The house of God

convincing almost every Great American by overreaction and gushing paranoiac railing at other Great Americans that he was as guilty as anyone imagined. We were all much relieved that no matter what else, we'd all have Nixon to laugh at and kick around for quite a good while longer. In some ways, after Vietnam, it was just what the country needed: a President so lacking in grace.

In Gomer City, we terns exploded as well. First to go was Eat My Dust Eddie. Bent under his own sado- masochism, he broke. He took himself OTC on every gomer until his service was being run by his BMS, and Eddie would talk about gomers only in terms of 'can I hurt this guy today?' or 'Some of them us to kill them and some of them don't, and I wish they'd make up their minds 'cause it gets confusing.' The BMS couldn't stand the strain and soon gave in to Eddies perverted thoughts, and one day when a particularly recalcitrant gomere shrieked PO?LICEI! PO?LICE! for several hours, Eddie and his BMS borrowed uniforms and appeared at the bedside and said, 'Yes, madam, this is Patrolman Eddie and Officer Katz. What can we do to help?'

'Why are you tormenting them?' Fats would ask.

''Cause they're tormenting me,' Eddie would say, 'they've got me on my knees, do you hear me? ON MY KNEES!'

When his wife started to have labor pains, all hell broke loose. The day his wife delivered, Eddie showed up dressed in his black motorcycle gear: hat and boots and black wraparound reflecting sunglasses and black leather jacket with

***EAT MY DUST***

***EDDIE***

in silver studs on the back, and went around to see his gomers with his flash camera taking portraits 'to remember them by.' The place came apart. Terrified, the gomers began to shriek. The ward began to sound and smell like a zoo. Every House Hierarchy sent a representative and we found Eddie sitting calmly in the on?call room, boots up on the desk, grinning ear to ear and reading Rolling Stone. To any inquiries all he would say was, 'They've broken me. I'm OTC.' Later, when he asked me if I thought he was being unreasonable, against my better judgment, thinking of what he'd said to me when I was banging on the elevator door, I said, 'Unreasonable? Hal I think you were giving them just what they always deserved.'

'He's crazy,' I said to Fats.

'Yeah. Delusional. A paranoid psychosis. It's terrible to watch. Ah, well, Basch, they'll have to give him a rest.'

'They can't,' I said. 'There's no one to fill in for him.'

'No one doesn't need a rest,' said the Leggo to the Fish, as they discussed what to do about Eddie. 'No one at all. Why, look at poor Dr. Putzel. I'll tell Eddie he needs a rest just like everyone else.'

'And who will fill in for him?' asked the Fish.

'Who? Why, the others. My boys will all pitch in and help.'

The next day Eddie was not at the cardflip, and when I called him at home he said, 'I'm OTC for a while. I'm sorry to do this to you guys, but the Leggo won't let me back into the House. He thinks if I stayed there any longer I might kill one of the gomers and the House would get sued. He might just be right.'

'Yeah,' I said, 'let's face it: you were getting close.'

'Wouldn't be a bad idea, though, would it?'

'It's illegal. How's the baby?'

'Oh, you mean the gomere?' Eddie said.

'The gomere?'

'Yeah, the gomere: incontinent of feces and urine, unable to walk or talk, not oriented, and sleeping in restraints at night. The gomere. Room 811. I don't know how she is 'cause they won't let me into the House to see her.'

'They won't let you see your own baby?'

'Yeah. I told them I wanted to take some pictures and they took away my camera, so I'm temporarily OTC with my own baby gomere, too.'

The Fish told Hooper and me that to pitch in and help take up the slack created by Eddies snapping, he and the Leggo had decided that we would be on call every other night for our last weeks on Gomer City but that we get special consideration.

'Oh, Christ,' I said, 'I hope it's not 'the toughies' again.'

'Not the toughies,' said the Fish. 'The 'preferential treatment! '

Preferential treatment was being skipped in the admission rotation once per day. This sounded good until it turned out that skipping a daytime admission resulted in our being awakened at three A.M. for the gomer beelining it in from the Mt. St. Elsewhere via the Grenade Room to Gomer City, courtesy of Marvin and the Blazers. Every other night, this three?A.M. special was the worst. After a week of the preferential treatment Humberto and Teddy and I were going almost as mad as Eddie. Teddy was first to go. His ulcer had started to act up. Muttering something about 'the cramps,' or maybe 'the camps,' he left.

Next to go, for me, was Molly. Strained by Gomer City, my thing with Molly had been fading for months, and when the preferential treatment had me on call for thirty-six hours and off for twelve, outside the House all I did was sleep. Once in a while I'd see Molly on the upstairs ward, and it was clear that she was losing interest in me. One day I found Howard helping her to make up a bed. I was shocked. Hot oil and myrrh for Howie? I asked Molly what was going on.

'Well, yes, I've been seeing Howard Greenspoon. He's the tern on this ward now. I guess I can't understand you anymore, Roy:'

'What do you mean?'

'You've become so cynical. You make fun of these poor patients.'

'Everyone makes fun of these poor patients.'

'Not Howard Greenspoon. He treats them with respect. I mean, it's like you're making fun of what I do. Remember how you walked out of that arrest on the man dying from multiple myeloma?'

'Yeah, but it was a big mess.'

'Maybe, but Howard stayed right until the end.'

'Howie? You and me used to make fun of Howie!' I said.

'Maybe so, but people change, you know. Look: I've had to work hard to get where I am. I can't help it if things always came easy to you, and you just coasted into medicine. When you were getting patted on the head, I was getting whacked by the nuns. Do you know how big and scary a nun all in black is to a little girl? Probably not. Well, Howard says he does.'

'He does?' I said, thinking maybe Howie wasn't a dumb shnook after all.

'He certainly does. He's sincere. No one could call you that.'

'So I've got to hand in my gold cleats, eh?'

'Oh, Roy,' she said, remembering the loving, snuggling up to me, 'I don't know. I still care. I guess it depends on what Howie says: '

Jesus! My myrrh depended on Howie! Howie, the tern who felt like a hero every time he put a feeding tube down someone's demented grandmother, who puffed up with pride when he marched into an elevator filled with nondoctors and heard the whispers, 'There's one of them, a doctor.' Howie, who bought the fantasy that doctors weren't just people, doctors were 'better' people. Howie, who would woo Molly and do all those sexual things he'd only imagined doing, with Molly, and think he loved Molly and get back at his parents by marrying Molly the shiksa nurse and have three kids and then, and then, fifteen years down the pike when Molly awoke and realized that by marrying Howie she was only getting back at the nuns, and what the hell, why not fuck with the macho guy who came to repair her washer?dryer and why not leave Howie, and then, fifteen years down the pike, Howie, awakening to the notion that as a husband-father?lover he'd been screwed by his fanatic dedication to medicine and that even in medicine he couldn't 'cure' anyone of anything, he'd check into the motel room alone and for the first time in his life, in shock, have to haggle out his one real decision: whether or not to peg out painlessly with the five grams of phenobarb he'd lifted from the hospital pharmacy when he'd found out that his wife and kids had left. Should I fight? Should I challenge Howie for Molly? Nah, it was too much of an effort now, and she was right: I'd become too cynical, too destructive for her.

Hyper Hooper and I cried differently from Eat My Dust. Although death and Hooper were still going steady and with Eddie on a pitstop at home Hooper was racing even harder for the Black Crow, under the stress of Gomer