The Machine in Ward Eleven

I like Ruben. He is a nice guy. He doesn't lock my door at night. He closes it, naturally, so that none of the doctors nor any of the other nurses will notice that it isn't locked when they are walking past, but he doesn't lock it. (An unlocked door gives me a delicately delightful sense of insecurity.) And this is the kind of thing a man appreciates here. As I recall, most of the white-coated boys in the private sanitarium were good guys like Ruben; but here in this malfunded state-supported institution, a male nurse with a high I.Q. is a rare exception.

A little thing here is a big thing. Ruben lights my cigarettes, and he doesn't mind lighting them. The day nurse, Fred, always appears to be exasperated when I call out to him for a light. I don't blame Fred, of course; the day nurse has many things to do compared to Ruben's duties. Getting the hallway and latrines cleaned, the privileged patients off to O.T. And all of the meals are eaten during the day, too and Fred is responsible for the cart, the collection of the trays and spoons afterward, and so on. I've never had a chance to talk much to Fred, but at night, I talk to Ruben quite a little.

Which means I listen, and that is what I need to do. There is a dark, liquid vacuum to be filled. What Ruben tells me, I often remember, Like the cigarettes.

The American Red Cross furnishes each patient with a carton of cigarettes every week, although there isn't any limitation – at least I don't think there is – on how many cigarettes we can smoke. A carton a week is plenty for me. But we aren't allowed to have matches or a lighter. The male nurse is supposed to open the cell door and light them for us when we call to him. There have been times when I have had to wait so long when Fred or maybe one of the loose patients (there are quite a few of these loose ones who are allowed to carry matches, and they do little odd jobs around the hospital, only their work details are called "therapy" for the convenience of the authorities) came around to light my cigarette I actually forgot what I called out for in the first place.

But at night it is different. The men in the other eleven (that unlucky number always makes my stomach feel queasy) cells in this locked ward are all good sleepers. Right after the supper meal, or within an hour or so, most of them are asleep. Old man Reddington, in No. 4, has nightmares that are truly terrible; if I had nightmares like his I would never go to sleep. But when I mentioned his nightmares to him he denied having any, so I guess he doesn't remember them. I wonder if I have nightmares? That is something I'll have to pump Ruben about sometime. The reason I don't go to bed early at night is because of my long, peaceful nap every afternoon. I'm not allowed to go to Occupational Therapy, so when the other patients leave the ward for O.T. after lunch I am locked in my cell. It is quiet then, and I sleep. I have nothing to think about; my memory is almost all gone, except for isolated, unsatisfactory and unresolved little incidents. Trying to remember things, however, is a fascinating game.

I like Ruben. He is a nice guy. Oh, yes, it was about the cigarettes.

"I don't really care, Ruben," I said to him the other night (I know it wasn't tonight), "but every week when the Gray Lady comes around with the cigarettes I get a different brand. And I don't think it's right, even if I am satisfied with whatever brand I'm given. I realize that smoking is a privilege, but I've also concluded that any man who smoked all the time would sooner or later decide that he preferred one particular brand. And if he did, he'd buy and smoke the same brand all the time. Is it because we're crazy that we get a different brand every week, or what?"

Ruben looked quizzically at me for a long time, and his searching expression made me feel apprehensive. He's a good-looking young guy (in a rather coarse way), twenty-five or -six, and friendly, with very white teeth, but when he examines me for a long time without replying I have a premonition that he doesn't truly like me, and that he might possibly be a doctor's spy. But then Ruben grinned fraternally, and I knew that he was all right.

"Do you know something, Haskell," he said with unfeigned sincerity, "you're the only nut in my whole ward who's got any sense."

This incongruous remark struck both of us as funny, and we had to laugh. "No, seriously," Ruben went on, "that comment was a sign of progress, Haskell. Do you possibly remember, from before maybe, smoking one particular brand of cigarettes? Think hard."

"No," although I didn't even try to think, "but this talk about cigarettes makes me want one. How about a light?"

"Sure." As he flipped his lighter he said: "If you ever do feel a preference, let me know. Nobody is trying deliberately to deprive anyone of their favorite cigarettes. But I've been working here for two years now, and you're the first patient who's ever mentioned the subject."

"Then maybe I'm not so crazy after all?" I said lightly.

"You're crazy all right," Ruben laughed. "Would you like some coffee? I'm going to make a fresh pot."

I remember this conversation well; the smoking of the cigarette; and yet I'm not absolutely certain whether he came back later with the coffee or whether I went to bed without it. I've had coffee with Ruben late at night on many occasions, but that particular night has disconnected gaps in it. I cannot always orient the routine sequence of daily events. It is probably because of the sameness here; the only difference between day and night is that it is quieter at night (except for old man Reddington in No. 4); and there is a lot of activity in the mornings. Breakfast, the cleaning up, the doctor making his rounds, and I have my chess problems to puzzle over every morning. I work two or three problems on my board every morning, although I would never admit it to Dr. Adams.

"A man's mind is a tricky thing, Haskell," Dr. Adams said, when he brought me the board and chessmen. He made this statement as though I were unaware of this basic tenet. "But if you use your brain every day – and I think you'll enjoy working out these chess problems – it'll be excellent therapy for you. In fact, your memory will probably come back to you in its entirety, all at once." He snapped his soft, pudgy fingers. "But I don't want you to sit around trying to remember things. That's too hard. Do you understand?" He handed me a paperback book of elementary chess problems to go with the set.

"Yes, I understand, Dr. Adams," I said unsmilingly. "I understand that you are a condescending sonofabitch."

