The house of God

"Of course they're serious," said Hyper Hooper, "and I'm go

And so if they were serious the Black Crow! Award came into being, at least as much being as the ***MVI***. Hyper Hooper, the tern who got off on death, really got off, and we others, who still didn't like death and were repulsed even more by autopsies, felt that once again the odds were getting stacked against the living, and that we had to work even harder to protect the poor unsuspecting patients who came, trusting, into the House of God oblivious to that incentive for their deaths and posts, the Black Crow. Hooper didn't waste any time, for the next afternoon as I was dictating a discharge summary, from the next cubicle I heard, his familiar voice: "The patient was admitted in good health except for a urinary?tract infection . . ."

I went on dictating, but tuned back in a few seconds later:

". . . the temperature rose to 107 and a resistant strain of Pseudomonas grew out of the spinal?fluid culture . . ."

Spinal fluid? I thought it had started in the urinary tract?

". . . the intern was called to see the patient and found her unresponsive. She expired three hours later. Permission for the postmortem was obtained Yahoo! This is H. Hooper, M.D."

As he was rushing out I caught his arm and asked him what had happened, and he said, "The usual, Death City. And I got the post. Atlantic City, here I come, Black Crow, Black Pants, and all."

"But she came in healthy."

"Yeah, and then she boxed, and I get credit for the post. The Black Crow's gotta go. So long."

"That award's a joke. They couldn't mean it."

"It's no joke. Autopsies are the flower?no, the red rose?of medicine. The Leggo wants more posts so he looks good."

"To whom?"

"Who cares? With that awful birthmark, he'll try any cosmetic procedure. Hey, I gotta go. The little woman and I are going to the Eucalyptus Room again tonight. Trying to float the M off the R. Ciao!"

And so the intern first out of the starting blocks for the Black Crow Award sped off down the hallway, out of the House of God, with that same glitter in his eye that the Fat Man had had over his food and his Invention and that Chuck and I had seen in the Runt's eye when he talked pornographically about Thunder Thighs, and the same glitter that Chuck had had when he'd made mincemeat of Ernie on the court or talked about Hazel, and the same glitter that I had whenever I thought of Molly.

Whenever I thought of Molly, I thought of her bendovers and her lacy underwear and the tears that she'd shed when she knew she was going to die when she pulled down her panties to show me the mole on her thigh. Whenever I thought of Molly, something rolled over in my pants and I felt younger than I was, and I got a glitter in my eye and I thought about my first love, and that bittersweet chaos of fumbling with hooks and belts and zippers and parents on couches on front seats on hack seats on movie seats on rocks and everywhere except in beds. I imagined Molly as young and i

Young and i

So finally she asked me to go out with her and some other nurses, and we went to this bar where the rock music blasts off only the ossicles of those, like me, over thirty, and leaves unshaken the under?thirty, who want the volume turned up, and then she taught me to do a dance I'd never heard of to music I'd never heard of, and then we went back to her apartment she shared with a toothpick of a nurse named Nancy, and Molly asked me if I'd ever seen her place before and I lied and said No and she started to show me and we wandered in on Nancy undressing and Molly said, I was showing him the place, and Nancy, remembering that I'd been there before, said, He's seen the place before, and Molly looked me in the eye and I gulped and said, Yup, I've seen the place before, and she said, Well, let me show you my bedroom.

Delight delight. She showed me her bedroom with her little?girl trinkets, furry toys and an alive furry kitten and Halloween masks and temple bells from the Far East and a makeup kit with backstage?type light bulbs and the usual prints and strewn pantyhose and bras and then in a fit of romance I feared I was too old for, we embrace, and I fumble with her bra, hooks and then I get caught up in things so I don't notice what I'm fumbling and after a little bit of protest from her with my mouth all over her long nipples and my hand on her own furry thing we are kind of wrassling, she gets on top of me, in the middle of a NO she says OOPS and in I slip, and she shows me her secret, which is that she fucks not like a young i

"Now you know my weakness," Molly said the next day in the middle of the nursing station, holding a Fleet's enema in her hand like a pistol.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I'm very physical."

"How is that a weakness?"

"It just is."

"Not if you can handle it."

"What do you mean handle a weakness?"

"You wouldn't call it a weakness in me, would you?" I asked.

"That's different, you're a man"

"You're not going all sexist on me, are you?"

"No."

"Then it's not a weakness in you any more than it is in me. You're just going to have to learn how to handle it."

"Yeah," she said in a way that confused me, since I couldn't tell if she were concerned or not, "I guess I just will."

Only later, when it became obvious that both of us loved the sex and, in a loose way, each other as much as we did, when the moaning mons had moved out of the little?girl bedroom into the on?call bunk bed whenever I could get rid of the Bruiser, and then moved into the ward bathroom for a five?minute one sitting on the can, and even, late one night, crooned to by the gomer band of renown, moved to a darkened corner of the ward standing up with our orgasms racing against the appearance of the patrolling night supervisor, only then did Molly?who called the feeling of making love the feeling of having a centipede walk through wearing gold cleats?only then did she tell me that she didn't give a damn about my having another woman, a steady woman, that she had been hurt by "involvement" and hurt by the nuns with their spiritual whips and that what she was "into" was "freedom in relationships," which I thought was terrific and too good to be true until I wondered whether someone else with the old gold cleats was hearing those chuckles and moans and glittering rainbows of orgasms when I was with my long love, Berry.

Berry must have suspected something was up. She'd remarked on my changed mood, on how suspicious I'd become of her, accusing her of going to bed with other men when I was on call in the House. She must have known that my jealousy came from my guilt, my fury from my jealousy of who was with her or with Molly when I was not. Things became strained, although at first the least strain was the emotional one. I was having a fantastic time making love to two women on the same day, enjoying the way that I could separate which aching muscle group went with which woman's moves. The real strain was how to hide Molly from Berry. What contortions I went through, as Molly began to come to my place, to hide her traces?her hair on the pillow, her spoor on the sheets, her hairpin on the bureau, her earring left on the bathroom shelf, her perfume in the air. I began to spend all my time doing laundry. I dreaded the ringing of my phone. Yet I couldn't tell Berry. I cared too much. I was too ashamed. I had too much to lose.