gonna make the fortoona.'
'Fresh fruit is God's own cathartic,' said Gra 'and we hope that this is the opposite. It's completely organic. Like laetrile.'
I asked Fats about this research at the VA, and he told me that some 'shyster' there had gotten 'a government grant' to try out a new antibiotic on eternal guinea pigs, the shell?shocked derelict vets. The Fat Man had contracted with the shyster to get a percentage for every vet he'd put on the antibiotic, so Fats had put them all on it.
'How'd it work?' I asked, realizing as soon said it that it was a dumb question, since it hadn't been given to work on anything.
'Great,' said Fats, 'except for one thing: the side effect.'
'Side effect?'
'Yeah, see, it wiped out the intestinal flora, and one of the latent intestinal viruses took over and produced an incredible diarrhea that nothing can control. Nothing yet, that is. So we've got high hopes for this extract, see?'
'Yeah, but what's a little diarrhea?' Hooper asked.
'A little diarrhea?' said Fats, eyes widening. 'A little . . .' And he dissolved into laughter, jolly chubby gusts of laughter that got bigger and bigger until he was holding onto his gut as if it would break apart and slop all over the tile floor, and Gracie and I and Eddie and Hooper laughed, and with tears in his eyes Fats finally took us aside and said, 'Not a little diarrhea, men, a big diarrhea. A big contagious diarrhea. This first half of TBC, this VA antibiotic, can produce a diarrhea in anyone's bowels. If I had known how bad the side effect would be, I never would have done it. That's why I gotta find the second half, the cure. You see, this diarrhea's the most contagious and uncontrollable son of a bitch in the whole wide GI world.'
At the end of the day I went to sign out to EMD, who was on call. I asked how it was going.
'Compared to California, it sucks. My third admission is on her way. I'm already on my knees.'
Why?'
'She's on her way from Albany. Three hundred miles. In a taxi.'
'In a taxi?'
'In a taxi. A totally demented wiped?out gomere who, according to the scouting report, has not urinated in weeks and is too demented to sign her informed consent for dialysis, who tormented her family to the point where they surreptitiously TURFED her into a slow?moving cab in Albany and who's been making her way here since noon. She's being sent here for dialysis.'
'If she won't sign there, what makes them think she'd sign here?'
''Cause like you said: 'Sweetheart, here it's Gomer City.' She's gonna be a special private patient of the Leggo's. It's the greatest day of her life.'
On my drive home, the sun wore that harsh steely look of tired midwinter, slashing and aslant, enraged at the gray of the ice. I felt cold, unsheltered, perplexed. I had high hopes that the Fat Man would save me, and yet here he was telling me not to get angry at the Blazer.
'He told me to cool it, and I don't feel like cooling it,' I told Berry. 'I mean, you're always telling me to express my feelings, and I worry that if I cool it I'll it I'll go nuts. How can I listen to both of you?'
'Maybe there's some common ground,' said Berry, 'But I can see how you'd be scared to try and survive there if you and he are at odds. What does he say about all the gomers?'
Realizing with sadness that now even Berry had sucked into calling these pitiful old ones 'gomers,' said, 'He says he loves 'em.'
'That's just being counterphobic. Secondary narcissism.'
'What's all that?'
'Counterphobic is when you do what you're most scared of doing, the guy who's afraid of heights becoming a bridge painter. Primary narcissism, like with Narcissus at the Pool, is when he tries to love himself but he can't embrace his own refection, and he fails. Secondary narcissism is where he embraces others; they love him for it, and he loves himself even more. The Fat Man is embracing the gomers:'
'He's embracing the gomers?'
'And everybody loves him for it.'
. . . Everybody loves the doctor and I'm by now your patients do love you. Hope you busy and know you are doing a terrific job. Watched the Knicks on cable TV and they prove that basketball is essentially a team game . . .
Fats had called us his 'A Team.' And yet what kind of team would it be if its ***MVI*** began questioning its coach?
15
'I want to eat,' said Tina, the woman sent in the taxi.
'You can't eat,' said Eat My Dust Eddie.
'I want to eat.'
'You can't eat.'
'Why can't I eat?'
'Your kidneys don't work.'
'They do.'
'They don't.'
'They do.'
'They don't. When was the last time you peed?'
'I don't remember.'
'See? They don't.'
'I want to eat.'
'If your kidneys don't work, you can't eat! You're gonna sign up for dialysis and have a rotten life.'
'Then I want to die.'
'Now you are talkin', lady, now you are talkin'!' said EMD, and slipping past the Albany cabbie, who was trying to collect his two?hundred?dollar?plus?tip fare, Eddie and I left Tina and sat down to the Fat Man's cardflip.
'Card one,' said Fats, 'Golda M.?'
'Great case,' said Eddie, 'the Lady of the Lice. Seventy?nine?year?old admitted from the floor of her room; found grimacing like
'Lice?'
'Right. The creeping cooties. Nurses refuse to enter her room.'
'OK,' said Fats, 'no problem. The way to TURF her is to find the cancer or find the allergy. We need skin tests: TB, monilia, strep, flyshit, egg foo yong, the works. One positive skin test explains the nodes, and it's a TURF back to the floor of her room.'
'Putzel, her Private, says he won't let this poor old lady go back there. He demands that we find placement.'
'Swell,' said Fats, 'I'll call Selma. Next? Sam Levin?'
'By the way,' said EMD, 'I didn't have a chance to tell Putzel about the cooties. He's in there now.'
A creeping coup.
'Sam's an eighty?two?year?old demented derelict living alone in a rooming house, picked up by the police for loitering. When the cops asked him where he lived, he said 'Jerusalem,' and then he pretended to faint, so they TURFED him here. Severe diabetes. He's a well-known pervert. Chief complaint is, 'I'm hungry.''
'Of course he's hungry,' said Fats, 'his diabetes is burning his own body for fuel. Lice and perversion? What are the Jews coming to?'
'To the Black Crow,' said Hooper.