"Of course I am, Haskell," he agreed easily, humoring me, "but solving chess problems is merely an exercise to help you. A person with weak feet can strengthen them by picking up marbles with his toes, and —"

"I haven't lost my marbles," I said angrily. "They've only rolled to one side!"

"Of course, of course," he said wearily, looking away. (I've learned how to discomfit these expressionless psychiatrists every time: I stare straight into their moronic, unblinking eyes.) "But you will try solving some of the problems, won't you, Haskell?"

"I might." (A noncommittal answer is the only kind a headshrinker really wants to hear.)

So I've never given Adams the satisfaction of knowing that I work three or four problems every morning. When he asks me how I'm getting along I tell him I'm still on the first problem in the book, although I've been through the book four times already, or is it five? Ah! Here is Ruben with my coffee.

The coffee is strong, just the way I like it, with plenty of sugar and armored cow. And Ruben is relating the story again about why he elected to become a male nurse. He has told me all this before, but each time he tells it a little differently. His fresh details don't fool me, however. He actually took the two-year junior college nursing course to be the only male student in a class of thirty-eight girls. But talking to me at night – or should I say "at me"? – is undoubtedly good therapy for Ruben.

"By the way, Haskell, your wife will visit you tomorrow. You asked me to remind you."

"Already?" I made a clucking sound in my throat. "My, my, how time flies. It seems like only yesterday, and yet thirty happy, happy days have flown by." I shook my head in mock dismay.

"Not for me." Grimly. He took my empty cup and closed the door.

I'm beginning to get accustomed to my wife and her monthly visits now. The first time she visited me I didn't even know the woman. I still don't recall marrying her or living with her before I assumed the bachelor residence of this cell. But I had uncommonly good taste. Hazel is a real beauty, still well under thirty, and she's a movie actress (she keeps telling me). The first time Hazel visited me – at least the first time that I remember – I made the undiplomatic mistake of asking what her name was, and she wept. I felt so sorry for her I've never made the same mistake again. Now, when her name escapes me momentarily, I either call her Honey or Sweetie-Pants. She likes these pet names. We usually spend our whole hour together talking about the movies, about technical details mostly, and she often asks me questions about acting techniques. (The doctor probably suggested such questions to Hazel as an aid to help me regain my memory, but I enjoy giv- (continued on page 98) Machine in Ward Eleven (continued from page 46) ing her sound advice.)

I am an expert in the field of falsely induced emotions, and although I don't remember directing any of the plays or movies or TV shows she told me I directed I am apparently well-acquainted with all of the terms and aspects of the craft – or so it seems. Hazel may be lying to me, of course. It is quite feasible that this vast store of movie knowledge I dredge up and dispense so freely during our visiting periods was gained by reading books on the subject before I came here. And it may be that a freak memory break-through allows me to remember various things concerning films the way a person does who has a photographic memory. That's a nice double meaning. I'll mention it to Hazel when she comes tomorrow, if I don't forget it. But if Hazel is an actress, she is a most convincing actress, because I always believe her when she tells me that I was once a director. Besides, there is that sharp, single scene that keeps recurring inside my mind at odd times; and although I thought at first that it was a delusion. I have finally learned how to tell the difference between delusion and reality. The secret was so simple it escaped me for a long time. If I can see myself within the scene, it's an imaginary scene, and I can enjoy the experience for what it is worth. But if I see the scene through my eyes – as though I were a camera – it is something that actually happened in the past. There can be no other rational explanation; it would be impossible for a man to see through his own eyes and watch his body perform as an actor at a distance – both at the same time.

• • •

The sun is so hot!

This is our fifth twelve-hour day on desert location, and it is the twentieth episode of the series. Nineteen more to go after this one is in the can, and if Red Faris doesn't change his attitude we'll never finish them all – which means, of course, that I will not. We may not even finish this one, The Pack Rats, which is, in my considered opinion, the lousiest script I've ever directed. But Red is brilliant, he knows everything. This is his third year as the star of the series, and he now owns a juicy fifty percent. A big, stupid, six-foot-two ex-football player who never had anything better than a walk-on at the Pasadena Playhouse before he lucked into this Western series, and yet he tries to tell me how to direct a scene. And when I explain some basic acting principle to him he nods condescendingly and winks broadly at the grinning crew members he plays poker with instead of studying his lines.

Take Twelve coming up; far too many for the budget, but every time he does some annoying thing wrong. Purposely? I'm beginning to wonder. The scene is unimportant; even a poor take would be valid enough, but I seem to have some sort of uncontrollable compulsion to shoot it over and over again until it's perfect. The arid heat must be at least a hundred and ten degrees, but the enmity from everybody on the set is hotter than that, much hotter. They all hate me now, they hate my guts. Wonderful!

"OK, Red?" My chapped lips hurt as I grin pleasantly at our stupid star, who stands petulantly at our stupid star, who stands pertulantly beside his sweaty gray horse. "I know I'm a real bastard, Red, but let's try it one more time. Rolling a cigarette is supposed to be as natural as breathing to a cowboy, and yet – – "

"And I'm also supposed to be tired, Haskell, after riding across the desert! And after about fifty danned takes –"

"Eleven," I emended.

" – I'm not faking it! I am tired."

"Get mounted." Ignoring his petty, childish outburst I turn my back on him. "Here we go, kiddies," I announce to the sullen crew. No one moves; they avoid my eyes; they are looking past me toward Red Faris. I turn. Red is still standing stubbornly beside his horse. He glares at me, pouting with his upper lip only (no mean feat for a television actor). Avoiding my eyes, he looks toward the camera, raising his dimpled chin. "That's it, everybody!" He shouts fiercely, in stentorian, but untrained, pectoral tones.

