The house of God

particular. I remembered my mother telling me about the time her mother took her and my aunt Lil to watch him, their father, at work: like a bee in a golden metal honeycomb high up in the sky, they saw him etch the sparkling arcs and curved sunbursts on the spire of the Chrysler Building, at the time the tallest in the City, maybe the world. And now, after all these years, I should choose a tooth?

Feeling hopeless, I said, 'I can't see it.'

'I know. It's clear that it's not for you.'

'Well, then, what is?'

'You think I know? Big deal. Fly high. Have a blast, Basch. Great minds?like ours?can't be just one thing.'

'Yeah, but I've got to decide soon,' I said, feeling lost, cast out alone after so many programmed years. 'I don't know what to do.'

'Do? Well, in Brooklyn we always did this,' said Fats, and reached out and hooked my pinkie in his. 'Linking pinkies.'

'Linking pinkies?'

'Sure. That's what we did in Brooklyn whenever we didn't know what to do.'

A joke? No, his face was serious, sincere. I felt his fat pinkie hugging mine. Suddenly I knew what he meant. It was perfect, a magical moment. A tingling current of feeling zinged through me. He'd sensed my emptiness, and he'd responded. His touch meant I wasn't alone. He and I were connected. I squeezed back. It was love. No matter what, Fats and I would be friends.

Laughing, I said, 'You know,' for a fat kid, you don't sweat much.'

'Right. Life's tough, but even a fat kid can fast on Yom Kippur.'

Berry and I were laughing over the lead article in Doctor's Wife, a tribute to a terrific doctor's wife who; 'becoming aware of the depth charges in a doctor's' dinner' such as her terrific doctor hubby getting called out on an emergency case that might keep him away: until his food gets cold, had learned 'a foolproof operation to keep roast beef deliciously rare for hours,' namely, wrapping it in aluminum foil and warming it on a hot plate. I told Berry about my top?bunk posture and asked if she thought it was another regression

'No, I think it's integration, working out what to do with yourself. Now that you know you can be doctor, you've got the option of discarding medicine and moving on. What are you thinking of doing?'

'Going on vacation to France with you. Maybe to taking a year off.'

'But what are you going to tell the Leggo about July?'

'I don't know. I hated this. The whole year sucked.'

'Not true. Fats, the policemen, your buddies?you liked them. And you liked listening to your patients in the Clinic, right?'

'As long as I didn't have to do anything medical, it was fun.'

'In the E.W., you were fascinated by the psych resident, Cohen.' Tantalizingly she asked, 'Why not become a psychiatrist?'

'Me?' I said, surprised. 'A shrink?'

'You.' Looking me squarely in the eyes, she said, 'Being with people was all that kept you going this year, Roy. And 'being with' is the essence of psychiatry.'

CLICK. In my head, CLICK. I asked her to repeat what she'd said.

' 'Being with' is the essence of psychiatry. You've always perched yourself at a slight angle to the universe. Psychiatry might be perfect for you.'

Being with. CLICK. Dr. Sanders, dying, telling me that what doctors did was to 'be with' patients. 'You mean 'being with' patients?'

'I mean being with,' she said. 'Even being with your family.'

Family? My grandfather, TURFED to rot in a home, never again to be with anyone: my father?

. . There is nothing more comforting during illness than a loved one to be with you and a good physician can serve that role .

'You're saying that psychiatry really offers something to patients? That it's different from medicine in that you can cure?'

'Sometimes. If you catch a life early, yes.'

'So the big thing is that you can offer something to patients?' '

'No. You can offer something to yourself.'

Stunned, I asked her: 'What can you offer to yourself?'

'Growth. Instead of forgetting, you'd try to remember. Instead of defensive, obsessive superficiality, you'd try to become open, looser, deep. You'd create. Your only tool as a therapist is who you are and who you might become.'

It was hard for me to think. Somehow, in the chaos, something was clearing. I might become someone I might not despise? Escape being strapped into the rocker of past, culling my memories for trinkets? Be rid of my avoiding, my exploding, my contempt? Trembling, I asked her if there was anything I could start to read.

'Freud. Start with Mourning and Melancholia. In it Freud says, 'The shadow of the lost object falls across the ego.' You've been under that shadow for a solid Year.'

'What shadow?'

'You. The shadow of yourself:'

My lacuna of humanity, my Berry. How I'd grown to love her, my accepting, caring, clear?sighted soft one, during this abrasive year.

'I love you,' I said. 'I lived through this nightmare because you were with me.'

'Yes, partly. And you're right: this internship has been like the stuff of dreams, like the overpowering nightmares of childhood: aggression, fear of retaliation, and then the resolution, where you don't win, you live. It's the straight Oedipal theme: mother, father, child.'

. . Hope you are finishing up well and glad to be finished with your experience. Could not understand your premise that now you can handle all medical problems and there is so much to know. I am very worried over the worldwide economic situation meaning the inability of the brains of the world to solve inflation and the monetary crisis and it is not even worth having money the bank. I don't know what mother told you but I know it was basic and true. I know you care for us as a son and that will never change. Distance and circumstance have interfered with our keeping close, and that is inevitable in this day and age. Would love to play golf with my son number one again and that is just a hope. Mom really has such a short controlled swing and it is a picture. My passion for the game is unlimited and I do enjoy it . . .

24

Disillusioned, not wanting to go on as House residents but not knowing what to do, we needed help. We turned to Fats. At the ten?o'clock meal, we asked him what we should do.

'About what?'

'About what specialty to go into on July the first.'

'Do what's always done nowadays,' said Fats, 'do a colloquium. Never fails.'

'What on?' asked Eddie, his eyes a bit dull, tranquilized.

'On 'How to Choose a Specialty,' what else?'

'Who the hell's gonna run it?' asked the Runt.

'Who?' asked Fats. smiling. 'Me. The star of the bowel run of the stars.'

Word spread rapidly. On the day, from all over the House of God, terns and BMSs appeared. Even Gilheeny and Quick were there. The crowded room hushed, and the Fat Man began: 'The whole pattern of medical education is backwards: by the time we realize we're not going to be TV docs undressing ripe-titted beauties, but rather House docs disimpacting gomers, we've invested too much to quit, and we wind up like you poor slobs: stuck. The sequence of training should be reversed: on day one, bring the puking BMSs right into the House of God and rub their noses in Olive O.: turn off potential surgeons with her humps, potential internal?medicine red?hots with her numbers incompatible with life and her inability to be cured or dead; even potential gynecologists will take one look