuse him back: When he saw me he stopped, looked at me as if he didn't know me, and demanded:

  "Are you a Jew?"

  "Yes, I am."

  "You know the problem with you Jews is you're circumcised."

  The nurses were upset at Abe's regression, and we were trying to convince Cohen to do something to prevent the inevitable, Abe's rehospitalization at the State F cility. Cohen seemed on edge. The policemen weren't expected until midnight. Flash had taken his vacation hitchhiking out to some godforsaken hole in the belly of the country to be ravaged by his retardate agrarian kin.

  I went to see an abusive drunk who said, "I was by a pushcart in the garment district and I've got a problem with my legs."

  "When were you hit?"

  "Six years ago:"

  "It's not an emergency. Come back to the clinic Monday."

  He wouldn't leave, and I called Gath, and together we tried to convince him to leave, but instead he began to unwrap his right leg, saying, "Here, just look at this, eh?" As the yellow bloodstained rags began to unwind, my stomach turned, and Gath screamed, "DON'T TAKE THAT OFF!"

  "Why not?" asked the drunk gleefully. "You're doctors. Look."

  The pus?yellow rags slipped away, and we were faced with the most foul?smelling, ugly, oozing ulcers down to bone that either of us had ever seen. I felt sick. Gath went red and livid, sticking his face smack up against the drunk's and yelling, "YOU HAD TO DO THAT, DIDN'T YOU, YOU BASTARD!"

  From there things went downhill. All joined in the chorale of abuse. Underdoses, overdoses, drunks, psychopaths, whores, V.D., and vagitch, providing me with the pleasure of sitting between the gynecology stirrups, looking down the diseased barrel of the Holiday world. My attempts at sleep were constantly interrupted. At three A.M. I saw a suburban housewife brought in by her husband.

  "I can't stand up straight," she said, leaning.

  "How long have you had this problem?" I asked, sleepy?eyed.

  "Three months"

  "Then why did you come in tonight?"

  "It's worse tonight. See, I can stand like this," she said, leaning, "but I can't stand like this," she said, standing up straight.

  "You are standing like that," I pointed out.

  "I know, but I prefer to stand like this."

  I TURFED her out and she abused me some, and left. At four?thirty I was awakened by a refrain of OIY OIY OIY and I knew that a medical admission had arrived. The nurse handed me the clipboard, saying, "Don't worry, it's hopeless: end?stage breast cancer, metastatic throughout pelvis, abdomen, and spine."

  "It was awful. A scoliotic wreck of a woman, bent into an ungodly shape, demented from the spread of the cancer to her brain, fighting like an animal in pain against my doing anything for her. Two sisters hovered, demanding I do everything. The disease was disgusting and painful. These sisters were irritating in their absurd hope. This was no live thing, no hope. This was death. This was despair, that rare look into the mirror at first twinkle, at first graying, at gray. This was the bottomless panic at the lost smooth cheek of childhood, at no longer being young. I was angry at this woman because this, the beginning of her end, meant work for me. Sick at heart, I admitted her. The sun rose on this pivotal night shift of mine; and to me the sun seemed defective, a second, a lightweight and tired speck at the edge of a vast unseen interstellar, black. On the way out of the E.W. I was the recipient, of Abe's abuse, heaped like shit on my head. Suspicious and angry, I felt the world too depleted to wash away my bitterness. A child's rocking horse was rotting in the snow. For all I knew, the first cells of a cancer were budding in my bladder. My own crab, lost on a winter?dusk shore, scuttling among the lifeless debris, asearch with timeless confidence in my ultimate ebb, for food.

  "Stand up, Roy," someone said harshly, shaking me "Roy?oy . . ."

  It was Berry. All around me were well?dressed peon ple, standing up, and Berry said, "Come on, Roy, it's the Hallelujah Chorus, stand up."

