The house of God

8

My mid?September, according to Jo's schedule, neither I nor any other tern was supposed to have learned how to save himself. That next morning, as the warmth of the fading summer percolated up through the crisp air, as the clear cirrus football weather blew into the ward through the skeleton of the Wing of Zock rising higher and higher like jail bars over our windows, I showed up for rounds a half?hour late, and I was the first tern there. Jo was furious, and when, an hour late, Chuck ambled in, wearing yet again the same dirty whites with the same fly open and the same no necktie, Jo exploded, saying, "I told you, Chuck, that rounds start at six?thirty. Got it?"

"Fine, fine."

"Where have you been?"

"Oh, well, I been getting my car fixed"

Just as rounds ended, in flew the Runt. His hair was frazzled, his belt undone, his shirt was hanging out, his stethoscope dragged from his back pocket, and he had a big smile plastered over his carnival of a face. He was sizzling.

"Are you sick?" asked Jo.

"Hell, no. I feel grrr?ate."

"Where have you been?"

"I've been fucking my eyes out," said the Runt, and then, roaring, clapped a hand on each of Chuck's and my shoulders, and with an idiotic rolls coasts of a grin, yelped.

"You've been what?" asked Jo.

"Fucking. Copulating. You know, vasodilation of the penile veins, it gets hard and the male sticks it into?"

"That's inappropriate?"

"Hey, Jo," said the Runt, looking to us for support, and then, ignoring her fragility, "go fuck yourself, huh?"

With that Chuck and I knew we had created a monster and felt real good about it, but Chuck pointed out that it was sort of like watching your mother?in?law drive your new Cadillac off a cliff, because we knew that Jo would not go fuck herself but would go talk to the Fish, who would go talk to the Leggo, who would get us back but good, since the essence of any hierarchy is retaliation. Jo led the rest of rounds in silence, until we got to the admission named Jimmy, who'd been TURFED to the SICU. Jo insisted we go see him, and as our caravan turned up the hall, Jo got excited about the case, and unable to contain herself any longer, blurted out, "Hey, Roy, that sounds like a really great admission."

Without thinking, remembering how Jimmy's decompensation had strung me out, as if from somewhere else than me, although I knew it did come from some bilious region within me, I heard myself create a new LAW NUMBER NINE: THE ONLY GOOD ADMISSION IS A DEAD ADMISSION, which stopped Jo in her tracks, the same way that, a few minutes later, when Chuck and the Runt and I were poodling around the SICU while Jo macerated Jimmy, we were stopped in our tracks when we saw, rigged up in an orthopedic apparatus, the remains of a human. Bandaged head to toe, it was clear that the patient had collided with something and that the point of impact had been his testicles. They were cantaloupe, even honeydew. Here we had an aberrant Hell's Angel who, on his Harley Hawg, had smashed head?on into a tree. A sign on the end of his bed read: IT TAKES BALLS TO RIDE A HARLEY.

None of us could have imagined what an ace auto mechanic Angel was until we heard from the Runt how, even the first time, she had fixed his compact car: "Well, I was so upset at what was happening last night, I couldn't even talk straight by the time I got to her apartment. I don't know what you said to her on the phone, Roy, but when she hung up, things were a lot easier. She poured me a drink, but all I could think of was Lazarus and Risenshein and the graffiti above the urinal at the Chinese restaurant: STAND CLOSER, IT'S SHORTER THAN YOU THINK. Well, anyway, she asked if I'd??like to watch TV and I said sure. We were sitting on the couch, and I didn't know if she liked me, and then all of a sudden she's sort of leaning her boob against me and her red hair is unpinned and down to her scapula and I start to feel better. And she says It's kind of uncomfortable in here, why don't we watch inside, and unplugs the TV and carries it into the bedroom. I couldn't believe it. I start to nuzzle her neck and she says Clothes are such a hassle, and she takes off her sweater and her skirt. Well. She starts to make husky noises and since she's taken off her sweater, I take off her bra. Ha! Perfect! Big soft tits! Ha! I pull off her panties," said the Runt, pulling off Angel's panties right before our eyes in the middle of the nursing station, "and she pulls off my pants. Incredible!"