A triumphant crew-cheer mingles with the heat waves, thirty-one voices, including the script-girl's parched, cigarette-contralto. My face grows numb as Red flashes his trade-mark, the sneersnarl-smile, an endearing grimace which has been described with gushing detail in seven trade magazines. "And on the way back," Red yells again, raising a long arm (the football signal for "Free catch"), "the steaks are on me at Palm Springs!"

Another enthusiastic rejoinder, followed immediately by the happy sounds of furious tearing-down, leave-taking activity.

"I've been fired before, Red," I mention quietly, "but not this way."

"Hell, you aren't fired, Hask! It's been a rough week, that's all. The cutting-room boys can piece together at least one good take out of the eleven, and if not," shrug, "we'll simply junk the scene. OK, Hask?" Sneersnarlsmile. A patronizing hand reaches for my shoulder, but I back away quickly before he touches me.

"No, it isn't OK. Either I have full authority or I don't direct. It's one of the little rules a good director lives by."

"I haven't done anything to hurt your authority, Hask. In fact, I submitted damned well to every stupid idea you've had this week. And you know as well as I do, there isn't another star in television who'd go through eleven straight takes in a row without sounding off! Am I right or am I wrong?" Sneersnarlsmile. "Look, Hask, we'll have us a few cold ones at the Springs, rustle up some girls – and Monday is another week. Right? There's no use getting sore over – – "

I swung for his dimpled chin – and missed. It should have been a fairly decent brawl, but it wasn't. Although I'm shorter than Red, five-eleven, I'm well over two hundred pounds; but Red's right first, as though it contained a roll of nickels, slammed into my jaw. The color film snapped, with a clicketyclick-etyclickety clack, as the crazy reel whipped around and around, and that's all that I remember for a while.

At first the thing-in-itself confused me. Bam! A hard right to the jaw could not, or did not, at my initial awakening, add up to two heavily bandaged wrists. I was snugly warm, in bed; I was lethargically comfortable; and my wrists, bound with white gauze, didn't hurt at all. I was fighting memory, and then total recall washed over the surface of my mind in a humiliating torrent.

No, I hadn't stopped with the gang in Palm Springs. I pushed my sea-green Porsche, top down, at a forbidden speed, all of the way home to my craggy redwood retreat in the Verdugo Woodlands above the L.A. smogbelt. A drink, alone on the sundeck, except for my fear. Economic fear. Failure fear. I had been wrong, Faris had been reasonable, and now I was through. Aware of this, I impatiently awaited the confirming phone call. The breezy deck was cool after a miserable week in the desert; a dozen giant potted plants with waxed green leaves, placed strategically at staggered intervals along the rail, masked successfully the dusty chaparral of the steep olive-colored hills. In some kind of wild optimism my eyes kept returning to the white telephone on the big circular coffee table, Would I finish one, two, three or four drinks before it rang? The total was six, and I allowed it to ring three times before I reached for it.

"Hask, baby!" Weldon, Murray, my agent.

"Willy, boy! And you've found a new job for me already? You've the greatest, Willy – I shall not want – – "

"I really am the greatest, Hask. I managed to keep you on the payroll, and it wasn't easy. Only you'll have to be satisfied with the standard director's contract, one-eighty per week. It stays in effect till the series plays out, and that may be forever. But I still haven't heard your side, sweetie, and everybody always has a side. If it's a fight they want, we can do that, too. Why didn't you call me (continued on page 102)Machine in Ward Eleven (continued from page 98) first, baby? I didn't have any ammo to shoot with – –"

"And I didn't have any to give you, Willy."

"Uh-huh." Pause. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to cry a little, kiss and make up?"

"No, that wouldn't do any good. It's been coming for'weeks. And I'm tired, Willy, tired."

"I love you, sweetheart, but you're going to get a damned long rest. Three is the fatal charm, it has been muttered in high places, and this is the third time for you in less than a year. TV can't afford perfectionists, baby – –"

"I know."

"It's just that TV isn't the movies, and today even the movies can't – –"

"Please. No lecture, Willy," I said wearily.

"Have you called Hazel?"

"No. She's in London – or was."

"Want me to call her for you?"

"I'll call her later. But thanks, Willy."

After racking the phone I fished a squirming, many-legged arthropod out of my drink. How many men, I wondered, are all washed up at the age thirty-two meridional? Was I ahead of or behind schedule? And yet I don't believe that I was really depressed. In a way, I had a rather sickening sense of relief. The useless struggle was finally over. The End. I drank slowly, spacing my drinks, enjoying the quiet evening and the yellow sky above Glendale. Minutes later, perhaps hours later, I was giggling, lurching through the empty house in search of a razor blade. A sixty-thousand-dollar house, meaning the mortgage, a swimming pool, and no blades. How can a man slash his wrists with an electric razor? The phone kept ringing all the time. Needlers. The gloating sympathizers. But I didn't answer it. At last I found a blade, a rusty, used blade, in an old plaid train-case that had belonged to my wife. In all probability, the ancient blade had nibbled golden stubble from Hazel's long legs. I giggled again as I eased the blade with concentrated caution into a cake of soap. No, I didn't want to cut the fingers holding the blade – too painful – and yet I wanted to slice my wrists. This paradoxical prudence struck me as very funny indeed.

