The house of God

12

Santas were everywhere, punctuating the real world of welfare and mugging with commas of fantasy and remembrance. There was a Salvation Army Santa, a militant clanging his bell in front of the rnaridatory tubercular trombonist; there was a rich Rubensian pasha of a Santa in a chauffeured Caddy at rush hour; there was even a Santa, a schizoid?looking Santa but a Santa nonetheless, riding a chilly elephant through the park. And of course there was a Santa in the House of God, spritzing joy amidst. the horror and the pain.

The best Santa was the Fat Man. To his gaggle of outpatients in his Clinic, he was a Fat Messiah. Given his brusque ma

"Sure they love me," said Fats, "doesn't everyone? All my life?except for the ones who were jealous everyone has always loved me. You know the kid in the center of the kids on the playground? The kid whose house the others come over to? Fats in Flatbush, always. So now it's kids we call 'patients.' Same thing. They all love me. It's great!"

"As crass and as cynical as you are?"

"Who said? And so what?"

"So why do they love you?"

"That's why: I'm straight with 'em and I make 'em laugh at themselves. Instead of the Leggo's grim self-righteousness or Putzel's whimpering hand?holding that makes them feel like they're about to die, I make them feel like they're still part of life, part of some grand nutty scheme instead of alone with their diseases, which, most of the time and especially in the Clinic, don't hardly exist at all. With me, they feel they're still part of the human race."

"But what about your sarcasm?"

"So who isn't sarcastic? Does are no different from anyone else, they just pretend they're different, to feel big. Jesus, I'm worried about this research project, though you know my trouble?"

"No, what?"

"Conscience. Would you believe it? Even ripping off the federal government at the VA Hospital makes me shiver. It's loony. I'm only making forty percent of what I could. It's awful."

"Too bad," I said, and then, as we approached the Clinic, I felt that sinking feeling of having to deal with, these husbandless hypertensive LOLs in NAD with their asinine demands for my care, and I groaned.

"What's the matter?" asked Fats.

"I don't know if I can stand trying to figure o what to do for these women in my Clinic."

"Do? You mean you try to do something?"

"Sure, don't you?"

"Hardly ever. I do my best nothing right in Clinic. Wait?don't go in there yet," he said, pulled me aside, hiding behind the door. "See crowd there?"

I did. There was a crowd of people in the waiting room, a melange looking like a bar mitzvah at United Nations.

"My outpatients. I do nothing medical for the and they love me. You know how much booze, merchandise, and food there's go

"You're telling me again that the cure is worse the disease?"

"Nope. I'm telling you that the cure is the disease. The main source of illness in this world is the doctor's own illness: his compulsion to try to cure and his fraudulent belief that he can. It ain't easy to do nothing, now that society is telling everyone that the body is fundamentally flawed and about to self?destruct. People are afraid they're on the verge of death all the time, and that they'd better get their 'routine physical' right away. Physicals! How much have you ever learned from a physical?"

"Not too much," I said, realizing that this was true.

"Of course not. People expect perfect health. It's a brand?spanking?new Madison Avenue expectation. It's our job to tell them that imperfect health is and always has been perfect health, and that most of the things that go wrong with their bodies we can't do much about. So maybe we do make diagnoses; big deal. We hardly ever cure."

"I don't know about that."

"Whaddaya mean? Have you cured anyone yet? In six months?"

"One remission."

"Terrific. We cure ourselves, and that's it. Well, let's go. You're go

Puzzled once again and feeling that he'd shaken my brain like he usually did and that he was probably right, I stood there for a moment and watched him approach his crowd. When they saw Fats, they shrieked with delight and engulfed him. Many of them had been coming to him every week for a year and a half, and almost all of them knew each other. They were one big happy family, with this fat doctor as its head. Smiles were smiled, presents were presented, and Fats sat down in the middle of the waiting room and enjoyed himself. Occasionally he'd take a kiddie on his knee and ask what he wanted for Christmas. I was touched. Here was what medicine could be: human to human. Like all our battered dreams. Sadly I went into my office, a kid not invited to play at the Fat Man's house.

And yet, having been primed by the Fat. Man, I was surprised to find my Clinic being fun. Relieved to think that my compulsion to try to cure was the only real disease in my patients, I sat back and let them, as people, bring me into their lives. What a difference! My basketball?playing arthritic black woman, when I, ignored her aching knees and asked about her kids, opened up, chatted happily, and brought her kids in to meet me. When she left, for the first time she forgot to leave a Jehovah's Witness pamphlet. Many of my other patients brought me gifts: my LOL in NAD with the taped?up eyelids brought me her niece, a knockout sabra with a ta

I did. I brought my patients to the Fat Man's affair.

In the E.W. as well, the jolt of feeling human refused to fizzle. I felt good, proud of my skills, excited. I didn't resent going to work, and outside the House, I could bear to think about inside the House. Sitting in the E.W. was like sitting on a bench in the Louvre: a human tapestry, ever unraveling under my eyes. Like Paris, the E.W. was a place unlimited in time: I'd 1eave it, and it would go on without me until I returned. An immense, humbling eternity of disease. With the luxury of the TURF, I began to live the fantasy "doctor" of my father's letters, competent to handle whatever unraveled at the end of the ambulance ride and came at me through those doors.

One Saturday afternoon before Christmas, in the lull before the Saturday?night storm, Gath and I sat at the nursing station. Crazy Abe had disappeared for two nights, and everyone was a little discouraged about his absence. The nurses were snappier, and even Flash, the orderly, used old parts of his brain, in irritation. Heavy wet snow had fallen, and I'd already treated the first of several expected myocardial infarctions, as the middle?aged out?of?shape suburban fathers shoveled their driveways clear. I told Gath that he looked kind of down, and he said, "Yeah, I am. It's Elihu?he don't know his ass from his elbow, so I'm supervisin' all his work. Suturin'. A man of my skills, suturin'. But if I let Elihu loose, it'd be a slaughterhouse down here. It'd be like when we had the old Chief of Surgery, Fra