The house of God

I went back to the notes on Fast Henry. I sat there and cried. It was a balancing act, and I slammed my fist down on the desk over and over, bashing away at the world. I could not go on. I thought what I'd thought as a kid, playing Superman: if I did my best, I couldn't be wrong. I went on. I went to see Fast Henry, a gray young fellow with a retarded look, a voice that leaped from bass to falsetto every other word, and his hair parted down the middle like Wrong Way Corrigan. I asked him how he was doing and he said, "Doc, if I died tomorrow I'd be the happiest man alive," and somehow that helped me and I went to work on him. The other help that miserable day was the Bruiser, who single?handedly destroyed Jo's ward. He'd started to work up the second admission, a young woman with black lace undies, suffering from ulcerative colitis. Although the Bruiser was excited at the blood and mucus he found on his finger on rectal exam and was all hot to sigmoidoscope her that day and go to the library to "read like crazy about stool," he was embarrassed by the erotic part of the exam. Unfortunately, the patient took a liking to the Bruiser and, naked head to toe, got the message to him that she was turned on, enjoying his exam. When the Bruiser got that message, he freaked, ran away, and came to me quivering.

"I've never seen a woman naked before, and never a young female patient. They didn't teach us about this. Oh, I'm so ashamed"

"Ashamed? What the hell did you do to her?"

"Nothing. I'm ashamed of the unprofessional thoughts in my heart."

He was so upset that he refused to continue to work her up until he'd talked it over with his analyst, and so I let him continue to work on Mrs. Biles, the woman with the fake heart disease, whom he'd bruised earlier in her House stay. At one A.M. the Bruiser stood before me and said, "Well, I've just finished hypnotizing Mrs. Biles."

"You did what to whom?" I asked nonchalantly.

"Mrs. Bites. I hypnotized her to take away her cardiac pain:"

"No fooling. Does Dr. Kreinberg know?"

"Nope. Didn't tell him yet."

"Hey, I'm sure he'd like to know. Why don't you give him a buzz?"

"Now?" asked Bruiser. "It's one in the morning."

"So? He likes hearing new developments on his patients"

The Bruiser called Little Otto Kreinberg.

"Hello, Dr. Kreinberg, this is Dr. Levy . . . Bruce Levy . . . No, you're right I'm not really a doctor . I'm a BMS but . . . right . . . well, I've gotten in the habit of calling myself Dr. Levy . . . Oh, yeah, wanted to tell you I've just finished hypnotizing Mrs. Biles for her angi? . . . hypnotizing . . . h?y?p?n . . . right, like a magician, and she . . . for her anxie and I . . . yes? . . . sure . . . oh . . . ohhhhh . . . it's an accepted . . . OK, sorry, yes, I'll awaken from her trance right away, sir, good?bye."

Looking sheepish, Bruiser started to slink out, I asked him if he'd do me a favor.

"Yeah?" he asked, thinking he might redeem himself.

"I've been busy all day and I haven't had a chance to go to the toilet. Could you go for me? A number two. I've done a number one."

"You can't treat me like this. Besides, I looked up 'microdeckia,' and there's no such thing."

"Microdeckia? Sure?'not playing with a full deck.' Night."

I went to bed. Molly was night nurse, and all our efforts to get to bed had been frustrated, first by the Bruiser, then by the gomers. But now the Bruiser was in the library and I'd BUFFED the gomers for the night, and I sat on the on?call bed, naked, awaiting my nurse. Hazel had BUFFED the sheets, and next to the House of God pillow was a doll made from rubber tubing and gauze pads with a note pi

In delicious anticipation I found myself looking out the window at the nursing?school dorm. In one of the rooms a nurse was undressing. She took off her uniform and then made that wonderful motion of hyperextending the elbows around her back to undo her bra. Just as Molly walked in, she let them fly. Fine, fine. I was a time bomb. Molly sat on the bed and I showed her what I was watching. I unbuttoned her dress and unhooked her bra and caught her little?girl breasts by their longing nipples. All over me, her dress was off her pantyhose were off her bikinis were off and she was going off. I thought of the Englishman's idea of perfection, when he, his alarm, and his mistress all go off at the same time, and just before we got that firm fun thing into her hollow fu

"Nope."

"The nuns said to slap it and it would go down."

"Do you want it to go down?"

"No, I want it to go up me and fuck me:"

And we started doing that more and more and more and more, and just as we were about to go off, there was an incredible CRASH that rocked the bed and my beeper lady fired again and she wanted me right away, but Molly wanted me more right away, saying, Jesus Christ Almighty oh finish it off ah ahhh ahhhhhh!

The CRASH had come when the Bruiser, in trying to make up for all he'd done wrong that day, had decided to help me out by using the TURF?tool, the electric gomer bed to TURF Mrs. Biles, the bruised and hypnotized Little Otto'd Mrs. Biles, elsewhere. He'd chosen the Orthopedic Height, and it looked from the right?angle bend in Mrs. Biles's left trochanter that she'd broken her hip.

"I did it for you, Dr. Basch," said the Bruiser proudly, smiling. "I've already paged ORTHO."

"Bruiser, it's hard for me to tell you this: I appreciate what you did, but that gomer?bed thing was a joke."

"A what?"

"A joke. The Fat Man was joking."

"Oh, God. Oh, my God. I think I've made a terrible mistake. I'd better go and phone Dr. Kreinberg right away."

"Bruiser?"

"Yes?"

"Call your analyst first."

Many of the dying young died. Jimmy, in the SICU with the BALLS TO RIDE A HARLEY guy, was treated with the standard ratbane used to wipe out cancerous bone marrow, and, bald and infected and bruised and bleeding, he died. Fast Henry, who in fact also had a cancer, got his wish to be the happiest man alive one tomorrow when he died, and many other young ones died. When I asked Chuck, "Hey, how come the ones our age die?" he said, "Du

Dr. Sanders had been dying a long time. Bald and infected, quiet and cachectic, he was getting his life in order. We were friends. He was dying with a calm strength, as if his dying were part of his life. I was begi

"I understand," he said, "it's the hardest thing we ever do, to be a doctor for the dying."

Talking about medicine, I told him with bitterness about my growing cynicism about what I could do, and he said, "No, we don't cure. I never bought that either. I went through the same cynicism?all that training, and then this helplessness. And yet, in spite of all our doubt, we can give something. Not cure, no. What sustains us is when we find a way to be compassionate, to love. And the most loving thing we do is to be with a patient, like you are being with me."

I tried to sit with him. I watched Molly take care to clip his fingernails and toenails so he wouldn't scratch himself and bleed or get infected. I watched everyone keep sterile around his bed. I watched Jo treat him like "a case," and I watched his oncologist chatter to him with perfect objectivity about his impending death, and all the time I hoped against hope that when he died, he would die neat.

His death was a mess. I was called in the middle of the night, and found him, despite massive platelet transfusions that had been dissolved by the cytotoxic rat poison in his system, bleeding out. Barely conscious when I got to him, his blood pressure almost nothing, he had trickles of geranium?red blood dripping from both nostrils and from the corners of his bloated bruised mouth, and I knew that he was bleeding from every little ruptured capillary in his gut. He was only conscious enough to say, "Help me, please help me."