Twelve

I met Martin Baum when Romona walked down the hall of Orthopedics with him in tow. He wore a tan manager's smock, and looked suave and old-fashioned, like Rudy Vallee. His black hair had a spectacular rolling curl, and his clothes and shoes were expensive. Romona said Martin would be taking over Ed's position on the eleventh and twelfth floors. Dr. Rocks and Normal Cane had wanted Ed's head because of the missing equipment during the cartoid blow, but she'd managed to get him transferred to other units. There was also a problem, she said, with missing drugs. Since so many people had access to the drugs, it was difficult to determine who the culprit was, but suspicion pointed to Ed Grabowski.

"That's ridiculous," I said. "Ed doesn't take drugs. All he cares about is corpses."

"I know that, and you know that," she said, "but Norm Cane and the boys from Security have their own ideas. They're going to be snooping around, so watch your step."

Romona's warning was given from the heart. All of us took home some extra drugs now and then, especially those left over when a patient was discharged. They were supposed to be sent back for credit, but usually they would gather for a couple of days at the back of the unit before anyone got around to doing so. Meanwhile, they were open game, and nurses, doctors, clerks, and everyone else helped themselves. Usually it was sleeping pills, and Romona filched them, too.

"How do you like the job so far?" I asked Martin.

"It seems interesting," he said, barely disguising his boredom.

Romona wanted me to break Martin in, so she left and I walked him around. I showed him where the supplies were kept, both medical and clerical, where the linen cart was supposed to go, and how to hide from work in the office if you'd had enough for the day. The idea was to bring a good book and close the office door. If anybody wanted you, they could use the paging system.

One of the first things to do on the evening shift was to check the dinner trays. It was mostly a courtesy, like the maitre d' going from table to table, but now and then a patient would have a real complaint. One day, for example, the fresh fruit was an apple, and patient had his Mackintosh delivered with a bite taken out of it. He said it didn't inspire much confidence in the rest of his food. Our job was to agree with such patients.

We hit the sixth floor first. It was the first time he'd been in a patient's room, and he entered with cautious reverence, almost tiptoeing through the door. One of the first things you learn when you work in a hospital, I told him, is to forget the patients are sick. After all, they don't want to be reminded of it, and there's no real privacy anyway. Just open the door, stroll in, and take care of your business. This is what I did, sailing through all of Six South without any problems, but he still stayed shyly behind me.

On Six North, there was a private room, 695, occupied by Mr. Prentice. He was a Parkinson's patient, and his wife was always there. She was a pain in the neck, because something was always wrong with the food. She was lying in wait when we entered the room.

"You call this food?" she screamed, jabbing her finger at the tray.

"What's the problem this evening?" I said politely.

"Feel these mashed potatoes," she said.

"You want me to feel the mashed potatoes?"

"Come on, they won't bite," she said, and before I knew it, she grabbed my hand and thrust them into a cold, meager pile next to the Salisbury steak.

"They're cold, all right," I said, looking around for a paper towel.

"You're damned right they're cold. What are you going to do about it?"

"I'll get you some warm ones," I promised. "How are you today, Mr. Prentice?"

He nodded with his whole body, the way Parkinson's patients do. It meant that he was fine, and I patted him on the shoulder. His incessant shaking had rattled the sheets off of him, and his knees were bent and trembling. Martin withdrew toward the door.

"Come here, Martin," I said. "Feel these mashed potatoes."

"Do I have to?" he asked.

"Part of the job," I said.

He put a reluctant finger to the top of a curd and instantly withdrew it.

"They're cold," he said to Mrs. Prentice.

"We're paying eighty dollars a day for this room," she said, "and we want warm potatoes."

"I understand," I said.

"You do something about it, young man."

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "We will," and Martin and I backed out of the room.

We ordered the mashed potatoes, and I got a call from pediatrics.