"What about her pubic hair?" I asked.

"Bright red!" said the Runt with a wild look in his eyes. "Perfect! Ha! Well, then I kind of hesitated when I go to put it in, and I think of Lazarus dying and all and it . . . well, it dies too."

"Damn!" said Chuck.

"But she's right there with her hand, and it raises right back up, and when I get if in, she's wet and ready, not like June or all the others my mother always liked. The first time I was a little off, and I came too soon, but before I knew it she had her hand between my legs and we're at it again. Ha! Hahaaa!

Twenty?three minutes. I timed it. And then when she was reaching orgasm she said something like This is terrii?fick! and her words were like a whip spurring me on. Bells rang and the earth shook. Yippeee! And then the next time?"

Chuck and I looked at each other.

"?she was sort of lying there with her back to me, and I thought she was asleep, but no, she kind of reached around and started pulling on my penis and the next thing I know she had kind of maneuvered it in and we were at it again and I think that was the time that did it. Yee?ow!"

"Did what?"

"Did what you guys said it would?made me a doc. We went on and on, her moaning and calling out things, and me sweating and grunting, and just before we came she started saying, at first in a whisper and then louder and then screaming it out so I was worried that someone might hear, DOCTOR RUNTSKY DOCTOR RUNTSKY DOCTOR RUNT?SKEEE! and when it was over, lying there, she snuggled up to me and sighed this wonderful satisfied sigh and said, Runt, you are a great doc, g'night, and the last thing I saw this morning was the sunlight on those fieryred pubic hairs. ha! i owe it all to you. There's nothing I won't try now, nothing!"

"Damn," said Chuck, "Runt you've become completely unnervous."

"Right. I can't wait to tell that dry bitch June it's all over. Poetry? Ha! That ain't poetry, this is. You know what's coming next?"

Neither Chuck nor I knew what was coming next.

"I'm gonna taste her pubic hair, 'cause I know in my heart that it's strawberry red. Roy, I just want to say thanks. Thanks for taking over my service last night, for helping me out, and for kicking me out of the House and into bed with Angel."

Such was the first installment of the Runt's relating to us, blow by blow, his love affair with Angel. While Chuck and I at first felt a little uncomfortable listening to the intimate details the morning after each thrilling episode, we didn't feel so bad that we couldn't listen, and we realized that the Runt was going through a healthy stage of development that we'd both passed about ten years before. Besides that, it was unctuous steamy stuff. In gratitude, we taught the Runt medicine, and each of us with a growing sense of camaraderie, helped each other do the work of the House of God.

Shortly after the Runt's first auto repair, Chuck's true greatness came out. First it was Lazarus. Chuck and I, in an effort to lighten the Runt's load, had flipped a coin for Lazarus, and he'd become Chuck's patient. One day on rounds we stopped outside the room Lazarus had occupied since July. Screams came from it. A fresh gomer was in the Lazarus memorial bed.

"What happened to Mr. Lazarus?" asked Jo.

"Oh, he's daid," said Chuck.

"Dead? What happened?"

"Dunno, gurl, dunno. Guess he died."

"Potts and I and the Runt and I kept him alive for the past three months, and then the first night he was on your service he died? What's going on?"

"Wish I knew:"

"Did you get the postmortem?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Who knows, gurl, who knows?"

That same day, at Chuck's insistence, we stopped outside the room containing the woman who was to make Chuck famous throughout the House. "Now, this is the most amazin' thing," said Chuck, "I was called down to the E.W. to see this whale. She'd been seen already by Howard, by Mad Dog, and by Putzel. She was lyin' there, not breathin' worth shit, and nobody could figure out why not. Well, I went in there and did my exam. I say to myself, Not breathin', eh? Hmm. Better have a look in her mouth. I opened it up and looked in. Damn! I say, what's that big ole green thing in there? So I put on about four pairs of gloves and I reach on back down in there, and this is what I fours': '

He took out a specimen jar in which was a large sprout of broccoli.

"Broccoli!" said the Bruiser, with one of his rare correct answers.

"Nuthin' but," said Chuck. "Howard, Mad Dog, Putzel?none of them dudes bothered to look in the ole lady's mouth."

