work with such elements in the Army, microscopic wires and grids and transistors.This one was designed to dissolve on contact with air…
Eight-twenty: the cards and puzzles go out…
Eight-twenty-five: some Acute says that he liked to watch when his sister was taking her bath; the three guys at the table with him run to write it in the logbook…
Eight-thirty: the ward door opens and two technicians come in. They close the lab door behind them, and I sweep up close to the door and can hear their voices.
“What we got already at this ungodly hour of the morning?”
“We got to install a Curiosity Cutout in some nosy, fellow. She says that it must be done quickly.”
I sweep away before I’m caught eavesdropping.
The two big black boys catch Taber and drag him to the mattress room. He’s yelling and kicking, but they hold him tightly.
They push him face down on the mattress. One sits on his head, and the other pulls his pants down. He’s cursing into the mattress and the black boy sitting on his head is saying, “ Tha’s right, Mistuh Taber, tha’s right…” The nurse comes down the hall with ajar of Vaseline and a long needle, closes the door, so they’re out of sight for a second, then comes out, wiping the needle on a fragment of Taber’s pants. She’s left the Vaseline jar in the room. Before the black boy can close the door after her I see the one still sitting on Taber’s head, dabbing at him with a Kleenex. They’re in there a long time before the door opens up again and they come out, carrying him across the hall to the lab. He’s now wrapped up in a damp sheet…
Nine o’clock: young residents talk to Acutes for fifty minutes about what they did when they were little boys. The Big Nurse doesn’t like this time because she can’t control the process.
Nine-fifty: the residents leave and the everything is smooth again: that clean orderly movement of a cartoon comedy.
Taber is wheeled out of the lab on a Gurney bed. They’re taking him to Building One for EST (electric shock treatment).
The Big Nurse says to them, “Maybe after that take him to the electroencephalograph and check his head – we may find evidence of a need for brain work.”
Ten o’clock: the mail comes up. Sometimes you get the torn envelope…
Ten-thirty: Public Relation comes in. Members of a ladies’ club are following him. He claps his fat hands at the day-room door. “Oh, hello guys; look around, girls; isn’t it clean, so bright? This is Miss Ratched. I chose this ward because it’s her ward. She’s, girls, just like a mother. Not that I mean age, but you girls understand…”
He conducts these tours – serious women in blazer jackets, who nod to him as he points out how much things have become better over the years. He points out the TV, the big leather chairs, the sanitary drinking fountains; then they all go and have coffee in the Nurse’s Station.
Ten-forty, – forty-five, – fifty: patients go in and out of little rooms to different appointments for treatment.
The ward is a factory for the Combine. The hospital is for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the churches. When a finished product goes back out into society, all fixed up, good as new, better than new sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurse’s heart; something that came in all twisted different is now a functioning, adjusted component. He’s adjusted to surroundings finally…
“Why, I’ve never seen anything like the change in Maxwell Taber since he’s got back from that hospital; a little black and blue around the eyes, a little weight lost, and, you know what? he’s a new man. God, modern American science…”
And the light is on in his basement window long after midnight every night as the Delayed Reaction,which the technicians installed in him, lend speed to his fingers as he bends over the drugged figure of his wife, his two little girls just four and six, the neighbor he goes bowling with on Mondays; he adjusts them as he was adjusted. This is the way they spread it.
When he finally dies after a pre-set number of years, the town loves him dearly, and there’s his picture in the paper, showing him helping the Boy Scouts last year on Graveyard Cleaning Day, and his wife gets a letter from the headmaster of the high school how Maxwell Wilson Taber was an inspirational figure to the youth of our fine community.
A successful Dismissal like this is a product that brings joy to the Big Nurse’s heart and speaks high of her skills and the whole industry in general. Everybody’s happy with a Dismissal.
But an Admission is a different story. Even the best-behaved Admission must be taught routine. An Admission might really make a hell of a mess and be a threat to the order. And, as I explain, the Big Nurse gets really angry if anything threatens her smooth organization.
At ten minutes to one the black boys are telling Acutes to clear the floor for the group meeting. All the tables are carried out of the day room.
The Big Nurse watches all this through her window. The day-room floor gets cleared of tables, and at one o’clock the doctor comes out of his office down the hall, nods once at the nurse as he goes past her window, and sits in his chair just to the left of the door. The patients sit down when he does; then the little nurses and the residents come in. When everybody’s down, the Big Nurse comes out into the day room, carrying the logbook and a basket full of notes. She sits just to the right of the door.
Soon after she’s sat down, Old Pete Bancini turns his face to McMurphy and starts complaining. “I’m tired. Whew. O Lord. Oh, I’m awfully tired…” he always does so whenever there’s a new man on the ward who might listen to him.
The Big Nurse doesn’t look at Pete. She’s going through the papers in her basket. “Somebody, go and sit beside Mr. Bancini,” she says. “Quiet him down so we can start the meeting.”
Billy Bibbit goes, sits down beside Pete and pats his knee. Pete realizes that nobody is going to listen to his complaint today. The nurse takes off her wrist watch and looks at the ward clock and puts the watch face toward her in the basket. She takes a folder from the basket.
“Now. Shall we get into the meeting?”
She looks around, smiling. The guys don’t look at her; they’re all looking at their nails. Except McMurphy. He’s sitting in an armchair in the corner, and he’s watching her every move. He’s still wearing his cap. A deck of cards in his lap opens and shuts with a loud sound. The nurse’s eyes stay on him for a second. She’s been watching his playing poker all morning and though no money has passed hands she suspects that he’s not exactly the type that is going to be happy with the ward rule of gambling for matches only. The deck opens and shuts again and then disappears somewhere in one of those big palms.
The nurse looks at her watch again and pulls a piece of paper out of the folder she’s holding, looks at it, and returns it to the folder. She puts the folder down and picks up the logbook.
“Now. At the end of Friday’s meeting… we were discussing Mr. Harding’s problem… concerning his young wife. He had stated that his wife’s bosom attracted stares from men on the street and that this made him uneasy.” She opens a place in the logbook. “According to the notes in the logbook, Mr. Harding says that she ’damn well gives the bastards reason to stare’. He also says that he knows her reason to look for sexual attention. He says, ’My dear sweet but illiterate wife thinks that any word or gesture that isn’t brutal is a word or gesture of weak dandyism’.”
She continues reading silently from the book for a while, then closes it.
“He has also stated that his wife’s big bosom at times gives him a feeling of inferiority. So. Does anyone care to touch upon this subject further?”
Harding shuts his eyes, and nobody else says anything. McMurphy looks around at the other guys to see if anybody is going to answer the nurse, then holds his hand up like a school kid in class; the nurse nods at him.
“Mr. – ah – McMurry?”
“Touch upon what?”
“What?