On Monday morning, a patient named Guernsey...
male, middle 70s, was admitted to the hospital complaining of chest pains.
He had been referred by a nursing home...
where the doctor had diagnosed his condition as Angina pectoris.
It is axiomatic...
that nursing-home doctors are always wrong.
The intern who admitted Mr. Guernsey, however...
accepted the diagnosis and prescribed morphine...
a drug suitable for angina, but not at all suitable for emphysema...
which is unfortunately what the old man actually had.
Within an hour, the patient became unresponsive and diaphoretic...
and was raced up to Intensive Care, with an irregular pulse of 150...
blood pressure 90 over 60, respiration rapid and shallow.
The resident on duty in Intensive Care compounded the blunder...
by treating the old man for pulmonary edema.
He gave him digitalis, diuretics and oxygen.
This restored the old mars color.
He was sent to his room in the Holly Pavilion...
ruddy-complected and peacefully asleep.
But the patient was in CO 2 narcosis, and died at 7:30 that evening.
I mention all this only to explain how the bed in Room 806 became available.
The intern involved was a prickly young buck named Schaefer...
who had a good thing going for him with a technician in the Hematology Lab.
In the haphazard fashion of hospital romances...
Dr. Schaefer had been zapping this girl...
on wheelchairs, stretchers, pantry shelves...
in the kitchen, in the morgue, in the dark corners of corridors...
standing up, sitting down...
So you can imagine what an available bed meant to him.
Sheila, this is Howard.
I got a bed for us for tonight. A real, honest-to-God bed.
Dr. Schaefer...
Did you know that Dr. Schaefer was in Room 806 because he's dead?
What?
I'm just telling you that Dr. Schaefer is dead.
- What do you want, Perez? - I don't know what this is about...
but Dr. Schaefer is in Room 806 with an IV running, and he's dead.
- I didn't even know he was sick. - What the hell are you talking about?
- Do you know what she's talking about? - No.
Maybe I'm going crazy. I don't know.
Isn't Room 806 the patient Guernsey?
Did something happen that maybe I didn't know about?
I don't know what you're talking about.
This is the nuttiest thing I ever saw. Dr. Schaefer is in Room 806, dead.
What Dr. Schaefer? Our Dr. Schaefer?
Our Dr. Schaefer. The one who's always grabbing everybody's ass.
- Do you know what she's talking about? - No.
I don't know what you're talking about.
What do you mean, "Dr. Schaefer's in Room 806, dead"?
I mean, he's lying on the far bed, stone dead, and with an IV.
If you don't believe me, you ought to go and look for yourself.
Maybe you'd better call Mrs. Christie.
Dr. Bock.
Yes, Mrs. Christie, what is it?
It's all right. I'd have to be getting up any minute, anyway.
Sorry, I missed that. Would you say it again, please?
I know.
Schaefer, the stud with the glasses, fancies all the nurses.
I'm afraid I don't understand. What do you mean?
Was he sick?
I mean...
What was the cause of death?
Was he being treated? I don't understand.
What was he doing in the bed? You did say...
Mrs. Christie, did you call the office?
Good, I'II...
It's all right.
I'd be getting my wake-up call any minute, anyway.
People!
What do you say, Sundstrom?
How long do you think your monopolistic, exclusionary, racist policies will work?
Free the hope!
Now, hold it.
Herb! I'm glad I caught up with you.
How's it going?
One of my interns dropped dead this morning.
Really? I'm sorry to hear that.
I understand you moved out to a hotel.
- Things got that bad with Phyllis? - It's been that bad for 24 years.
You gonna be solicitous?
God.
I'm the guy that brought you into this hospital...
so I think I can skip the diplomatic overtures.
Marty stopped me in the hall yesterday, very upset.
He had just had lunch with you. He said you sounded suicidal.
Marty tends to be extravagant, but he's not the only one.
Jack Singer mentioned that you were boozing it up a lot.
Let's face it, you have been sloughing off.
I understand you haven't even been doing rounds.
I'm going to do rounds today.
Do you want to take a couple of days off?
Go down to Montego Bay, get drunk, get laid, get a little sun?
For God's sake, I'm 53 years old, with all the attendant fears.
I just left my wife, after 24 years. A standard case of menopausal melancholy.
- Maybe you wanna see Einorn. - Don't wanna see a psychiatrist, don't worry.