The hospital – not this place I'm in now, but a private hospital – was a warm white womb. There was a sunny, glassed-in porch running parallel to the far end of the ward, and the meals were served on schedule in the dining room. I liked every one of my eighteen fellow patients – a charming, mixed-up group – and I would have been content to remain dormant in the friendly ward forever. My closest friend was Dave Tucker, an actor who had been possessed (literally) by the Devil. Dave had played The Devil and Daniel Webster in summer stock a few months before, and while he was immersing himself in the role of Daniel the Devil had gotten inside of his skin. Our unimaginative psychiatrist, unfortunately, couldn't exorcise the Devil from poor old Dave because the doctor didn't believe that the Devil was really under Dave's hide. I didn't believe it either, not at first, although I never expressed my doubts, and besides, I didn't really know.

"The worst thing about him, Hask," Dave told me, "is the constant itching. I itch all the time because he squirms around so much, and scratching can't get to him."

Poor Davé. His discomfort was real enough. Why would any man lie about something like that? But I still couldn't resist, from time to time, giving Dave the business. "Your case is the inevitable result of method acting, Dave," I told him one afternoon, "but it could've been worse."

"How?"

"You could've been playing in Jumbo."

"Move!" he said irritably, scratching his chest. "It's your move." And we continued our daily chess game on the sunlit porch.

I see now that it was a mistake to become friends with Dave Tucker, or anyone else, for that matter. It hurt me too much – it was only a few days later – when the Devil finally got him. We were playing chess, as usual, smoking, not saying much of anything, when Dave stage-whispered my name: "Hask! Get the doctor! He's turned on the heat!"

I looked up from the board, and Dave's face was fiery. There was no perspiration. No time. The Devil had caught Dave in an unguarded moment. I rushed frantically into the ward, screaming my head off for the doctor. And although I returned to the porch with Dr. Feller-man within a minute and a half, at the very longest, Dave was dead when we got there. It was a preposterous scene. Impossible. And yet it had happened. The Devil had boiled Dave's blood for him, and fled. I was unreasonable, more than a little hysterical, and I cursed Fellerman for all he was worth (which wasn't much), although it hadn't been entirely his fault – except that he had refused to even pretend belief in Dave's story. The Devil would have taken Dave sooner or later anyway, but the swiftness of the attack unnerved me, and I had a prolonged crying spell. After Dave, I dropped out of the ward activities. No more friends for me – not after Dave – I simply couldn't take it, and I was wise enough to see that I couldn't.

A truly successful, nigrescent state of depression has to be nourished, cherished. The strong black wall can keep everything out and everything in, but it must be built stone by stone. Each brick must be carved patiently from igneous rock; every added layer must be laid meticulously, with the stones so close together that no mortar is required.

Before I retired to my walled-in garden, I had been well on the road to recovery. All of the written and oral psychological tests had been taken docilely; the needles had been inserted into my scalp for the recording of my brain waves; and I had been a reluctant, but participating, member of Ward Fourteen's group therapy group. We met on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at eleven A.M. in Ward Eleven, under the joint chairmanship and supervision of Doctors Fellerman and Mullinare.

There were four of us, not counting the two doctors (they merely observed and listened): Tommy Amato, the seventeen-year-old son of a well-known movie star (and every night Tommy drowned his bed): Randall Hickman, an ex-hotel manager who had deliberately wrecked his car, and now possessed a corrugated skull and headaches; and Marvin Morris, a songwriter who, like me, had also unsuccessfully attempted suicide.

I never did understand fully what the four of us were supposed to accomplish during these weird, triweekly sessions. The two psychiatrists never uttered a sound; they sat impassively on their metal folding chairs, looking us over like a couple of bespectacled owls caught out in the sunlight at high noon. We – the sick ones – were supposed to discuss our problems; I believe that was the general idea. But the atmosphere in the scaly, gray-walled ward was too depressing for talk of any kind. The first few minutes of every meeting were invariably awkward, taut with the clearings of tense, dry throats. Ward Eleven was an unused ward (by cannily raising its monthly rates, the hospital had managed to rid itself of several unwanted, low-income patients). We sat in a rough semicircle, smoking, trying to avoid looking in the direction of the six unoccupied mattresses on the floor by the doorway. The electroshock machine rested on a small metal stand in one corner of the room, and right next to it was the rubber-sheeted treatment table. When the shock treatments were given early every morning the unconscious bodies were deposited on the mattresses until they recovered, and then the bedazed patients were led away to eat breakfast. No, the atmosphere was not exactly conductive to animated talk, but the hospital was still cramped for space and Ward Eleven had been pressed into service as a group therapy meeting place as well as a treatment room for electroshock therapy.

Although there is a federal law against photographing nuts in a funny factory, these group therapy sessions were great human comedies that should have been put on film. They were the kind of Chaplinesque comedies that cause strong men to weep copious tears. Albert McCleery would have loved to show them live on television's old Cameo Theatre, cutting back and forth from face to face.

After the prolonged silence became almost unbearable, young Tommy was always first to break the unhappy uneasiness.

"I wet my bed again last night." A simple announcement. Tommy was no longer embarrassed by his chronic enuresis, now that the doctors had convinced him that his was a psychosomatic condition, and he felt that we older patients could help him. We were grateful to Tommy every time, of course, for getting us through the sound barrier.

"Did you try elevating your feet?" Marvin would ask eagerly.

"Yes, sir. I slept with three pillows under my feet, but they didn't do any good."

The group therapy session was then under way. We discussed movies, B.B., Russia, bridge, paperback novels, the quality of the hospital food, taxes, the L.A. traffic, the new long-distance dial system; everything, in fact, except our personal, individual problems. Tommy, however, was always provided with several thoughtful suggestions for his little problem – not that any of them ever proved to be successful. The two doctors didn't take notes, they never made any comments or suggestions, and they never tried to steer our digressive conversations. For this much we were grateful, all of us, and I believe we did our best to entertain them so they wouldn't be too bored during their listening-in hour. But maybe the meetings did the doctors some good – I really don't know or care. After Dave died, I refused flatly to attend any more of them.

