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"Roy, sit down. Now you sit, see?"
Some sharp?toothed woman let out with a menstrual I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVETH and Berry and I left. Our feet got soaked in the slushy snow, and I said, "I feel sick. I can't seem to get this heaviness out of my chest, and I don't know what to do."
"It sounds congested," said Berry.
"Yeah, what do you think I should do? I don't even cough."
"That's your trouble. You're not coughing. You need something to break it up. A tussive."
"You think so? I never thought of that. What do you suggest?"
"Roy, what is this? You're the doctor, not me."
"You're right. I never thought of that."
"Dissociation. You're dissociating yourself from everything. You must be really depressed."
"Didn't I tell you? The policemen say I've become paranoid. They've seen it happen to interns before. It comes from working in the E.W."
"I thought you liked the E.W."
"I used to. It had been fun. It wasn't all gomers. There were people whose lives I saved, I actually
saved."
"What happened?"
"I got competent to handle the big stuff, and the other stuff is just one abusive person after another. It shits. Addicts trying to dupe you for dope, drunks, the poor, the clap, the lonelier?I hate 'em all. I don't trust anyone. It comes from being vomited on and spit at and yelled at and co
"Paranoia's OK," said Berry, "it's just a more primitive defense. If you think someone's watching you, you think you're not alone. It keeps the desperation of loneliness out of your mind. And the rage. You're so depressed, Roy, you've been so far down lately, it's horrible to see. You've changed."
At that I got tears in my eyes. The gap between what was human, with this smart, caring woman, an dwhat was inhuman, with the gomers and the abuse became too much. Choked up, I hung my head, found myself blurting out that I had something to tell her and that I was screwing around with a nurse. I awaited the explosion.
"You don't think I knew that?" asked Berry.
"You did?" I said, surprised.
"Sure. Floozies and oysters and all the rest, remember? I know you pretty well. It's all right with
Roy. As long as it goes both ways.'"
"It is? You mean that?"
"Yeah," she said, and then, looking me square in the eye she went on, "with the internship wrecking you, we can't keep on just as we were. That's been obvious for months. We'll keep this love going, Roy, I'm going to fight for it. Just remember, though your freedom means my freedom too. OK, buddy?"
Crunching down the jealousy, I said, "Sure, buddy . . . sure, love," and I hugged her and kiss and with tears in my eyes I said, "There's only a week to go in the E.W, and I'm really worried what's going to happen. I might not make it. I'm scared that of these nights, with nobody else around, when someone starts to abuse me, I'm going to lose control and beat the shit out of some poor bastard"
"Let me warn you, Roy: in psychiatry, this week coming up, the one between Christmas and New Year's, is the worst. It's a week of death. Be careful, get ready. It's going to be terrible."
"A Holocaust."
"Exactly. Savage."
"How am I going to survive?"
"How? Maybe like in the camps: survive to bear, witness, to record the ones who didn't survive."
Later, after the fury of sex had given way to the tenderness of a caress, I began to talk about Gilheeny, Quick, and Cohen. I started to laugh, Berry started to laugh, and soon the bed, the room, the world itself was one gigantic mouth and tongue and tooth engaged in one ellipsoid laugh, and Berry said, "They sound incredibly bizarre. I mean, they really talk like that? Like textbooks? How did they get that way?"
"They say it's from hanging around the House E.W. for twenty years and talking to smart guys like me. They've absorbed every tern's liberal?arts education for the last twenty years:"
"You love them; don't you?"
"Yeah, they're great. They're keeping me going."
"And you're puzzled and interested by Cohen."
"Yeah. You know what he told me?he never touches bodies. If I didn't have to touch 'em, I'd like listening too, what the hell."
"You mean he doesn't blow into his stethoscope at the gomers?"
"He doesn't own a stethoscope. He wears jeans to work."
"Well, how does he communicate with the gomers?"
"He doesn't."
"He doesn't?" Berry asked in a tantalizing tone.
"Damn! He doesn't. Maybe I should be a shrink!"
Well, at that, peals of laughter rang out again. A resident in psychiatry, a psychiatrist? No gomers, no rotting twats, no vagitch, no itchy blotchy penises, no leg ulcers, no rectals, not much on?call. Just the old chit?fuckin'?chat. That's what most of them needed anyway, these ones sucking on doctors for what doctors couldn't give. I could throw away my stethoscope and wear a pair of jeans to work.
Berry and I got dressed to go to the Leggo's Christmas party. She put on slinky black, and I, since I had to report to the E.W. at midnight, House white. Berry excited at meeting the Fish and the Leggo, said, "I'm anxious to see how much of what you've told me is transference."
"What's transference?"
"The distortion of the real relationship by unconscious forces. Maybe you hate the Fish and the Le because they remind you of your father:"
"I love my father"
"How about your mother?"
"The Fish and the Leggo remind me of a woman who keeps kosher?"
The party was at the Leggo's house, on the edge the suburbs. A grand circular drive led up to a regal mansion. There was money in urine. We were greeted in the foyer by the Leggo, whose eyes went immediately to my House name tag and to Berry's boobs. When I said Hello, sir, the horny little guy looked puzzled, and I knew he was trying to remember whether or not I'd ever been in the military. In the hour before I went to the E.W. I decided I'd try to drink as many champagnes as I could, and soon I was bubbly and high, and stood there when Chuck arrived. He was dressed in his dirty whites, having come directly from ward 6?South, and was covered in the usual ward excretia. The Leggo gave Chuck a big Oh, hello there, uh . . . and then, searching out the name tag, he said . . . uh . . . Charles: Er, have you been at work? and Chuck said, Naw, I always look like this, Chief, you know how it is.
The party went on. The Leggo's wife was about as sexy as a catheter. The talk was, on the part of the doctors, all medicine; and on the part of the spouses, mostly women, all about how hard medicine was on them. Chuck and I fell in love with a woman and couldn't figure out why. As I got more loaded, it seemed that Berry's face was getting more and more incredulous. She met the Leggo, she met the Fish. After forty minutes she came up to us and said she was leaving. I'd never seen her so ripped, and Chuck and I asked her why.
"You two are drunk," she said, "and I can see why. I'd get drunk too if I had to deal with these schmucks. It's not transference, it's obsessive?compulsive neurosis. You spill something, they have an attack of diarrhea. No wonder doctors have the highest rate of suicide, divorce, addiction, alcoholism, and premature death. And probably premature ejaculation too. In two hours here, nobody asked me anything about me. It's as if I were only an appendix to you."
A keeper, I thought to myself.
"Roy, I've never had a more degrading time. You know what these people are? Cocksuckers. So long."
Kissing each of us on the cheek, she got her coat and left. After as many bubblies as we could get down, Chuck and I drove back to the House.
"Damn, that Berry's sumthin' else."
"Yeah, she's great. Hey, try and stay on the road, huh? You know, she's worried about you."