Recent events force me to re-peruse the famous medical tome The House of God.This passage makes me laugh:
“The house is special,” said the Chief. “Part of its being special is its affiliation with the BMS [Best Medical School]. I want to tell you a story about the BMS, that showed me how special the BMS and the House are. It’s a story about a BMS doctor and a BMS nurse named Peg. It showed me what it is like to be affiliated with the …”
My mind wandered. The Leggo was a less chubby version of the Fish, as if, given the fact that the Leggo had published rather than perished to become Chief, all the human juice had been sucked out of him, and he had been left drained, dehydrated, even uremic. So this was the top of the cone, when finally, and with all men, as Chief, one was perpetually more slurped against than slurping.
“… and so Peg came up to me with a surprised look on her face and said ‘Doctor Leggo, how could you wonder whether that order had been done? When a BMS doctor tells a BMS nurse to do something, you can be sure it will be done, and it will be done right.’”
He paused, as if expecting applause. He was met with silence. I yawned, and realized that my mind had gone straight to f***ing.
And this one is my favorite in the whole book:
I sat in the E.W. nursing station thinking about how the Leggo and the Fish had blessed our ward with “the toughies,” the dying young, like Jimmy, like my friend Dr. Sanders, out there on his last fishing trip before his last autumn-
“That’s tough to do, to face the dying and the dead.”
I looked up. It was one of the policemen, the fat one, Gilheeny.
“Strength of character,” said the other one, Quick, “it doesn’t grow on trees.”
“Nor can one buy it in any store,” said the redhead. “It’s the toilet training that does it, I do believe. So said Freud and Cohen.”
“Where did an Irish cop learn about Freud?” I asked.
“Where? Why, here, man, here, from spending the last twenty years here, five nights a week; in trialogues of discussion with fine young overeducated men like you. Better than night school, more broad and useful. And we get paid to attend.”
“Not only that,” said Quick, “but all the different viewpoints contribute. Over twenty years one learns a good deal. Currently a surgeon named Gath brings the news from the Southern Rim, and with Cohen we are in the middle of a gold mine of psychoanalytical thought.”
“Who is Cohen?”
“A sophisticated, jocular, and unrestrained resident in psychiatry,” said Quick. “A textbook in himself.”
“You must make his acquaintance,” said Gilheeng. Twitching his red eyebrows so that they coerced the rest of his fat face into a gap-toothed smile, he went on, “We can hardly wait to hear from a Rhodes Scholar like yourself, a man with high qualities of body and mind, with experience gleaned from corners of the round globe, like England, France, and the Emerald Isle, which I have visited only twice.”
“A textbook in yourself,” said Quick.