It was Mrs. O'Hara, the head nurse, a very disagreeable character. She was feared by the nurses under her, and by everyone else, for that matter, but her way of instilling that fear was indirect. She would leave a small blue "drug card" on a patient's Kardex, with a harsh note for the nurse to discover herself. The nurses called her the "Kardex Commandant" and other names that were not so polite.

Without telling me what the problem was, she insisted that I come down to the unit. When we got there, O'Hara was nowhere in sight. The invisible dictator who worked the day shift had finally gone off duty at seven P.M., but she'd left a note for me about the "immediate" need for more pillows on the unit.

"Look at this," I said to Estelle, the unit's only nursing assistant, "O'Hara wants more pillows."

"You better get 'em," she said, cutting her throat with a finger and smiling.

I grabbed Martin by the sleeve of the coat, walked him down the hall, threw open a closet door, and turned on the light. There, in its glory, was a shining mountain of fresh pillows without their cases. The whole large closet was filled with them. It was O'Hara's main obsession. Before I started getting them for her, she sent Estelle out on raids to other units. As a result, there was always a shortage elsewhere in the hospital. I had begun to steal them back, one at a time, but it was like taking hubcaps from under the gaze of a junkyard dog. Estelle was devoted to O'Hara, and she watched the unit with a constant eye. In order to get them by her, I'd create subterfuges, like turning on the call light in one of the kids' rooms.

The irony was that there were only five or six kids on the unit at any given time. That meant seven or eight pillows for each patient. Most sick kids went to Children's Hospital, so O'Hara's urgency was of the lifeboat variety. She feared the unit was going to be closed altogether.

We went back to the station.

"Estelle," I said, "I'm not getting any more pillows. The closet is full of them."

"I'm gonna tell O'Hara," she said.

"Fine."

A little kid named Nicky whizzed by us, holding his arms out and making airplane noises. Then he flew back our way and pounded into Martin, slamming his fists into Martin's leg and making ack-ack sounds like a machine gun. Estelle pulled him off and walked him back to his room.

"What's the matter with him?" asked Martin.

"Hyperactive. They give them uppers to slow them down."

"I would think the opposite," he said.

"It's like with cats. For some reason you speed them up to slow them down." I knew a nurse at Metropolitan who gave tranquilizers to her nervous cat, and they made it even worse. It spent the night circling the walls at eye level, like cars at Daytona.

Nancy, the beautiful nurse on the evening shift, came out of a room looking distraught. She had plastic gloves on both hands and a stethoscope around her neck. "Where's Estelle?" she said.

"What's wrong?"

"We've got an expiration," she said. "It's Brent."

Brent was an ethereal little boy of about five who had leukemia. They'd been keeping him going for two or three weeks with blood transfusions, IVs, and all the rest.

"I'm going to need some help," she said.

We entered the room, and there was Brent, dead, in a bed with chrome bars to keep him from crawling out. The disease had yellowed his skin, giving it a soft glow, and his lips were purple. Scattered around the bed were various toys he'd been given, and next to his face, stained with blood, was a teddy bear. Even though I'd become hardened to these scenes of death, I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach.

"Oh, God," said Martin, looking like he was going to faint.

"Why don't you find Romona?" I said. "I'll take care of this."

He was extremely grateful and left the room. I sat down in a chair and tried to calm down. My heart was pounding slow and hard and my breath was short and high in my chest. I didn't cry, but I felt like I wanted to, maybe needed to. But I couldn't.

Estelle entered, looking put-upon as usual, and Nancy and she began to silently straighten up. They put all the toys into a plastic bag for the parents to take home later, but there was a disagreement about the teddy bear. Nancy thought we should throw it out, while Estelle insisted the parents would want it. It was decided that Estelle would try to wash it clean, but if that failed, they would toss it down the garbage chute. I ordered the death pack and they washed the body, laying it out on clean sheets and propping the head with two pillows. Estelle had wet his hair and combed it nicely. It looked like a kid's on the first day of school.

