peering at us suspiciously from under a pair of pink silk women's panties he was wearing on his head. Cohen reappeared and tried to talk with him, but gave up, and when I asked him what was going on, he said, 'Paranoid homosexual panic; stay away from him. Tincture of time. We wait.' Cohen started in on a 'Jesus Christ' and I went to see a 'Son of Charlie Chaplin' who had intractable headache and demanded codeine and whom I TURFED back out to the street. I began to realize how many of these people needed Cohen more than they needed me. During a break, as I watched Elihu using what he called 'the standard method' of awakening a Pantagruelian drunk Norwegian?shoving ice cubes against his balls?the nurse said there was a man I'd better see right away, his blood pressure being 'patent pending over 150.'
'Patent pending over 1507 What the hell's that?'
'At the top of the scale where the mercury ends, the machine says 'patent pending.' The highest it goes.'
A new House record. The Norwegian awoke from his stupor, screamed YOU BASTARD YOU KISS MY ROYAL NORWEGIAN ASS, and began to chase Elihu around the nursing station. Gath and I hoped he would catch him. I went and saw the man with the patent?pending blood pressure. He was a fat black guy with a nervous look in his eyes, swollen ankles, wet lungs, and a terrible headache. He let me put in an IV and when I informed him that at any moment his brain?stem arteries could explode, he agreed to come into the House. He then ripped out my IV and spurting blood, said that first he had to 'take care of some business' involving a silver Cadillac and two women, and ambled out. Claiming the House record for the highest blood pressure TURFED to the street did not harm my reputation as a WALL.
Toward eleven, something marvelous happened: a run of erotica. One of the few true pleasures of doctoring, when, with the excuse of a medical degree I could move past the fantasy of mentally undressing sexy women, and really do it. I started with a Persian princess and ended with a lonely oral collegian who, unable to choose between her father and her boyfriend, had suddenly developed difficulty swallowing which, obtained for her on this lonely Saturday night one young Jewish doctor, making bona fide medico?erotic contact with her mouth tongue tonsillar pillars naso? oro? pharynx neck throat clavicle rib cage breast even nipple, why not?
The most remarkable woman was Danish. Glittering white of tooth, blond of hair, blond of eyelash, which meant blond of pubic hair, pink of chill winter cheek blue fjord of eye, she was dressed in a slinky go wraparound which left one shoulder bare, two nipples poking. And a partridge in a pear tree. Her chief complaint: 'crick in my neck, going around to my breast. Delight delight. I joked, flirted, asked the history this crick and this breast. I had to decide whether not to have her undress for me. I hesitated. The tension rose. In the silence she looked at me quizzically. Now I'd really blown it. I blushed, but said, 'I'd better have a better look. Would you mind changing into this hospital gown?'
She looked me in the eye, and paused, and I thought: Oh, no, big trouble, now I've done it, she's gonna report me to somebody, and I saw tomorrow's headline: NORWEGIAN SAILOR SLAYS TERN IN HOUSE OF GOD? CRIME DE PASSION ALLEGED STATUESQUE DANE.
'But of course,' she said, smiling a blue blond smile.
She knew and was going to play along! I went to the other side of the curtain, where there was another young woman, with a nurse, and I asked what the trouble was, and the nurse said, 'Overdose of dog food.'
'Oh?' I asked cockily. 'And what's the usual dose of dog food?'
I started to examine the dog food, who presented a different erotic aspect: drowsy, stripped unashamedly to the waist, she was vomiting. As I put my stethoscope on her chest, something in the mirror between the curtains caught my eye: I could see into the other. cubicle, where the Dane was undressing. Carefully, delicately, she unhooked her clinging gold dress and unwrapped it. She sat there on the stretcher, naked but for her gold panties, and then she stretched out her arms in a yawn. The pounding in my temporal arteries seemed to echo off the tile walls. She shivered in the chill, and hugged herself. Her nipples were tense brown buttons in the smooth silk flow of her breasts. Just before she reached for the House nightie, she looked down at her nipples, a child looking at two exciting toys, and with a feather?down touch gave each nipple a slow circular caress, the slow circular movement of a pelvis, of a thigh. Well, at that touch everything?her nipples, my putt, the House stethoscope-leaped up ensemble like hungry Jews at the last prayer of the fast of Yom Kippur. Suffused with a lover's anticipation, I prolonged the dog?food exam and then walked into the room containing the Dane and found myself ridiculously asking, 'How are they?'
'They?'
'The pains in the neck?'
'Oh, yes. The same.'
'Let me undo this,' I said, untying her House nightie and dropping it to her waist. 'Let me examine you.'
As I let myself enjoy her, my hands and head wandered. I felt the sexual attraction bubbling up around us, reflecting prismatic elastic soap bubbles of erotica floating around us, glistening and gliding, straining and popping, all in an act of love. My palm on her pink cheek, testing the pain when the
'Dr. Basch,' she said as I reluctantly finished, and watching her cover her breasts again, told her to take two aspirin and wanted to tell her to call me in the morning, 'can I ask you something?'
ANYTHING. PERHAPS THAT NEAT YOUNG KIPPER IN MY PANTS.
'Is it hard for you to see so much . . . disease all the time?'
'Yes, it is,' I said, struggling with how to ask her out.
'You're attracted to me, I can tell.'
WELL, YA FOUND ME OUT!
'And I like you. You have good hands: gentle, but strong.'
IT'S FINALLY GONNA HAPPEN LIKE IN THE BOOKS.
'What a shame I'm flying to Copenhagen tomorrow, yes?'
OWWWwww.
'Wal, rump buddie, how'd ya like 'em, eh?' asked Gath, sitting down with me at the nursing station.
'Incredible. What a run of luck, eh?'
'Luck, hell. I was out theah triagin'-above the waist to you, below the waist to Elihu. All this greeny, creamy twat cain't hurt his sex life none, can it? Hot damn! Would you look at that?Crazy Abe came back! Abie baby is back!'
He was. With that electric glint in his eye, Abe waved to us from just inside the automatic doors. Flash ran up and hugged him, and the spirits of the nurses lifted. What a wonderful night! When a lost old man finds his way out of the wilderness into the House of God, who could not be glad?
Before midnight, I was sitting with the policemen. Cohen joined us, filling out the data on a young schizophrenic who had come in comatose, having inhaled the contents of an aerosol can of Ban spray deodorant.
'Hello, Dr. Jeffrey Cohen,' blared Gilheeny, and then, turning to me, said, 'You will forgive us focusing on Cohen, but we must take advantage of his being on call only once per seven nights. A much more human schedule than yours, Dr. Basch, proving Dr. Cohen's wisdom in choosing psychiatry, and proving the maxim of Dr. Cohen's hometown: 'You can take the boy out of South Philadelphia, but you can never take South Philadelphia out of the boy.'
Stunned by the idea of being on call once in seven nights, I listened as Gilheeny asked Cohen, 'What remarkable depth of the human mind have you plunged tonight? And what is your total idea about our young schizoid inhaling the Ban?'
'Problems of closeness,' said Cohen, 'define schizophrenia. All of us, as Freud noted, suffer egodystonic neurotic conflicts.'
'As you have told us,' said Quick, 'you never outgrow your need for neurosis.'
'True,' said Cohen, 'but the schizophrenic's struggles are much earlier, pregenital, centering around personal boundaries-how close to get to someone before being consumed. I gave him some Stelazine.'
