where and with whom??and while the Runt was getting seduced out of 'sruicide,' I tried to finish my write?up of young and soon?to?be?dead Jimmy. Chubby, grinning, puffing his pipe, Howard appeared.
'What the hell are you doing up here?'
'Oh, I just thought I'd do some follow?up on Jimmy. Great case. Guess he's had it, huh? Oh, and I wanted to ask, you about that nurse in the MICU, Angel. Very fine girl, and I thought I might ask her out.'
I watched him puff his pipe, and, hating him because his happy life even in the House was a puff on his pipe, I said, 'Oh, so you haven't heard about the Runt and Angel?'
'No. You don't mean?'
'Exactly. At this very moment. And, Howard, listen carefully: you should see what she does with her mouth.'
'With her . . . her what?'
'Her mouth,' I said, knowing that by morning Howard would have puffed what Angel did with her mouth all over God's House. 'See, she takes her lips and she puts them around his?'
'Well, I don't want to hear about that, and I'm glad you warned me before I asked her out. But I want to know why when I took Jimmy's blood pressure just now it was only forty systolic.'
'It's what?' I said, rushing into Jimmy's room, where I found that it was forty systolic and Jimmy was trying to die right away. I panicked. I didn't know where to start, to save him. I looked at Howard leaning casually against the doorway lighting his pipe and smiling, and I said, 'Howard, help me with this.'
'Oh, yes? And what might I do?'
I didn't know what he might do or what I might do either, but then I thought of the Fat Man and I said, 'Page the Fat Man, stat.'
'Oh? Do you think you need him? No, you can handle it, Roy. Besides, they say you can't become a real doctor without killing a few patients at the least.'
'Do something to help me,' I said, trying to think clearly.
'What might I do?'
The Fat Man arrived, puffing from the race up the stairs, and sensing my panic, ordered me to take my own pulse. As I did so, he began to get Jimmy organized so he would not die right then. Fats attacked Jimmy with that fantastic smooth expertise of his, and you could almost hear the click click click of each essential procedure. Fats chattered as he worked, addressing comments to us all, including the nurse and a woman named Gracie from Dietary and Food Services who somehow at that late hour had been with him in bed?!-
'What's wrong with Jimmy?' asked Fats, putting in a big needle.
'Cancer of the lung,' I said.
'Christ,' said Fats, 'and he's young enough to die.'
'If I were you, I'd try laetrile,' said Gracie from Dietary and Food Services.
'Try what?' asked Fats, stopping trying to save Jimmy.
'Laetrile. A cure for cancer,' said Gracie.
'A what for what?' shot out Fats, standing up stockstill.
'The Mexicans have found that an extract from apricot pits, called laetrile, can cure cancer. Controversial, but—'
'But worth a big fortoona,' said Fats, eyes aglitter: 'Hey, listen, I gotta hear more about this, Roy,' he said, starting to leave.
'Fats, wait!' I said. 'Don't leave me yet!'
'Did you hear what Gracie said, Roy? A cure for cancer. Come on, Gracie, I want you to tell me more.'
'It's bullshit,' I said. 'There's no cure for cancer, it's a hoax.'
'It's not,' said Gracie from Dietary and Food indignantly, 'it worked on my cousin's husband. He was dying and now he's fine.'
'Dying and now he's fine,' said Fats, and then, walking toward the door, he murmured, as if in a trance, 'dying and now he's fine.'
'Please, Fats,' I said, 'don't leave me alone yet,' as Jimmy began once again to die and I began once again to panic.
'Why not?' asked Fats, puzzled.
'I'm scared.'
'Still? You still need some help?'
'Yes, I do.'
'Well, then, you're going to get it. Let's get to work.'
We got to work, but soon I realized that Fats had slipped away, and I was left alone with Jimmy and Howie and Maxine, the night nurse. And then I knew that Fats's slipping away and leaving me in charge meant that he knew I could handle it, and I felt a warm rush go through me. I could handle it, and although all I wanted to do was to beat the shit out of Howard, I worked on Jimmy until it was clear that he needed to be breathed by a respirator, which meant a TURF to the SICU-Surgical Intensive Care Unit-and as I watched the cheery sadistic surgical resident wheel Jimmy off, Jimmy, who by now was surrounded by so much tubing that he looked like a meat ball in the middle of a plate of spaghetti, I felt great relief, and I heard Howard say, 'Impressive job on a tough case,' and he left and I was filled to my eyeballs with hate.
With the sweat dripping from my brow onto Jimmy's chart and the flu dripping through every muscle and bowel villas in my body, I finished my write-up and sent the Bruiser along with it to the SICU. I sat for a moment musing: Well, this has been the worst night of my life, but now it's over, and now I can go to sleep. They can't get me now. Through the open window came that comforting smell of fresh rain on hot asphalt. The nurse came in and said, 'Mr. Lazarus has just had a bowel movement that is all blood:'
'Hey, that's really funny, Maxine. You got a great sense of humor.'
'No, I'm serious. The bed is solid blood.'
They wanted me to go on, and I could not. The world became the world just before the head?on crash. It could not be what it was. 'I can't do anything more tonight,' I heard myself say. 'I'll see you in the morning.'
'Look, Roy, don't you understand? He's just bled out a gallon of blood. He's lying in it. You're the doctor, and you have to do something for him.'
Filled with hate, trying to get rid of thoughts that Lazarus wanted to die and I wanted him to die and I had to break my ass to stop him from dying, I went into his room and was face to face with black putrid sticky wet blood. On autopilot, I went to work. My last clear memory was putting a naso-gastric tube down into Lazarus' stomach and having the bloody vomit spew up and out and all over me, as Lazarus rolled his death-defying eyes.
Just after Lazarus, just before dawn, Dr. Sanders came back in, bald from the chemotherapy, infected and bleeding, having had to cut short his fishing trip.
'1'm glad you'll be taking care of me again,' he said weakly.
'So am I,' I said, wondering if this admission would be his last, and realizing how attached to him I felt.
'Just remember: no whispering behind my back, Roy. And as for heroic measures-we'll talk about that, together.'
I put him in the same room with Saul the leukemic tailor, thinking that while Sanders would die, Saul might be just old enough to survive. How crazy was that? As I lay down in my spewed clothes for my hour's sleep, I found myself wondering where Molly was, more than where Berry was, and wondered if that meant that it was the beginning of the ROR?Romance On Rocks?and then I thought with pleasure of the phone call I'd gotten at about one A.M. from June, the Runt's poet, wondering if I knew where he was, and I chuckled at that and composed a letter in my head to give the Runt in the morning: 'Congratulations on your bravo three?dimensional night of love. You are herewith charged with rape. Red pubic hairs, I might warn you, will stand up in court.' But then I realized that, Goddamn! the Runt was seeing what Angel did with her mouth while I still hadn't gotten past Molly's long nipples, and then finally I recalled that no one yet knew what Angel did with her mouth because I'd just made that up to torment that optimist Howard, who knew that being a doc really was the cat's balls after all. And I realized that they could never hurt me more than they had just hurt me that night, and that out of chaos like this had to come confidence and skill. Something had happened when I was with Saul and Jimmy and Lazarus and Dr. Sanders,