The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August

Chapter 8

Jenny visited.

They tied me to the bed and shot me through with a sedative when she came.

I tried to speak, to tell her what they were doing, but I couldn’t.

She wept.

She washed my face, and held my hand, and wept.

She was still wearing her wedding ring.

At the door she spoke with Dr Abel and he said he was concerned about my deterioration and was considering a new kind of drug.

I called out for her and made no sound.

She kept her back turned to me when they locked the door.

Then Dr Abel was sitting too close to me, the tip of his pen resting on his lower lip, and he said, “Tell it to me again, Harry?”

There was an urgency in his voice, more than just the fascination with his own treatments.

“End of the oil embargo,” I heard someone reply. “Carnation revolution in Portugal, government overthrown. Discovery of the terracotta army. India gets the nuclear bomb. West Germany wins the World Cup.”

Ugly Bill was sitting in an orange haze. He said, “Not so smart now not so smart are you so smart so smart you think you’re so smart but you’re not so smart here you’re not so smart smart is nothing smart is shit I’m smart I’m smart I’m the smart one here…”

He leaned in close to dribble on my face. I bit his nose hard enough to hear the cartilage crack and found it very, very funny.

Then there was a voice, a stranger’s voice, cultured and mildly American.

“Oh no no no no no,” it said. “This won’t do at all.”