If I just get to work, I'll be fine. I'm sorry if I caused you concern.
Sid called from St. Luke's. He said the demonstrators there...
- are planning a march to join those here. - God.
- Did you call the cops? - Sure.
- They're all in 806, Doctor. - What happened?
I think I'll just let Mrs. Christie tell you about it.
Oh, boy, what happened?
I've seen some pretty good snafus. But this one...
There's a certain splendor to this one.
One of the night nurses thought he was a patient...
and plugged an IV into him. He was a diabetic.
What do you mean she plugged an IV into him?
It's a really screwed-up story.
We had an old man in there who died last night.
So the bed was available. You know Schaefer. He's Sammy Stud.
He talked a nurse into zapping him on the bed?
A girl from Hematology he's been running around with.
- God, it's a Roman farce! - I thought I heard you out here.
I suggest you do that right now.
I'm so terribly sorry.
As I understand it...
a nurse inadvertently administered an IV to Schaefer. How could that happen?
- We ought to straighten this out elsewhere. - Very good idea.
Oh, God, what a mess!
- These things happen. - I'd better call the Medical Examiner.
- I still don't understand what happened. - It took us an hour to get it sorted out.
A patient named Guernsey died last night, in 806.
That information wasn't given to the night nurses. These things happen.
At any rate, according to the cardex...
the patient, Guernsey, was down for 25 mg of Sparine at q. 6h.
Mrs. Reardon sent Nurse Perez to give him his 12:00 shot.
In the meantime, Dr. Schaefer usurped that particular bed...
for his own purposes.
Dr. Brubaker suggests it was for a love tryst...
and some weight is given that hypothesis...
- by the fact that Dr. Schaefer was naked. - I get the drift.
Nurse Perez went in and sedated Dr. Schaefer...
thinking it was the patient Guernsey. What I don't understand...
May I finish, please?
After Perez gave him his shot, she noticed the IV was pinched off on the bed.
She reported this to Mrs. Reardon...
who then assigned Nurse Rivers to restart the IV.
Rivers was a float. She didn't even know the staff people on the floor.
Nobody knew what the patient looked like, since he'd only been admitted that morning.
- So she plugged an IV into him. - Yes.
- How much? - A liter.
Five percent glucose solution won't kill anybody.
Was he dehydrated? Did he have any ancillary conditions?
Didrt anybody bother to go check on him during the night?
Even under the impression that he was merely a patient?
Was he hyperosmolar? Did he have a bad heart?
He must have had some sort of thrombosis.
I want the post done here, Mr. Hitchcock.
You and I better have a chat about your excessive use of float nurses.
I've got nearly a thousand nurses in this hospital...
Every time one of them has her period, she disappears for three days.
Doctors complain they can't find the same nurse on the same floor...
two days in a row.
What am I gonna tell Schaefer's parents?
That a substitute nurse assassinated him...
as she couldn't tell the doctors from the patients on the floor?
My God!
The incompetence here is absolutely radiant!
Two nurses walk into a room and stick needles in a man...
and one of those is a Number 18 Jelco, tourniquet the poor guy...
anchor the poor guy's arm with adhesive tape...
and it's the wrong poor son of a bitch!
Where do you train your nurses, Mrs. Christie? Dachau?
All right.
Wrap him up and get him down to Pathology.
I'm especially interested in his blood sugar.
A liter of glucose never killed anybody. Your ladies must have done something else.
- Will there be anything else? - No.
Before you call the family, I wish you'd speak to Mr. Mead about this.
We'd like, naturally, to avoid litigation.
A few things have been piling up. Would you like to go into them?
A quickie.
Dr. Esterhazy wants to start hiring temporary people...
to cover the summer vacations.
He says, last year, some of the replacement people...
didn't receive their checks until they waited six months.
He wonders if you could do something about getting these people paid promptly.
Ms. Aronivici complains the lab reports are coming in slow into the ER.
I called Dr. Immelman about that, and she says three microscopes...
have been stolen out of her lab in the last two months.
Charlie Walters also complains about pilferage.
I've clumped all these together for you.
As you know...
we've agreed to take over the local ambulance cases...
as part of the hospital's commitment to the community...
and it's created a serious overload in ER.
I don't know why this was dumped in our lap, but they seem to think...
Find out if Dr. Einorn is in his office.
Which Dr. Einorn?
