House of God (18 page)

8

By mid-September, according to Jo's schedule, neither I nor any other tern was supposed to have learned how to save himself. That next morning, as the warmth of the fading summer percolated up through the crisp air, as the clear cirrus football weather blew into the ward through the skeleton of the Wing of Zock rising higher and higher like jail bars over our windows, I showed up for rounds a half-hour late, and I was the first tern there. Jo was furious, and when, an hour late, Chuck ambled in, wearing yet again the same dirty whites with the same fly open and the same no necktie, Jo exploded, saying, ‘I told you, Chuck, that rounds start at six-thirty. Got it?'

‘Fine, fine.'

‘Where have you been?'

‘Oh, well, I been getting my car fixed.'

Just as rounds ended, in flew the Runt. His hair was frazzled, his belt undone, his shirt was hanging out, his stethoscope dragged from his back pocket, and he had a big smile plastered over his carnival of a face. He was sizzling.

‘Are you sick?' asked Jo.

‘Hell, no. I feel grrr-ate!'

‘Where have you been?'

‘I've been fucking my eyes out,' said the Runt, and then, roaring, clapped a hand on each of Chuck's and my shoulders, and with an idiotic rolla coasta of a grin, yelped.

‘You've been what?' asked Jo.

‘Fucking. Copulating. You know, vasodilation of the penile veins, it gets hard and the male sticks it into—'

‘That's inappropriate—'

‘Hey, Jo' said the Runt, looking to us for support, and then, ignoring her fragility, ‘go fuck yourself, huh?'

With that Chuck and I knew we had created a monster and felt real good about it, but Chuck pointed out that it was sort of like watching your mother-in-law drive your new Cadillac off a cliff, because we knew that Jo would not go fuck herself but would go talk to the Fish, who would go talk to the Leggo, who would get us back but good, since the essence of any hierarchy is retaliation. Jo led the rest of rounds in silence, until we got to the admission named Jimmy, who'd been TURFED to the SICU. Jo insisted we go see him, and as our caravan turned up the hall, Jo got excited about the case, and unable to contain herself any longer, blurted out, ‘Hey, Roy, that sounds like a really great admission.'

Without thinking, remembering how Jimmy's decompensation had strung me out, as if from somewhere else than me, although I knew it did come from some bilious region within me, I heard myself create a new LAW—NUMBER NINE: THE ONLY GOOD ADMISSION IS A DEAD ADMISSION, which stopped Jo in her tracks, the same way that, a few minutes later, when Chuck and the Runt and I were poodling around the SICU while Jo macerated Jimmy, we were stopped in our tracks when we saw, rigged up in an orthopedic apparatus, the remains of a human. Bandaged head to toe, it was clear that the patient had collided with something and that the point of impact had been his testicles. They were cantaloupe, even honeydew. Here we had an aberrant Hell's Angel who, on his Harley Hawg, had smashed head-on into a tree. A sign on the end of his bed read: IT TAKES BALLS TO RIDE A HARLEY.

None of us could have imagined what an ace auto mechanic Angel was until we heard from the Runt how, even the first time, she had fixed his compact car: ‘Well, I was so upset at what was happening last night, I couldn't even talk straight by the time I got to her apartment. I don't know what you said to her on the phone, Roy, but when she hung up, things were a lot easier. She poured me a drink, but all I could think of was Lazarus and Risenshein and the graffiti above the urinal at the Chinese restaurant: STAND CLOSER, IT'S SHORTER THAN YOU THINK. Well, anyway, she asked if I'd like to watch TV and I said sure. We were sitting on the couch, and I didn't know if she liked me, and then all of a sudden she's sort of leaning her boob against me and her red hair is unpinned and down to her scapula and I start to feel better. And she says It's kind of uncomfortable in here, why don't we watch inside, and unplugs the TV and carries it into the bedroom. I couldn't believe it. I start to nuzzle her neck and she says Clothes are such a hassle, and she takes off her sweater and her skirt. Well. She starts to make husky noises and since she's taken off her sweater, I take off her bra. Ha! Perfect! Big soft tits! Ha! I pull off her panties,' said the Runt, pulling off Angel's panties right before our eyes in the middle of the nursing station, ‘and she pulls off my pants. Incredible!'

‘What about her pubic hair?' I asked.

