Four

When I arrived at the hospital at nine in the morning for my physical, the place was exploding with activity. This was the time when all the surgeries are scheduled and most of the tests are concluded. The hallways were littered with patients on carts or in wheelchairs, waiting their turns for the X ray or operation that possibly would save theirs lives. I entered through the front door this time, where an Egyptian-looking doorman helped people in and out of cabs, a service only to be found at a place like Metropolitan. At City Hospital, located in a bad neighborhood, there was no doorman. There you were lucky if you could get the broken doors to open on your own, and if someone reached out, it was probably to steal your wallet. The doorman gave me a big smile full of gold teeth and opened the door. He looked very happy in his work, and the gold stitching on his brown coat said "Mama." It was a good name for him. He looked like he might pick you up in his arms and rock you right to sleep.

The lobby looked like the nave of a Gothic cathedral. A red tapestry with an abstract design hung from the high ceiling, and the walls were Indiana limestone. The place seemed to breathe dignity and money. To the right, unobtrusively set in an alcove with oak trim, was the cashier's office, and to the left was the Ladies' Auxiliary Gift Shop, filled with get-well cards, stuffed animals, and magazines. It was always crowded, with a huge line at check-out, because all the clerks were volunteers and didn't know what they were doing. But they were awfully nice, and everybody forgave their incompetence. The gift shop smelled of cough drops, perfume, and old ladies with silver hair.

I took the elevator to the basement, where Health Services was located, next to Nuclear Medicine. The cancer patients had their tumors reduced there with gamma rays, down the hall from a long winding tunnel leading to the medical school.

Health Services consisted of two small rooms, one for the doctor and one for an aged male volunteer wearing a white smock over a Brooks Brothers suit. He might have been a distinguished lawyer thirty years ago.

"May I help you?" he asked, peering at me over his reading glasses.

"My name is James Holder," I said. "I was told to report here for my employee physical."

The desk was clean except for a clipboard containing a single sheet of paper. He consulted it with shaking hands, holding the board close to his face.

"It's Holder," I said, "H-o-l-d-e-r."

"Not related to Ernest Holder, are you? Fine fellow, Ernest." You could tell Ernest had been dead for years.

"Not that I know of," I said.

"A fine man for golf, Ernest. Wicked with the mashie niblick." He chopped down with his right hand, and the long white fingers shook. They were so white they almost looked blue.

"I play golf," I said unnecessarily.

"Well, that's fine, young man, just fine!" He was glad I'd offered the information. It made all the difference to him.

I shifted my weight, trying to peek into the doctor's office. A white light filled the room, a quality of light you only see in hospitals or doctors' offices.

"Here it is, young man. Holder. That you?"

"That's right," I said. "Holder, just plain Holder."

A short blond doctor appeared in the doorway. She was about fifty years old, and appeared to be very serious. She looked me up and down and without another word waved me into the office.

"You are Mr. Holder, I suppose," she said with a German accent.

"That's right."

"I am Dr. Waldheim. I am told you seek a position in management here." She seemed to doubt this was possible. There was a pause, because I didn't answer. It seemed perfectly clear who I was and why I was there.

"I am waiting for your answer," she said crisply. She crossed her arms and impatiently tapped one foot on the floor.

"That's right," I said meekly. "Holder. I've applied to be a unit manager in the Service Department."

"And you feel that you can be of service to our patients?" She said "our" as if they were her patients only. In fact, she had no real patients. She was only a medical service physician on a base salary, hired to prevent goldbricking by nursing aides and orderlies.

"Well, yes," I said, "I do believe I can be of help. I've always been a helpful person." I looked around the room for pieces of paper to put in the wastebasket. What proof did she want, anyway?

She reached onto a shelf, grabbed a small plastic cup, and handed it to me. "Take off your clothes," she said coldly, "and put on one of those gowns. Then fill this cup with urine. You can use that room." She pointed to a bathroom set into the wall and watched as I entered. She was in the same position when I came out again. I held clothes heaped in one hand, the cup of warm urine in the other.

Dr. Waldheim took the urine and told me to put my clothes on the chair and sit on the examination table, which was covered with a long sheet of paper. She held the urine up to the light and looked through it. Then she dipped some litmus paper into it. She seemed satisfied with these results, because she didn't say anything.

The examination was thorough. I was probed, poked, and stared at. I coughed, sweated, and let her look in my ears and mouth. When she grabbed my front teeth with two fingers and wiggled them back and forth, my whole head shook.

"Hey?" I yelled.

"The teeth are loose. They are not real." Excited, she made a mark on the chart. Her manner changed from suspicion to gleeful discovery.

"One is false," I said. "The other one is mine."

"You have much trouble with your teeth. The teeth are very bad."

It was true, but what of it. I had about five pounds of silver in my mouth, and hardly a tooth was spared. I never yawned on dates, because they might see the dark clots of silver.