- Ophthalmology or Psychiatry? - Psychiatry. Never mind. I'll look in, myself.
Is he in?
- Can I have a minute, Joe? - Of course.
I've been having periods of acute depression, recently.
Apparently, it's becoming noticeable. A number of people have remarked about it.
John Sundstrom thought it might be a good idea if I spoke to you about it.
- Do you want to sit down? - No. I'm not good at confessional.
What can I tell you?
The last year, two, three... It goes way back, I suppose.
I remember entertaining suicidal thoughts as a college student.
At any rate...
I've always found life demanding.
I'm an only child of a lower-middle-class people.
I was the glory of my parents. "My son, the doctor." You know.
I was always top of my class. Scholarship to Harvard. The boy genius.
The brilliant eccentric.
Terrified of women, clumsy at sports.
God, how do I go about this?
I understand you just separated from your wife.
I left her a dozen times.
She left me a dozen times.
We stayed through a process of attrition. Obviously, sadomasochistic dependency.
My home is hell.
We've got a 23-year-old boy. I threw him out of the house last year.
A shaggy-haired Maoist.
I don't know where he is.
Presumably, building bombs in basements as an expression of universal brotherhood.
I've got a 17-year-old daughter who's had two abortions in two years...
got arrested last week at a rock festival, for pushing drugs.
They let her go.
The typical affluent American family.
I don't mean to be facile about this.
I blame myself for those two useless young people.
I never exercised parental authority. I'm no good at that.
Oh, God, I'm no good at this, either.
Let's just forget the whole thing. I'm sorry I bothered you.
How serious are your suicidal speculations?
I amuse myself with different ways of killing myself that don't look like suicide.
I wouldn't want to do my family out of the insurance.
Digitalis will give you an arrhythmia.
A good toxologist would find traces.
Potassium's much better. 60 milli-equivalent. Instantaneous.
Then you're stuck with how to get rid of the hypodermic.
Forty milli-equivalent. Gives you time to dispose of the evidence.
You seem to have given considerable thought to the matter.
You ought to know that a man who talks about it all the time never does it.
I don't know. I see a man exhausted...
emotionally drained, riddled with guilt...
has been systematically stripping himself of wife, children, friends...
isolating himself from the world.
- Are you impotent? - Intermittently.
- What does that mean? - I haven't tried in so long, I don't know.
Let's just drop the whole thing, Joe. I feel humiliated and stupid.
I just got to pull myself together and get back into my work.
I'm sorry I troubled you. Take care of yourself. I'll see you later.
Ten-four, save our homes.
Two, four, we the poor.
Don't go 'round. Don't tear us down.
- All set? - Yes, sir.
- Who was that exotic group? - You got me.
- They've been here about an hour. - I think they're with the old man in 806.
Dr. Perry said he picked the tuberculosis and liver nodes for today.
- Yes, sir. - Good, because that's the one I studied up.
- A hell of a case. - Yes, sir.
- Who's presenting? - I am, sir. Should I start?
Mr. Hemmings!
Is there anybody seated who hasn't been to see me first?
Is there anybody here who has not given me their health-insurance number?
Emergency Room.
I don't know, Sybil. What's his name?
Wait a moment, please. I'm on the phone.
Can't you see I'm on the phone?
I am, Sybil. I'm looking.
Of course not. Do they ever?
Would you mind, please? Excuse me.
Thirty-two?
Telescope sights. They follow me everywhere.
Three big Black men. Naked, completely exposed, right in the street.
Hanging down to their knees. It's disgusting.
Did you call upstairs and tell them to admit a patient named Mitgang?
- Is that the concussion? - I don't know.
They said you didn't fill out the chart.
Where do you come off sending anyone up to Admitting without my okay?
Would you get the hell out of here?
The patient's in the holding room. You want his Blue Cross number, go get it.
Dr. Spezio, may I see you for a moment, if you don't mind?
Is this your handwriting, if you don't mind?
Am I supposed to read this?
Was that a sprain, a broken wrist? I can't read that scribbling.
I have to bill these people.
I know you are the ministering angels...
and I'm the bitch from the accounting department, but I've a job, too.
If you don't mind, Doctor.
The kid had a colly fracture, we had him in the OR.
We reduced it, and we gave him a small cast.
But did you give him a sling? You must've taken x-rays.
How am I supposed to make out the charges?
- Are you Mitgang? - I'm Mitgang.
