by Samuel Shem
"Simple. You're a mathematician, right? Now, I get paid a fixed salary by the BMS, no matter how many hours I'm awake. You pay a fixed tuition to the BMS, no matter how many hours you're awake. Therefore, the more I sleep, the more I earn per waking hour, and the more you stay awake, the less you pay per waking hour. Got it?"
There was a pause and then Sev's QED: "So you get paid for sleeping, and I pay to stay awake."
"You got it. Hit the light on the way out, eh, good buddy? Oh, and remember: Nate Zock is not a BMS case. If you talk to him?even say 'Hi, Nate? or 'Hi, Mr. Zock' to him you die. Nighty?night."
I heard the ataxic shuffle of the little polymath, I felt the puzzled look back at me, and then the lights went out, and I slept.
By the next morning, something had changed. A small epidemic had begun. Never in the House of God had there been anything like it. Starting as a murmur, a trickle, a loss seen full?face on a dusk?dappled island, the epidemic spread, and was soon many rivulets streaming around many islands, sounding louder a louder, an ululation of a river against a sea. Suddenly urgently, five of us terns in the House had become infected with psychoanalytic thought. We had begun to BUFF ourselves for the possibility of TURFING ourselves into a residency in pyschiatry on July first.
Together we five began to study Mourning and Melancholia. We sought out Dr. Frank, who at first delighted with Eddie's interest in a psych residency at the House, but who, when four more of us folk suit, ran to the Leggo with the news. We ordered psych consults on our patients, and we attended psych rounds, our dirty whites conspicuous amidst the psychiatric fashion show, our rudimentary questions on anger, and loss, and guilt demonstrating our ignorance. At a case conference on an obscure autoimmune disease, Hooper startled us by letting fly a psychoanalytic interpretation based on Freud's "Death Wish." Eddie, still racing Hooper down the stretch for the alleged Black Crow, was delighted to find Freud so tight into anal sadism, and developed a facial tic. Chuck grooved on the passive?aggressive personality, and discovering his pathological closeness to his momma while his poppa was reading cowboy novels at work, came out with, "Man, it's amazin' I ain't queer, 'cause everythin' in my upbringin' points right to me bein' a fag." The Runt, of course, plunged deepest into the one whom Fats had tagged "that red?hot from Vienna": obsessing about what the hell he'd been letting Angel do to his face, he'd look dazed and say, "Holy cow, is there is something wrong with me!" I kept on self?analyzing in my top bunk, finding and stashing these pieces of myself.
The day came for our "future-plan-Leggo-chats." The Leggo had heard of the epidemic and had discounted it. He harbored no doubts about our future plans: the House residency year. With July less than a month away and a year full of residency on?call night slots to fill, the Leggo was a little surprised to hear the Runt, Hooper, and Eddie, one after the other, say: "Well, sir, I'm thinking of starting my residency in psychiatry."
"Psychiatry?"
"Yes, sir, on July the first."
"But you can't. You've agreed to stay in medicine for your residency year. I'm counting on you, on all of you boys, to stay."
"Yeah, but you see, I feel kind of urgent about this. Lotta things to work through, and some things, sir, well, they just can't wait."
"But your contract says?"
"There is no contract, remember?"
The Leggo didn't remember that the House had refused to write us a contract?the only way it could legally treat us like shit?and he said, "There isn't?"
"No. You said we didn't need one."
"I said that? Hmmm . . ." said the Leggo, drifting out the window. "Why, no one doesn't need a contract. No one doesn't, at all."
When Chuck mentioned psych, the Leggo burst out with "WHAT!? YOU TOO?"
"No foolin', Chief. What this country needs is a high?class black shrink, right?"
"Yes, but . . . but you've done so well so far in medicine. Up from the poverty of the rural South, your father a janitor, to Ober-"
"Ezactly, man, ezactly. And get this: today I was in my Clinic, and this chick got mad at me and threw this textbook across the table and hit me in the ear, and instead of smackin' her up side of her haid, I go: Hmmm, gurl, you mus' be angry, huh?' So right then I knew I was gonna think about shrinkin'. I'm talkin' to Dr. Frank again tomorra about goin' under analysis myself."
"But you can't start this July, I need boys like you."
" 'Boys'? Did you say 'boy'?"
