The house of God

"What?"

"Killed mo' Jews than Hitler. Ah we're not gettin' the big stuff in heah anymo'. No gunshots, accidents, it's all belly pain, suturin', and twats. Makes me sick."

The nurse handed us each a clipboard. Gath glanced down, and wearily covering his eyes with his hand, said, "You know what's on heah, boy? A twat. A sick twat. I may be a racist 'Bama cracker, but for Chrissakes, Lord, give me some big stuff fo a change. Alt this sick twat is ruinin' this po' boy's sex life."

On my own clipboard was a thirty?three?year?old white toothpick brought in from the streets outside the public library where he'd gone to use the toilet. Zalman was six?four and weighed in at eighty?two. Looking concentration?campish, he was all buttock, rib, and law, too listless to do anything but talk: he didn't want to eat meat because animal souls transmigrated like humans, he was an unemployed philosopher, the world was full of incompetence, his typical di

During the time it had taken to save the snow shoveler, the clipboards had piled up. The first nonswimmers, caught in the incoming Saturday?night tide. As I picked up some charts and headed back into the rooms, I was stopped by a balding guy my age, dressed in jeans and a black turtleneck.

"Dr. Basch, I'm Jeff Cohen, psych resident. I've just said hello to your anorexic, Zalman."

"Glad to meet you. The policemen have told me a lot about you. Yeah, Zalman?he's incredible. He needs your services."

"Tell me about him," Cohen said, sitting down, interested.

"I don't have time right now," I said.

"OK, later. We want him, but not yet. We don' touch patients until they're cleared medically. We never touch patients physically."

"You don't? Never? You never touch bodies?"

"You're surprised. No physical contact?it inflame the transference. Well, I see you're hassled, and I'm on my way upstairs to do some reading. Let's talk about him later, if you've got the time. Male anorexica are rare, and fascinating. Just page me, OK? See you later."

I watched him go. He was different: he listened. the House of God, like in other Jewish houses, when someone talked, no one listened. I got the feel Cohen had been interested in what I had to say. Like the Fat Man, but without the Fat Man's cynicism. And he was interested in his patients! I could see that Zalman's bones were nowhere near as interesting as his story. Even I had listened, enthralled. And Cohen had time to read while on call? Far?fucking?out.

I reentered the revving?up Saturday night. A young woman was brought in from a party, over her boyfriend's shoulder, not breathing, turning blue. In a twinkling?PRESTO?Gath and I metamorphosized her from a Dead on Arrival overdose to a puking hysterical underdose, TURFED to Jeff Cohen. As I attended a Santa with acid indigestion, I saw Gath coaxing a young man farther inside the doors. The young man stopped and stood there, peering at us suspiciously from under a pair of pink silk women's panties he was wearing on his head. Cohen reappeared and tried to talk with him, but gave up, and when I asked him what was going on, he said, "Paranoid homosexual panic; stay away from him. Tincture of time. We wait." Cohen started in on a "Jesus Christ" and I went to see a "Son of Charlie Chaplin" who had intractable headache and demanded codeine and whom I TURFED back out to the street. I began to realize how many of these people needed Cohen more than they needed me. During a break, as I watched Elihu using what he called "the standard method" of awakening a Pantagruelian drunk Norwegian?shoving ice cubes against his balls?the nurse said there was a man I'd better see right away, his blood pressure being "patent pending over 150."

"Patent pending over 1507 What the hell's that?"

"At the top of the scale where the mercury ends, the machine says 'patent pending.' The highest it goes."

A new House record. The Norwegian awoke from his stupor, screamed YOU BASTARD YOU KISS MY ROYAL NORWEGIAN ASS, and began to chase Elihu around the nursing station. Gath and I hoped he would catch him. I went and saw the man with the patent?pending blood pressure. He was a fat black guy with a nervous look in his eyes, swollen ankles, wet lungs, and a terrible headache. He let me put in an IV and when I informed him that at any moment his brain?stem arteries could explode, he agreed to come into the House. He then ripped out my IV and spurting blood, said that first he had to "take care of some business" involving a silver Cadillac and two women, and ambled out. Claiming the House record for the highest blood pressure TURFED to the street did not harm my reputation as a WALL.

Toward eleven, something marvelous happened: a run of erotica. One of the few true pleasures of doctoring, when, with the excuse of a medical degree I could move past the fantasy of mentally undressing sexy women, and really do it. I started with a Persian princess and ended with a lonely oral collegian who, unable to choose between her father and her boyfriend, had suddenly developed difficulty swallowing which, obtained for her on this lonely Saturday night one young Jewish doctor, making bona fide medico?erotic contact with her mouth tongue tonsillar pillars naso? oro? pharynx neck throat clavicle rib cage breast even nipple, why not?

The most remarkable woman was Danish. Glittering white of tooth, blond of hair, blond of eyelash, which meant blond of pubic hair, pink of chill winter cheek blue fjord of eye, she was dressed in a slinky go wraparound which left one shoulder bare, two nipples poking. And a partridge in a pear tree. Her chief complaint: "crick in my neck, going around to my breast. Delight delight. I joked, flirted, asked the history this crick and this breast. I had to decide whether not to have her undress for me. I hesitated. The tension rose. In the silence she looked at me quizzically. Now I'd really blown it. I blushed, but said, "I'd better have a better look. Would you mind changing into this hospital gown?"

She looked me in the eye, and paused, and I thought: Oh, no, big trouble, now I've done it, she's go

"But of course," she said, smiling a blue blond smile.

She knew and was going to play along! I went to the other side of the curtain, where there was another young woman, with a nurse, and I asked what the trouble was, and the nurse said, "Overdose of dog food."

"Oh?" I asked cockily. "And what's the usual dose of dog food?"

I started to examine the dog food, who presented a different erotic aspect: drowsy, stripped unashamedly to the waist, she was vomiting. As I put my stethoscope on her chest, something in the mirror between the curtains caught my eye: I could see into the other. cubicle, where the Dane was undressing. Carefully, delicately, she unhooked her clinging gold dress and unwrapped it. She sat there on the stretcher, naked but for her gold panties, and then she stretched out her arms in a yawn. The pounding in my temporal arteries seemed to echo off the tile walls. She shivered in the chill, and hugged herself. Her nipples were tense brown buttons in the smooth silk flow of her breasts. Just before she reached for the House nightie, she looked down at her nipples, a child looking at two exciting toys, and with a feather?down touch gave each nipple a slow circular caress, the slow circular movement of a pelvis, of a thigh. Well, at that touch everything?her nipples, my putt, the House stethoscope-leaped up ensemble like hungry Jews at the last prayer of the fast of Yom Kippur. Suffused with a lover's anticipation, I prolonged the dog?food exam and then walked into the room containing the Dane and found myself ridiculously asking, "How are they?"