The house of God

'Never mind. Go away'

Angry and jealous, I watched them walk off, and I yelled after them, 'You got shit looking at shit, that's what!'

Fats turned and angrily said, 'Don't talk like that.'

'Hurt your feelings, Fats?'

'No, but it hurts hers. You can't use our inside jokes with the ones outside all this, the ones like her.'

'Sure you can,' I said, 'they need to see?'

'THEY DON'T!' yelled Fats. 'They don't need to, and they don't want to. Some things have to be kept private, Basch. You think parents want to hear schoolteachers making fun of their kids? Use your damn head. You got a good woman here, and believe me they're not easy to find and keep, especially if you're a doctor. It makes me angry to see the way you treat her.'

An hour later they paged me to come in. It felt like a military tribunal. Berry said she and Fats were worried about me, about my bitter sarcasm and rage.

'I thought you told me to express what I feel,' I said.

'In words,' said Berry, 'not in acts. Not in taking it out on patients and doctors-Fats told me about your rumor about Dr. Putzel.'

'They'll get you, Roy,' said Fats, 'you'll get it in the neck.'

'They can't do anything to me. They can't run the House without interns. I can do whatever I want. I'm indispensable. Invulnerable'

'It's dangerous. Externalization is a brittle defense.'

'Here we go again,' I said. 'What's externalization?'

'Seeing the conflict as outside of you. The problem isn't outside of you, it's inside. When you see that, something's going to snap:'

'That's the way it's gotta be, to survive.'

'It's not. Look at Fats?he's got a healthy way of dealing with this incredible situation. He uses compassion, humor. He can laugh.'

'I can laugh,' I said, 'I laugh too:'

'No you don't. You scream.'

'You're the one who used to call him cynical, sick. And he's the one who taught me to call these nice of people 'gomers.' '

'He hasn't killed off the caring part of himself. You have.'

'Look,' said Fats seriously, 'let's stop, eh? We can't tell him what to do. If you can imagine it, last year, I was a helluva lot worse than him, and nobody could tell me anything. Even last July I was worse. This year is yours, Roy. I know how it is?it's hell.'

'This Putzel thing scares me,' said Berry.

'Because every day he stands in front of his mirror and straightening his bowtie, he says to himself: You know, Putzie?poops, you are one great physician. Not a good physician, no. A great physician.' I hate him. You think you're scared? You should see him. Shaking in his shoes! Ready to crackl HA!'

'It's not Putzel, it's you,' said Berry. 'You hate something inside of you. Get it?'

'I don't, and it's not. Fats knows what an asshole Putzel is.'

'Don't do it, Roy,' said Berry, 'you'll only hurt yourself.'

'Fats?'

'Putzel's a turkey,' said Fats, 'a money?grubbing, incompetent piece of dreck. True. But he's not the monster you make him out to be. He's a harmless wimp. I feel sorry for him. Lay off. Whatever you're planning, don't do it.'

I did it. I'd given the rumor a week to gnaw on Putzel. My time had come. I found Putzel holding a Rose's hand, and I crept up in back of him. I whispered in his ear: 'I've had it with you, Putzel. Within the next twenty?four hours, I swear it, I'm going to do you in.'

Putzel leaped up off the bed, gave me a panic-stricken look, and ran out of the room. I walked out into the corridor and watched the little emperor of the bowel run, keeping his back to the walls and intermittently ducking into doorways as if he were afraid of a bullet, race off down the hall. I ambled off toward rounds.

I never made it. Two Bouncers from House Security attacked me, twisted my arms behind me, and carried me into the on?call room. They stood me up against the wall and frisked me for a weapon and sat me down facing Lionel, the Fish, Fats, and, quaking in a corner, Putzel. 'Hey, what the hell's going on?' I asked. Everyone looked at Putzel until he said, 'I heard a rumor about some intern was going to kill me and then . . . and then he whispered in my ear that in the next twenty?four hours he was going to do me in.'

I waited until the silence had become unbearable and then in a calm voice I said, 'What did you say?'

'You said you were going to . . . to do me in.'

'Dr. Putzel,' I asked incredulously, 'have you gone mad?'

'You said it! I heard you say it! Don't deny it to me!'

I denied it to him, said that anyone who thought that an intern in the Hous of God would threaten to kill a Private Doctor of the House of God had gone mad and told the Bouncers to let me go.

'No! Don't let him go!' screamed Putzel, hugging the wall like a terrified maniac.

'Look,' I said, 'I'm just an intern trying to do my job. I can't take responsibility for that nut. See you later, eh?'

'NO! NOOooo!' wailed Putzel, rolling his eyes like a nut.

'What do you think we should do?' the Bouncers asked the Fish.

'I don't know,' said the Fish. 'Fats?'

'I've never seen anything like this,' said Fats. 'One thing's for sure: Dr. Putzel is acting mighty strange.'

'It's the strangest thing,' said the Leggo, as I sat in his office, which was the only place they'd decided it was safe to send me, 'yes, the strangest . . :' and he drifted off into that place out his window where the answers to strange things might be found. 'I mean, you didn't in fact threaten to kill?no, of course you didn't!' said the Leggo, his consternation turning his horrific birthmark even more purple.

'How could I have, sir?'

'Exactly. It's extraordinary.'

'Can I speak in confidence?'

'Fire away,' he said, bracing himself for yet another shock.

'To me, this means that Dr. Putzel is a sick man:'

'Sick? A House Private sick, Roy?'

'Overworked. Needs a rest. And who doesn't, sir? Who doesn't?'

The Chief paused, as if perplexed, and then brightened and came up with the answer: 'Why, no one doesn't. No one doesn't at all. I'll tell Dr. Putzel he needs a rest just like everyone else. Thanks, Roy, and keep right on in there plugging.'

'Plugging? For what?'

'For what? Why . . . why, for the Awards. Yes, keep plugging for the Awards.'

I felt good. Maybe I even felt grand. My only twinge of regret was that I had stepped out on my own, leaving behind Berry and Fats, the ones who claimed to care, the ones I'd counted on to save me.

17

It was all the rage, that Watergate March, and many Great Americans took the opportunity to explode. Jane Doe, bloated and floated by the infusion of that VA antibiotic, started with a little squeeping fart caught on the Fat Man's alert stopwatch, and then with the rest of us watching, went on to rage at us with a great cacophony of orchestrated farts and then liquid farts and finally a blasting of her bowels and a continual gushing of what seemed like eternal stool. Richard Nixon, bloated by power and doubt, started with a little bark when named by Judge Sirica as unindicted co?conspirator of the Watergate Boys, went on to rage in a farting cornucopia on national TV,