The house of God

"Welcome, Fish," said Fats. "We're both GI, and is there ever good GI material here, eh?"

Jane Doe cut a long, drawn?out, liquid fart.

"What'd I tell you, Fish?" said Fats. "The Gee Eye tract!"

"The GI tract is a special interest of mine," said the Fish," as is flatulence. I've recently had the opportunity to review the world literature on flatulence in liver disease. Why, flatulence in liver disease would make a very interesting research project. Perhaps the House Staff would be interested in undertaking such a research project?"

No one said he was interested.

"Let me ask you this," said the Fish, looking at Hooper. "What enzyme is missing in liver disease to produce flatulence?"

"I don't know," said Hooper.

"Good," said the Fish. "You know, it's so easy to answer a question. Why, quite often it's harder, here on rounds, to say frankly 'I don't know.' In some hospitals like the MBH, it would be frowned on to say 'I don't know.' But I want the House of God to be the kind of place where an intern can be proud to say 'I don't know.' Good, Hooper. Eddie? What's the enzyme?"

"I don't know," said Eat My Dust.

"Roy?"

"I don't know," I said.

"Fats?" asked the Fish, with trepididation.

After a tense pause Fats said, "I don’t know."

The Fish looked a little perturbed that everyone had said "I don't know," Jane Doe broke wind again, and the Fish, irritated, said, "I love the GI Tract as much as anyone, but it's not professional to have someone with that kind of looseness of bowel control sitting in the middle of the corridor. Too loose. Put her in her room."

"Oh, we can't do that," said Fats, "she gets real violent in her room. But don't worry, I'm working on something special to stop the farting. Part of the TBC."

"TBC? What's TBC?"

"Total Bowel Control. Part of the Research Project at the VA."

"Excuse me, Fish." said Eddie, "but maybe you could tell us the answer to that question about the enzyme?"

"Oh? Why, I don't know"

"You don't know either?" asked Eddie.

"Why, no, and I'm proud to say it. I was hoping one of you would. But I'll say one thing: I'll know by tomorrow on rounds."

Since the placement of the gomers was hot stuff in Gomer City, so was the Sociable Cervix. Soon after our sexual carnival in the fall, my thing with Premarin Selma had cooled. On Social Service rounds that first day, both Selma and Rosalie Cohen were cordial but wary. I didn't mind. I was preoccupied by what I'd already seen of "the worst" ward, and I had a hard time concentrating on the meeting. I caught Eddie muttering something about "I looked up, and all I saw was gomers," and the nurses demanding we go over the three?part placement form, poring over questions like "Anointed: Yes No Date" and "Incontinence: Bladder Bowel Date of Last Enema." By the end of rounds I found myself zeroed in on a young blond; guy with a terrific tan, sitting in a corner giving hid forelock an occasional flick up out of his baby?blue eyes.

Later Hooper and Eddie and I were sitting in the on?call room, finding new ways to play with our stethoscopes without sucking on them outright. I raised question: "Why are there only gomers on this ward?" Hooper and Eddie looked at each other, puzzled. No one knew.

"Why don't you dial HELP and find out?" Hooper suggested.

"Dial what?"

"H?E?L?P. The guy in the Blue Blazer., It's a new House concept: if you need help with anything, dial HELP."

I dialed HELP and said, "Hello, I need help . . . No, I'm not a patient, I'm on the opposing team, the doctors, and I need one of those Blue Blazers . . . Which? Damn! Yeah, floor four . . . 'Bye." I turned to the others and said, "Each floor has a Blazer of its very own, and ours is named Lionel."

"Amazing," said Eddie. "I wonder how much those jokers get paid?"

The Blue Blazer arrived. He was the same Blazer as in rounds, and he looked just as terrific as before. We welcomed him and invited him to sit down. Witha dynamite aristocratic flick of the wrist and forelock, he did. He crossed his legs in a slick way that showed that here was a guy, finally, who really knew how to sit down and cross his legs.

A strange thing happened. We asked the Blazer all kinds of questions about what he and HELP was and did and how much HELP got paid, and "Why are there only gomers here on this ward?" Lionel answered each question in a sincere and soothing voice, and seemed to be a storehouse of information that he was glad to disseminate to us hardworking terns "without whom the House of God would fall like a house of cards." Yet each soothing answer was cotton candy, 'cause after it was, it wasn't. Lionel had said nothing. It was crucial to our survival in Gomer City that we get answers, since even if we TURFED every gomer out, if somehow each TURFED?out gomer was to be replaced with a fresh one, why the hell bother at all? We got angry, and our questions turned nasty. This did even less good, and just as the three of us were begi

We told him.

"So?" asked Fats, sitting down and smiling. "So what?"

"So the prick never did tell us what HELP did or how much they get paid. Where I come from, they pay help what they're worth, they pay 'em shit," said Eddie.

"Take it easy," said Fats. "Go with it. Getting pissed at jerks like that is useless"

"I want to know how come there are only gomers in here," I said.

"Yeah? Well, so do I and so does everyone else, and you know what? You'll never find out. Why get angry, eh?"

"I'm not getting angry," I said. "I am angry."

"So? So what good does that do? Finesse, Basch, finesse."

Gracie from Dietary and Food poked her head into the room, carrying an IV bottle filled with yellow liquid, and holding it up, a

"Hey, great," said Fats, "let's try her out."

We followed Fats and Gracie down the corridor and we watched Gracie replace Jane Doe's IV bot with the bottle of "the extract." Fats, using the reverse stethoscope technique, shouted into Jane's ears: "THIS WILL MAKE YOUR BOWELS STOP RUNNIN JANIE. THIS WILL BIND YOU UP!"

"What is this extract?" I asked.

"Oh, it's something I invented and Gracie prepared and it's part of the TBC, part of the VA Research that's go

"Fresh fruit is God's own cathartic," said Gra "and we hope that this is the opposite. It's completely organic. Like laetrile."

I asked Fats about this research at the VA, and he told me that some "shyster" there had gotten "a government grant" to try out a new antibiotic on eternal guinea pigs, the shell?shocked derelict vets. The Fat Man had contracted with the shyster to get a percentage for every vet he'd put on the antibiotic, so Fats had put them all on it.

"How'd it work?" I asked, realizing as soon said it that it was a dumb question, since it hadn't been given to work on anything.

"Great," said Fats, "except for one thing: the side effect."

"Side effect?"

"Yeah, see, it wiped out the intestinal flora, and one of the latent intestinal viruses took over and produced an incredible diarrhea that nothing can control. Nothing yet, that is. So we've got high hopes for this extract, see?"

"Yeah, but what's a little diarrhea?" Hooper asked.

"A little diarrhea?" said Fats, eyes widening. "A little . . ." And he dissolved into laughter, jolly chubby gusts of laughter that got bigger and bigger until he was holding onto his gut as if it would break apart and slop all over the tile floor, and Gracie and I and Eddie and Hooper laughed, and with tears in his eyes Fats finally took us aside and said, "Not a little diarrhea, men, a big diarrhea. A big contagious diarrhea. This first half of TBC, this VA antibiotic, can produce a diarrhea in anyone's bowels. If I had known how bad the side effect would be, I never would have done it. That's why I gotta find the second half, the cure. You see, this diarrhea's the most contagious and uncontrollable son of a bitch in the whole wide GI world."