Ward Fourteen wasn't a locked ward, and as its privileged residents, we had considerable freedom within the hospital. There were 16mm movies every night in the patients' lounge; there was a small library, a TV set on the porch, and there was a snack bar, but I gave up these frivolous activities for the fulltime occupation of my uncomfortable bedside chair. I ate my three full meals every day, marching to the dining room with the others when it was our ward's turn to eat, but I returned immediately afterward to my chair. After dinner each night I went to bed, sleeping dreamlessly until six-thirty A.M. I could have slept all the time, I think, but we weren't allowed to lie on our beds during the day. Unable to drowse in my hard metal chair, I read and meditated, read and meditated again, and it was always the same book: Thomas Merton's The Silent Life.

I was fascinated by the various ac-counts of monastery life, particularly the account of the Carthusians, and the way they lived in their isolated hermitages. Here were the men who had discovered the right answer to the complexities of life, and I was saddened by the knowledge that I could never be one of them. These holy monks had a curious mixture of humility and vanity I could never hope to achieve. They believed that if they were humble enough they would see God when they died – surely this was a strange vanity. But I knew that God would never look at a wretch like me. However, there was another way, and now that I had time to think, more time than I had ever had before in my entire life, the new idea appealed to me more and more. To reach the top wasn't too difficult; only a small percentage competed for the top, and I had been up there three different times already. But the pyramid was much broader at the base. How many men had consciously directed every effort toward achieving the absolute bottom of the pile? burrowing their way purposely to the exact center of the bottom of humanity? If I could only get down there, really down, all the way down, and without any outside help – Ah! – here was a unique and terrible aspiration! How? How? A man could meditate forever on this fascinating problem!

My deliberations were interrupted one morning by Dr. Fellerman, who had approached my bed surreptitiously and tapped me on the shoulder. He wanted to know if I would like to talk to him alone in his office twice a week.

"I've got an hour open on Thursday now, and another on Monday. I'll squeeze you in."

"Squeeze in somebody else," I told him coldly. "I have nothing to say to you." Unbidden, he had interrupted a very important train of thought, and I glared at him to express my annoyance.Fellerman was a tall, almost cadaverous-looking man; a tired-faced and ostensibly overworked doctor. In his loose, knee-length white coat, with his humped shoulders, and with his narrow head cocked to one side, he always reminded me of an unskilled mechanic listening for an engine knock.

"And you won't rejoin our group therapy sessions, either?"

"No. But if I happen to come up with a valid suggestion for Tommy Amato," I said sarcastically, "I'll write it down and give it to him in the dining room."

I got to my feet, turned my back on the doctor, and sat down again facing the wall, thereby terminating the unwelcome interview. This brief interchange occurred on a Monday afternoon. On Wednesday morning, right after breakfast, Luchessi, the male nurse, told me that we were going to Dr. Fellerman's office. Any mental patient has the privilege of arguing with his doctor, but only a crazy man will argue with a male nurse. Without protest, I accompanied Luchessi to Fellerman's office.

"I've decided to give you the short series of nine electroshock treatments, Mr. Haskell." Fellerman stated this calmly, without any preamble; the sentence was a nail on a slate.

The hand, my right, carrying the cigarette to my mouth, was arrested in mid-air. I was astonished, yes, but my fear was even greater. The hairs at the nape of my neck stiffened. The six white-sheeted mattresses on the floor in Ward Eleven appeared vividly, sickeningly, in my mind. And the small electroshock machine, which resembled a cheap portable phonograph more than anything else, became a leather-covered symbol of terror – swift, sudden death!

"No," I managed to say at last, "you aren't serious!"

"I don't know what else to do with you, Mr. Haskell." He shrugged. "Do you still hold the opinion that the Devil, rather than apoplexy, killed your friend, Mr. Tucker?"

"What my opinions happen to be on any subject are not your concern – "

"But you are, as my patient. You won't attend group therapy, you've refused to talk to me, and you aren't getting any better."

"Depression is something I can learn to live with," I said bitterly, "but I can't live with death."

"Now you're being melodramatic."

"Am I? How many people survive electroshock treatments?"

"The fatality percentage is so small we don't even consider it as important any longer – that is, in comparison with the good – – "

"It's important to me! What is the percentage?"

"I don't recall the exact figures, but it's less than one fatality in three or four thousand. And that would be a person with a weak heart, or – – "

"Nine treatments in a row drops those odds down to a damned dangerous level!"

"If we thought there was any real danger, Mr. Haskell, we wouldn't consider electroshock therapy. You're a strong, healthy young man, except for being a little overweight; and to lessen the convulsion we'll give you curare to relax you."

"Poison? I see. If the shock doesn't kill me the curare will! Is that the idea?"

"I assure you, Mr. Haskell, you have nothing to worry about. The treatments start tomorrow morning. Don't go to breakfast with your ward."

"And if I refuse?"

"Don't you want to get well?"

"Not if I have to take shock treatments I don't!"

"There's absolutely no pain, Haskell."

"I don't care about the pain, but I don't want to lose my memory. My memories may be bitter, but they're all I've got left, and I want every single one of them."

"There is a slight memory loss, but it's only a temporary condition."

"I don't care to discuss it. I refuse to take the treatments, and that's final!" The forgotten cigarette burned my fingers, and I dropped it into his desk ashtray – a white ceramic skull. The ashtray alone was the key to the psychiatrist's sadistic nature.

"The choice isn't yours to make, Haskell," he reminded me.

