Catch-22 (Catch-22 1)

'We can't tell him to beat it,' said a corporal. 'There's a new directive out about abdominal complaints. We have to keep them under observation five days because so many of them have been dying after we make them beat it.'

'All right,' grumbled the doctor. 'Keep him under observation five days and then make him beat it.' They took Yossarian's clothes away and put him in a ward, where he was very happy when no one was snoring nearby. In the morning a helpful young English intern popped in to ask him about his liver.

'I think it's my appendix that's bothering me,' Yossarian told him.

'Your appendix is no good,' the Englishman declared with jaunty authority. 'If your appendix goes wrong, we can take it out and have you back on active duty in almost no time at all. But come to us with a liver complaint and you can fool us for weeks. The liver, you see, is a large, ugly mystery to us. If you've ever eaten liver you know what I mean. We're pretty sure today that the liver exists and we have a fairly good idea of what it does whenever it's doing what it's supposed to be doing. Beyond that, we're really in the dark. After all, what is a liver? My father, for example, died of cancer of the liver and was never sick a day of his life right up till the moment it killed him. Never felt a twinge of pain. In a way, that was too bad, since I hated my father. Lust for my mother, you know.'

'What's an English medical officer doing on duty here?' Yossarian wanted to know.

The officer laughed. 'I'll tell you all about that when I see you tomorrow morning. And throw that silly ice bag away before you die of pneumonia.' Yossarian never saw him again. That was one of the nice things about all the doctors at the hospital; he never saw any of them a second time. They came and went and simply disappeared. In place of the English intern the next day, there arrived a group of doctors he had never seen before to ask him about his appendix.

'There's nothing wrong with my appendix,' Yossarian informed them. 'The doctor yesterday said it was my liver.'

'Maybe it is his liver,' replied the white-haired officer in charge. 'What does his blood count show?'

'He hasn't had a blood count.'

'Have one taken right away. We can't afford to take chances with a patient in his condition. We've got to keep ourselves covered in case he dies.' He made a notation on his clipboard and spoke to Yossarian. 'In the meantime, keep that ice bag on. It's very important.'

'I don't have an ice bag on.'

'Well, get one. There must be an ice bag around here somewhere. And let someone know if the pain becomes unendurable.' At the end of ten days, a new group of doctors came to Yossarian with bad news; he was in perfect health and had to get out. He was rescued in the nick of time by a patient across the aisle who began to see everything twice. Without warning, the patient sat up in bed and shouted.

'I see everything twice!' A nurse screamed and an orderly fainted. Doctors came running up from every direction with needles, lights, tubes, rubber mallets and oscillating metal tines. They rolled up complicated instruments on wheels. There was not enough of the patient to go around, and specialists pushed forward in line with raw tempers and snapped at their colleagues in front to hurry up and give somebody else a chance. A colonel with a large forehead and horn-rimmed glasses soon arrived at a diagnosis.

'It's meningitis,' he called out emphatically, waving the others back. 'Although Lord knows there's not the slightest reason for thinking so.'

'Then why pick meningitis?' inquired a major with a suave chuckle. 'Why not, let's say, acute nephritis?'

'Because I'm a meningitis man, that's why, and not an acute-nephritis man,' retorted the colonel. 'And I'm not going to give him up to any of you kidney birds without a struggle. I was here first.' In the end, the doctors were all in accord. They agreed they had no idea what was wrong with the soldier who saw everything twice, and they rolled him away into a room in the corridor and quarantined everyone else in the ward for fourteen days.

Thanksgiving Day came and went without any fuss while Yossarian was still in the hospital. The only bad thing about it was the turkey for dinner, and even that was pretty good. It was the most rational Thanksgiving he had ever spent, and he took a sacred oath to spend every future Thanksgiving Day in the cloistered shelter of a hospital. He broke his sacred oath the very next year, when he spent the holiday in a hotel room instead in intellectual conversation with Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife, who had Dori Duz's dog tags on for the occasion and who henpecked Yossarian sententiously for being cynical and callous about Thanksgiving, even though she didn't believe in God just as much as he didn't.

'I'm probably just as good an atheist as you are,' she speculated boastfully. 'But even I feel that we all have a great deal to be thankful for and that we shouldn't be ashamed to show it.'

'Name one thing I've got to be thankful for,' Yossarian challenged her without interest.

'Well...' Lieutenant Scheisskopf's wife mused and paused a moment to ponder dubiously. 'Me.'

'Oh, come on,' he scoffed.

She arched her eyebrows in surprise. 'Aren't you thankful for me?' she asked. She frowned peevishly, her pride wounded. 'I don't have to shack up with you, you know,' she told him with cold dignity. 'My husband has a whole squadron full of aviation cadets who would be only too happy to shack up with their commanding officer's wife just for the added fillip it would give them.' Yossarian decided to change the subject. 'Now you're changing the subject,' he pointed out diplomatically. 'I'll bet I can name two things to be miserable about for every one you can name to be thankful for.'

'Be thankful you've got me,' she insisted.

'I am, honey. But I'm also goddam good and miserable that I can't have Dori Duz again, too. Or the hundreds of other girls and women I'll see and want in my short lifetime and won't be able to go to bed with even once.'

'Be thankful you're healthy.'

'Be bitter you're not going to stay that way.'

'Be glad you're even alive.'

'Be furious you're going to die.'

'Things could be much worse,' she cried.

'They could be one hell of a lot better,' he answered heatedly.