Do you carry Blue Cross Blue Shield, if you don't mind?
Do you have your card with you?
Do you know your number?
You are not leaving this room until I have this information.
Do you mind if I at least ask this gentleman to fill out his chart?
May I have your AHS policy number, sir?
Do you carry Blue Cross Blue Shield?
Dr. Spezio!
I think one of your patients in here is dead.
Why do you say that, Mrs. Cushing?
Because he wouldn't give me his Blue Cross number.
Christ!
How long has this man been lying here?
Isn't he the doctor that came in around 9:00?
"Pete's sake," I said, "This is a hospital. One of our feed lines just blew."
We were lucky to trace it in time.
Have we covered everything?
Dr. Kish has been driving me nuts about the OR schedule.
He's supposed to see me about that.
This is the Emergency Room. One of the doctors died of a heart attack.
- One of our staff? - I think so.
Tom, you want to go down to the Emergency Room?
- One of our doctors just died. - Another one?
See what that's about. I'll be on Holly 8, and I'll be right back.
It's no longer pilferage. It's reached the point of piracy.
- That's the third microscope this month. - Let's get together on this later today.
- How about 1:00? - 1:00 will be fine.
Your brother's in his room.
- What one is it? - 806.
You're gonna be in the hospital for two lousy days.
- What's the fuss about? - You're supposed to be a big wheel here.
The private rooms are full.
If they brought in Jesus Christ fresh off the cross, I couldn't get him one.
- I'm not staying in a room with a dying man. - He's not dying.
They'll screen him off. You won't even know he's here.
If you want a private room, go home. I'll call you when one comes up.
But you phoned me, in a panic. You're going on vacation.
They'll cut this polyp out tomorrow.
You'll be home Thursday, in Miami Friday.
- Will you talk some sense into this lunatic? - You said it. He's a lunatic.
Big wheel! Can't even get me a private room.
I'll get you a tranquilizer.
"Five. A full...
"abdomen..."
contrasted with wasting elsewhere.
"Six. Ascites..."
with a protein content above 4 grams.
Unexplained anemia, leukopenia.
Unexplained elevation of the serum gamma globulin level.
Especially abnormal flocculation tests, and of course, a positive PPD.
All of these findings assume special significance in Negroes.
This has been a very commendable workup.
It's as commendable a workup of an FUO as I can remember.
The staff on this floor is to be applauded.
All right, let's go take a look at the girl.
It's a reportable case, Brubaker. I'd write it up.
Nurse...
who's the senior resident on this floor?
That would be Dr. Brubaker. But he's at Chief-of-Service rounds, now.
That's this way?
I wonder if there's some correlation between hepatic tuberculosis and drug addiction.
Presumably, there was an early consideration of SBE?
Yes, sir. We discounted it after repeated blood cultures were negative.
- You, Ambler. Is that right, "Ambler"? - Yes, sir.
What else do you look for in Bacterial Endocarditis?
Dr. Brubaker, can I see you for a minute, please?
Still a little icteric. Who's got an ophthalmoscope?
Did anyone note Roth spots?
Don't worry about it. There aren't any.
Ambler, you're our big man on SBE.
- What was the latex fixation? - It wasn't done, sir.
Don't you think that's an important test to differentiate SBE from miliary TB?
Not you, Biegelman. Ambler.
There's about a 70 percent incidence of false-positive latex in SBE.
You have been reading up.
If the diagnosis were SBE...
would a positive latex indicate anything in the therapy?
- We'd expect the latex to become negative. - Lf...
If the antibiotic therapy were successful.
- Are you applying for your internship here? - I'm not sure.
Come and see me. Would you sit up, please, miss?
We've got a little thing here, Doctor.
The girl over there is the daughter of the patient in 806.
He is at the moment comatose, and requires intravenous feeding and meds.
The daughter wants to take the father out of the hospital...
and back to Mexico, where they live.
The patient's name is Drummond. He's apparently a Methodist missionary.
They run some kind of religious mission among the Apache Indians.
The daughter says she's a licensed nurse...
so she can give the necessary IVs and treatment.
I don't think he should be let out of the hospital.
The attending, the guy in brown over there, concurs.
Wait, let me have all that again.
As a matter of fact, this is Dr. Biegelmars case.
Never mind the professional ethics. What happened?
I don't know why I'm covering up for that son of a bitch in Farkis Pavilion.