"You're frightening me, Doctor – – "

"You needn't be. Your wife has consented to the treatments."

"I don't believe you!"

"It's true, nevertheless. Don't build these simple shock treatments up out of all proportion in your mind. If all goes well, and it often does, you may not need nine of them. Sometimes six are plenty, and you'll be going home before you know it."

"But I don't want to go home!" I wailed. Despite my shame, I couldn't prevent the tears that streamed down my face. "All I want, all I ever wanted, is to be let alone. . ." Blubbering helplessly into my sleeve, I stumbled blindly out of his office, and Luchessi took me back to the ward.

A few minutes later, and considerably calmer, I realized upon reflection that most of my scanty knowledge about electroshock therapy had been learned second-hand from a fellow patient, Nathan Becker, during bull sessions on the porch. Unintentionally, perhaps, Nate had implanted a dread of the little machine in my head by innocently under-playing the description of his own course of treatments.

"I didn't mind too much," he told me quietly. His dark, sienna eyes already had a puzzled expression, and at the time, he had only had three treatments. "On the first one I asked to go first because I was scared and I wanted to get it over with. I climbed up on the table in Ward Eleven and the four nurses – Luchessi's one of them – all got a good hold on my pajamas and dressing gown. One guy held onto my feet. When the electricity shoots through your brain you get one helluva big convulsion, you see, and if these guys didn't hold you in a tight brace you'd get your back broke. Anyway, Dr. Fellerman slipped the little harness over my head. There's a chromium electrode that clamps tight over each temple. Then they stick a curved piece of rubber hose in your mouth to bite down on. If they didn't, you'd bite off your tongue, I suppose, And that's it."

"What do you mean, that's it?" I asked tensely.

"Blooey, that's all."

"Blooey?"

"Blooey. I didn't feel anything. Next thing I know I'm awake and looking up at the ceiling, only instead of being on the table I'm flat on my back on one of those mattresses in Ward Eleven. You know the – – "

"I know, I know. But what did you feel? Did you have any screwy dreams while you were out, or anything like that?"

"No, I don't think so." He shook his head. "Just blooey, that's all. One minute I'm wide awake, a little scared, looking up at Dr. Fellerman's face, and then I'm on the mattress looking at the ceiling instead. A funny feeling. Soon's the orderly sees you're awake he sends you across the hall to the kitchen in Ward Ten for scrambled eggs. You can get 'em any way you want, but I always get mine scrambled."

"But there must be more to the shocks than that, Nate. You make the whole thing sound too simple."

"It is simple, Hask. I watched some of the other guys before I took my second treatment to see how it worked with them. And that was it. Soon's the electrodes are in place Dr. Fellerman turns the two knobs on the machine. There can't be more than a hundred and ten volts, because the cord's plugged into the wall socket – and Dr. Fellerman watches the needle pretty close."

"What's this about the needle?"

"The needle on the gauge. The machine is preset, but there isn't any rheostat, or whatever you want to call it. So when the needle hits the right number on the gauge the doctor just turns off the machine. And that's it."

"But the patient on the table; what kind of a convulsion does he have?"

"You can't really tell, not with all those guys holding him and all. But all in all, it's a very humane machine, Hask. I imagine the electric chair works the same way when they execute somebody. They shove the guy in the chair, flip the old switch, and blooey, that's all. Of course," Nate frowned, "they have to strap the guy into the electric chair because the voltage is so much more powerful." He giggled. "The guy's backbone probably snaps like a match anyway, but he's dead by that time so it doesn't make any difference."

Nate Becker was no longer with us. The course of shock treatments had helped him – perhaps they had eleminated his mental depression altogether – and he had been discharged from the hospital. But after a very few treatments he had developed a frowning, perplexed expression. He had been unable to recall entering the hospital, or any of the events that had occurred for several months prior to his admission. I had talked to him several times before his release, and except for his loss of memory, which bothered him considerably, he was a rational, perfectly normal – nothing. That was it, nothing! He was neither depressed nor elated. He was stonily indifferent, and he had believed Dr. Fellerman when he was told that his memory would return, all in good time.

But I didn't believe it, not for a second!

My palms perspired. My throat was dry. For the very first time in my life I knew true fear! Ordinary fear was a familiar emotion I had known intimately, many times – the fear of losing an arm or a leg or an eye in battle, when I had fought (for a blissfully short three months toward the very end) in Korea; the fear of being broke, the fear of success, and the fear of failure; and certainly, the fear of death. And I had also known that secret, unvoiced fear, the kind no one ever admits to anybody, and only rarely to himself: the terror of afterdeath! Is there an afterlife or isn't there? and if there is, how will a man fare there? Will he be able to withstand the punishment meted out to him according to his earthly record?

But what were any of these childish, mundane fears compared to the worst fate on earth, the worst possible misfortune that could happen to mortal man? The fear of becoming a vegetable!. Could any misfortune be greater?

His memories, and his ability to laugh at his own stupidities; when the chips are finally down, these are all that a man has left to him. Otherwise, a man is a turnip, a pine tree, a daisy, a weed, existing through the grace of the sun and photosynthesis during the day, and lidding himself of excess carbon dioxide during the long night. I was still a fairly young man, but if the choice had been the simple one of sudden and lasting death, I could have faced it. Perhaps I even could have mustered some show of insouciant bravery – I didn't really know.

But I had only to go to one of the glass windows on the porch and look out over the verdant hospital grounds. On a warm day there were always five or six hospitalized human vegetables sitting on benches beneath the sun. Most of them were old men, white-thatched, perfectly harmless, and they were allowed to remain outside all day long when the weather was nice. They never bothered anyone, they didn't talk, they didn't think, they couldn't remember anything, not even their names, and their ability to laugh was completely gone. Plants, Vegetables.