Half an hour later, the doctor came in with the parents. Everyone knew that Charles wouldn't live long, so an order had been placed on the chart not to call a Dr. Blue. The parents wanted him to die with some peace. Nancy was in the room when it happened; the death was mercifully quick.

The doctor went into the room first, then he called the parents in. They were a nice-looking couple in their thirties, and they handled it well until it was time to leave. Then the mother collapsed in grief and had to be helped into the lobby.

Brent's body was so light I took it to the morgue myself, lifting it up in my arms and placing it softly onto the cart and later the morgue slab. For some reason warmth seemed to come from the body, and the shroud smelled sweet, more like clean laundry than death. The family said we could keep all the toys, so it didn't matter that Estelle, unable to wash the bear clean, had dropped it down the chute.

I got to dinner late. Romona, Martin, Ed, and Barbara had finished eating, but they were hanging around as usual, having more cups of coffee.

"Sorry about the business with Cane," I said to Ed, sitting next to him.

"That's all right," he said glumly, "I'll make a comeback." But I could tell he was mad that Martin had taken his place. He kept looking across the table like he might throw something at him.

Barbara was telling a story about Radiology earlier that evening. She had taken a patient to get an X ray, and while she was waiting for him, a midget wearing a hospital gown walked into the area and sat down across from her. He was about the size of a three-year-old, and his legs dangled far above the floor. Barbara felt him looking at her while she read a magazine, and pretty soon he hopped down and walked over to her.

"How ya doin'?" he asked.

"Oh, fine," she said. "How are you?"

"Do you mind if I sit here?" he said, patting the chair beside her.

She said she knew what was coming next, but what could she do? He scrambled into the chair beside her and looked at her with intense devotion. The ring on his finger had a Playboy emblem, a black rabbit on gold.

"I'm not very good at small talk," he said, looking very serious.

"Me, either."

"You're supposed to laugh at that," he said.

"It was a dumb joke," she said, "I bet you use it on all the girls."

"That's true," he said, sitting up straight and cracking his knuckles. "Look," he continued, "let's cut through the fog. I'm attracted to you, and I'd like to take you out. What do you say?"

"I'm pretty busy."

"We can go over to Rush Street. There's a great place called Lysell's"

"I know Lysell's," she continued, "I just can't find the time."

"You just don't want to go out with me because I'm small, right?" His voice was both hurt and belligerent.

"It's not that at all, really," she said, crossing her long legs the other direction.

"Honest?"

"Cross my heart," she said, crossing her heart and feeling stupid.

"I believe you," he said, putting his hand on her leg, high on the thigh.

"You never stop, do you?" Barbara said, standing up and glaring down at him.

"You can't blame a guy for trying," he said, shrugging his shoulders.

Romona thought the story was hugely funny, and so did Ed. I didn't feel so hot myself. I kept thinking of Brent lying so perfectly in his freshly made bed, and the absurdity of Barbara's story didn't charm me at all. Apparently I was staring at something, because Romona said, "Hey, Holder, what's the matter with you?"

"Oh, nothing," I said, rousing from my introspection with an effort.

"You look like hell," said Romona.

"The world is dark," Martin said.

Everyone turned and looked at him.

"What do you mean?" Romona said.

"It's why I chose the evening shift," he said through a small mouth, "because the world is so dark."

"I like the nights, too," Romona said. "It's hard to get up in the morning."

"I don't think that's what he means," Barbara said.

Martin had been doodling on his paper napkin with a pen. All available space was filled with tortured, swirling lines. A figure half cobra, half vulva dominated the center, then he flipped the napkin over and started on the other side.

The rest of the shift was relatively uneventful. Martin and I sat in my office most of the night, waiting for one of our pagemasters to go off. We had to leave only a few times, to check the snack trays around ten o' clock, and to get some coat hangers for a patient with a private room on one of his floors. It was a woman of about forty-five who was in for a face lift, and she sat on the bed with one leg up, wearing silk shorty pajamas that showed off her figure. She cocked her eye at Martin, trying to be seductive. He seemed puzzled.