The patient, a man of 56, was admitted to the hospital 10 days ago...
in good health, for a checkup. No visible distress.
We did the mandatory workup on him. Blood cultures, stool, LE preps, chest EKG.
All negative. However, there was some evidence of protein in his urine.
I don't know how that guy in Farkis Pavilion found out.
Maybe he had a deal with one of the girls in the lab.
He turned up the next day...
conned the patient into signing an authorization for a biopsy.
- What guy in Farkis Pavilion? - Some postgrad fellow named Ives.
Elroy Ives. I never met him. He's on one of the immunology research programs.
Some postgrad came up here, did a biopsy on the patient?
Yes, sir. He conned Biegelman with that story...
Protein in the urine?
- And he biopsied the man? - And he nicked a vessel.
They woke up Biegelman at 2:00 in the morning, as the patient was in shock.
Biegelman called the kidney people for a consult.
But what was there to see? The patient was sour and bleeding.
Spoke to this fellow, Sutcliff.
He referred us to a surgeon named Welbeck.
- That barber? - You ain't heard nothing yet.
We finally got Welbeck around 4:00 in the morning.
He said go ahead. So they laid the surgery for 8:00.
Welbeck turned up half-stoned, orders an IVP, clears him for allergies...
Without actually testing, and the patient went into shock.
And tubular necrosis. They lopped out the bleeding kidney...
ran him back to the room, we waited for urine.
Fever began spiking like hell, uremia, vomiting. So we arranged hemodialysis.
He's putting out good water now...
but some nurse goofed on his last treatment. A shunt separated, something.
Blood pressure plunged. They ran him up to ICU...
gave him two units of whole blood. Vital signs are normal, but he's comatose.
- That was two days ago. - In short...
a man comes into this hospital in perfect health...
and in the space of one week, we chop out one kidney...
damage another, reduce him to coma, and damn near kill him.
Yes, sir.
You know, Brubaker...
last night I sat in my hotel room, reviewing the shambles of my life...
and contemplating suicide.
I said, "No, Bock, don't do it. You're a doctor, you're a healer.
"You're the Chief of Medicine at one of the great hospitals of the world.
"You are a necessary person. Your life is meaningful."
Then I walk in here, today, and I find out that one of my doctors...
was killed by a couple of nurses who mistook him for a patient...
because he screwed a technician from the Nephrology Lab.
- Hematology... - Now you come to me...
with this gothic horror story in which the entire machinery of modern medicine...
has apparently conspired to destroy one lousy patient.
How am I to sustain my feeling of meaningfulness in the face of this?
I'll tell you something.
If there were an oven around here, I'd stick my head in it.
What was the name of that guy from Farkis Pavilion, again?
Ives, sir. Elroy Ives.
- Somebody ought to ream his ass. - I'm going to ream his ass.
I'm gonna break that Welbeck's back. I'll defrock those two cannibals.
They will never again practice in this hospital. I'll tell you that.
What about the girl? She says we have no right to stop her...
from taking her father out. She's willing to sign an AOR form.
Let him go...
before we kill him.
Get me Dr. Gilley. I want to talk to him right now.
Put him on page, if you have to.
I don't care if he's operating. You get me some monkey named Ives.
L-V-E-S. First name, Elroy. He's in the Farkis Pavilion.
I want to talk to you, Joe. Come in my office, please.
You got some punk rotating in your department, named Ives?
Also, I want to ask you what kind of dialysis room you're running.
Excuse me.
Gilley? Bock.
Didrt you tell me a few months ago...
you were gonna cut off all privileges for that assassin, Welbeck?
Welbeck, yes! He just butchered another one of my patients!
The mars a buccaneer.
I want him brought up before the Medical Executive Committee.
He's in your department, not mine. He's putatively a surgeon!
I'll be here.
I think you should know you've got some research guy named Ives...
in your department who's doing some dubious biopsies.
We're having enough problems squeezing grants...
- out of the Nixon Administration... - Ives is dead. That's why I'm here.
- What do you mean? - I mean he's dead.
He had a heart attack in the Emergency Room.
He had a heart attack in the Emergency Room?
What is this? Some kind of plague? Where is he now?
They were just taking him down to Pathology.
...the next thing anybody knew, three hours later...
Mrs. Cushing said there was a dead man in the holding room.
You don't find anything a little grotesque about all this?
