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He was not alone. Four more times I was shaken by the horror of ruined life. One after the other, totally immobilized, lungs run by respirators, hearts run by pacemakers, kidneys run by machines, brains run barely, if at all. It was terrible. The smell was that of lingering death: sickly-sour, feverish, sliding away far off on a horizon I could barely see. I didn't want any part of it. I would not touch these putrid ones, no. It was all too sad for me.
Not for Jo. At each room she riffled her three-by-five cards and rattled off numbers, and then had the nurse hoist the body up to sitting, so she could listen to the chest. Pinkus looked distractedly out the window, unable to ask or tell about hobbies, and I felt dead inside. Jo asked me didn't I want to listen to their chests, and reflexively, I did. The last was a second-year BMS student who, while on a pediatrics rotation, had caught a cold from a kid, which turned into a cough, then a flu, then a something beyond the realm of the known or the treatable that had hit his lungs, heart, liver, and kidneys and left him driven by respirator, pacemaker, and kidney machine. Despite this, despite the MICU's "4?plussing" him?going all out?he was dying. The stubble on his cheeks was blond. Jo had the nurse hoist him up, put her stethoscope on him, and motioned for me to join in. I said I'd pass.
"What?" asked Jo, surprised. "Why?"
"I'm afraid of catching what he caught," I said, leaving.
"What? You're a physician, you've got to. Come back here."
"Jo, get off my back, huh?"
Later, Pinkus and I went down to lunch, leaving Jo to tend to the Unit. Pinkus always "brown?bagged" it brought his own?so he could regulate his diet while in the House. As he picked gently at his cottage cheese, alfalfa, and fresh fruit, he inquired first about my hobbies, telling me his were ru
"Even coffee?" I asked, not aware of this risk faotor.
"Cardiac irritant. Latest Green Journal. Work done right here at the BMS by intern Howard Greenspoon."
Finally, after a lengthy discussion of ru
From the waist up, he was toothpickoid; from the waist down, Mr. Olympia. His quadriceps, hamstrings, and calves were sleek and rippling, fastened to tendons of steel.
Returning to the MICU, repulsed by the disease and boggled by the machines, I had an urge to escape. Jo cornered me, insisting that I learn how to pop a big needle into the radial artery of the wrist, a brutal, dangerous, and more or less u
I left. As I drove through the chill April rain, my mind stuck on the Unit. What about it had been so different?
Quintessence. That was it. The Unit was the quintessence. There, after all the sorting had been done, lay the closest representation, in living terms, of death.
That was to have been expected. That was the bronze Zock plaque on the wall. And there, also, lay the closest representation, in living terms, of sex. I could not fail to notice. I did not pretend to understand. Amidst the dying, these nurses were flaunting life.
Berry asked me how it had been, and I told her that it had been different, high?powered, kind of like being part of the ma
"No, I don't mean the mechanics, I mean the feelings. It's been weeks since Potts's suicide, and you haven't said anything about it. It's as if it didn't happen."
"It happened. So?"
"So he was a damn good friend of yours and now he's dead."
"I can't think about it I got a new job to do, in the Unit."
"Amazing. In spite of everything that happens, there's no past."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"You and the other interns obliterate each day, in order to start the next one. Forget today today. Total denial. Instant repression."
"Big deal. So what about it?"
"So nothing ever changes. Personal history and experience mean nothing. There's no growth. Unbelievable: all across the country, interns are going through this, and going on each day as if nothing had happened the day before. 'Forget it; all is forgiven; come home; love, the Medical Hierarchy.' It rolls on, greater than anyone's suicide. That's what makes a doctor. Terrific."
"I don't see what's so wrong with that."
"I know you don't. That's what's so wrong. It isn't the medical skills you learn, it's the ability to wake up the next day as if nothing had happened the day before, even if what happened is a friend killing himself."
"There's a helluva lot new to learn in the Unit. I can't afford to think about Potts."
"Stop it, Roy?you're not some dumb clod, you're a person."
"Look, I'm not your red?hot intellectual anymore. I'm just a guy out to learn a trade and make a buck, OK?"
"Wonderful. All the shadows have been taken from your sun."
"How can you ask me to think, when tomorrow I'm go