Mental patients live for an uncommonly long time, and I was only thirty-two. I was also blessed with that accursed trait that every actor or director must have to achieve any kind of success in the world of make-believe: the ability to put myself into someone else's place. I could project myself into the future, near and far; Haskell the Vegetable, sitting in the sunlight year after year until he was a feeble old man of eighty – no, ninety! – the damned busybody medicos were learning more about geriatrics every day!

No longer was I Haskell the Arrogant, the one man in Hollywood who had never taken anything from anybody. I was transformed almost instantaneously by my cool, logical imagination into Haskell the Abject, Haskell the Craven, Haskell the Beggar. If Dr. Fellerman wanted me to crawl I would crawl. If he wanted to see me humbled, or if he wanted his feet washed, I would wash his feet and anoint them with scented oils. The gelid dread that clutched my entrails was panicky, and there was so little time! The relentless clock above Lu-chessi's desk told me that it was 11:40. I had to see Fellerman now, before he left the hospital at noon. When tomorrow morning came it would be too late; they would inject their South American curare into my veins and destroy my mind forever with their machine. Controlling my inner conflict as well as I could, I headed for the nurse's desk at the end of the ward.

"You should've reminded me, Luchessi," I said smiling, "about the group therapy session in Ward Eleven."

"I thought you dropped out of group therapy?" But he wasn't suspicious; he was already filling in a hall pass for me.

"I did for a while, but I was supposed to start again today. That's what the doctor wanted to talk to me about this morning."

"You're late, you know." Luchessi handed me the pass. "But it isn't my fault."

"It's mine, I know, but I simply forgot about it. It's probably too late to go at all now, but if I didn't show up anyway, Dr. Fellerman would say that I was being uncooperative. You know how he is."

"Sure. You'd better get a move on."

I had escaped legally from the ward. Despite our privileges in the unlocked ward, we weren't allowed to wander around the hospital without an official pass and a destination of some kind. But nobody stopped me. When I reached Ward Eleven the group therapy session was just breaking up. Tommy Amato was the first patient through the door. I nodded to him absently, brushed by the three other emerging patients and entered the ward. Dr. Fellerman and Dr. Mullinare were still seated on their folding metal chairs, holding a postmortem, I supposed, on the lately departed quartet of singers. I hesitated just inside the doorway, not allowing my eyes to look toward the right and the electroshock machine and treatment table.

"Hello there, Haskell!" Dr. Mullinare called out cheerily. "Long time no see!" (This Mullinare character was a real cornball.)

"Good morning, Dr. Mullinare," I responded pleasantly. "Sorry to intrude on you gentlemen this way, but I wanted to talk for a few moments with Dr. Fellerman." I moved toward them, holding myself stiffly erect.

"That's quite all right, Haskell," Fellerman said. "We're finished here." He winked at Mullinare. "We can talk about that later; all right, Frank?"

"Sure." Mullinare clasped my shoulder with a sweaty, meaty hand. "We've missed you at our little sessions, Haskell," he said lightly.

"I've missed them too, Doctor," I lied. "Perhaps Dr. Fellerman will let me rejoin the group?"

Mullinare didn't reply. He left the ward, closing the doors behind him. I wet my parched lips, wondering how to begin. The practiced silence peculiar to psychiatrists puts every patient on the defensive. These doctors rarely, if ever, ask questions, except perhaps with their incurious, unblinking eyes – but even their eyes are distorted, as a rule, behind glasses. Fellerman, his skinny shoulders hunched, his narrow head cocked to the right as he looked up at me from his seated position, gave me no encouragement whatsoever. His face was as impersonal as doom. How could any man, a human being, approach such a machine?

"I've been hoping, sir," I began humbly (it was the first time I had addressed another male as "sir" since the age of twelve), "that you might reconsider the idea of putting me on shock treatments. My attitude has been poor all along, sir, and I realize that now. And I apologize. If I am to help myself, I must cooperate fully with you and the other members of the staff. And I want you to know, Dr. Fellerman, I'm ready to turn over a new leaf. If you'll allow me to do so, I'll return gladly to the group therapy sessions. And if you still have those two free hours a week open you mentioned, I'd like to take advantage of them as well. Why, when I finally managed to get it through this thick, dumb head of mine, Doctor, that I was only hurting myself by my poor attitude, I began to feel better right away. Yes, sir, and that's the truth! Why, I'm not nearly as depressed as I was when I talked to you earlier this morning!"

I essayed a little laugh then, and it was indeed a pitiful, strangling sound. Is there anything more heart-rending than the sound of forced, false gaiety?

"And what's more, sir," I continued doggedly, "my change in attitude will be beneficial to my fellow patients, too. Out in the hall just now, when I bumped into young Tommy Amato, I realized how selfish I've been all along, thinking only of myself instead of the others. And as you may remember, Doctor, I talked quite a bit at group therapy, just as much if not more than any of the other patients. I've got a good mind, Doctor, an inventive mind, and if I put all of my intelligence to work, I'll bet you anything you want to wager that I can come up with a valid solution to Tommy's bed-wetting problem! Yes, sir! If you'll cancel those shock treatments I'll get a notebook and pencil and start working on Tommy's problem right away. I know it sounds funny, now that I'm a mental patient, but when I was in college I got straight A's in Logic. And I'll also bet you, sir" (for a brief instant I considered injecting another forced, merry little laugh into my monolog, but I swiftly changed my mind, knowing I couldn't pull it off convincingly) "that once I solve Tommy's problem I'll also solve my own!

