Ghouls

CHAPTER ELEVEN

John stepped out of his room for the last time. Pure instinct made him pull the door to behind him, but it was useless; it never clicked shut. It had no lock and no bolt. None of the doors did, except the one at the med station, and the wing door.

The hall lights seemed brighter today, and more artificial. His footsteps sounded annoyingly loud, like someone clapping stones. It was the meaning of the moment, he knew, and nothing more. From doorways, other ”in-pats” looked at him with blank envy. Some of them nodded, some waved, but most recoiled into their rooms as he passed, still unused to his facial features.

Someone had erased the precaution roster and drawn a warped face; John thought of a comic reflection, which it probably was, though he’d made no enemies here. He walked by a closed door on which had been plaqued PSYCHO-NEUROLOGY, ECT. He’d heard it could break bones from reactive muscle contractions, and his social worker had once told him that it worked by effectuating minor brain cell death. Great therapy. At least he’d never had to go in.

Nurse Dallion stood waiting at the end of the wing. Beside her, two men in starched green work clothes were busy installing a Scanray metal detector. Better late than never, he thought sarcastically but with real remorse. A day ago a Class III patient had smuggled in a bottle cap and cut his wrists.

On the wing door was a sign that read: PREVENTION OF ELOPEMENT IS EVERYBODY’S JOB. John regarded the power housing automatically. Electromagnetic surface blank, he thought. Twelve-hundred-pound hold, 3-watt running differential at 24 volts, cadmium strike plate. Takes all of a minute and a half to defeat.

Nurse Dallion smiled frailly and waved to a face in the med station. There was a metal clack, then the door chunked open like a bank vault.

“All ready?” she said.

“Are you kidding?”

Nurse Dallion laughed brokenly, a cracked whisper; he followed her out. The door hummed and sucked shut. Down an empty corridor and to the left, three avocado-colored elevators stood like portals to a pale void.

Nurse Dallion pressed the Down button. She handed John his checklist. “You only have three more stations to go.”

John took the list. Only three more fucking stations.

The nurse unconsciously fingered a tiny American flag pinned to her collar. She was a ghost in her white dress, her white shoes, and her white stockings. She had pale freckles on very white skin, and seemed as thin as the anorectics. John had always liked her, and her weird, nervous aura—he could easily picture her an in-pat.

She looked just past him, as if leery of muggers. “The first floor is kind of confusing, especially at this hour. If you get lost, just look for a directory board, they’re all over… Any questions?”

John surveyed the last three marks on the sheet.

14 MHC- Dr. Herman

15 Travel Unit

16 Baggage Claim/Housekeeping

“Who’s Dr. Herman?” he asked. “I’ve never heard of him.”

“He’s chief of the psychiatric division; his office is downstairs in the mental hygiene clinic.”

“Not another staff board—”

“No, nothing like that; it’s just him. He likes to talk to all restored patients before they leave.”

Restored, he thought. What terminology.

A muffled bell chimed, and the middle elevator yawned open. John stepped in and turned around; its closeness made him think of a coffin on end.

Nurse Dallion’s smile ran slits down her cheeks. Without realizing it she had turned the flag pin upside-down. “Take care of yourself, John,” she said. “And God bless.”

“I won’t miss this place, but I will miss you—” and before he could say anything more, the doors had closed, leaving him to face painted metal.

The elevator droned, lowering. He’d had a fear as a child that one day he’d take an elevator down and it would open into hell. His mother, with seared-red flesh and horns in her head, would reach in and take his hand.

