The house of God

"Bad, huh? Man, we'll never get these gomers placed."

"Nope, not bad. Good. Great! Her breasts are beautiful. Vintage Ava Gardner, made in 1916 and still dynamite."

"Well, man, how does she do it?"

"I asked her. Premarin."

"Premarin? Premarin!"

"Premarin. Estrogen supplements. Total?body female hormone. It's like making love to purified molecular woman. Stupendous!"

During all this, the Runt had been silent, but as I finished, he burst out with his story, which was that he'd spent the night with Rosalie Cohen, which prompted Chuck to grimace and say, "You did it with that ugly?bugly? Yecch!"

"It was grr?ate," said the Runt, beaming his maniac smile.

"The Man Who Scrogged 'Rosalie Cohen," I said. "Chuck, we have created a monster."

"Man, what was it like to wake up to ole Rosalie?"

"Well," said the Runt, "I did try hard not to look on her face."

The gomers began to get placed. The true Golden Age had arrived. From the Leggo to the Bruiser, no one in the hierarchy could understand how the nursing-home beds seemed to open at a touch for ward 6?South, and only for ward 6?South. Gomers as close to legal death as possible were described by our Cervix as being "of excellent rehabilitation potential" and were admitted to the homes the day the beds fell free. Incontinent gomers who were shitting all over the ward were described as "continent of feces and urine" and, shitting on the ambulance stretcher and shitting on the down elevator and shitting in the hallway leading to the ambulance and shitting through the wailing ambulance ride; came to rest to shit their way to immortality in the nursing home of their family's choice, in homes like the New Masada, their bodes stacked floor by floor in order of morbidity, those imagined closest to death put on the topmost floors, imagined closest to heaven. A

As the gomers left, the ward filled up with more toughies, and every once in a while one of these dying young would be saved. One day, in Saul the leukemic tailor's latest bone?marrow biopsy, like a rash of crocuses in the charred fields of Hiroshima, normal white cells sprouted.

"What?" I said, peering through the microscope at these millions of flowers that meant that Saul might live. "A remission! Look!"

"Damn! Somethin' else!" said Chuck, looking.

"Rr hhmmmmm rhmmmm, now, ain't that some fine shit!"

"It's wonderful!" I said, realizing how I'd kept myself from hoping anything for Saul, given the odds: against these buddings, these buds, and I ran up to his room, and panting, yelled at him, "Said, you've got a remission"

"Sounds bad," he said, "first leukemia, now remission. Oiy."

"No?remission means cure. A miracle! You're not going to die."

"I'm not? What do you mean I'm not going to die?"

"Not now you're not, no."

The bruised little man stopped, still. He let go of his banter, he looked me in the eye, he slumped down on his bed. "Oh . . . I'm not going to die now, I mean right now?"

"No, Saul, you're not. You're going to live."

"Oh . . . Oh, thank God, thank . . ." and he grabbed me and put his head on my shoulder and with all those centuries and years of never daring to hope, he sobbed, and his thin body trembled against me like a child's. "So? So some more of this wife of mine, eh? Oh, it's good, it's real good. Thank God-mind You, Dr. Basch, till now, for me, He hasn't done so much, but this . . . this is life . . . this is a new baby, born . . ."

We were so happy. The whole world was curable and sexual and fun, and we were high, we were redhots at the bosoms and nipples and bangles and thighs of the House of God. It was as comforting as had been the trucks rumbling down the cobblestone hill in the Bronx lulling me to sleep as a child when we stayed at my Aunt Lil's, and it was all so easy and it was all so damn much fun.

It wasn't easy and it was not fun. Our crooked Veep resigned and honest Jerry Ford started right in bashing those helicopter doors with his head. On the Sunday after Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre, when he tried to stop people trying to get rid of him by getting rid of them, I awoke to a blaring late?fall day leaved with all the leafy colors, glad to be alive, until I entered the living death of the House of God for the next thirty?six hours. Sundays in the House always made me feel like a punished kid, locked inside and looking out. Jo, the outsider, spent her life looking in, and, reluctant to entrust her ward to sex fiends and maniacs like us, she'd always come in on her day off, Sunday, to help.

Jo had invited me to di

"You've got to trust us more," I said. "Loosen up. It's no crime not to do everything for every patient always, is it?"

Nervously she said, "No, it's not. I know that, but it's hard for me to accept it."

"Try."

"What can I do?"

"Well, I guess one thing would be not to come in when I'm on call next Sunday. That would be a good start."

"Right. I'll try. Thanks, Roy, thanks a lot."

On that Sunday, Jo was in the House of God earlier than me.

Trying to restrain myself, I said, "You had to come in?"

"I tried not to, Roy, believe me I tried. But I'm studying for Boards, and I can only study so much. Besides, you might need some help:"

I realized I was trapped. Enraged, I couldn't tell her, for fear it would send her hurtling down off a bridge. Even with her terns tormenting her with their sexual carnival, each hint of which hurt her, making her feel more and more left out, her only happiness was inside the medical hierarchy inside the House, where she could kill herself by doing super-dedicated medical stunts.

The admission brought me to my knees. The admission? Henry was a twenty?three?year?old with no workable kidneys, who'd been sent from one of the Mt. St. Elsewheres after they'd parlayed his renal disease into an infected dry dribbling uremic mass of flesh just this side of the grave. Henry was also retarded. To save Henry, I had to be able to understand the chart sent in from the Mt. St. E. It was lightly photocopied, u

"What's that?"

"Look it up."

He left, and once again I tried to read the chart and I could not. I looked out the window at the autumn.

A young couple was having a leaf fight, the leaves sticking to their white Irish sweaters. I got tears in my eyes. I was all choked up with what I was missing, the second cup of coffee in bed with the woman and the Sunday Times, the ache in the lungs from the icy morning air. Jo came in and asked me to "present the case." I blew. I forgot everything and screamed at her that if she stayed one more minute, I was leaving. I shouted at her, all kinds of dark green things about her, her emotional problems, her hunger to be on the inside. I stood up, towering over her, and I yelled until I was bright blue and tears were on my cheeks, and I didn't stop until I'd chased the little twirp of a victim of success out the door, down the elevator, and out of the House of God.