A nurse paged me to check on something strange on one of my floors. I was getting a little tired of Martin shadowing me, so I told him to stay put in my office.

I got to the room and immediately saw the light under the closed door.

"Excuse me?" I said knocking on the door.

"Don't come in! Stay out!"

Just so did the woman answer my knocking. But I was already inside the room. On hospital rounds, a knock is only a gesture.

"Are you all right?" I asked her through the bathroom door. There was no answer.

"I'll be back in a few minutes to check on you. Please get back in bed." I turned to leave. Then I saw advancing from beneath the closed bathroom door the blot of dark shine. I stepped closer and crouched, peering. I slid open the door which separated us. In a hospital the doors cannot be locked.

The woman was naked. She sat on the toilet, bent forward, her pale white feet floating on the jammy floor. Nearby, a razor blade dropped from one painted hand. The other hand couldn't be seen; it was sunk to the wrist within the incision in her abdomen. Bits of black silk, still knotted were all over the floor about her feet. They looked like the corpses of slain insects. The elbow that pointed out from her body moved in answer to those hidden fingers which were working.

For a moment she didn't seem to notice that I was there. The face was turned upward, its gaze fixed on some galaxy beyond me. It was vacant, ecstatic. Something had fled from it. What did she need? For what was she reaching? A precious coin that she will, must deliver herself of? A baby? And so she dilated the opening with her fist, and so groped for the limbs of her fetus?

For a moment I couldn't move or speak. I was struck and minted at that spot. But then she saw me. And her eyes leapt back across the vast distances and she was a woman surprised at her most secret act.

"You should not have come in," she said. Her voice was gaunt, quiet. "I was almost finished. You should have waited."

Her hand remained immersed in her body. She did not withdraw it. But now the elbow was still.

"What are you doing!" I said. "What have you done! Stand up here and come back to bed!"

"I almost had it," she said.

"What? What did you 'almost have'? You opened your incision. It's not healed. What's it been, five days since your operation. Stand up now," I say firmly. "Come with me."

Then, more gently, "It's all right. Don't worry. I'll get a doctor and he'll fix it. You didn't realize . . ."

I took her by the arm, lifting, and as I did, the plunged hand was extracted with a small wet sound. It was a fist, shiny, beaded with yellow globules of fat.

But a fist is a mystery. I have to find out what it holds. I pried open the fingers, all bridged with clots. It was raw and scalded and empty. She whimpered, but not in pain. It was longing that she expressed. She sighed, and stood up. A sash of intestine hung from her belly. I reached one hand to cup it, and keep it from falling out further like spaghetti on a tilted plate. The loop shuddered in my hand.

The woman laid down on the bed. I called out for assistance and in a moment a nurse arrived.

"Oh," said the nurse quietly, and she sucked back her saliva. She took one step into the hall and called for a doctor in the station area.

He was in the room one step when he had accessed the situation. "Get me gauze packing, Betadine solution, instruments and gloves," he said.

Gently, the doctor took the intestine from my hand and replaced the coil inside the abdominal cavity. He clamped and sutured the few points that were still bleeding. Finally, he packed the wound with yards of gauze, and drenched it with the Betadine.

"That would really be painful, wouldn't it?" the woman asked me. "If that were my real body, I mean. It would hurt. But I don't feel anything at all."

All at once, I knew what it was, what she was reaching for, deep inside. It was her pain. The hot nugget of her pain that, still hissing, she would cast away. I almost had it she said. You should have waited, she said.

It's like a raccoon, I think. A raccoon whose leg is caught in a trap will gnaw through his thigh, cracking the bone between his jaws, licking away the blood and fur. So has this woman torn open her incision to rummage in the furnace of her body for the white hot ingot. I closed my eyes and saw the raccoon rise. He hobbled from the trap. He will not die there. Now he turns his beautiful head to glance back at his dead paw. His molten eyes are full of longing.

