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
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***MVI***
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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.
