‘I worry about the airplane crashes also,’ Yossarian told him.
‘You’re not the only one.’
‘Yeah, but I’m also pretty worried about that Ewing’s tumor,’ Doc Daneeka boasted.
‘Do you think that’s why my nose is stuffed all the time and why I always feel so chilly?
Take my pulse.’
Yossarian also worried about Ewing’s tumor and melanoma.
Catastrophes were lurking everywhere, too numerous to count.
When he contemplated the many diseases and potential accidents threatening him, he was positively astounded that he had managed to survive in good health for as long as he had.
It was miraculous.
Each day he faced was another dangerous mission against mortality.
And he had been surviving them for twenty-eight years.
The Soldier Who Saw Everything Twice
Yossarian owed his good health to exercise, fresh air, teamwork and good sportsmanship; it was to get away from them all that he had first discovered the hospital.
When the physical-education officer at Lowery Field ordered everyone to fall out for calisthenics one afternoon, Yossarian, the private, reported instead at the dispensary with what he said was a pain in his right side.
‘Beat it,’ said the doctor on duty there, who was doing a crossword puzzle.
‘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.’