"The Broccoli Lady,' I said. "A save!"

"No foolin'. Y'all come in an' see her."

The Broccoli Lady was huge, gomertose, and smelly. Except for an occasional spasmodic shiver of her chest, she still wasn't breathing and she didn't look like she was doing too great.

"Doin' great, ain't she?" asked Chuck.

"A real save," said the Runt.

"What are you doing for her?" asked Jo.

"What am I doing for her? Why, I got her on a low-broccoli diet, gurl, what else?"

From that time on, the House looked at Chuck not as a dumb black admitted on quota, but as a smart tern. As he and I and even the Runt became competent, we began to realize that since no one else would want to do what we terns were forced to do, we were becoming indispensable. The House needed us. The House thought it needed us to do something for the gomers and for the dying young.

What the House really needed us for was to do nothing for the gomers and to bear the helplessness of caring for the dying young. As autumn flared, as it looked more and more like both Agnew and Nixon would get thrown into the slammer at the same time, we struggled to hide our doing nothing from our ferret, Jo. Rounds became a bravura performance in duplicity, with us trying to recall what imaginary test we'd written down, what imaginary complications had ensued, what imaginary treatment for the imaginary complications had been initiated, and what the imaginary response to all this had been, and all the time working like hell on trying to get the gomer placed. It was such a great strain on us that occasionally things would break down. One day, faltering under Jo's demanding why I hadn't ordered a four?A.M. temperature to work up Anna O.'s imaginary fever, I blurted out another new LAW?NUMBER TEN: IF YOU DON'T TAKE A TEMPERATURE, YOU CAN'T FIND A FEVER, and I'd begun to catalogue the other things that you might not do, to not produce something you might not treat, such as, instead of TEMPERATURE and FEVER, substituting EKG and CARDIAC ARRYTHMIA, and I'd gotten as far as CHEST X RAY and PNEUMONIA before Chuck and the Runt collared me and ushered me out of Jo's grasp.

To ease the strain, Chuck and I spent more and more time with our feet up drinking ginger ale in the nursing station, doing nothing. Although the Runt was somewhat calmer, he was still too tense to sit with us. Towl, his BMS, was not, and filling a ginger?ale container, Towl groaned and put his feet up.

"Towl, I want to ask you about Enid," said the Runt. "She's still not cleaned out for her bowel run."

"Rrhhmmmmm rhmmmm, Ah know. So wut?"

"So what should I do? I gotta get her cleaned out, and no matter what I do, without eating anything she keeps gaining weight and hasn't had a bowel movement for the past three weeks. Her daughter says she hasn't unloaded spontaneously for eight years. It's amazing?she turns water into shit."

"Rrhhmmmmm rhmmmm, Ah know. Why you wanna do the bowel run?"

"Because that's why she's here."

"Yeah, but I mean, is she really havin' the bowel run, or are we jus' pretendin' she's havin' the bowel run? Ever since I toined her over to you, I caint keep her straight."

Sheepishly the Runt admitted that Enid's Private, Putzel, wanted the bowel run done, and the Runt was really trying to do it.

"Rrhhmmmmm rhmmmm, well, then, give her milk and 'lasses, down her mouth and up her direcshum hole, the both at once."

"Milk and 'lasses?"

"Right. Milk and mo?lasses. Both ends. She gonna explode."

Inevitably, during our ginger?ale rounds, like a floorwalker, the Fish would appear. He walked up and, avoiding our eyes, asked, "Hey, guys, how's it going?" and then, without waiting to hear how it was going, said, "You know, don't you, that that looks unprofessional."

"Fine, fine," said Chuck, lifting his feet down off the counter.

To irritate the Fish, I lit a cigarette.

"I hear from Jo that you've been coming in late:"

"Oh, yeah," said Chuck. "Well, the thing is my car. Keeps breakin' down and I gotta keep takin' it to the garage."

"Oh, well, that's different. Got a good mechanic? You could use mine if you like. Get the damn thing fixed right once and for all, so you don't have to worry about it. Yes, and another thing: your spelling is atrocious. We'll go over a few of your write?ups together, OK?"

"Fine, fine."