"From what little knowledge I've picked up about Freud – of course, I don't know nearly as much as you do, what with your wonderful training and the brilliant record you've established and all – but it's a sign of progress, isn't it? I mean, when a mental patient starts to think about other people instead of himself, isn't that an indication of recovery? Well, maybe not. But what I want to get over to you is that I'm not in any badly depressed state any longer. Electroshock treatments are for people who really need them. And when we get into our private consultations – just you and I alone – I don't like to confess really personal things in a group session, but when it's only you and I, I'll tell you everything, anything you want to know!"

Involuntarily, in the face of his silence, my voice dropped down to an aspirate whisper. "For instance, when my wife and I were first married we were very much in love, Doctor. And some of the things we did together – sex play, I guess you'd call it – were pretty unusual. I know you want to go home to lunch now, but when we meet alone I'll tell you about every intimate thing we did together. They were really sordid, some of the things we did, at least from a Freudian point of view, but I'll tell you all the details. I'll even make notes if you want me to, so I don't forget a single moment. I'll do anything, anything, only please, please, please..."

I was unable to continue. Dr. Fellerman's impassive expression hadn't changed once as I had talked. Nothing I had said (or possibly could say) made any impression on the man. I dropped abjectly to my knees, and kissed the toes of his shoes. He wore black, rather old-fashioned, high-topped shoes, and white cotton socks. And I was furious with myself because I couldn't cry. The needed tears wouldn't come, and I had a desperate need for every crutch on the emotional scale to elicit sympathy from this stone, this dehumanized machine –&ndansh;

"Get up, Haskell, get up from the floor."

"Yes, sir." I scrambled to my feet.

"You'll take me back in group therapy, Doctor? And you won't put me on shock treatments?"

He got up from the chair, stretching his long arms as he yawned, and yawn he did! "No, Haskell, the shock treatments will do you a lot of good." Without a backward glance, he started toward the exit.

Before he took three steps I caught up with him. My fingers dug deeply into his throat before he could cry out. He struggled, but he didn't have a chance. Despite his height, he didn't weigh more than a hundred and fifty pounds. I kicked his feet out from under him and followed him to the floor, still clutching his scrawny neck. I squeezed relentlessly until my fingers tingled with pain, but the moment his body went limp I dragged him to the treatment table in the corner. Using hastily ripped strips of sheeting I snatched from one of the mattresses on the floor, I tied his body to the table. As I began to stuff his slack mouth with wadded paper towels from the pile on the metal stand, Fellerman gagged slightly and opened his eyes. Without his glasses, which had been dislodged during our one-sided wrestling match, his brown eyes were very expressive indeed, particularly when I slipped the elastic harness over his head and adjusted the shiny electrodes to his temples.

A simple, impersonal, uncomplicated machine. I plugged the cord into the wall outlet, turned the two plastic knobs to the right as far as they would go, and left them there. The black, sensitive needle beneath the glass of the gauge hit the red plus-pole so hard it almost bent. The convulsions were terrible. I couldn't bear the sight of this long, skinny body buckling and jerking beneath the steady flow of electricity. But it was no hallucination; I can see him still through my own eyes.

Turning away, I lit a cigarette. And as I hurried back down the corridor to my ward (it was time to get into the lunch line for the march to the dining room), I considered the involved technical problems of capturing this unusual scene on film from a director's point of view. Handled right, with an exceptionally good score on the sound track, the scene would scare hell out of an average movie audience. But one mistake of any kind, a slip-up, and they would burst into embarrassed, giggling laughter. For the discreet, unblinking eye of the camera, sympathy for either one character or the other would have to be firmly established prior to showing the scene. And who would the hero be? Fellerman or me?

I never took any electroshock treatments, that much I know for certain. But although I won the battle with Fellerman, I lost the war with the hospital. They gave me insulin shock treatments instead, and they were started before my transfer came through. The nurses came for me early in the mornings, jerking me out of sleep, dragging me, kicking and screaming, down the dark halls to the unnumbered soundproofed room. When my ankles and wrists were bound with loops of gauze to the bedstead, they forced the sugareating, mind-destroying plungerfuls of insulin into my terror-stricken body. And the long insulin comas were much worse than the brief electroshocks could possibly have been. Strange things happened to me during the comas; some of them were imaginary, but many of them were real. I know that they were real!

. . .

"What's the matter, Haskell? Are you all right?" Ruben sounds as if he is genuinely concerned.

"Sorry, Ruben. But I'm all right. Every once in a long while one of those screams gets away from me before I can catch it. I'm sorry, but after all, if I wasn't crazy I wouldn't be lodged permanently in the State Asylum for the Criminally Insane – or would I?"

"Well, you'd better take a towel and wipe your face. Your head is soaking wet."

"Sure. I'll do that."

"Would you like a hooker of paraldehyde to go to sleep on? You're entitled to a two-ounce shot if you want it."

"No. No thanks. I'll be all right."

"Then take it easy, Haskell. I don't want old man Reddington to get started again."

He closed the door, and this time he locked it. Ruben is a nice guy. But I'll have to watch myself more closely. I can't afford the risk of being put on insulin shocks again. Despite the wide gaps in my memory a continuity pattern is already discernible. And if I ever do regain my memory in its entirety, they won't be able to bounce me out of here as long as I keep the information to myself. I doubt if they would ever consider seriously the idea of trying me for the murder of Fellerman, but they would dearly love to throw me back into the outside rat-race again. But to keep my low position on the bottom of the pile, all I have to do is keep my big mouth shut.

And I'm just the man who can do it, too. As Ruben to wisely remarked, I'm the only nut in his whole ward who's got any sense.