‘Bright red!' said the Runt with a wild look in his eyes. ‘Perfect! Ha! Well, then I kind of hesitated when I go to put it in, and I think of Lazarus dying and all and it . . . well, it dies too.'

‘Damn!' said Chuck.

‘But, she's right there with her hand, and it raises right back up, and when I get it in, she's wet and ready, not like June or all the others my mother always liked. The first time I was a little off, and I came too soon but before I knew it she had her hand between my legs and we're at it again. Ha! Hahaaa! Twenty-three minutes. I timed it. And then when she was reaching orgasm she said something like This is terrii—fick! and her words were like a whip spurring me on. Bells rang and the earth shook. Yippeee! And then the next time—'

Chuck and I looked at each other.

‘—she was sort of lying there with her back to me, and I thought she was asleep, but no, she kind of reached around and started pulling on my penis and the next thing I knew she had kind of maneuvered it in and we were at it again, and I think that was the time that did it. Yee-ow!'

‘Did what?'

‘Did what you guys said it would—made me a doc. We went on and on, her moaning and calling out things, and me sweating and grunting, and just before we came she started saying, at first in a whisper and then louder and then screaming it out so I was worried that someone might hear, DOCTOR RUNTSKY DOCTOR RUNTSKY DOCTOR RUNT—SKEEE! and when it was over, lying there, she snuggled up to me and sighed this wonderful satisfied sigh and said, Runt, you are a great doc, g'night, and the last thing I saw this morning was the sunlight on those fiery red pubic hairs. Ha! I owe it all to you. There's nothing I won't try now, nothing!'

‘Damn,' said Chuck, ‘Runt, you've become completely unnervous.'

‘Right, I can't wait to tell that dry bitch June it's all over. Poetry? Ha! That ain't poetry, this is. You know what's coming next?'

Neither Chuck nor I knew what was coming next.

‘I'm gonna taste her pubic hair, ‘cause I know in my heart that it's strawberry red. Roy, I just want to say thanks. Thanks for taking over my service last night, for helping me out, and for kicking me out of the House and into bed with Angel.'

Such was the first installment of the Runt's relating to us, blow by blow, his love affair with Angel. While Chuck and I at first felt a little uncomfortable listening to the intimate details the morning after each thrilling episode, we didn't feel so bad that we couldn't listen, and we realized that the Runt was going through a healthy stage of development that we'd both passed about ten years before. Besides that, it was unctuous steamy stuff. In gratitude, we taught the Runt medicine, and each of us, with a growing sense of camaraderie, helped each other do the work of the House of God.

Shortly after the Runt's first auto repair, Chuck's true greatness came out. First it was Lazarus. Chuck and I, in an effort to lighten the Runt's load, had flipped a coin for Lazarus, and he'd become Chuck's patient. One day on rounds we stopped outside the room Lazarus had occupied since July. Screams came from it. A fresh gomer was in the Lazarus memorial bed.

‘What happened to Mr. Lazarus?' asked Jo.

‘Oh, he's daid,' said Chuck.

‘Dead? What happened?'

‘Dunno, gurl, dunno. Guess he died.'

‘Potts and I and the Runt and I kept him alive for the past three months, and then the first night he was on your service he died? What's going on?'

‘Wish I knew.'

‘Did you get the postmortem?'

‘Nope.'

‘Why not?'

‘Who knows, gurl, who knows?'

That same day, at Chuck's insistence, we stopped outside the room containing the woman who was to make Chuck famous throughout the House. ‘Now, this is the most amazin' thing,' said Chuck, ‘I was called down to the E.W. to see this whale. She'd been seen already by Howard, by Mad Dog, and by Putzel. She was lyin' there, not breathin' worth shit, and nobody could figure out why not. Well, I went in there and did my exam. I say to myself, Not breathin, eh? Hmmm. Better have a look in her mouth. I opened it up and looked in. Damn! I say, what's that big ole green thing in there? So I put on about four pairs of gloves and I reach on back down in there, and this is what I foun'.'

He took out a specimen jar in which was a large sprout of broccoli.

‘Broccoli!' said the Bruiser, with one of his rare correct answers.

‘Nuthin' but,' said Chuck. ‘Howard, Mad Dog, Putzel—none of them dudes bothered to look in the ole lady's mouth.'

‘The Broccoli Lady,' I said. ‘A save!'