  I stood up where was I Symphony Hall. I was listening to that penultimate grenade, The Messiah, performed by the lonely and ratchet?voiced members of the Handel Society. Another matinee. As usual with any activity?outside the House of God, The Messiah had put me right to sleep. FOR THE LORD GOD OMNIPOTENT REIGNETH! HALLELUJAH! Sing it, boys. How could you know that He doesn't seem to reigneth much in the House of God E.W. AND HE SHALL REIGN FOREVER AND EVER. FOREVER! AND EVER! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! It wasn't a bad grenade, this Messiah, really. I looked around at the audience, stretching from the giant double organ onstage, back in row on row of creaky benches. Many gomers and gomeres, especially toward the front. Tufts of gray, hyperemic flesh over sallow cheek. GOMERES DON'T DIE! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! FOREVER! THEY LIVE FOREVER! The price of the seats had the rich gomers in front, the kids in the rear. Berry and I were halfway to being rich gomers.

  "Roy, sit down. Now you sit, see?"

  Some sharp?toothed woman let out with a menstrual I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH and Berry and I left. Our feet got soaked in the slushy snow, and I said, "I feel sick. I can't seem to get this heaviness out of my chest, and I don't know what to do."

  "It sounds congested," said Berry.

  "Yeah, what do you think I should do? I don't even cough."

  "That's your trouble. You're not coughing. You need something to break it up. A tussive."

  "You think so? I never thought of that. What do you suggest?"

  "Roy, what is this? You're the doctor, not me."

  "You're right. I never thought of that."

  "Dissociation. You're dissociating yourself from everything. You must be really depressed."

  "Didn't I tell you? The policemen say I've become paranoid. They've seen it happen to interns before. It comes from working in the E.W."

  "I thought you liked the E.W."

  "I used to. It had been fun. It wasn't all gomers. There were people whose lives I saved, I actually

  saved."

  "What happened?"

  "I got competent to handle the big stuff, and the other stuff is just one abusive person after another. It shits. Addicts trying to dupe you for dope, drunks, the poor, the clap, the lonelier?I hate 'em all. I don't trust anyone. It comes from being vomited on and spit at and yelled at and conned. Everyone's out to get me to do something for them, for their fake disease. The first thing I look for now is how they're trying to t
ake me for a ride. It's paranoia, see?"

  "Paranoia's OK," said Berry, "it's just a more primitive defense. If you think someone's watching you, you think you're not alone. It keeps the desperation of loneliness out of your mind. And the rage. You're so depressed, Roy, you've been so far down lately, it's horrible to see. You've changed."

  At that I got tears in my eyes. The gap between what was human, with this smart, caring woman, an dwhat was inhuman, with the gomers and the abuse became too much. Choked up, I hung my head, found myself blurting out that I had something to tell her and that I was screwing around with a nurse. I awaited the explosion.

  "You don't think I knew that?" asked Berry.

  "You did?" I said, surprised.

  "Sure. Floozies and oysters and all the rest, remember? I know you pretty well. It's all right with

  Roy. As long as it goes both ways.'"

  "It is? You mean that?"

  "Yeah," she said, and then, looking me square in the eye she went on, "with the internship wrecking you, we can't keep on just as we were. That's been obvious for months. We'll keep this love going, Roy, I'm going to fight for it. Just remember, though your freedom means my freedom too. OK, buddy?"

  Crunching down the jealousy, I said, "Sure, buddy . . . sure, love," and I hugged her and kiss and with tears in my eyes I said, "There's only a week to go in the E.W, and I'm really worried what's going to happen. I might not make it. I'm scared that of these nights, with nobody else around, when someone starts to abuse me, I'm going to lose control and beat the shit out of some poor bastard"

  "Let me warn you, Roy: in psychiatry, this week coming up, the one between Christmas and New Year's, is the worst. It's a week of death. Be careful, get ready. It's going to be terrible."

  "A Holocaust."

  "Exactly. Savage."

  "How am I going to survive?"

  "How? Maybe like in the camps: survive to bear, witness, to record the ones who didn't survive."

