You have to harden your heart to pain and suffering. And quick. Like right away at the very latest.
We couldn’t get through half an hour of this without the necessary conditions, humanly. We’re real antic about it. Among the tepid metal and tile of the locker room, or slumped over the paper cups and coffee balloons of the commissary—Johnny’s there, with unspeakable skid marks all over his smock. Our victims we call stiffs and slabs and sides—and fuck-ups, and organ donors.
“Not like the blob. You see the blob?”
“Ah, she ain’t so bad off.”
“You see the splat case?”
It isn’t much, but I’ll say this for Dr. John Young. He takes no pleasure in his work. The self is a muffled self: it wears a suit of protective clothing. This despite the overtime he voluntarily puts in. Opinions of him vary: he is “incredibly dedicated”; he is “a glutton for punishment”; he is a “saint”; he is “a fucking maniac.” “Well,” says John, and shrugs lightly, “you do what you do best.”
Johnny is stronger than the other doctors, the brothers, the sisters. They’re forever faltering, rocking on their platforms. Johnny needs no encouragement—but he gives it. Here’s Byron, who looks like Bluto, with his breadth of black beard, and body hair sprouting luxuriantly through his shoulder laces.
“Talk to me, Byron.”
“Johnny, look at me, I’m losing it.”
“Who told you it was going to be easy?”
“I’m not up to this shit.”
And so on. It never helps. They’re in far worse shape, as always, when John’s done. Byron rocks away, very hairy, very clean, wringing his hands, like an impeccable spider in his green fatigues.
And the body beneath is so tired all the time. It never ends. I work a lot with Witney. Witney? Thirty-two, tall, rubber-lipped, pop-eyed, very smart but no culture so just wised~up: that’s Witney. He thinks he’s cool; he talks about Korea, and how, compared to that, this is nothing. No big deal. There was this incident with Witney when, I don’t know—oh yeah. We’d just totaled a couple of teenage boys. Their mothers had brought them in and then got the hell out soon after we started work, staying only to witness the methodical unraveling of the soaked bandages. We took the stitches out and swabbed the boys with blood. I remember Witney’s skillful insertion of some kind of crossbow bolt; me, I was wedging shards of brown glass into the other boy’s crown. And we both, as they say, cracked up: we laughed at each other, full face, showing at last with teeth and tongue and tonsils the mortal hilarity that sniggers behind everything we do here. Our laughter, together with the boys’ cries and whimpers. Oh yeah. And Witney goes, to my one, “Expecting a break-in, kid? You look like a garden wall.” Or something like that, which seemed to calm us both, as jokes will. Humor keeps you steady, after all, even when the shit’s coming down. Our hilarity contained terror, of course it did, terror of our own fragility. Our own mutilation. Who might commit it? How can we avert it? Soon Witney and I were busy elsewhere with hacksaw and medium chisel, attaching a farcically mangled leg to an unknown and shrouded figure, at the thigh, in a kind of rain of blood, a snow of bone.
The city—it is the city that will have to heal them, with knifeblade and automobile, nightstick, gunshot. The local passions of love and hate. The loose cables and rogue masonry of the telekinetic city.
There is the Laundry Room on the second floor, scene of trysts and quickies and what the team here call knee-tremblers, which is when you do it standing up. I have been there with Nurse Davis. I now go there with Nurse Tremlett.
There are two Recovery Rooms on the fourth floor where it’s usually okay. I used to go there with Nurse Cobretti. I hope to go there soon with Nurses Sammon and Booker. Sometimes I don’t even bother to take off my gown, which is all smeared and tiretracked. I just kick off my clogs.
There is a nurse called Nurse Elliott who is always sneering at me without meeting my eye. In the elevator yesterday, under her breath, she called me an asshole. I know the signs—when a woman is leading me on. She’s just slipped into the Laundry Room, After a minute or two I follow her through the door. She stands by the window, checking her face in the silver compact. I walk toward her with my knees trembling.