- What do you mean? - I mean, at 8:30 this morning...
we meet over a doctor who's killed intravenously...
and here we are four hours later, with another doctor...
who's died of a heart attack in the Emergency Room.
What are you suggesting?
You think we have a mad killer stalking the hospital halls?
Presumably, Dr. Ives died of a heart attack, and Schaefer in a diabetic coma.
People do die of these things.
It's all coincidental, but I wouldn't call it grotesque.
How long are they gonna be on Schaefer's post?
- I don't think you'd like to call next-of-kin? - No, thanks.
God, I need a drink.
Mr. Mead?
I have an injection for you.
What the hell is going on in there?
Honey, we got a witch doctor in 806...
and you better go in there.
You know that Indian that was sitting in 806 all night? He's still there.
And the girl's there, and they're doing some voodoo in there.
- And I ain't kidding! - What're you talking about?
I mean that Indiars in there, half-naked, going...
...with a little bag.
You just better get in there, Mrs. Dunne.
You wanna see something, baby? You just come here.
It's a perfectly harmless ceremony. It's nothing to get excited about.
It'll be over in a few minutes, anyway.
Mr. Blacktree is a shaman who gets his power from the thunder...
and it's imperative he conclude his ritual while the storm is still going on.
Visiting hours were over at 9:00.
All that's going on in there is a simple Apache prayer...
for my father's recovery.
The markings he's made on my father's arms...
are from the pollen of the tule plant.
The twigs have no significance, except they've been struck by lightning...
and are consequently appeals to the spirit of lightning.
It's all entirely harmless. A religious ceremony, not a medical one.
You don't seriously believe all that mumbo jumbo's gonna cure him?
On the other hand, it won't kill him.
- Okay. Go ahead. - Thanks.
- You still gonna take your father out? - I have to arrange an ambulance.
- Is there a phone here I could use? - Use my office.
Thank you.
Hello. I'd like to arrange an ambulance.
I'd like to arrange an ambulance at 1:30, tomorrow afternoon.
Drummond. First name, Barbara. I'll pay cash.
You're to pick up my father, Drummond, Edward...
at the Manattan Medical Center, Holly Pavilion, Room 806.
It's a stretcher case. I presume you provide the stretcher.
He's to be taken to American Airlines...
Kennedy Airport, Flight 729 to Yuma, Arizona.
I'll accompany the patient. Thank you.
- You believe in witchcraft, Miss Drummond? - I believe in everything.
- You like a drink? - Yeah.
My father, you should know, was a very successful doctor in Boston.
A member of the Harvard Medical Faculty.
He was a widower, and I was his only child.
He was not an especially religious man, a sober Methodist.
One evening, seven years ago...
he attended a Pentecostal meeting at Harvard...
and found himself speaking in tongues.
He sank to his knees at the back of the room and began to talk fluently...
in a language which no one had ever heard before.
This sort of thing happens frequently at Pentecostal meetings...
and began happening regularly to my father.
It was not unusual to walk into our home and find my father sitting in his office...
utterly serene, happily speaking to the air in this strange, foreign tongue.
I was, at that time, 20 years old...
having my obligatory affair with a minority group.
In my case, a Hopi Indian, a postgraduate fellow at Harvard...
doing his doctorate in aboriginal languages of the Southwest.
One day, I brought the Indian boy home...
just as my father was sinking to his knees in the entrance foyer in one of his trances.
The Indian wheeled in his tracks, and he said, "I'll be a son of a bitch!"
You see, my father was speaking an Apache dialect...
an obscure dialect, at that...
spoken only by a ragged band of unreconstructed Indians...
who had rejected the reservation, and gone to live in isolation...
in the Sierra Madre Mountains in Northern Mexico.
What do you say to that?
What the hell am I supposed to say to that?
I'm sitting here boozing, and you come in and tell me...
some demented story about your father's religious conversion.
You miss the point. Not my father's conversion, mine.
You see, I'd been hitting the acid pretty regularly at that time.
I had achieved a few minor sensory deformities, some suicidal despairs...
but nothing as wild as fluency in an obscure Apache dialect.
I mean, like, "Wow, man!"
Here was living afflatus right before my eyes!
Within a week, my father had closed his Beacon Hill practice...
and set out to start a mission in the Mexican Mountains.
I turned in my SDS card and my crash helmet, and I followed him.
It was a disaster, at least for me.