The elevator faltered open to show him a deceptively large lobby. He slipped into a throng of people who moved chaotically through the main junction: patients, janitors, technicians, doctors in white tunics, and unshaved medical residents with stethoscopes slung over their shoulders. At the right moment he squeezed out of the stream and sat down in a very uncomfortable chair made of chrome wires. This was the waiting area. Waiting for what? he thought. Here, patients stood or sat in perfect stillness. They were all very old. No women, just men bent and cracked by age; they made the area a sea of wizened faces, sunken heads, and jaundice-darkened eyes. Some straggled on canes, tipped walkers, and prosthetic limbs. One tall, thin man shuffled through the aisle in blue pajamas and robe and squeaky sponge slippers, pulling with him a wheeled plasma stand; an IV line drooped like an umbilical from an upturned bottle of clear liquid and disappeared under his robe sleeve. A man in a battery-powered wheelchair rolled by; the motor made a sound like a toy car. Another man in a manual chair passed in the opposite direction; his right leg was gone below the knee, leaving only a bald knob of flesh to jut from his rolled pajama cuff. John noticed lots of men in wheelchairs—lined up in front of windows, clogged in the aisles, parked by tulip-like ashtrays, all displaying different variations of dismemberment. This limbo seemed the fortune they’d inherited for fighting the Germans. To finish the glimpse of despair, John saw two techs pushing a gurney into the freight elevator. The gurney contained a man who had no arms or legs at all.

Oppressed, he got up and followed a long L-shaped corridor away from the lobby. This hall, too, was flooded with people moving in both directions. Some stopped to talk, and this particularly infuriated him. He wanted to shove them out of the way. A female security officer eyed him suspiciously; then he realized that most of those he passed were staring. The preceding years on the ward had helped him forget about the condition of his face. He would have to prepare himself now to be stared at for the rest of his life.

His journey through the hospital led him past a canteen, a jammed cafeteria, and a noxious-smelling automat. A black directory at the end of the hall read MHC with an arrow pointing right. In another moment he faced the bizarre room number 1D122.

The clinic was an odd network of short corridors and closed doors. Only a third of the overhead fluorescents seemed to be working. John approached a lexan-fronted reception partition, and withdrew his VA ID card. It was a pretty card, a white square with a purple triangle and the letters SERVICE-CONNECTED. He handed his card over the halfboard to a reed-thin receptionist with green eye makeup and metallic-blond hair. He wondered how she could sit up straight; her breasts each were clearly the size of a baby’s head. “I have an appointment to see Dr. Herman at eleven,” he said.

Her green eyelids slivered. She took the card, stiffening at the sight of his face. “You’re the one out-processing today?”

“Yes.”

“Fine,” she said. Her cleavage blared; he envisioned nipples with the circumference of coffee cups. As she began scribbling in a green log book, more signs harassed him. NO SMOKING PLEASE, MEDICATION BY APPOINTMENT ONLY, ARMED ESCORTS MUST SIGN IN WEAPON SERIAL NUMBERS HERE. Facing him was a Day-Glo poster which read GOOD MORNING, SUNSHINE, and under it a trade calendar advertising McNeil anti-depressants. The contradiction was so outrageous he could’ve laughed.

“You can wait in the office,” the receptionist said. Her breasts rose slightly, like balloons, when she handed back the card. “Second door on the right. Dr. Herman will be with you shortly.”

The office was dark and cramped and vaultlike. It had no windows. One painting adorned the front wall, a perverse swirl of dark colors, some patient’s OT project, no doubt; John had seen them everywhere, and even painted a few himself. There was no couch here; he’d been in dozens of psychiatrists’ offices over the years, but never had he seen a proverbial couch. An industrial-gray desk sat hugely off to one corner; heaps of books and papers threatened to overrun its top. The desk was a show-place for psycho-paraphernalia. A dark blue paperweight shaped like a Stelazine pill; a haloperidol thermometer; pens and pencil cups bearing names of numerous trade drugs; a flier: What every doctor should know about extrapyramidity; a plastic Xanax calendar; and a blotter advertising Mellaril. In one corner stood a coat stand draped with white lab coats, and still another was occupied by an old Royal 440 typewriter. Bookshelves seemed divided between psychiatric texts and anthologies of American literature and poetry.

John took a cane chair right of the desk. Beside him was a table on which rested a queer aluminum ashtray stuffed with butts. His nostrils constricted at the tinge of tar.