"But there's one thing I don't understand," I said "I can't figure out if I drink cause I pee or I pee 'cause I drink."

"Stop drinking and see what happens."

"I tried that. I get thirsty."

"Perhaps you have Addison's disease," said the Fish, and his attention shifted to my cigarette until he couldn't stand it any longer and said, "I don't understand how, knowing what you know about lung cancer, you continue to smoke. Maybe you don't inhale?"

I did not inhale, and so I said. "I inhale."

"Why do you do it?"

"It feels good."

"If everyone did what feels good, where would we all be?"

"Feeling good."

"You're too loose," said the Fish, "I don't know how you do such good work, being that loose. Enjoy that cigarette, Dr. Basch, for it's three more minutes off your life."

Just then Little Otto marched in, went to the blackboard to leave a note for me, saw the space taken up with a fresh ripe

***

***MVI***

***

let out a sharp bark which turned all our heads toward him, and finding no eraser handy, spat on the board and wiped the thing off with his sleeve, snarling.

"Now, that's just the kind of thing I resent," I said to the Fish, "having that damn ***MVI*** smeared all over the House under my name. Your kinky bouncers haven't done anything. Can't you stop it?"

"I tried," said the Fish, "but it didn't do any good. The damn thing may all be a practical joke anyway."

"That's not what I heard. I heard that the prize for the ***MVI*** is a free trip for two to Atlantic City for the AMA meetings in June, with you and the Leggo.

"I didn't hear that," said the Fish, beginning to leave.

"Damn!" said Chuck. "Man, would you look at that!"

The Fish and I and Towl and Little Otto looked at that, which was, somehow, under my name on the blackboard, in all colors of the rainbow, that neat yet ornate insignia:

***

***ROY G. BASCH***

***

***MVI***

***

Later that week the Leggo and the Fish called a B?M Deli luncheon to announce another award, which we were to nickname the Black Crow. Since this was the first time all the terns had been gathered together since July the first, we greeted each other warmly and with relief. Everything had happened. Most of us had learned enough medicine to worry less about saving patients and more about saving ourselves. Although some of our ways of saving ourselves were beginning to seem bizarre, they weren't so far?out, yet, as to be dangerous or intolerable. Looking around the room, hearing the simmering jokes and laughter and chatter that from time to time popped its lid and boiled over into a happy roar, I realized how much we'd grown to care about each other. We were developing a code of caring, helping each other leave early, not fucking each other over, tolerating each other's nuttiness, and listening to each other's groans. Each life was being twisted, branded. We were sharing something big and murderous and grand. Sensing that, I felt close to tears. We were becoming doctors.

Eat My Dust Eddie, being run ragged in the deathhouse, the MICU, looked awful, and was talking about his previous night on call: "I was admitting my sixth cardiac arrest and I got this call from the E.W.?Hooper, it was you?saying that there was a guy down there who'd arrested and you were thinking of sending him to me if he survived. I hung up the phone, got down on my knees, and prayed: Please, God, kill that guy! I was on my knees, I mean ON MY KNEES!"

"He died," said Hooper. "Jo was the resident, and she wanted to keep pumping his chest, but I said, 'As far as I'm concerned, this guy was dead ten minutes ago,' and I left."

"Hooper, you're a great man," said EMD. "I feel like kissing you."

"Kiss me you can, kiss me if you like, but all I know is that if a human disaster like that had shown up in Sausalito, he'd have had to sign his own postmortem permission slip to be admitted at all:"

"I think that's a bit crass," said Howie, grinning.

"Stay out of Sausalito when you're having your cardiac arrest."

Potts came in, late, made a thin sandwich, and sat down, and I was reminded that the Yellow Man had yet to die. Potts was haunted by him, linked with him, and whenever we saw Potts, we saw the Yellow Man. Potts was becoming more withdrawn. He hadn't come out for our touch?football game. He was a tree with a limb ripped off, the pulp a harsh raw white. No one ever mentioned the Yellow Man to him. Or to the Runt. But if the Runt was infected, at least he'd have done some snazzy dirty things with Angel before he died. I asked Potts how he was.

"I don't know. OK, I guess. Otis loves the fall, the leaves. I keep thinking I'm not doing a good job here, you know."