My father had received the revelation, not I.
He stood gaunt on a mountain slope and preached the Apocalypse...
to solemnly amused Indians.
I masturbated a lot. We lived in a grass wickiup...
ate raw rabbit and crushed pi?on nuts. It was hideous.
Within two months, I was back in Boston.
A hollow shell, disenchanted with everything, and dizzy with dengue.
I turned to austerity, combed my hair tight, entered nursing school.
I became haggard, driven...
had shamelessly incestuous dreams about my father.
I took up with some of the senior staff there. One of them...
a portly psychiatrist, explained...
I was generated by an unresolved lust for my father.
I cracked up.
One day, they found me walking to work naked and screaming obscenities.
There was talk of institutionalizing me.
So I packed a bag and went back to join my father in the Sierra Madre Mountains.
I've been there ever since. That's three years.
My father is, of course, as mad as a hatter.
I watch over him, and have been curiously content.
You see, I believe in everything.
What was that all about?
I thought I was obvious as hell.
I'm trying to tell you, I have a thing about middle-aged men.
I admire your candor.
You've been admiring a lot more than that.
You're wasting your time.
I've been impotent for years.
Rubbish.
What the hell is wrong with being impotent?
Kids are more hung up on sex than the Victorians.
I got a son, 23 years old. I threw him out of the house last year.
Pietistic little humbug.
He preached universal love, and he despised everyone.
Had a blanket contempt for the middle class, even its decencies.
Detested my mother because she had a petit bourgeois pride...
in her son, the doctor.
I cannot tell you how brutishly he ignored that rather good lady.
When she died, he didn't even come to the funeral.
He felt the chapel service was an hypocrisy.
He told me his generation didn't live with lies.
I said, "Listen, everybody lives with lies."
I grabbed him by his poncho...
and I dragged him the length...
of our seven-room, despicably affluent...
middle-class apartment, and I flung him... out.
I haven't seen him since.
You know what he said to me?
He's standing there on the landing, on the verge of tears.
He shrieked at me:
"You old fink.
"You can't even get it up anymore."
That was it, you see.
That was his real revolution.
It wasn't racism...
the oppressed poor, or the war in Vietnam.
The ultimate American societal sickness...
was a limp dingus.
My God.
If there is a despised, misunderstood minority in this country...
it is us poor, impotent bastards. I'm impotent, and I'm proud of it.
Impotence is beautiful, baby!
- Power to the impotent! Right on, baby! - Right on!
You know...
when I say impotent, I don't mean merely limp.
Disagreeable as it may be for a woman, a man may lust for other things...
something a little less transient than an erection.
A sense of permanent won'th.
That's what medicine was to me, my reason for being.
When I was 34...
I presented a paper before the annual convention...
of the Society of Clinical Investigation...
that pioneered the whole goddamn field of Immunology.
A breakthrough.
I'm in all the textbooks.
I happen to be an eminent man.
You know something else? I don't give a goddamn.
When I say impotent...
I mean I've lost even my desire to work.
That's a hell of a lot more primal passion than sex.
I've lost my reason for being.
My purpose.
The only thing I ever truly loved.
It is all rubbish, isn't it?
Transplants, antibodies...
We manufacture genes.
We can produce birth ectogenetically.
We can practically clone people like carrots...
and half the kids in this ghetto haven't even been inoculated for polio!
We have established the most enormous...
medical entity ever conceived...
and people are sicker than ever!
We cure nothing!
We heal nothing!
The whole goddamn wretched world...
is strangulating in front of our eyes.
That's what I mean when I say impotent.
You don't know what the hell I'm talking about, do you?
Of course I do.
I'm very tired.
And I hurt.
I've got nothing going for me anymore. Can you understand that?
Of course.
Can you also understand...
that the only admissible matter left is death?
Sounds to me like a familiar case of morbid menopause.
Christ.
It's hard for me to take your despair seriously.
- You obviously enjoy it so much. - Bugger off!
That's all I need now, is clinical insight.
Some cockamamie 25-year-old acidhead...
is gonna reassure me about the menopause now!
I'd like to be alone. Why don't you just beat it?
Close the door and turn off the lights on your way out.
Mr. Blacktree disapproves of my miniskirt...
but it was the only thing I had to come to the city with.
Back at the tribe, I wear ankle-length buckskin.
Swell. Close the door and turn off the lights.