Closing Time (Catch-22 2)

"Hey, guys, give me a hand with him. From them too?"

"Sure."

28

Hospital

"Cut," said the brain surgeon, in this last stage of his Rhine Journey.

"You cut," said his apprentice.

"No cuts," said Yossarian.

"Now look who's butting in."

"Should we go ahead?"

"Why not?"

"I've never done this before."

"That's what my girlfriend used to say. Where's the hammer?"

"No hammers," said Yossarian.

"Is he going to keep talking that way while we try to concentrate?"

"Give me that hammer."

"Put down that hammer," directed Patrick Beach.

"How many fingers do you see?" demanded Leon Shumacher.

"One."

"How many now?" asked Dennis Teemer.

"Still one. The same."

"He's fooling around, gentlemen," said former stage actress Frances Rolphe, born Frances Rosenbaum, who'd grown up to become mellow Frances Beach, with a face that again looked its age. "Can't you see?"

"We made him all better!"

"Gimme eat," said Yossarian.

"I would cut that dosage in half, Doctor," instructed Melissa MacIntosh. "Halcion wakes him up and Xanax makes him anxious. Prozac depresses him."

"She knows you that well, does she?" clucked Leon Shumacher, after Yossarian had been given more eat.

"We've seen each other."

"Who's her busty blonde friend?"

"Her name is Angela Moorecock."

"Heh, heh. I was hoping for something like that. What time will she get here?"

"After work and before dinner, and she may come again with a house-building boyfriend. My children may be here. Now that I'm out of danger, they may want to bid me farewell."