"You're all doing a good job," said the Leggo, standing before us, "but you as a group have not been getting enough postmortem permissions. It's hard to describe the importance of the autopsy. Why, the autopsy is the heart?no, the flower, the red rose?of medicine. Yes, the great Virchow, the Father of Pathology, performed twenty?five thousand autopsies with his own two hands. It's crucial to our understanding of disease. For instance, that Czech, nicknamed?what was he called, Dr. Fishberg?"

"Not was called, sir, is called. The Yellow Man, Sir."

"Yes, take the Yellow Man. . :"

The Leggo went on to take the Yellow Man, stressing how important it would be for us to get the post when he died, and as he spoke, each word seemed to rip into poor quiet Potts.

"When I was an intern," said the Leggo cheerily, "we got seventy?five percent post permissions. Of course, in those days we did the autopsies ourselves, but you know something, we didn't mind. Because we were helping to advance the science of medicine:"

The Leggo said that the terns were not getting enough postmortem permissions, and since he knew "how hard it is to approach the family for permission in their hour of need," he thought of "a way to raise the incentive: an award. The award will go to the intern with the most postmortem permissions for the year. The prize will be a free trip for two to Atlantic City for the AMA in June, with Dr. Fishberg and myself."

There was dead silence. No one knew what to say, until Howie, puffing and smiling, said, "Damn good idea, Chief, but maybe it should be a trip to the American Pathological instead."

"I don't think it should be the most posts," I said, sure that the Leggo was joking, "I mean, after all, wouldn't that put a premium on death? The tern with the most deaths would probably win, and that would make us lay off treatment, or, even worse, kill off patents to win the prize."

"Yeah," said Eddie, "why not make it a percentage of deaths?"

The Leggo and the Fish didn't laugh, and as the meeting broke up, no one was sure whether they'd been serious or not.

"Of course they're serious," said Hyper Hooper, "and I'm gonna win it. The Black Crow! Atlantic City, here I come. Salt?water taffy, strolling along the boardwalk." He grinned, and started to sing to us. "Under the bo?o?orrdwalk, down by the seee?eeee . . . "

And so if they were serious the Black Crow! Award came into being, at least as much being as the ***MVI***. Hyper Hooper, the tern who got off on death, really got off, and we others, who still didn't like death and were repulsed even more by autopsies, felt that once again the odds were getting stacked against the living, and that we had to work even harder to protect the poor unsuspecting patients who came, trusting, into the House of God oblivious to that incentive for their deaths and posts, the Black Crow. Hooper didn't waste any time, for the next afternoon as I was dictating a discharge summary, from the next cubicle I heard, his familiar voice: "The patient was admitted in good health except for a urinary?tract infection . . ."

I went on dictating, but tuned back in a few seconds later:

". . . the temperature rose to 107 and a resistant strain of Pseudomonas grew out of the spinal?fluid culture . . ."

Spinal fluid? I thought it had started in the urinary tract?

". . . the intern was called to see the patient and found her unresponsive. She expired three hours later. Permission for the postmortem was obtained Yahoo! This is H. Hooper, M.D."

As he was rushing out I caught his arm and asked him what had happened, and he said, "The usual, Death City. And I got the post. Atlantic City, here I come, Black Crow, Black Pants, and all."

"But she came in healthy."

"Yeah, and then she boxed, and I get credit for the post. The Black Crow's gotta go. So long."

"That award's a joke. They couldn't mean it."

"It's no joke. Autopsies are the flower?no, the red rose?of medicine. The Leggo wants more posts so he looks good."

"To whom?"

"Who cares? With that awful birthmark, he'll try any cosmetic procedure. Hey, I gotta go. The little woman and I are going to the Eucalyptus Room again tonight. Trying to float the M off the R. Ciao!"

And so the intern first out of the starting blocks for the Black Crow Award sped off down the hallway, out of the House of God, with that same glitter in his eye that the Fat Man had had over his food and his Invention and that Chuck and I had seen in the Runt's eye when he talked pornographically about Thunder Thighs, and the same glitter that Chuck had had when he'd made mincemeat of Ernie on the court or talked about Hazel, and the same glitter that I had whenever I thought of Molly.