‘No foolin'. Y'all come in an' see her.'

The Broccoli Lady was huge, gomertose, and smelly. Except for an occasional spasmodic shiver of her chest, she still wasn't breathing and she didn't look like she was doing too great.

‘Doin' great, ain't she?' asked Chuck.

‘A real save,' said the Runt.

‘What are you doing for her?' asked Jo.

‘What am I doing for her? Why, I got her on a low-broccoli diet, gurl, what else?'

From that time on, the House looked at Chuck not as a dumb black admitted on quota, but as a smart tern. As he and I and even the Runt became competent, we began to realize that since no one else would want to do what we terns were forced to do, we were becoming indispensable. The House needed us. The House thought it needed us to do something for the gomers and for the dying young.

What the House really needed us for was to do nothing for the gomers and to bear the helplessness of caring for the dying young. As autumn flared, as it looked more and more like both Agnew and Nixon would get thrown into the slammer at the same time, we struggled to hide our doing nothing from our ferret, Jo. Rounds became a
bravura
performance in duplicity, with us trying to recall what imaginary test we'd written down, what imaginary complications had ensued, what imaginary treatment for the imaginary complications had been initiated, and what the imaginary response to all this had been, and all the time working like hell on trying to get the gomer placed. It was such a great strain on us that occasionally things would break down. One day, faltering under Jo's demanding why I hadn't ordered a four-
A.M.
temperature to work up Anna O's imaginary fever, I blurted out another new LAW—NUMBER TEN: IF YOU DON'T TAKE A TEMPERATURE, YOU CAN'T FIND A FEVER, and I'd begun to catalogue the others that you might not do, to not produce something you might not treat, such as, instead of TEMPERATURE and FEVER, substituting EKG and CARDIAC ARRYTHMIA, and I'd gotten as far as CHEST X RAY and PNEUMONIA before Chuck and the Runt collared me and ushered me out of Jo's grasp.

To ease the strain, Chuck and I spent more and more time with our feet up drinking ginger ale in the nursing station, doing nothing. Although the Runt was somewhat calmer, he was still too tense to sit with us. Towl, his BMS, was not, and filling a ginger-ale container, Towl groaned and put his feet up.

‘Towl, I want to ask you about Enid,' said the Runt. ‘She's still not cleaned out for her bowel run.'

‘Rrhhmmmmm rhmmmm, Ah know. So wut?'

‘So what should I do? I gotta get her cleaned out, and no matter what I do, without eating anything she keeps gaining weight and hasn't had a bowel movement for the past three weeks. Her daughter says she hasn't unloaded spontaneously for eight years. It's amazing—she turns water into shit.'

‘Rrhhmmmmm rhmmmm, Ah know. Why you wanna do the bowel run?'

‘Because that's why she's here.'

‘Yeah, but I mean, is she really havin' the bowel run, or are we jus' pretendin' she's havin' the bowel run? Ever since I toined her over to you, I caint keep her straight.'

Sheepishly the Runt admitted that Enid's Private, Putzel, wanted the bowel run done, and the Runt was really trying to do it.

‘Rrhhmmmmm rhmmmm, well, then, give her milk and ‘lasses, down her mouth and up her direcschum hole, the both at once.'

‘Milk and ‘lasses?'

‘Right. Milk and mo-lasses. Both ends. She gonna explode.'

Inevitably, during our ginger-ale rounds, like a floor-walker, the Fish would appear. He walked up and, avoiding our eyes, asked, ‘Hey, guys, how's it going?' and then, without waiting to hear how it was going, said, ‘You know, don't you, that that looks unprofessional.'

‘Fine, fine,' said Chuck, lifting his feet down off the counter.

To irritate the Fish, I lit a cigarette.

‘I hear from Jo that you've been coming in late.'

‘Oh, yeah,' said Chuck. ‘Well, the thing is my car. Keeps breakin' down and I gotta keep takin' it to the garage.'

‘Oh, well, that's different. Got a good mechanic? You could use mine if you like. Get the damn thing fixed right once and for all, so you don't have to worry about it. Yes, and another thing: your spelling is atrocious. We'll go over a few of your write-ups together, OK?'

‘Fine, fine.'

‘But there's one thing I don't understand,' I said, ‘I can't figure out if I drink ‘cause I pee or I pee ‘cause I drink.'