The House of God

by Samuel Shem

Gomer is an acronym: Get Out of My Emergency Room—it’s what you want to say when one’s sent in from the nursing home at three A.M.”

And I realized that they could never hurt me more than they had just hurt me that night, and that out of chaos like this had to come confidence and skill. Something had happened when I was with Saul and Jimmy and Lazarus and Dr. Sanders, and I didn’t know for sure what, but I knew that from taking the risks and learning and remembering Fats, I had pinned down my terror and exploded it to bits. From that night on, I might be everything else, but I’d never again be panicked in the House of God. It was a thrilling thought—almost like in the intern novels and in the inside of Howard’s skull and in my father’s letters—until I realized with alarm that I hadn’t learned how to save anyone at all, not Dr. Sanders or Lazarus or Jimmy or Saul or Anna O., and that what I was thrilled about was learning how to save myself.