"Well I . . . What I meant was?"
"Want me to send in Roy now?" '
"Basch? Hmmm. You wouldn't know his future plans, would you?"
"Yup."
"Psychiatry?"
"Really."
"Yes, well, no, you don't have to bother to send Roy in."
And so he didn't call me then. Despite Berry's formulation that the Leggo couldn't help it, that he had been damaged by the system, I was too angry not to see him as Nixonesque, getting squeezed by us as Nixon was getting squeezed by Sirica and the Supreme Court for the tapes. Couldn't it have been the Leggo himself, standing with St. Clair on the bow of the yacht Sequoia at Mount Vernon, listening to the ceremony of ship's bells and the National Anthem, who, when it was over, drunkenly spilled out: "They pay you nickels and dimes, but this is what makes it worth it." Berry was right?it was pathetic. But these pathetic men were powerful men, and soon the Leggo began to pressure us to stay. Through the Fish, at first by insinuation and then by clear threat, the Leggo made it known that to leave in July "would seriously-very seriously?jeopardize one's future plans and career." We didn't budge. The Leggo got more vicious. Vulnerable and powerless, we got madder. As July closer, all his retaliations having failed, the Leggo began to panic.
None of us knew what he would do.
25
Why, he would call an emergency B?M Deli lunch.
On the morning of the emergency lunch, I walked into the House to find Howie, calm "Social Medicine" Howie, the last tern to have gone to Gomer City, standing in front of the elevator door, IBM cards scattered at his feet, hair disheveled, biting on his pipe stem and kicking and pounding on the closed steel door, screaming, "GODDAMNIT, COME DOWN, COME DOWN!" So, I thought, the last happy tern has been broken.
The only patients I went to see were Nate Zock and Olive O. My relationship with Nate had rocketed along on a remarkable trajectory. All the Zocks-Nate, Trixie, the kids?suffered under the illusion that my "taking charge" in the E.W. by kicking them all out of the room was what had saved Nate's life. I did not relieve them of their suffering under this. For the first few days Trixie, thinking that Nate was at death's door and that I had the key, had shadowed me all over the House. I'd shaken her only by mentioning that in fact Nate still did not have the best room in the House. Trixie had gone one?on?one with the daughter of the rich gomere who did have the best room and was never to give it up. Trixie had done a thumbnail calculation and ascertained that this gomere was not in the League of Zock, especially while the interior of the Wing of Zock was not quite finished. The major medical complication in Nate's case had been how to implement what Nate needed, the Fat Mannish LAW: DO NOTHING. I'd encountered much resistance, and had had to use all my hard?earned House skills?lying, false?BUFFING the chart, keeping the Low Profiles?to be sure of doing nothing on this important personage. I liked Nate, which made my holding on to doing nothing a little easier. And so the potentially lethal bleeding polyp of Zock had healed over, and he got better. That day, he was to go home, and wanted to talk to me.
"You're a good guy," Nate said. "I'm a real judge' of talent. I look at a guy and I know if he's got it's or not. Know what I mean?"
"Sure." I said.
"You got it. The Pearl warned me about you. The way you kicked my wife out of that room I'll never forget. You and me are similar: started with nothin and now . . ." And Nate made a wavy motion with his hands, as if playing a huge accordian stuffed with money, expanding to fill the world. "Now, listen: I like you, Basch, and the people I like, I reward. I know you don't make shit
for money here, but now, with your internship almost over, you can start in private practice. I can help. You know the Pearl? With the ritzy office and the Muzak playing Fiddler? You know how he got started? My old man. So listen: your sneakers tell me you play tennis. Come to the house, play on my court, use my pool. Here's the card: NATE ZOCK: NOT THE BEST BUT THE MOST. You call this weekend, OK?"
I thanked him and started to leave.
"Oh, and one more thing: I'm writing a letter to the Chief of Medicine, Dr. Leggo, with copies to Chief Resident and the BMS and House Board of Trustees. I been a patient here eight times and I never been treated so good. Usually my intern is some whiny kid from the Bronx who's so scared of a Zock pegging out that he's in the room every ten minutes doing tests, taking blood, and I get worse before I get better. By the time I'm out of here I'm so exhausted I've got to fly 'straight to the condo in Palm Springs for a rest. Bad for business. But you?you had enough savvy to let me heal. And I knew you were there in case anything went wrong. Basch, you were with me man to man. You handled my wife, my fat kids, and you handled me. So I'm going to tell your bosses, eh? Give a call Saturday. I'll send my man around."
