Seven oclock the mess hall opens and the order of line-up reverses: the Wheelers first, then the Walkers, then the Acutes pick up trays, corn flakes, bacon and eggs, toast and this morning a canned peach on a piece of green, torn lettuce. Some of the Acutes bring trays to the Wheelers. Most Wheelers are just Chronics with bad legs, they feed themselves, but theres these three of them got no action from the neck down whatsoever, not much from the neck up. These are called Vegetables. The black boys push them in after everybody else is sat down, wheel them against a wall, and bring them identical trays of muddy-looking food with little white diet cards attached to the trays. Mechanical Soft, reads the diet cards for these toothless three: eggs, ham, toast, bacon, all chewed thirty-two times apiece by the stainless-steel machine in the kitchen. I see it purse sectioned lips, like a vacuum-cleaner hose, and spurt a clot of chewed-up ham onto a plate with a barnyard sound.
The black boys stoke the sucking pink mouths of the Vegetables a shade too fast for swallowing, and the Mechanical Soft squeezes out down their little knobs of chins onto the greens. The black boys cuss the Vegetables and ream the mouths bigger with a twisting motion of the spoon, like coring a rotten apple: This ol fart Blastic, hes comin to pieces befo my very eyes. I cant tell no more if Im feeding him bacon puree or chunks of his own fuckin tongue.
Seven-thirty back to the day room. The Big Nurse looks out through her special glass, always polished till you cant tell its there, and nods at what she sees, reaches up and tears a sheet off her calendar one day closer to the goal. She pushes a button for things to start. I hear the wharrup of a big sheet of tin being shook someplace. Everybody come to order. Acutes: sit on your side of the day room and wait for cards and Monopoly games to be brought out. Chronics: sit on your side and wait for puzzles from the Red Cross box. Ellis: go to your place at the wall, hands up to receive the nails and pee running down your leg. Pete: wag your head like a puppet. Scanlon: work your knobby hands on the table in front of you, constructing a make-believe bomb to blow up a make-believe world. Harding: begin talking, waving your dove hands in the air, then trap them under your armpits because grown men arent supposed to wave their pretty hands that way. Sefelt: begin moaning about your teeth hurting and your hair falling out. Everybody: breath in and out in perfect order; hearts all beating at the rate the OD cards have ordered. Sound of matched cylinders.
Like a cartoon world, where the figures are flat and outlined in black, jerking through some kind of goofy story that might be real funny if it werent for the cartoon figures being real guys
Seven-forty-five the black boys move down the line of Chronics taping catheters on the ones that will hold still for it. Catheters are second-hand condoms the ends clipped off and rubber-banded to tubes that run down pantlegs to a plastic sack marked DISPOSABLE NOT TO BE RE-USED, which it is my job to wash out at the end of each day. The black boys anchor the condom by taping it to the hairs; old Catheter Chronics are hairless as babies from tape removal.
Eight oclock the walls whirr and hum into full swing. The speaker in the ceiling says, Medications, using the Big Nurses voice. We look in the glass case where she sits, but shes nowhere near the microphone; in fact, shes ten feet away from the microphone, tutoring one of the little nurses how to prepare a neat drug tray with pills arranged orderly. The Acutes line up at the glass door, A, B, C, D, then the Chronics, then the Wheelers (the Vegetables get theirs later, mixed in a spoon of applesauce). The guys file by and get a capsule in a paper cup throw it to the back of the throat and get the cup filled with water by the little nurse and wash the capsule down. On rare occasions some fool might ask what hes being required to swallow.
Wait just a shake, honey; what are these two little red capsules in here with my vitamin?
I know him. Hes a big, griping Acute, already getting the reputation of being a troublemaker.
Its just medication, Mr. Taber, good for you. Down it goes, now.
But I mean what kind of medication. Christ, I can see that theyre pills
Just swallow it all, shall we, Mr. Taber just for me? She takes a quick look at the Big Nurse to see how the little flirting technique she is using is accepted, then looks back at the Acute. He still isnt ready to swallow something he dont know what is, not even just for her.
Miss, I dont like to create trouble. But I dont like to swallow something without knowing what it is, neither. How do I know this isnt one of those funny pills that makes me something Im not?
Dont get upset, Mr. Taber
Upset? All I want to know, for the lova Jesus
But the Big Nurse has come up quietly, locked her hand on his arm, paralyzes him all the way to the shoulder. Thats all right, Miss Flinn, she says. If Mr. Taber chooses to act like a child, he may have to be treated as such. Weve tried to be kind and considerate with him. Obviously, thats not the answer. Hostility, hostility, thats the thanks we get. You can go, Mr. Taber, if you dont wish to take your medication orally.
All I wanted to know, for the
You can go.
He goes off, grumbling, when she frees his arm, and spends the morning moping around the latrine, wondering about those capsules. I got away once holding one of those same red capsules under my tongue, played like Id swallowed it, and crushed it open later in the broom closet. For a tick of time, before it all turned into white dust, I saw it was a miniature electronic element like the ones I helped the Radar Corps work with in the Army, microscopic wires and grids and transistors, this one designed to dissolve on contact with air.
Eight-twenty the cards and puzzles go out.
Eight-twenty-five some Acute mentions he used to watch his sister taking her bath; the three guys at the table with him fall all over each other to see who gets to write it in the log book.
Eight-thirty the ward door opens and two technicians trot in, smelling like grape wine; technicians always move at a fast walk or a trot because theyre always leaning so far forward they have to move fast to keep standing. They always lean forward and they always smell like they sterilized their instruments in wine. They pull the lab door to behind them, and I sweep up close and can snake out voices over the vicious zzzth-zzzth-zzzth of steel on whetstone.
What we got already at this ungodly hour of the morning?
We got to install an Indwelling Curiosity Cutout in some nosy booger. Hurry-up job, she says, and Im not even sure we got one of the gizmos in stock.
We might have to call IBM to rush one out for us; let me check back in Supply
Hey; bring out a bottle of that pure grain while youre back there: its getting so I cant install the simplest frigging component but what I need a bracer. Well, what the hell, its bettern garage work.
Their voices are forced and too quick on the comeback to be real talk more like cartoon comedy speech. I sweep away before Im caught eavesdropping.
The two big black boys catch Taber in the latrine and drag him. to the mattress room. He gets one a good kick in the shins. Hes yelling bloody murder. Im surprised how helpless he looks when they hold him, like he was wrapped with bands of black iron.
They push him face down on the mattress. One sits on his head, and the other rips his pants open in back and peels the cloth until Tabers peach-colored rear is framed by the ragged lettuce-green. Hes smothering curses into the mattress and the black boy sitting on his head saying, Thas right, Mistuh Taber, thas right. The nurse comes down the hall, smearing Vaseline on a long needle, pulls the door shut so theyre out of sight for a second, then comes right back out, wiping the needle on a shred of Tabers pants. Shes left the Vaseline jar in the room. Before the black boy can close the door after her I see the one still sitting on Tabers head, dabbing at him with a Kleenex. Theyre in there a long time before the door opens up again and they come out, carrying him across the hall to the lab. His greens are ripped clear off now and hes wrapped up in a damp sheet.