The house of God

'Yes. Now I almost admire the ones who do it, take that risk. It's so strange: at my previous hospital, my boys had great affection for me, but here, this year . . .' And he trailed off, searching the sky in quiet amazement, like a man watching his wife run over his dog. Turning back abruptly, he said, 'Look, Roy, I'm upset. Things are out of order: three of you leaving, what you all said about House medicine at the luncheon, Potts killing himself like that. This has never: happened to me before?never!?where my boys didn't love me, and I don't know what the hell's going on!' He paused and asked, 'Do you? Why me?'

Suddenly I realized how much he was hurting, how vulnerable, at that instant, he was. Did I know why him? Yes. It was my knowing that was setting me free. Should I tell him? No. Too cruel. What would Berry do? She'd not tell, she'd ask. I'd ask him, give him way to talk about it, a way out of the judgment he was begging from me.

'Never before?' I asked. 'Not even in your family?'

'My what? My family?' he said, startled. He fell silent. His face showed concern. Perhaps he was thinking of his own son. I hoped that he would find a way to talk about it. As I watched, his face got sad. I began to hope that he wouldn't say anything, scared that if he opened up, he'd dissolve. The Chief in tears? That would be too much for me. I waited, my anxiety rising. Time seemed to have died.

'No,' he said finally, looking away, 'nothing like that. Things are fine at home. Besides, in many ways my family is here in the House.'

I felt relieved. Somehow he'd pulled things back up around him, and could go on, impenetrable, cold, the tough little pisher he'd always been before. I felt sorry for him: I was going free; he was in a cage. As had happened so often before in my life, the tiger had turned out to be a paper tiger, a dream tiger: worn, bored, timid, envious, sad.

He held out his hand in good?bye and said, 'In spite of everything, Roy, it's, well, it's not been all that bad having you here this year.'

'It's been difficult for me, sir. There were times when I did things that just about drove you ape, and I'm sorry for that.'

'Nothing to be sorry about. I know. I went through it too, by God. But you know something, Roy, I'll tell you from my experience: you wait and see, you'll look back on this year as the best year of your life.'

I didn't know what to say. I shook his hand and left.

Finally free, and more free for having glimpsed the fear and jealousy of those trapped inside, I left the House of God for the last time. These men were so vulnerable. Poor Nixon, with a severe phlebitis that might kill him, and probably would if he had Hooper for his doctor, floundering so bad. I found myself standing on the microfilm of human tissue coating the parking lot that I still regarded as Potts. Feeling the warm sun on my face, I felt a weight in my hand: my black bag. I didn't want it or need it anymore. What should I do with it? Give it to the nearest six?yearold kid and start him on his way to the top? Give it to an underprivileged? No. I knew what to do. Like a discus, round and round and round it went, gathering momentum, until with a scream of bitterness and joy I launched it up and up into the hot fresh summer' breeze and watched the glittering chrome instruments' fall out in a rainbow and smash on the pavement below. .

Later that evening, the policemen picked up Berry and me and loaded our luggage into the squad car and with sirens blaring and lights ablaze rushed us to the airport.

'You're really becoming lay analysts?' asked Berry.

'The couch awaits the excretia of our unconscious' processes,' said Gilheeny.

'And like other rare Catholic candidates?the latest, being a horny nun,' said Quick, 'we are celebrities. Our brains are being picked neatly for our reactions to so many years on the beat.'

We arrived at the airport, and Gilheeny said, 'Brevity is not my forte, and yet I shall try to be brief.' Rambling on, the flashing red light of the squad car highlighting his bushy features, he finally concluded: 'And so as Quick and I place this final bookend on our shelf of time at the House of God, the three we will always cherish are Dubler, the Fat Man, and Roy G. Basch.'

'Your like will not be seen again,' said Quick.

'From the libidinal heart, the oracle of the ventricle, we wish you both good?bye, Shalom, and'?he was interrupted by a gush of plump tears streaming down his cheeks?'and God bless.'

'And God bless,' echoed Quick.