  Later, after the fury of sex had given way to the tenderness of a caress, I began to talk about Gilheeny, Quick, and Cohen. I started to laugh, Berry started to laugh, and soon the bed, the room, the world itself was one gigantic mouth and tongue and tooth engaged in one ellipsoid laugh, and Berry said, "They sound incredibly bizarre. I mean, they really talk like that? Like textbooks? How did they get that way?"

  "They say it's from hanging around the House E.W. for twenty years and talking to smart guys like me. They've absorbed every tern's liberal?arts education for the last twenty years:"

  "You love them; don't you?"

  "Yeah, they're great. They're keeping me going."

  "And you're puzzled and interested by Cohen."

  "Yeah. You know what he told me?he never touches bodies. If I didn't have to touch 'em, I'd like listening too, what the hell."

  "You mean he doesn't blow into his stethoscope at the gomers?"

  "He doesn't own a stethoscope. He wears jeans to work."

  "Well, how does he communicate with the gomers?"

  "He doesn't."

  "He doesn't?" Berry asked in a tantalizing tone.

  "Damn! He doesn't. Maybe I should be a shrink!"

  Well, at that, peals of laughter rang out again. A resident in psychiatry, a psychiatrist? No gomers, no rotting twats, no vagitch, no itchy blotchy penises, no leg ulcers, no rectals, not much on?call. Just the old chit?fuckin'?chat. That's what most of them needed anyway, these ones sucking on doctors for what doctors couldn't give. I could throw away my stethoscope and wear a pair of jeans to work.

  Berry and I got dressed to go to the Leggo's Christmas party. She put on slinky black, and I, since I had to report to the E.W. at midnight, House white. Berry excited at meeting the Fish and the Leggo, said, "I'm anxious to see how much of what you've told me is transference."

  "What's transference?"

  "The distortion of the real relationship by unconscious forces. Maybe you hate the Fish and the Le because they remind you of your father:"

  "I love my father"

  "How about your mother?"

  "The Fish and the Leggo remind me of a woman who keeps kosher?"

  The party was at the Leggo's house, on the edge the suburbs. A grand circular drive led up to a regal mansion. There was money in urine. We were greeted in the foyer by the Leggo, whose eyes went immediately to my House name tag and to Berry's boobs. When I said Hello, sir, the horny little guy looked puzzled, and I knew he was trying to remember whether or not I'd ever been in the military. In the hour before I went to the E.W. I decided I'd try to drink as many champagnes as I could, and soon I was bubbly and high, and stood there when Chuck arrived. He was dressed in his dirty whites, having come directly from ward 6?South, and was covered in the usual ward excretia. The Leggo gave Chuck a big Oh, hello there, uh . . . and then, searching out the name tag, he said . . . uh . . . Charles: Er, have you been at work? and Chuck said, Naw, I always look like this, Chief, you know how it is.

  The party went on. The Leggo's wife was about as sexy as a catheter. The talk was, on the part of the doctors, all medicine; and on the part of the spouses, mostly women, all about how hard medicine was on them. Chuck and I fell in love with a woman and couldn't figure out why. As I got more loaded, it seemed that Berry's face was getting more and more incredulous. She met the Leggo, she met the Fish. After forty minutes she came up to us and said she was leaving. I'd never seen her so ripped, and Chuck and I asked her why.

  "You two are drunk," she said, "and I can see why. I'd get drunk too if I had to deal with these schmucks. It's not transference, it's obsessive?compulsive neurosis. You spill something, they have an attack of diarrhea. No wonder doctors have the highest rate of suicide, divorce, addiction, alcoholism, and premature death. And probably premature ejaculation too. In two hours here, nobody asked me anything about me. It's as if I were only an appendix to you."

  A keeper, I thought to myself.

  "Roy, I've never had a more degrading time. You know what these people are? Cocksuckers. So long."

  Kissing each of us on the cheek, she got her coat and left. After as many bubblies as we could get down, Chuck and I drove back to the House.

  "Damn, that Berry's sumthin' else."

  "Yeah, she's great. Hey, try and stay on the road, huh? You know, she's worried about you."

  "Well, man, what all is she worried about?"

