Closing Time Read Free Page B

understood, and maybe she did not -than all of the few men she was seeing outside the hospital and even the one or two men she had been seeing exclusively, almost exclusively, for a number of years. She had never been married, not even once or twice. Yossarian was so little trouble that he was no trouble at all, and she and the other floor nurses had little more to do for him than look into his room each shift just to make certain he wasn't dead yet and needed nothing done to keep him alive.
    "Is everything all right?" each one would inquire.
    "Everything but my health," he sighed in response.
    "You're in perfect health."
    That was the trouble, he took the trouble to explain. It meant he had to get worse.
    "It's no joke," he joked when they laughed.
    She wore a black slip in one day after he'd begged her to switch, affecting aesthetic longing. Often when he wanted her there he found himself in dire need of something to need. When he pressed his call signal, another nurse might respond.
    "Send in my Melissa," he would command.
    The others would cooperate. He suffered no nursing shortage. He was in good health, the doctors restated daily, and this time, he was concluding in morose disappointment, with the sense he was being cheated, they appeared to be right.
    His appetite and digestion were good. His auditory and spinal apparatus had been CAT-scanned. His sinuses were clear and there was no evidence anywhere of arthritis, bursitis, angina, or neuritis. He was even without a postnasal drip. His blood pressure was the envy of every doctor who saw him. He gave urine and they took it. His cholesterol was low, his hemoglobin was high, his sedimentation rate was a thing of beauty, and his blood nitrogen was ideal. They pronounced him a perfect human being. He thought his first wife and his second, from whom he had now been separated a year, might have some demurrers.
    There was a champion cardiologist who found no fault with him, a pathologist for his pathos, who found no cause for concern either, an enterprising gastroenterologist who ran back to the room for a second opinion from Yossarian on some creative investment strategies he was considering in Arizona real estaie, and a psychologist for his psyche, in whom Yossarian was left in the last resort to confide.
    "And what about these periodic periods of anomie and fatigue and disinterest and depression?" Yossarian rushed on in a whirlwind of whispers. "I find myself detached from listening to things that other people take seriously. I'm tired of information I can't use. I wish the daily newspapers were smaller and came out weekly. I'm not interested anymore in all that's going on in the world. Comedians don't make me laugh and long stories drive me wild. Is it me or old age? Or is the planet really turning irrelevant? TV news is degenerate. Everyone everywhere is glib. My enthusiasms are exhausted. Do I really feel this healthy now or am I just imagining I do? I even have this full head of hair. Doc, I've got to have the truth. Is my depression mental?"
    "It isn't depression and you're not exhausted."
    In due course, the psychologist conferred with the chief of psychiatry, who consulted with all the other medical men, ard they concluded with one voice that there was nothing psychosomatic about the excellent health he was enjoying and that the hair on his head was genuine too.
    "Although," added the chief psychiatrist, with a clearing of throat, "I am honor bound to flag you as a very good candidate for late-life depression."
    "Late-life depression?" Yossarian savored the term. "About when would that be?"
    "About now. What do you do that you really enjoy?"
    "Not much, I'm afraid. I run after women, but not too hard. I make more money than I need."
    "Do you enjoy that?"
    "No. I've got no ambition, and there's not much left I want to get done."
    "No golf, bridge, tennis? Art or antique collecting?"
    "That's all out of the question."
    "The prognosis is not good."
    "I've always known