The psychiatric chief seemed to materialize rather than enter. Dr. Herman stood slender and statuesque and too striking to be a man of this trade. Fine lines composed his face; his hair was dark, modestly styled, and only traceably gray. He reminded John of someone who might be in a Shakespearean troupe, or a historical society.

“Ah,” Dr. Herman said. “You must be John, from upstairs.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Please bear with us. I realize how anxious you must be, but I’m afraid it’s hospital policy that you be interviewed by me before release. I suppose that might seem odd, that such a requirement be meted out by a doctor you’ve never met.”

“Yes, sir,” John said.

“Though my main function here revolves around the out-patient clinic, ward-patient release requires my final authorization, since I am also the administrative chief of the psychiatric branch.”

John didn’t care. He watched Herman sit down and thought how out of place the doctor appeared behind the cluttered desk. It was almost as if the office didn’t belong to Herman at all, but to another doctor.

Dr. Herman placed a hand on a closed folder of papers, what John presumed were his own medical records and psychiatric history. The folder was very thick. “I read over your case earlier,” Herman said. He was sitting erect in the chair, as if uncomfortable. John suspected his face was what made the doctor uneasy. Herman went on. “Most extraordinary. How do you plan to deal with it?”

From afar he heard a sudden, heavy pounding, construction workers on the roof. “Sir?”

“I mean, now that it’s over, how are you going to commence with your life?”

“I’m going to forget it all now,” John lied. “Leave it all behind.”

“Pretend it never happened, in other words.”

“Yes.” It amused John how hard Herman tried not to look at him.

The doctor let a pause hang in the air. “You’re cured now, John. I admit that’s a crude term in this instance, but we view psychiatric illness the way a dermatologist might view a rash. Treatments are applied, and the rash clears. Hence, the original affliction is no longer evident. Many patients pending release hesitate to be honest with me because they believe that I have the power to detain them at the last minute, should my opinion differ with those of the ward doctors. This is not at all true, please understand that. You can get up and run out of this hospital right now, and there’s nothing I could do to stop you. My final authorization is simply to make sure you’ve been out-processed properly. Therefore, you can speak honestly with me. You will do that, won’t you?”

“Of course,” John said. He had to smile; Herman’s entire monologue seemed painfully rehearsed.

“Tell me then, the incident which brought you here is a very strange account.” He glanced briefly at the folder. “Do you agree?”

“Yes.”

The pounding from the roof grew louder, pile-driving thuds that seemed to rock the superstructure of the building. Neither of them acknowledged it. Herman said, “Yet, it is your account. It’s something that you, at one time, believed most persistently, am I right?”

“Yes…”

Another pause. This time Herman looked John directly in the eye, and asked, “John, do you believe any of it now?”

“No,” John lied. He’d learned the futility of this truth, he’d learned well. “No,” he said again.

“Not even a little bit of it?”

John shook his head. He felt interrogated, but now it was his turn to deliver rehearsed lines. “When I think about that period of my life, I… I can’t believe it happened to me. What’s more, I can’t believe that I believed it, if you know what I mean. It’s more like a dream. Or recalling a dream you once had long ago. It’s a well-engineered dream, but it’s distanced enough to see through, to detect the parts that don’t fit. It’s like having a fever for a week, and when you think about it later, the whole week seems unreal.”

“What we in the business colloquially refer to as the inverted telescope syndrome… But the fever, in your case, was a bit longer than a week.”

“Right.”

Now Dr. Herman relaxed. He folded his hands in his lap and actually leaned back in the chair. “I’m sure you’ll do well on the outside, John. No discipline problems, no memos, you went through the acclimation program with flying colors. Almost like…”

Almost like there was nothing wrong with me to begin with, John finished in thought. “It was a milk run.”

“So then, what are your plans for the future?”

“It’s weird, but I really haven’t given it that much thought. Won’t have to worry about money, at least, but I don’t plan on just sitting around living off my disability, if that’s what you mean. I’ll take a few weeks to get settled, then start looking for work.”

Herman nodded approvingly. “And how do you feel? How do you feel right now as we speak?”