Whenever I thought of Molly, I thought of her bendovers and her lacy underwear and the tears that she'd shed when she knew she was going to die when she pulled down her panties to show me the mole on her thigh. Whenever I thought of Molly, something rolled over in my pants and I felt younger than I was, and I got a glitter in my eye and I thought about my first love, and that bittersweet chaos of fumbling with hooks and belts and zippers and parents on couches on front seats on hack seats on movie seats on rocks and everywhere except in beds. I imagined Molly as young and innocent and fun.

Young and innocent? How could I have known that that preceding figment had been brought to me through the courtesy of my imagination? Feeling guilty about trying to seduce this young and innocent fun, I tried my hardest to seduce her. In the House, I would touch her, when we worked together, putting a hand on her shoulder, on her hip. She would brush my arm with her breast, she would leave her dress unbuttoned, and in addition to the bendover, she showed more of her repertoire, including what Fats had called the "flash sit?down," where in the instant between the sit down and the leg cross, there's the flash of the fantasy triangle, the French panty bulging out over the downy mops like a spinnaker before the soft blond and hairy trade winds. Even though, medically, I knew all about these organs, and had my hands in diseased ones all the time, still, knowing, I wanted it and since it was imagined and healthy and young and fresh and blond and downy soft and pungent, I wanted it all the more.

So finally she asked me to go out with her and some other nurses, and we went to this bar where the rock music blasts off only the ossicles of those, like me, over thirty, and leaves unshaken the under?thirty, who want the volume turned up, and then she taught me to do a dance I'd never heard of to music I'd never heard of, and then we went back to her apartment she shared with a toothpick of a nurse named Nancy, and Molly asked me if I'd ever seen her place before and I lied and said No and she started to show me and we wandered in on Nancy undressing and Molly said, I was showing him the place, and Nancy, remembering that I'd been there before, said, He's seen the place before, and Molly looked me in the eye and I gulped and said, Yup, I've seen the place before, and she said, Well, let me show you my bedroom.

Delight delight. She showed me her bedroom with her little?girl trinkets, furry toys and an alive furry kitten and Halloween masks and temple bells from the Far East and a makeup kit with backstage?type light bulbs and the usual prints and strewn pantyhose and bras and then in a fit of romance I feared I was too old for, we embrace, and I fumble with her bra, hooks and then I get caught up in things so I don't notice what I'm fumbling and after a little bit of protest from her with my mouth all over her long nipples and my hand on her own furry thing we are kind of wrassling, she gets on top of me, in the middle of a NO she says OOPS and in I slip, and she shows me her secret, which is that she fucks not like a young innocent little girl but like a moaning Byzantine courtesan, all gold and warm oil and myrrh.

"Now you know my weakness," Molly said the next day in the middle of the nursing station, holding a Fleet's enema in her hand like a pistol.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I'm very physical."

"How is that a weakness?"

"It just is."

"Not if you can handle it."

"What do you mean handle a weakness?"

"You wouldn't call it a weakness in me, would you?" I asked.

"That's different, you're a man"

"You're not going all sexist on me, are you?"

"No."

"Then it's not a weakness in you any more than it is in me. You're just going to have to learn how to handle it."

"Yeah," she said in a way that confused me, since I couldn't tell if she were concerned or not, "I guess I just will."

Only later, when it became obvious that both of us loved the sex and, in a loose way, each other as much as we did, when the moaning mons had moved out of the little?girl bedroom into the on?call bunk bed whenever I could get rid of the Bruiser, and then moved into the ward bathroom for a five?minute one sitting on the can, and even, late one night, crooned to by the gomer band of renown, moved to a darkened corner of the ward standing up with our orgasms racing against the appearance of the patrolling night supervisor, only then did Molly?who called the feeling of making love the feeling of having a centipede walk through wearing gold cleats?only then did she tell me that she didn't give a damn about my having another woman, a steady woman, that she had been hurt by "involvement" and hurt by the nuns with their spiritual whips and that what she was "into" was "freedom in relationships," which I thought was terrific and too good to be true until I wondered whether someone else with the old gold cleats was hearing those chuckles and moans and glittering rainbows of orgasms when I was with my long love, Berry.