When she asked me to stand and drop the gown, I did so, but with embarrassment. Suddenly I had a horrible fear of getting an erection, and the more I thought about it, the more it became a possibility. My balls were shriveled from cold or fear, and the penis began to twitch. I cleared my throat and tried to think ugly thoughts: spiders crawling up and down my legs, picking up that cup of urine and sipping it down. That worked. Cold sweat ran out of my armpits, down both sides, and onto my hips.

She walked around me like I was a statue. She asked me to bend my knees sideways, then backward. I touched the tip of my nose with an index finger and held my ear with the other hand. Then, holding this position, I hopped up and down on alternate legs. I bent over while she looked for hemorrhoids with a flashlight. When she inserted her middle finger into my rectum, pressing hard on the prostate, I groaned. I coughed obediently while she stuck a lone finger, like a sharpened broomstick, under each testicle. Dr. Waldheim looked up my nose, under my fingernails, and behind my ears. She counted the hairs on my chest and under each armpit. She smelled my breath for something funny. Blood was drawn, X rays were ordered, and questions were asked. Did I smoke? Was I an alcoholic, a pederast, smuggler, scholiast, or seminarian? Was I vegetable, mineral, or composed of various cosmic gases? What was the nature of my dreams, and what did I do with the property of others after I'd stolen it?

As an afterthought, she looked at my wrists. There was a scar on the left one, which she spanked and stroked with the tips of her fingers.

"What is this?" she asked with a menacing smile.

"This is what we, in Kansas, call a scar," I said. The old man in the other room was humming a song, just loud enough to be heard.

"And how did you get this scar?"

"I've had it since seventh grade. I fell on the sidewalk with a jar of pennies. They had to rush me to the doctor to have it sewn up. It looks funny because the doctor was in a hurry to stop the bleeding and didn't do a very good job."

She leaned so close I could feel her breath on my teeth. "You can tell me the truth, you know," she said. "It's nothing to embarrass you."

"What are you talking about?"

"This," she said, jabbing a finger at the small twisted scar, "is clear evidence of a suicide attempt. I insist that you tell me about this."

She was a bounty hunter, paid to catch employees with drug habits, frailties, old suicide attempts. Her teeth had small crack lines that had turned brown. She looked like a vase put together again.

"I told you the truth," I insisted. "The scars are over ten years old."

"Tell me about your mental depression," she said. "Tell me how you put the blade to the skin and twisted it. Tell me about your cowardice, your refusal to face life. You know nothing about life!" She had made a tight little fist as if squeezing a fly to death. In her anger, her sallow face almost took on color.

"You," I said, "are crazy."

My clothes were in the corner. I pushed past her, stark naked, and bundled them into my arms. Should I rush into the hall and search for a bathroom? Fly past the volunteer in a pink panic? Already I could see Mulrooney's gloating face as he sent me off to Vietnam, marking the orders with a flick of his wrist.

I tried to be calm. I sat in a chair and put on my shoes and socks. Then I stood up and put on my pants, hopping around the room. They were too tight because of the shoes on my feet. Nervously I fastened each button on the shirt, and wrestled on the sport coat. There was only one thing wrong. I'd forgotten to put on underwear. Alone on the chair, they were proof of the doctor's assertions. I picked them up and held them in my right hand.

All along, Waldheim had said things like, "What do you think you're doing?" and "Where do you thing you're going? Running? Coward!" But now she said, "My report will go to Mr. Bolger as soon as possible."

"And?" I said.

"I shall disrecommend," she said crisply and coldly.

By this time the noise had reached the other room. The ancient volunteer opened the door a crack and peeked in. I waved and he waved back.

"You vill never, never work in this hospital," said the doctor.

"I do not give a damn," I replied, storming out of the room. In my anger, I felt about six feet wide in the basement hallway, bumping into everybody and everything as I left.

That night, at home in bed with Melinda, I started to worry about it all. Here she was pregnant -- which is why our backs were turned to each other -- and I'd screwed everything up. I spent the night tossing and turning, but in the morning Bolger called and then Janush. I had the job, no problem. They'd gotten the report from Waldheim, all right. She had walked it up to Personnel herself and stormed around the office. That's what she always did. She got so worked up she had my urine cup in her hand and accidentally drank it down before she knew what she did. They'd gotten used to her, and blood tests and X rays were mainly what they needed anyway. They figured the rest out on their own. Janush offered congratulations and hinted that he and Waldheim used to date each other. I imagined them doing the bunny hop in a German restaurant.

But I had another theory about Waldheim. Her real name was Rosa Teal, and she'd escaped from the psych ward the night before. She'd hidden in a laundry basket and emerged wearing a white lab coat with "Dr. Waldheim" stitched on the vest pocket. It was a simple matter, with such credentials, to become the doctor she had always dreamed of being. Now she was Elsa Waldheim, a simple girl from the mountains, but one with a mission.