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Chuck and I found ourselves in a basketball game with some BMSs who thought they were hot?shit ballplayers. With the same kind of ferocious competitiveness that had gotten them into the BMS, these guys started to play rough?hand?checking, fouling, calling us for the slightest foul and disputing calls?as if they were making an A in surgery if they won. Chuck's opponent was the worst, the kind of kid whose arrogance had oozed through the umbilical cord and breast and had always been the part of him that his mother loved, the kind of kid whom everybody hated and who played for the fans and not for the game, even when there weren't any fans to play for. Every time Chuck had the ball, this kid would foul, him, and every shot the kid took, he'd call a foul on Chuck. Despite the fact that Chuck was taking a beating, he never called a foul. Finally, on one outrageous call that even had his own team telling the wiseass to "jest play ball, Ernie, all right?" Ernie said to Chuck, "Hey if you didn't foul me, why don't you say so?" and all Chuck said was, "Fine, fine, let's play," and he handed over the ball.
Something in that "Fine, fine" was ominous, and from then on Chuck began to play. He'd stay outside and bomb for hoops, and he'd take Ernie inside and overpower him despite the fouls, and he'd fake the shot from outside and slip past, and he'd fake the drive and stop and pop, and as he did all this, scoring point after point, wise Ernie got madder and madder and fouled more and more, but it had about as much effect as a fly on a racehorse. It became a ballet of strength and smarts and finesse. The game turned into a one-on?one, played out in a raging intense silence. Chuck made a fool of Ernie until finally somebody said it had gotten too dark to see the rim. Chuck asked Ernie for our ball, and Ernie threw it into some bushes. A hush fell. I wanted to smash Ernie in the teeth. Chuck said, "Well, Roy, I guess I better go get our ball, now that we won this game," and, smiling, arms around each other's sweaty shoulders, proud of wi
Later, drinking with him, I said, "Damn, you are some ballplayer. Did you play in college?"
"Yup. Small College All?American, my senior year. First team."
"Well, I found you out," I said. "Your indifference is all an act. You care about everything you do:"
"'Course it is, man, 'course I care."
"Well, why do you pretend that you don't?"
"On the street, it's the only way to be. If'n you let on what you are and who you are and what you got and how someone can use you, you get yourself used worse. Like Potts with Jo. I may be painin', man, but nobody's go
"Amazing. Where I come from, it's just the opposite?you keep showing your pain so that people will lay off you. What do you think about that?"
"What do I think? I think, fine, man, fine."
On those rare days when Potts came out to play ball, it was embarrassing. He was clumsy and shy, scared of hurting someone and scared of standing out. Open for a shot, he'd pass. In a dispute, the other guy was right. He rarely yelled. As the maples began to do their reddening, as the touch?football games sprouted on the browning fields and as the dawn dew got more and more chill, Potts got worse and worse. Left out of Chuck's and my lives, left for weeks on end by his wife, worried about his golden retriever's growing whine, hounded by the Yellow Man and by 70, Potts became scared of taking any risks. Since the only way to learn medicine was to take risks in those hard times when you were alone with your patient, Potts had trouble learning. Ashamed and afraid, in the computer rotation handed us on our first day. Potts moved on to his next assignment and left our ward.
His replacement was the Runt. On the day of his arrival, Chuck and I were sitting at the nursing station, our feet up, drinking ginger ale from large House ice buckets. Knowing how nervous he would be, Chuck and I had filled a syringe with Valium and taped it under his name on the blackboard, with a prescription: "to be injected into right buttock upon arrival" The blackboard was the standard way that the House Privates communicated with the terns about their patients. Under my name was an insignia:
***
*** MVI ***
***
This cryptic insignia had begun to appear throughout the House. It was always the same, always only associated with my name, and no one knew who was writing it. Recently it had become known that it stood for Most Valuable Intern. The rumor was that there was a competition among the interns, sponsored by the Fish and the Leggo, for this award, the ***MVI***. Since this insignia was associated only with my name, people began to address me as "the ***MVI***" and often I was greeted with "here comes the ***MVI***." I asked the Fish whether I really was the front?ru
And yet the ones most irritated by the ***MVI*** were the Privates, and of the Privates the most irritated of all was Little Otto Kreinberg, the Private whose name still rang no bell in Stockholm. Since Otto wouldn't talk to the terns, and since the blackboard was the only way of communicating with the terns, and since the ***MVI*** left no room for communication, it drove Little Otto wild. As Chuck and I sat, we watched Otto march in, curse, erase the ***MVI***, write a note to me, and depart. Almost as soon as he was gone, when the bouncer's back was turned, there appeared under my name on the blackboard:
***
*** MVI ***
***
As the insignias continued to multiply, gnomes like Otto spent a greater and greater amount of time ma
"Hombre?"
"Hey, hey, Hazel," said Chuck. "Come on in, gurl."
Hazel from Housekeeping stood in the doorway. I'd seen her pushing mops and emptying trash, but I'd never seen her look like this: she wore tight white tights and a green uniform stretched tautly over her chest so that the buttons were tugging at the fabric, which parted to reveal enticing bits of black breast in white bra. Her face was marvelous: ruby?red lipstick on black lip, light?brown afro on head, mascara, eye shadow, false lashes, and a carnival of bangles. Her tongue lay like a cushion on the couch of her mouth. Her teeth were moonstones.
"You got your hot water and clean sheets, Chuck?"
"Great, Hazel, just great, gurl. Thanks."
"And your car? Maybe it needs some fixing?"
"Oh, yeah, Hazel, my car's not ru