  I was drunk enough to tell him. I told him how she'd noticed he'd gotten so much fatter, so out of shape. How he'd wolfed down his food, how he'd stopped caring about his body, and how he was beginning to drink.

  "No foolin'. I used to be in great shape, and look at the mess I'm in now. Pitiful, man, pitiful."

  "She says it's anger, that all of us are so pissed off we're beginning to do strange things. With you, she says it's all oral. She's worried that you're turning into an alcoholic."

  He parked the car like an alcoholic, orthogonally to the House white lines. We got out and in unspoken defiance peed on the House lot. The two clouds of steam were a comfort.

  "So Berry's a little worried about me, huh?" asked Chuck.

  "Yup. More than a little. Hey, I'm worried about you too."

  "Well, Roy, tell you a little secret: so am I, man, so am I."

  The alarm went off. I separated myself from the hothouse under the covers with Berry. I groaned. Potts's father had died and Potts had left for the funeral in Charleston and Eat My Dust Eddie was covering the ward for Potts and I had to cover for Eddie in the E.W., a twenty?four?hour shift. The morning was so cold that despite my bundling, when my ass hit the seat of the car the chill made me shake and chatter, and as I shivered my way down to the House I thought about Wayne Potts.

  The strange thing about Potts was that he wasn't acting strange. Perhaps he'd grown more quiet, more withdrawn. One night I'd found him sitting in nursing station with a dazed look on his face, like that of a child at a funeral. "Oh, hi, Roy," he'd said. "You know, I just went to see the Yellow Man I could have sworn he looked right
at me and knew me, but then, when I looked again, he was the same as ever, eyes closed, comatose."

  Potts plodded along. With his wife having multiple orgasms of power as an MBH surgical intern, Potts spent a lot of time alone. We'd get together, and I'd grown to like him. His Southern roots resonated with my love of the rootedness of England, of Oxford with its cameo pieces of strawberries and cream and champagne served on the smooth lawns in the fifteenth-century courtyards. We became friends partly through a shared contempt for the competitive Slurpers of the North, and a shared longing for permanence, for a solid past. We'd sit at his house talking and listening to blues and gospel, Potts's favorite ballad being Mississippi John Hurt, on dying:

  When my earthly trials are over, cast my body down in the sea;

  save all the undertaker's bills, let the mermaids flirt with me.

  One day we'd talked about how we'd gotten into medicine.

  "Well, I remember one summer at Pawley's Island, I was about twelve. Mother had kicked Daddy out, and that summer my brother and my mother and me went to the shore. One day I spilled hot oil all over my hand, burned it real bad, and Mother rushed me back into Charleston to our family doc. His office was just these two big old rooms all mahogany?paneled with brass knobs and fixtures, apothecary drawers, urns, you know? He dressed my burn and said, 'Boy, you like fishin', don't you? 'Yessir.' 'What do you like to cetch, boy?' 'Sea bass and bluefish, sir.' 'Are the bluefish runnin' yet?' 'No, sir.' 'Well, you see if we don't have you back fishin' by the time those bluefish are rennin', eh?' So I went to him every couple of days for him to change the dressing. He used some special ointment on it, and I remember once, after a week or so, he said to me, 'Well, I've run outta that ointment, and I called up the company that makes it, New Jersey, but they say that some government bureau has banned its use in human beings, 'cause it harmed some white mice. Now, there ain't nothing wrong with that ointment, boy, and I know, 'cause I've been using it for almost twenty years. So what I did was go out to my farm and get some I've been using on my horses. Works on them, reckon it's gonna keep right on workin' on you. Well, of course it did, and I healed up fine. I was catching bluefish that summer, just like he said. I drifted into hanging around with him, doing things on his rounds with him. The things I saw! Wherever he went, people opened their doors to him. He'd be up all night in a Negro shack delivering twins, and, then his next call'd be at the grandest house on the East Battery, washing himself with their scented soap and served chickory coffee by the butler on the Bahamas porch, the sea breeze from Fort Sumter mixin with the honeysuckle from the garden in back. I did a lot with him, saw a lot, and wanted more than any thing to be like him."