My first thought when I saw the bulging face of the jumbo jet was that it looked like an obese or edematous gomer. Sinking into the seat for the short night flight to Paris, Berry at my side, thinking of the train ride that would take us to the south of France the next day, I told Berry what the Leggo had said to me, about the year being 'the best year of your life.' After a moment's thought she settled into the snug of my neck, yawned, and said, 'You told him, of course, that there have been twenty?nine others that have beaten it so far.'

Damn, now why couldn't I have thought of that? I yawned and closed my eyes and slipped down into the dark.

I am a blind cave fish, thrown into a river of light. My senses are readjusting. As I learn to live in this strange full spectrum, day after dazzling day, at the same time I am drawn back to the horrific dark. I am split, filleted by the knife glare of the French summer sun. Berry and I will be dining in a garden under a trellis of woven branches, our table dressed with heavy silver and starched white linen and monogrammed crystal, the perfection completed by a red rose in a silver vase, and my eye will catch the aged waiter, standing, napkin over his tremoring arm, and I will think back to a gomer with a senile tremor in the House of God. We will be sitting on a bench in the village square, in silence but for the Clack! Clack! of the boules, bathed in the scents of orange, garlic, river musk, and walnut, and I will focus on an old man heaving boules from his wheelchair, and I will think back to Humberto, my Mexican?American BMS wheeling Rose Nizinsky to X Ray the night we set the House speed record for the bowel run. On market day I will see two blackclad LOLS in NAD carrying a pole to which are tied, by the feet, three squawking geese; behind them, dawdling home, fingers looped through the green ribbon loops tied round the boxes of patisserie, two whiteclad little girls. There is no escape. Even the bikini-clad luscious bodies at our river are not safe. I dissect them into tendon, muscle, and bone. At least, I think to myself, I have yet to see the incapacitation, the complete horizontality of posture that goes with being a true gomer, here in the south of France.

And yet I know it is only a matter of time. One lazy and succulent day, I am sitting by myself in the graveyard at the top of the village. A little girl's grave is inscribed 'Priez pour elle'; upon the stone vault lies a supine Crucifixion, the arched breast of Christ say lifelike in glazed, flesh?toned ceramic. As I leave 'Priez pour elle, Priez pour elle,' rings on and on my ears. I am walking down the catnapping winding road overlooking the chateau, the church, the prehistoric caves, the square, and far below, the river valley, the child's?toy poplars and Roman bridge indicating the road, and the creator of all this, the spawn of the glacier, our river. I have never taken this path before. I am beginning to relax, to know what I knew before: the peace, the rainbow of perfection of doing nothing. The days are beginning to feel smooth, warm, pebble with the nostalgia of a sigh. The country is so lush that the birds can't eat all the ripe blackberries. I stop and pick some. Juicy grit in my mouth. My sandals slap the asphalt. I watch the flowers compete in color and shape, enticing the rape by the bees. For the time in more than a year, I am at peace.

I turn a corner and see a large building, like asylum or a hospital, with the word 'Hospice' over the door. My skin prickles, the little hairs on the back of my neck rise, my teeth set on edge. And there, sure enough, I see them. They have been set out in the sun, in a little orchard. The white of their hair, scattered among the green of the orchard, makes then look like dandelions in a field, gossamers awaiting there final breeze. Gomers. I stare at them. I recognize the signs. I make diagnoses. As I walk past them, their eyes seem to follow me, as if somewhere in their dementia they are trying to wave, or say bonjour, show some other vestige of humanness. But they neither wave, nor say bonjour, nor show any other vestige. Healthy, tan, sweaty, drunk, full of blackberries, laughing inside and fearing the cruelty of that laughter, I feel grand. I always feel grand when I see a gomer. I love these gomers now.

That night is the worst. I awaken, bolt upright, at attention, drenched in sweat, screaming, as the church bell tolls three. My mind is filled with horrific images of the year in the House of God. My screams awaken Berry, and I say, 'I finally saw where they keep them.'

'Keep who?' she asks, half?asleep.

'The gomers. They call it a 'Hospice.' '

'Calm down, love. It's over.'