But this woman felt no pain at the doctor's probing and packing. Perhaps she was wrong. Perhaps she did find what she was looking for, and threw it away. Perhaps I did wait long enough.

"When you are calm," the doctor said, "we'll go back to the operating room, and I'll stitch you up again."

"I am calm," she said. "You are the one who isn't calm."

A couple of days later in my office, Romona told Martin and me that her behavior could be explained. People get nervous when they're admitted to a hospital. They think they're going to die, and their craziness comes out. She then left, confidently leaving a trail of blue cigarette smoke behind her.

Her theory seemed to interest Martin, because he became more animated. He said people were always crazy. The world was dark with craziness. In fact, the bizarre was the rule, because of human will. It was will that held the world together, not good or evil. No matter what we did to limit our desires, even the attempt was another form of will. Saints and hermits are better than us because at least they try not to be willful, but of course they are crazy too. He'd been quiet all evening, but now he was masterful as he launched into his topic, leaning back in his chair like a college professor lost in his lecture. Schopenhauer had a lot to teach us, he said. His spiritual pessimism was restorative, because nothingness is basically good.

"You think too much," I said.

"Maybe you're too dull to understand."

"Look, Martin, you'd better relax. There are things happening here that will tear your head off if you don't watch out. Schopenhauer isn't going to do you any good at all."

We talked better after that. I said I thought that by not going to Vietnam, I would have no contact with death, but every day I carried bodies to the morgue. Sometimes on the el I felt I was choking to death. The other day a drunk woman stood between two moving cars and took off her bra. The train rocketed into the tunnel and she nearly fell, but she caught herself, her broad face smeared against the window. Once a rock flew against the el car window where I was sitting and shattered the glass in a weblike pattern. There were people out there who wanted to do me harm, even though they didn't know me.

"What you are feeling is completely normal," Martin said. "I have these exact same feelings myself, but I understand their origin. You are anxious because the world reveals its intentions, but if the world is will, it is also capable of change, provided your will is stronger."

I said the subway was the main problem with western civilization. Last month a woman threw herself onto the el tracks at the Chicago Avenue station. The train ran over her, but it only cut off her arm, which the doctors sewed back on. She was all healed up and back playing bridge with her friends. They said the hand on her severed arm was still clutching her large white purse when they found it on the tracks.

Martin said that my darkness was my sense of the absurd. I thought everything was significant in life, which made me into an absurdist. A sense of the absurd and sentimentality were essentially the same thing, he insisted.

"But you believe in nothingness, nada," I said. "Isn't that sentimental?"

"Maybe you're right," he said, looking depressed under the weight of the world. "We really are the same, aren't we?"

Martin was weird all right, but at least with the patients he kept it to himself. Now and then one of us would find him sitting alone in his office with the lights turned off, but at least he didn't spread his pessimistic philosophy while checking dinner trays. A number of the nursing assistants liked him, and he also got along with the nursing supervisors, which was important. They had gotten the day manager of seventh floor fired over the size of a waste basket.

He and I got along great and had some good discussions where we would start by disagreeing and by the time we ended agreed on every point. Within a couple of months we got to be like best friends, but then he started not coming to work.

A week later we got the news that Martin was dead. He'd taken several containers of pills with Metropolitan Hospital labels. The police lieutenant told Gary Janush that he'd apparently taken whatever he had on hand: Valium, codeine #3, Seconal, Tuinal, and a bottle of aspirin. The body had been lying on the bed for three days and it wasn't in very good shape. Martin's roommate, a salesman for a printing company, had been out of town for a week and a half, and he found the body when he returned. The radio was tuned to a top 40 station, and was playing loud rock music. The neighbors had complained about the music, but the management failed to look very far into the matter. All around Martin's bed, hundreds of books lay open, and he was fully dressed, as if for a dinner party. In a closet one of the detectives found several pistols. A high-powered telescope, fixed on a tripod, was focused on a picture of himself lying on the floor and a note to me was taped to the handle.

The note said, "See you later, alligator."