A letter to the Leggo? Fight power with power! Not even the Leggo would be dumb enough to stand up to Zock, a family dealing in monstrous steel beams and knockwurst?sized nuts and bagel?sized bolts holding together the brand?new Wing of the House of God. Excited, I checked out humpy Olive O. She seemed to be doing just great.
Yet LP Leon still refused to let me present the humps to the Leggo, and so I climbed into the top bunk, pried open my can of Freud, and soon found yet another Viennese bombshell recalling leaping into the sack with her pop. Chuck came in, took his bottle out of his bag, and began to sing. Hooper wandered in and opened a book called How to Pierce an Ear, which turned out to be not another quest for a post, but a requirement for a moonlighting job in a department store downtown. Eddie stopped by and started reading out loud from my old "internship novel" How I Saved the World, but after a few passages that had us laughing at the idealized deception, the book sailed into the trashcan for good. The Runt ambled in and greeted 789 cheerfully: "749, how are you? Did you ever find out what was in those humps?"
"Excuse me, but you misspelled my middle name," said Sev. "No, I have not yet found what is in 'those humps.' "
"Man, maybe they're breasts," said Chuck. "Extra breasts."
"Doesn't help," ,said 789, "no one knows what's in breasts either."
"They're spiritual humps," I said, "filled with the milk of human kindness."
"The leading theory," said Sev, "is that they're filled with oxygen. It's said that the oxygen in her humps, is what's keeping her alive."
"That's it," I said, "she's not human, she's a plant. Her humps are cotyledons. In her altruism, she makes oxygen for us all."
"Nah, you're all wrong," said the Runt, "I know what's in the humps, and it's not altruism or oxygen, either."
"Well, man, what's in 'em?"
"Pimento. Olive's humps are big pimentoes."
After the laughter had died down, Chuck drifted into a song by Mississippi John Hurt:
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. .
Each of us had heard another tern sing that song. The other tern had been Wayne Potts. We were ready. It was time for the B?M Deli lunch.
Gilheeny and Quick stood by the door. As we entered, they sent back two winks: one fat, red, and bushy; the other thin, wiry, and black. Little did the Leggo realize whom he'd chosen to protect him. We dug into our B?M Deli sandwiches. The Leggo ate standing, in front. Sensing the tension in the room and with only two weeks to go until his Chief Residency year was successfully completed and he would be assured a spot on the House Slurper staff, the Fish was determined to avoid an explosion. Standing before us, he began to announce the event that Hyper Hooper and Eat My Dust Eddie had been awaiting, the presentation of the Black Crow Award.
"You mean the thing really exists?" I asked Chuck.
"If'n it don't, it sure did fool the Leggo and the Fish."
'. . . and so, since there has already been one award this year, the ***MVI*** won by Dr. Roy G. Basch and symbolized by his silver tiepin, we've decided to have a tiepin for the Black Crow." The Fish held up a silver tiepin with a black crow perched on it, and said, "I know there's been fierce competition, and right up until last night the contest was a dead heat between Hooper and Eddie for the most posts. In fact, it wasn't until the early hours of the morning, with the death of Rose?"
"KATZ! ROSE KATZ!" screamed Hooper, leaping up. "YAYYY! I KNEW IT! ROSE KATZ PUT ME OVER THE TOP! I WON IT AT THE POST!"
"Yes," said the Fish, "it was Mrs. Rose Katz, the postmortem was done this morning, and it gives me great pleasure to announce that the first annual House of God Black Crow Award goes to Dr. Hooper."
"YEE?AYY!" said Hooper, running up to the front of the room to accept his tiepin and his free trip for two to Atlantic City. He did a little victory dance and burst out with "Underr the boo?ard?walk, down by the seee?eeeeee?"
"Wait just a second," said the Runt angrily. "Rose Katz was my LOL in NAD. I claim credit for the death and for the post. I worked hard for that death, and Hooper robbed me of it. He came in last night when he wasn't even on call and I was home asleep. Eddie was on call, and since Rose died when Eddie was in charge, I know she'd want him to get credit for her post. Eddie's the winner, not Hooper."