Berry must have suspected something was up. She'd remarked on my changed mood, on how suspicious I'd become of her, accusing her of going to bed with other men when I was on call in the House. She must have known that my jealousy came from my guilt, my fury from my jealousy of who was with her or with Molly when I was not. Things became strained, although at first the least strain was the emotional one. I was having a fantastic time making love to two women on the same day, enjoying the way that I could separate which aching muscle group went with which woman's moves. The real strain was how to hide Molly from Berry. What contortions I went through, as Molly began to come to my place, to hide her traces?her hair on the pillow, her spoor on the sheets, her hairpin on the bureau, her earring left on the bathroom shelf, her perfume in the air. I began to spend all my time doing laundry. I dreaded the ringing of my phone. Yet I couldn't tell Berry. I cared too much. I was too ashamed. I had too much to lose.

Berry and I had thought that we might try living together, but when we found out that my being on call turned me into a snarling bear, we'd decided that it was not a good idea. We'd also decided that we'd not see each other the night after my night on call, because all we did was bicker and bitch. That left only one night in three, the night that I was supposedly not exhausted. With our contact decreased, with Molly zinging through my rectos abdominus and ball?tingling cremaster muscle groups, with Berry the Clinical Psychologist off into mind and with me off into body, we began to drift apart. I began to think her cat hated me.

We tried hard to enjoy the fall. We went to a football game, but instead of the bright cheeriness I remembered from going to football games in college, the day turned cold and wet and somber, filling us both with the dread of winter. Exhausted, more or less in silence, skin catching on the rough edges of our love, we dragged back to my apartment, and Berry, feeling woozy with the flu, curled up in my bed with her cat. A, safe warm fetal ball, she slept. Her cat, eyes closed to me, purred. She snored. I felt so much in love with her, with protecting her from the flu and the world and my wry and guilt, that I was filled with joy. But as my joy for what had been and could be showed itself, my sadness for what had' happened to us crushed it. What a terrific turd I was.

She awoke, we talked. We talked about the gomers and about how furious Jo and the Fish and the Leggo making me, and about how Berry couldn't Possibly understand.

"You know what your problem is?" she asked.

"What?"

"You've got no role models. You can't look up to any of them."

"What about the Fat Man?"

"He's sick."

"He's not," I said, starting to get angry. "Besides there's Chuck and the Runt and Hooper and Eat My Dust. And Potts."

"Oh, sure, there's the camaraderie, and you're right, the only reason men go to war is to die with then buddies, but it seems to me that what's happening to you is the total institutionalization of the internship, a la Goffman."

"What did you say?" I asked as evenly as possible, swallowing my rage at her high?ass theory of my pain.

She started to repeat it, and seeing that the wordsweren't registering, said, "Never mind."

"Why never mind?"

"Because you could care less. Damnit, Roy, you've gotten so concrete. You won't talk about anything except the internship."

Feeling swamped with words, I found myself like sewerman Ralph Cramden on TV, "Goddamnit, I don't want to think, 'cause when I do, I think of the disgusting things I do every day and it's so awful I want to kill myself. Get it?"

"You imagine that talking about your feelings would destroy you?"

"Yeah."

"That's a fantasy."

"A what?"

"A fantasy. Why don't you get some help?"

"Help?"

"Therapy."

We fought. She probably knew we were fighting about Dr. Sanders's long dying and about the illusion in my father's letters and about my plethora of absent role models and the blossoming idea that the gomers were not our patients but our adversaries, and most of all we were fighting over the guilt that I felt for having Molly in a dark corner of the ward standing up, this Molly, who, like me, wouldn't stop and think and feel either, because if she ruminated on what she felt about enemas and emesis basins, she'd lose faith even in her centipede and want to kill herself too. Our fight was not the violent, howling, barking fight that keeps alive vestiges of love, but that tired, distant, silent fight where the fighters are afraid to punch for fear the punch will kill. So this is it, I thought dully, four months into the internship and I've become an animal, a mossbrained moose who did not and could not and would not think and talk, and it's come like an exhausted cancerous animal to my always love, my buddy Berry, and me?yes it's come to us: Relationship On Rocks, ROR.