The house of God

Teddy turned out to be one of the horde of patients who loved Fats. A concentration?camp survivor, Teddy had been brought into the House E.W. bleeding out from an ulcer one night when Fats was on call. Fats had TURFED him to surgery, and, losing half his stomach, Teddy was convinced that Fats had saved his life. Teddy 'owns a deli and is lonely so he comes in when I'm on call, with a bag of food. I deck him out in whites and a stethoscope, and he pretends he's a doctor. Sweet guy, Teddy.' Sure enough, as Fats and I and Humberto, my Mexican?American BMS, sat down in the TV room to watch the MGM lion begin to roar, in walked a thin, worried? looking fellow in shabby black, in one hand a radio spewing a melancholic Schumann, and in the other a big paper bag splotched with grease. As Moses grew from being a baby bulrushing around the Italian extras to being a six? foot?three Egyptian red?hot looking like Charlton Heston, Fats and I and Teddy and Humberto ran the ward via the Bell Telephone System. Just about the time that God, playing doctor, handed down the Ten 'Commandments, saying, 'Take these two tablets and call me in the morning,' Harry the Horse had chest; pain. I sent Humberto to take an EKG, and when he returned, without looking at it Fats said it was 'an ectopic nodal pacemaker taking over from the sinus node and producing chest pain.' He was right.

'Of course I'm right. Harry's Private, Little Otto has worked out a method to keep Harry here indefnitely: whenever Harry's ready to be TURFED, Otto tells him he's leaving, Harry wills his heart into that crazy rhythm with chest pain, and Otto tells him he's staying. Harry's the only man in history to ha conscious control of his A?V node.'

'The A?V node is never under conscious control,' I said.

'For Harry the Horse, it is'

'So how do we get him to leave?'

'By telling him he can stay.'

'But then he'll stay forever.'

'So? So what? He's a landsman, a brother. Nice man.'

'So you don't have to take care of him, I do,' I said, irritated.

'He's no work for you. Let him stay. He loves it here. Who doesn't?'

'I do,' said Teddy. 'Here was the best six weeks of mine life.'

As The Ten Commandments finished, we got a call for an admission from the E.W., and Fats gathered us to him and said, 'Men, pray that this is our sleep ticket.'

'What?' asked Teddy. 'You need a ticket to sleep here?'

'We need an admission around eleven that's not too much work, so we can get to bed and the rotation doesn't hand us another admission at four A.M. Pray, men, pray, to Moses and Israel and Jesus Christ and the entire Mexican nation.'

He heard. Bernard was a young eighty?three, not a gomer, and able to talk. He'd been transferred from MBH, the House's rival. Founded in Colonial times by the WASPs, the insemination of MBH by nonWASPs had taken place only mid?twentieth century with the token multidextrous Oriental surgeon, and, finally, with the token red?hot internal?medicine Jew. Yet MBH was still Brooks Brothers, while the House was still Garment District. For Jews at MBH the password was 'Dress British, Think Yiddish.' It was rare to get a TURF from the MBH to the House, and the Fat Man was curious: 'Bernard, you went to the MBH, they did a great work?up, and you told them, after they got done, you wanted to be transferred here. Why

'I rilly don't know,' said Bernard.

'Was it the doctors there? The doctors you didn't like?'

'The doctus? Nah, the doctus I can't complain.'

'The tests or the room?'

'The tests or the room? Vell, nah, about them I can't complain.'

'The nurses? The food?' asked Fats, but Bernard shook his head no. Fats laughed and said, 'Listen, Bernie, you went to the MBH, they did this great work up, and when I asked you why you came to the House of God, all you tell me is, 'Nah I can't complain.' So why did you come here? Why, Bernie, why?'

'Vhy I come heah? Vell,' said Bernie, 'heah I can complain.'

As I headed to bed on the ward, the night nurse came up to me and asked me to do her a favor. I wasn't in the mood, but asked what it was.

'That woman transferred from surgery yesterday, Mrs. Stein.'

'Metastatic cancer,' I said, 'inoperable. What about it?'

'She knows that the surgeons opened her, took a look, and then just sewed her up:'

'Yeah?'

'Well, she's asking what that means, and her Private won't tell her. I think that someone should tell her, that's all.'

Not wanting to face it, I said, 'It's her Private's job, not mine.'

'Please,' said the nurse, 'she wants to know; some one has to?'

'Who's her Private?' asked Fats.

'Putzel.'

'Oh. It's OK, Roy, I'll take care of it myself.'

'You? Why?'

''Cause that worm Putzel will never tell her. I'm in charge of the ward, I'll take care of it. Go to sleep.'

'But I thought you're telling me and Eddie not make waves.'

'Right. This is different?this woman needs to know.'

I watched him enter her room and sit on the bed.

The woman was forty. Thin and pale, she blended with the sheets. I pictured her spine X rays: riddled with cancer, a honeycomb of bone. If she moved too suddenly, she'd crack a vertebra, sever her spinal cord, paralyze herself. Her neck brace made her look more stoic than she was. In the midst of her waxy face, her eyes seemed immense. From the corridor I watched her ask Fats her question, and then search him for his answer. When he spoke, her eyes pooled with tears. I saw the Fat Man's hand reach out and, motherly, envelop hers. I couldn't watch. Despairing, I went to bed.

At four A.M. I was awakened for an admission. Cursing, I wobbled into the E.W. cubicle and found Saul the leukemic tailor, at whose remission in October we'd wept with joy. Saul was dying. As if enraged at the delay in its onrush to death, Saul's marrow had gone wild, spitting out deformed cancerous bone cells that left Saul delirious with fever, oozing blood, anemic, in pain, and, where the malignant white cells had failed to prevent the spread of his normal skin flora, his body coated with maggoty pustules of staphlococcus. Too weak to move, too mad to cry, gums swollen and tongue bruised, he shooed away his wife and motioned me to bend down to him, and whispered, 'Dis is it, Dr. Basch, right? Dis is the end?'

'We can try for another remission,' I said, not believing it.

'Don't talk to me remission. Dis is hell. Listen —I want you to finish me off.'

'What?'

'Finish me off. I'm dead, so let me die. I didn't want no treatment?she forced me. I'm ready, you're my doctor, so give me something to finish me off, OK?'

'I can't do that, Saul.'

'Crap. Remember Sanders? I was dere, next bed. I saw. Suffered? Terrible. Don't make me go like him. So? You want me to sign something, I sign. Do it.'

'I can't, Saul, you know that.'

'So find me someone who will.'

'I promise you'll have no pain. That's the best can do.'

'Pain? What about pain inside, in my heart? What do I have to do, Dr. Basch,' he said angrily, 'beg? You don't want me to suffer like Sanders. You liked him too, I know.'

I looked into his bloodshot eyes, the infection creeping over the lids toward the conjuctival vessels that were pale because there were so few red cells, and I wanted to say, No, I don't want you to suffer, Saul, I want you to die easy.

'Dere, see? It's a cinch. Please, finish me off.'

As I continued to protest, remembering how Sanders had suffered and died, a horrible thought crossed my mind, horrible because for an instant it didn't see horrible, like seeing a baby and thinking of putting icepick through