“Pretty good,” John said. He felt numb. “I know it’ll take some adjusting, with my face the way it is, but I don’t anticipate any problems. I’ve always been pretty much on my own; my face doesn’t bother me. If I’d lost an arm or a leg, then I guess that’d be different. The way I see it, I’m lucky to be alive. So my face got screwed up? Sure, it would be nice to have it back, but I’d rather be ugly and on the street than good-looking in a pine box.”

“An admirable attitude. And how do you feel about your release? Generally speaking, I mean.”

“Great. No offense to your setup here, but I’m happy as hell to be finally getting out.”

Herman leaned forward to raise a finger. “Not just that you’re getting out, but that you’re getting out healthy. That’s the important thing.”

“Right.”

“What about medication?” the doctor asked. “Your chart says—”

“Imipramine, four times a day,” John answered. From his pocket he withdrew a container of tiny off-orange pills and held them up for Herman to see; they made a sound like a baby rattle. He’d been spitting them out in the ward toilet for two years now, what universal psych-ward idiom knew as “dogging the meds.” “But, really, the depression hasn’t been a problem for the last year or so.”

“I understand that, but to ensure that it doesn’t become a problem in the future, you must continue taking them, and you must continue out-patient check-ups at least a couple of times per year. Now, your ward doctor has indicated that you’ll be going to Florida, to your original hometown.”

“I feel strange calling it my hometown, since I haven’t actually been there in a long time—probably ten years. But it seems as good a place as any to settle. I may hang around the area for a few weeks to look up some old friends. Eventually, though, I think I will be heading south.”

“Just remember that wherever you do settle, check into the nearest VA hospital and establish out-patient status; that way you’ll be able to continue with your medication free of charge. If you have any problems, any doubts whatsoever, don’t hesitate to come in.”

“Right,” John said. But it was more whimsy. The last thing he’d ever do was come back.

Herman initialed the checklist and the VA Routing Form 10-2875-2; smiling, he said, “I won’t keep you any longer; I’m sure you’re itching to leave. Just follow the directories to travel and baggage claim.”

They both stood up and shook hands.

“The best of luck to you, John,” Herman said.

“Thank you, sir.”

John left. Moments later he was back amid the confusion of the corridors. This time he passed the automat quickly and with caution, holding his breath to avoid the stench of microwaved plastic. The travel unit waiting room was packed; everyone looked irritable and very tired. John hated waiting. He decided he’d pay his own bus fare rather than stand jammed like a canned mackerel.

He took the elevator to the basement. Behind the caged counter in the baggage unit a lean black man with short hair and beard sat atop a stool. He was reading a book called Night-lust and seemed electrified.

John flashed him his VA card.

“Out-process?”

“Right.”

Next, John handed him the claim stub. The man disappeared for less than a minute, and returned shouldering an OD-green air-freight bag with a brass lock on its clasps. Apparently the bag had been fluoroscoped and sniffed, not opened. John was sure, though, that the additional string bag tied to the top had been opened and searched by MAC MP’s. But it didn’t matter; if they wanted it that bad, they could have it.

The man took out a ledger and said, “I need some info before I can turn over your stuff.”

“Sure,” John said. “Just don’t ask about my sex life.”

The man chuckled. “What ward are you coming off?”

“2D West.”

“And that’s the—”

“The psychiatric ward.”

The man nodded, disinterested. He paid no mind to John’s disfigured face. “Pay grade at time of separation?”

“E-7.”

“MOS?”

“I have ten.”

“Give me the two highest.”

“11 Echo 40, 45 Bravo, Lima, and Zebra.”

“Hey, how do you like that,” the black man said, at once enthused. “I was 11 Echo, too. ‘Clank, clank, I’m a tank.’”

“Hell on fucking wheels, man. We ride in style.”

This time the black man laughed hard. “Give me your C number. I got to make sure it matches the stub.”

“C29541313.”

“Legal first name?”

“John,” John said.

“Not Jonathan?”

“Not Jonathan. John.”

“Middle name?”

“Victor.”

“Last name?”

“Sanders.”

— | — | —