The house of God

"I rilly don't know," said Bernard.

"Was it the doctors there? The doctors you didn't like?"

"The doctus? Nah, the doctus I can't complain."

"The tests or the room?"

"The tests or the room? Vell, nah, about them I can't complain."

"The nurses? The food?" asked Fats, but Bernard shook his head no. Fats laughed and said, "Listen, Bernie, you went to the MBH, they did this great work up, and when I asked you why you came to the House of God, all you tell me is, 'Nah I can't complain.' So why did you come here? Why, Bernie, why?"

"Vhy I come heah? Vell," said Bernie, "heah I can complain."

As I headed to bed on the ward, the night nurse came up to me and asked me to do her a favor. I wasn't in the mood, but asked what it was.

"That woman transferred from surgery yesterday, Mrs. Stein."

"Metastatic cancer," I said, "inoperable. What about it?"

"She knows that the surgeons opened her, took a look, and then just sewed her up:"

"Yeah?"

"Well, she's asking what that means, and her Private won't tell her. I think that someone should tell her, that's all."

Not wanting to face it, I said, "It's her Private's job, not mine."

"Please," said the nurse, "she wants to know; some one has to?"

"Who's her Private?" asked Fats.

"Putzel."

"Oh. It's OK, Roy, I'll take care of it myself."

"You? Why?"

"'Cause that worm Putzel will never tell her. I'm in charge of the ward, I'll take care of it. Go to sleep."

"But I thought you're telling me and Eddie not make waves."

"Right. This is different?this woman needs to know."

I watched him enter her room and sit on the bed.

The woman was forty. Thin and pale, she blended with the sheets. I pictured her spine X rays: riddled with cancer, a honeycomb of bone. If she moved too suddenly, she'd crack a vertebra, sever her spinal cord, paralyze herself. Her neck brace made her look more stoic than she was. In the midst of her waxy face, her eyes seemed immense. From the corridor I watched her ask Fats her question, and then search him for his answer. When he spoke, her eyes pooled with tears. I saw the Fat Man's hand reach out and, motherly, envelop hers. I couldn't watch. Despairing, I went to bed.

At four A.M. I was awakened for an admission. Cursing, I wobbled into the E.W. cubicle and found Saul the leukemic tailor, at whose remission in October we'd wept with joy. Saul was dying. As if enraged at the delay in its onrush to death, Saul's marrow had gone wild, spitting out deformed cancerous bone cells that left Saul delirious with fever, oozing blood, anemic, in pain, and, where the malignant white cells had failed to prevent the spread of his normal skin flora, his body coated with maggoty pustules of staphlococcus. Too weak to move, too mad to cry, gums swollen and tongue bruised, he shooed away his wife and motioned me to bend down to him, and whispered, "Dis is it, Dr. Basch, right? Dis is the end?"

"We can try for another remission," I said, not believing it.

"Don't talk to me remission. Dis is hell. Listen —I want you to finish me off."

"What?"

"Finish me off. I'm dead, so let me die. I didn't want no treatment?she forced me. I'm ready, you're my doctor, so give me something to finish me off, OK?"

"I can't do that, Saul."

"Crap. Remember Sanders? I was dere, next bed. I saw. Suffered? Terrible. Don't make me go like him. So? You want me to sign something, I sign. Do it."

"I can't, Saul, you know that."

"So find me someone who will."

"I promise you'll have no pain. That's the best can do."

"Pain? What about pain inside, in my heart? What do I have to do, Dr. Basch," he said angrily, "beg? You don't want me to suffer like Sanders. You liked him too, I know."

I looked into his bloodshot eyes, the infection creeping over the lids toward the conjuctival vessels that were pale because there were so few red cells, and I wanted to say, No, I don't want you to suffer, Saul, I want you to die easy.

"Dere, see? It's a cinch. Please, finish me off."

As I continued to protest, remembering how Sanders had suffered and died, a horrible thought crossed my mind, horrible because for an instant it didn't see horrible, like seeing a baby and thinking of putting icepick through a fontanelle of its skull, the though Yes, Saul, I'll do it, I'll finish you off. I began to work like hell to save him.

I went back to the ward, and came to the room with Putzel's terminal?cancer woman. Fats was in there, playing cards, chatting. As I passed, something surprising happened in the game, a shout bubbled up and both the players burst out laughing.

After the next morning's cardflip, when Fats had gone to eat and Hooper had gone to Path, EMD got a silly look on his face and told me that Lionel Blazer had paged him to take a look at some "little red things" on his gorgeous pubis that itched like hell. Eddie asked me what to do, and I said, "Do? You're a doc, so do what docs do: examine him. Give five minutes and do it in here."

I got the operator to page Fats and Hooper Selma and the nurses and the Fish and Housekeeping to come STAT to Gomer City, and then I watched Lionel come up the hallway, look around cautiously and enter the on?call room. I ran up to the group I'd paged and said, "Hey, I got paged to go into the oncall room, STAT!" and then the ten of us rushed into the room. Lionel was blue?blazered only from the waist up and was sitting on the table naked from the waist down, pawing through his brown pubic hair. Eat My Dust was sitting across from him, lost in contemplation. When Lionel saw us, he went red and started to explain. He realized that he didn't want to explain and stopped, and blushed, and said, "It's about a medical problem."

"Crab lice," said Eddie, "Lionel's got the venereal crabs."

"Medical problem?" I said. "You know, we can't blame Lionel for this, no. We can only blame the system, the one that has paramedical perso

Lionel put on his spi

"You shouldn't have done that, Basch," said the Fat Man, walking out onto the ward with me.

"Why not?"

"'Cause with guys like the Blazers, you can't win: as soon as you engage in the struggle, you lose. Lionel's boss, the flunky Marvin, who assigns admissions, is go

"Give in to those assholes?"

"I never said that."

"What's the alternative?" I asked, challenging him.

"Don't let them use you, Roy. Use them."

"How?"

"Like this," said Fats, sitting down across from Jane Doe and taking out his stopwatch. "Observe."

"What are you doing?"

"Using them. In ten minutes I'll explain."

"Look, I want to go home. I'm going to sign out to Hooper."

"Go ahead. Come back here in ten and I'll explain." I went into the on?call room and signed out to Hooper, and even though I knew he hadn't heard a word I'd said, I didn't care, and I got up to go home. Hooper was reading the manual I'd used at the begi