The house of God

I was wrong. It was about a patient, one of Little Otto's cardiac cases. who refused to lie quietly in her restraints. Trying to hide the stiff screaming crowd living it up in my . white pants, I stumbled out into the corridor, blinking in the glare, and followed that pert bouncing ass to the patient's room. There was an explosion. We ran in to find the woman, having GONE TO GROUND, standing naked in the middle of her room, screaming obscenities at her own reflection in the mirror. She picked up an IV bottle, screamed, "There! There! That old woman in the mirror!" and hurled the bottle at her refection, smashing , the mirror to bits. When she saw me she knelt in the broken glass, grabbed my knees, and said, "Please, mister, please don't send me home." It was pathetic. She smelled stale. We tried to cool her off. We roped her back into restraints.

This was the first of a series of explosions, to mark the Fourth. When I called Little Otto to tell him that his patient was living it up, Otto exploded, accusing me of "worrying my patient with your inept attention. She's a nice woman and you must have upset her. Leave her alone." Next, the elevator door opened, and exploding out of yet another ring of Hell, out rolled Eat My Dust and his BMS, wheeling yet another human carcass to the far end of the hall. This one was a bony mollusk of a man, with a red knobby protuberance popping out of his skull, sitting as rigid as a corpse, chanting:

RUGGALA RUGGALA RUGGALA RUGG,

RUGGALA RUGGALA RUGGALA GUGG . . .

"This is my fourth admission." said Eddie, "and it means that you're next up. You should see what they're cooking up in the E.W. now."

Next up? Inconceivable. I went back to bed, and I fell asleep, until my finger, celebrating the Fourth on its own, exploded in pain. I screamed at the top of my voice, bringing Levy down from the top bunk and Molly in from the ward, pushing those fun thighs into my puss.

"Something bit me!" I shrieked.

"Honest, Dr. Basch," said Levy, "I swear it wasn't me."

My finger started to swell. The pain was excruciating.

"I was going to call you anyway." said Molly. "There's another admission for you in the E.W."

"Oh, no. I can't stand another gomer tonight."

"Not a gomer. Fifty, and sick. He's a doctor himself."

Fighting panic,.I went to the E.W. I read the chart: Dr. Sanders. Fifty?one. Black. On the House of God Staff. Previous history of parotid and pituitary tumors with horrible complications. Came in this time with chest pain, increasing weight loss, lethargy; difficulty breathing. Should I call the Fat Man? No. I'd see him myself first. I walked into the room.

Dr. Sanders lay flat on the stretcher, a black man looking twenty years older than he was. He tried to shake my hand, but he was too weak. I took his hand and told him my name.

"Glad to have you as my doctor." he said.

Moved by his helplessness, his weak hand still lying trustfully in mine, I felt sad for him. "Tell me what happened."

He did. At first I was so nervous I could barely listen. Sensing this, he said, "Don't worry, you'll do all right. Just forget I'm a doctor. I'm putting myself in your hands. I was where you are once, right here, years ago. I was the first Negro intern in the House. They called us 'Nigroes' then."

Gradually, thinking of what the Fat Man had taught me, I began to feel more confident, more wide?awake, nervous, but excited. I liked this man. He was asking me to take care of him, and I would do my best. I went to work, and when the X ray showed fluid in the chest cavity, and I knew I'd better tap it to see what it was, I decided I'd page the Fat Man. Just as he arrived, I put together the findings and realized that the most likely diagnosis was malignancy. I got a sick feeling in my gut. The Fat Man, a jolly green blimp in his surgical pajamas, floated in, and with a few words with Dr. Sanders established a marvelous rapport. A warmth filled the room, a trust, a plea to help, a promise to try. It was what medicine might be. I tapped the chest. Since I'd practiced on A

"Nothing will be definite for a few days," I said.

"Well, you tell me in a few days. If it's malignant, I've got to make some plans. I've got a brother in West Virginia; our father left us some land. I've been putting off a fishing trip with him much too long."

Outside the room; chills ru

"What about it?"

"Remember it. It's the face of a dying man. Good night."

"Hey, wait. I figured it out?the reason they let you screw around the way you do is that you're good."

"Good? Nah, not just good. Very good. Even great. Night?night."

I wheeled Dr. Sanders back up to the ward and went back to bed just as the dawn was exploding the hot nasty night. The frenetic surgeons were just begi

Chaos. The blur blurred. I didn't think I would make it through the day. The nurse came up to me and said that my only Italian patient, nicknamed Boom Boom, who had no cardiac disease, was having chest pain. 3 walked into the room, where the family of eight were chattering away in Italian. I took an EKG, which was normal, and then, a showman with an audience of eight, decided to use the Fat Man's reverse stethoscopoe technique. I plugged Boom Boom in, and yelled into the megaphone: "Cochlea come in! Cochlea come in! Do you read me, cochlea . . ." Boom Boom opened her eyes, shrieked, jumped, put her fist to her chest in the classic sign of cardiac pain, stopped breathing, and turned blue. I realized that I and eight Italians were witnessing a cardiac arrest. I thumped Boom Boom on the chest, which produced another shriek, signifying life. Trying to assure the family that this whole thing had been routine, I ushered them out and called an arrest code. The first to arrive was Housekeeping, for some reason carrying a bunch of lilies; next came a Pakistani anesthesiologist. With the ring of the Italian delegation in my ears, I felt like I was at the United Nations. Others arrived, but Boom Boom was now doing OK. Fats looked over the new EKG and said,