American Fanatics

TIJUANA CLINIC

T I J U A N A C L I N I C I Limousined over the pimped border through nightsweats of switchblades and firecrackers illuminating cripples on casters selling obscene piggy banks, they come from America, our patients, to regard with disdain the miracle radiance which is not exactly their fate: complete remission in four weeks at $, a throw. They come begging us for a change. With their first-world cancers. With regret sprouting eyes in the dampness of their bodies: pain as pain: I smoked, I drank manhattans, three before supper for thirty-six years, but all I really wanted was quiet love in the evenings and a baseball game on the radio. They are not lambs, but captains of industry tied to colostomy pocketbooks telling chemo nightmare losses.  Barresi pages:Layout 1 5/12/10 1:43 PM Page 43 I I American doctors like to wash their hands. They do it all the time. But we are a town trafficking in hope: if it falls on either side of a rank, incurable wish, we’re lousy with it. Laetrile, and coffee enemas at eight— life’s cheapest labor isn’t lost on us. Look. Here is something milled from the glands of spring lambs to drink. Here is someone gulled with a shunt to the heart which should do very nicely for the enzyme drip. I I I A rogue cell is a mad situation, a sidelong glance in a feathered god’s left eye, an ancient nation rising. I V Fluid on the pleural heart, lungs leaking filthy honey, they come to us on their knees, our patients,  Barresi pages:Layout 1 5/12/10 1:43 PM Page 44 with their tax-sheltered annuities cashed out, por favor. Damn the penalties. They come sweating like wetbacks to the old world, where we have been waiting all our lives for someone to call us doctor.  Barresi pages:Layout 1 5/12/10 1:43 PM Page 45 ...