"HEY! HEY HEY!" cried Eddie, standing, running up to the front. "HEY, GUYS, IT'S EDDIE! HOOPER, YOU CAN EAT MY DUST! I'M THE BLACK CROW, FAIR AND SQUARE! LET'S HEAR IT FOR EDDIE, EH? HEY HEY HEY!"
Well, at that, all hell broke loose. Eddie and Hooper started arguing and then were pushing and shoving and then really started in swinging at each other, and with all of us screaming like at a prizefight, finally the policemen broke it up. The Leggo marched center?ring and said that unfortunately the decision of the judges: was final and Hooper was the first House Black Crow. Hooper, relieved, shook hands with Eddie, and then, turning to the rest of us, with moisture in his eyes, said, "You know, guys, I just can't believe it. This is like a dream come true. I want you to know I couldn't have done it without your help, each and every one of you. You put me where I am today, and I'll never forget it. From my heart, guys, thanks. YAY! Under' the boo?"
The Leggo arid the Fish canned the second verse of Hooper's song, and we settled down to the serious business of the day: "All of you, when you came here almost a year ago," said the Leggo, "agreed to do two years, and yet some of you are thinking of not going on in medicine. Boys, I'll be frank: I'm banking on your being here with me for the rewarding House residency year. One year isn't enough. One year is nothing, almost a waste. It's the second year, built on, the foundation of the first, that makes it all worthwhile." He paused. Angry silence filled the room. A waste. "Now, how many of you are considering psychiatry? Raise your hands."
Silently, five hands went up: the Runt, Chuck, Eddie, the Crow, the ***MVI***. And then the Leggo's eyes and the Fish's eyes bugged out, staring at the back of the room. We turned. Both Gilheeny and Quick had raised their hands.
"What?" asked the Leggo. "You too? You're policemen, not physicians. You can't become psychiatrist on July the first."
"Policemen we are," said Gilheeny, "and strictly speaking, psychiatrists we cannot become. At first t seemed a singular limitation for us, so taken as we are with the warped and criminally perverted?"
"Get on with it, man. What's the point?"
"The point is that we shall become lay analysts."
"Lay analysts? You cops are thinking of becoming lay analysts?"
There was a pause, and then, out of it rolled a familiar question: "Would we be policemen if we were not?"
"Yes," said Quick, "for lay analysis was introduced to our minds by our old friend Grenade Room Dubler. Dr. Jeffrey Cohen also?"
"WHAT?!" yelled the Leggo. "
DUBLER A PSYCHIATRIST?"
"Not just a psychiatrist, no," said Gilheeny, "a Freudian analyst."
"THAT MADMAN? A FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYST?"
"And not just a psychoanalyst," said Quick, "but the bearded President of the Psychoanalytic Institute, a preeminent humanist and scholar."
"Yes," said Gilheeny, "having left the House of God directly after his internship year, Dubler never looked back, and has risen to the very top. At this moment, he is pulling strings for us, giving us 'a leg up'."
"And with Finton's banjaxed leg anyway," said Quick, "it is time for us to change careers to a less ambulatory one. Lay analysis is perfect."
"For did not the great Sigmund Freud in 1912 conclude a symposium on masturbation with the statement: "the subject of onanism is inexhaustible'?"
"And will it not take time to work out our Church dogma that masturbation will render the Catholic lad blind, hairy?palmed, insane, doomed, and with the leg bones bent like an orphan with the rickets?"
"And so excuse us, Chief," said Gilheeny, folding his big arms across his chest and leaning back against the door, "we will not resume the free associations," and he closed his eyes and lapsed into silence again.
The Leggo was shaken. Turning back to us, anxiously tugging the stethoscope deep?sixed in his trousers, he asked, "Psychiatry? All of you five? I don't understand. Hooper?"
"Well," said Hooper sheepishly, "I got to admit I was thinking Path most of the year, but for some reason, right now Psych seems a better deal. Lot to work through, Chief?the divorce, . splitting up the furniture, saying good?bye to the wife's old man, the works?anyway, the fiancee's a pathologist, she'll keep me up on the stiffs."
"Chuck? Even you?" asked the Leggo.