and calves all the way up to where all seams meet. She wore no slip, and through her starched white dress I could see the bright patterns on her panties. She knew they would show through. Through her dress showed her bra strap, with its pleading unhookable hook. Her back was to us. Who could know about the front? I half?wished she would never turn around, never spoil the imagined breasts, the imagined face.
'Hey, man, that's somethin' else.'
'I love nurses,' I said.
'Well, man, what is it about nurses?'
'It must be all that white.'
She turned around. I gasped. I blushed. From her ruffled front unbuttoned down past her clavicular notch showing her cleavage, to her full tightly held breasts, from the red of her nail polish and lipstick to the blue of her lids and the black of her lashes and even the twinkly gold of the little cross from her Catholic nursing school, she was a rainbow in a waterfall. After a day in the hot smelly House, after a day of being whacked by the Privates and the Slurpers and the gomers, she was a succulent chilled wedge of an orange squirting in my mouth. She came over to us.
'I'm Molly.'
'Gurl, the name's Chuck'
Thinking to myself is it true what they say about interns and nurses, I said, 'I'm Roy.'
'This your first day, guys?'
'Yeah. I was just thinkin' of joinin' the army instead.'
'I'm new too,' Molly said. 'Started just last month. Scary, eh?'
'No foolin',' said Chuck.
'Hang in there, guys, we'll make it. See ya round the campus, eh?'
Chuck looked at me and I looked at him, and he said, 'Sure does make you glad to be spendin' time in here makin' it with the gomers, don't it?'
We watched Molly disappear down the corridor. She stopped to say hello to Potts, who was talking to a young Czech patient, a man yellow from liver disease. The Yellow Man flirted with Molly, and then ogled her as she, giggling, wiggled down the corridor. Potts came over to us and picked up the lab results from the morning.
'Lazlow's liver functions are getting worse,' he said.
'He looks mighty yellow,' said Chuck. 'Lemmee see. Too high. If I was you, Potts, I'd give him some roids.'
'Roids?'
'Steroids, man, steroids. Whose patient is he, anyhow?'
'He's mine. He's too poor to afford a Private doctor'
'Well, I'd give him the roids. Never know if he don't have fulminant necrotic hepatitis. If'n he does, unless you hit him with the roids now, he's gonna die.'
'Yeah,' said Potts, 'but the tests aren't that high, and steroids have a lot of side effects. I'd just as soon wait a day.'
'Suit yourself. Looks awful yellow, though, don't he?'
Thinking about what the Fat Man said about the young dying, I got up to do some work. When. I returned to the nursing station I saw two LOLs in NAD peering through their thick cataract?defying glasses at the blackboard on which were written the names of the new interns on the ward. They mentioned my name, and I asked them if they were looking for me. Tiny, a foot below me, huddled together, they peered up at me. 'Oh, yes,' said one.
'Oh, aren't you the tall young doctor.'
'Handsome and tall,' said the other. 'Yes, we want to hear the news about our brother Itzak.'
'Itzak Rokitansky. The professor. Brilliant, he was.'
'How is he, Dr. Basch?'
I felt trapped, not knowing what to say. Fighting the impulse to say PURRTY GUD, I said, 'Well . . . I've only been here a day. It's too early to tell. We'll wait and see.'
'It's his brain,' said one. 'His marvelous brain. We're glad you'll be taking care of him, and we'll look for you tomorrow. We visit every day.'
'We spend much of our time now visiting the ones who are ill. Good?bye, Dr. Basch. Thank you so much.'
I left them, and noticed them pointing at me to each other, pleased that I would be their brother's doctor. I was moved. I was a doctor. For the first time that day, I felt excited, proud. They believed in me, in my art. I would take care of their brother, and them. Take care of the whole world, why not? I marched down the hallway with pride. I fingered the chrome of my stethoscope with a certain expertise. Like I knew what I was doing. Far? out.
It didn't last. I got more and more tired, more and more caught up in the multitudinous bowel runs and lab tests. The jackhammers of the Wing of Zock had been wiggling my ossicles for twelve hours. I hadn't had time for breakfast, lunch, or dinner and there was still more work to do. I hadn't even had time for the toilet, for each time I'd gone in, the grim beeper had routed me out. I felt discouraged, worn. Before he left for the day, the Fat Man came by and asked if there was anything else I wanted to talk about.
'I don't get it,' I said. 'This isn't medicine, this isn't what I signed up for. Not writing orders for cleanouts for the bowel run.'
'Bowel runs are important,' said Fats.
'But aren't there any normal medical patients?'
'These are normal medical patients.'
'They can't be. Hardly any of them are young:'
'Sophie's young; she's sixty?eight.'
'Between the old people and the bowel runs, it's crazy. It's not at all what I expected when I walked in here this morning.'
'I know. It's not what I expected either. We all expect the American Medical Dream?the whites, the cures, the works. Modern medicine's different: it's Potts being socked by Ina. Ina, who should have been allowed to die eight years ago, when she asked, in writing, in her New Masada chart. Medicine is 'bedrest until complications,' Blue Cross payments for holding hands, and all the rest you've seen today, with the odd Leo thrown in to die.'
Thinking of the Rokitansky girls, I said, 'You're too cynical.'
'Did Potts get socked by Ina, or did he not?'
'He did, but all of medicine isn't like that.'
'Right. In the teeth of our expertise, the ones our age die.'
Cynic.
'Ah, yes,' said Fats, eyes twinkling, 'no one wants you to know all this yet. That's why they wanted you to start with Jo, and not me. I wish I could lie. Doesn't matter, 'cause I can't discourage you yet. Like sex, you gotta find it out for yourself. So why don't you go home?'
'I've got some work to do'
'Well, you won't believe this either, but most of the work you do doesn't matter. For the care of these gomers, it doesn't matter a damn. But do you know to whom you're saying goodbye?'
I did not.
'To the potential father of the Great American Medical Invention. Dr. Jung's. More money than in the bowel run of the stars.'
'What the hell is this invention, anyway?'
'You'll see,' said Fats, 'you will see.' '
He left. I felt scared without him, and troubled by what he'd said. Got to find it out for myself? In fifth grade, when I'd asked an Italian kid why he liked having sex, he'd said, ''Cause it feels good.' I couldn't understand someone doing something because it felt good. What sense was there in that?
Just before I left I wanted to say good?bye to Molly. I found her carrying a bedpan toward the disposal. I walked with her, the shit sloshing in the pan, and said, 'It's not a very romantic way to meet someone.'
'The romantic way has gotten me into all kinds of trouble in the past,' she said. 'This is much more realistic.'
I said good night and drove home. The sun was a foreign diseased thing, glowering down a hot red
