I met him at Liam’s Irish Pub. He sat at the bar, but at the end, next to the wall. He was tall so he stood out from the crowd. He appeared to be slightly older than the student crowd, or maybe not older but more mature. His hair was longish and such a deep brown that it looked black to match the frame of his glasses. It looked as if he didn’t care much about clothes since he had a worn pullover shirt and threadbare jeans, and wrapped around his waist was a wide, brown, brass-buckled belt. I guess he was about one hundred eighty or ninety pounds. He appeared to be drinking a gin and tonic, maybe a vodka tonic with a lime slice jammed onto the rim of the glass.
As I got closer, I could see that he was reading a novel by some guy named Jeffrey Archer. I watched him for an hour, off and on, as I sat with my friends during the evening. He totally ignored the noise and the loud crowd which occurs every Friday at this college town, student-oriented bar. It was late afternoon with a medium-sized crowd, but at about 8:00 p.m. this place was so crowded it could accurately be compared to sardines in a can. At times it was just as smelly from unwashed bodies, usually male bodies, and a lot of groping, usually males.
The three girls I came with got restless and decided to explore the male crowd at another bar. This town had more bars than retail stores.
The girls departed when I told them I’d stay.
“You see someone in here that looks interesting? Good for you, Honey, because I know most of these jerks, and they’re mostly one-track mind pussy hunters.”
I saw that he finished his G and T and ordered another one. When he ordered another one, he looked at Jason, one of the regular bartenders, and took his hands off the book pages. The book was opened to the page that he was reading. It pages remained unmoving. Most books half open will flip pages if left unattended, but his book was like a well-trained dog who ‘sat’ and ‘stayed’ when its master ordered it to do so. I thought of the word ‘military,’ but I’m not sure how the open book put the word military in my mind. My dad was a Marine. Super proud and patriotic and would break your nose if you slander the Marines. See, I thought of ‘military’ again. Dad might like this guy, but I’m way, way ahead in my thinking.
That reminded me that I also needed a refill. I went to the bar and asked Jason, for another vodka gimlet with a splash of cranberry juice. He made it, I paid for it, then whispered, “What’s the deal with the book reader?”
“Just some new guy. Quiet, weirdo. Creepy how silent he is. Comes in a couple of times a week. Doesn’t drink much. Has only had two G and Ts so far. If it weren’t for his generous tips, I’d tell him to get lost. I guess he pours through the books because I’ve never seen him with the same book. Sometimes he has a type of composition tablet with him. I see him writing in it every once in a while. He must have a pen in his pocket. In high school, he must have been one of those dorks who wore pocket protectors in their shirt pocket and three or four pens in it. Are you interested? He’s not that good-looking. You can do much better in the looks department. He’s just your average Joe. It’s hard to figure his age. He looks young enough to be a student, but he doesn’t act like the typical male student. Much more self-contained. Doesn’t reveal much.”
“Like you said the hunks like you have in here are egotistical and arrogant. Maybe he’s a more mature and decent guy.”
“Jesus! I never heard that one before. I wouldn’t mind dating you.”
“Thanks for the information and the compliment, Jason, but friendship is all I want from you. He may look a little older, but what I see is not so much older as more mature.”
“Sure. OK. The guy’s gotta try. Oh, and I’ve also never seen him smile while in here. Never heard him laugh and his minor grin, like his eyes, looks dark. Guys are overly serious. A leave-me-alone kind of dude. I think you’re much better off catching up to your friends.”
“You get any pervert sex vibes off him?”
“No. Nothing like that, but the dude is hostile, and scary, especially when he just stares at you. I don’t even think he’s looking for pussy, well, not yet anyway.”
“That’s more bullshit than you’ve ever tossed at me,” Jason. “Every straight guy is looking for easy pussy. Like you, right? It’s their motto. You know the three Fs: Find them, Feel them, and Forget them.”
“I’m quite sure he’s not gay. We had some gays come in. Every guy, straight or gay, turns them away with that warning stare of his. Any girls go to him, he says, “Go away,” before they can even talk to him. He doesn’t even look up from his book. So not normal. Guess he doesn’t want friends either. Strange guy, maybe ex-military. Just wants to be alone. Noise doesn’t bother him at all. Weird.”
“Have you talked to him, ever?”
“Fuck no. Just when he orders drinks. I serve it then walk away. The other bartenders agree with me. If he wants to be alone, why do it here? Who brings a book to a bar? Weird.”
“A guy wants to be alone and without talking to him you have him all figured out? OK, his behavior is different than you and I are used to, but you’ve got him figured for a covert, Nazi, racist rapist?”
“Fuck it. You asked. I answered and now I have customers waving hands for refills. See ya.”
I stood there holding my sweaty glass of gimlet and decided to approach him. Slowly I made my way to the stool next to him (probably empty due to his reputation). I attempted to sit down when I heard his growl, “Go away!”
I started to walk away, then suddenly turned, sat down and said, “No.” I thought, maybe he’s the strong, silent type, but he doesn’t look strong. His height makes him look thin. Definitely a recalcitrant streak. I said, “Watcha reading?” I asked.
He didn’t look up, just stared at his book, not so much with anger and impatience as with my defiance. Still no reply from him.
“Do you attend college here?”
He finally looked at me. I noticed his strangely dilated pupils. Jason was right. It’s a walk-away kind of look.
“Double major. Computer science and philosophy. They keep me busy and help me to relax. Now go away.”
“Damn! A double major. I understand the ‘keeps you busy’ part, but ‘helps you to relax?’ I don’t get that at all. So why did you come here? You’re not studying.”
“I want to relax, have a drink and read. The teenage babies in my dorm want to monkey around, play games, and fill the hallways and bathroom with cigarette smoke, then smoke dope. It irritates me, so I come here when I have time to read and drink”.
He stared at me. Like Jason said, it made me feel uncomfortable but not in danger. Ironically, I felt safe near him. “I’m not here to mess up your quiet relaxation. Just curiosity. I’m sorry.” As I finished my drink and walked away, I looked back and said, “Maybe I’ll see you sometime.”
It sounded as if he said, “Hope not. Too busy.”
I walked away, self-conscious now about my tight jeans and my wide V-neck blouse. Come to think of it, he hadn’t once looked at my breasts, but some guys can fool you with their unusually good peripheral vision. Maybe he was a closet gay or, perhaps, a eunuch, but I’d rather he be gay than a eunuch.
As I walked away, I sensed both his sadness and his strength, not muscular strength, but an unconquerable determination to get somewhere in the future. He reminded me of my dad who said to me, “Good character isn’t simply not doing the wrong thing, it’s also about doing the right thing.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered as I walked, then said it again, followed by, I never met any guy like him before. No charming smile, no charismatic speeches, no shoulder touch followed by a hand resting on my thigh, no flirtatiousness, no sexual innuendos. Rather rude, though. He didn’t ask for my name, my dorm, my age, nor my phone number. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was not interested. I laughed at myself.
How could he not be interested? I’m in good shape and I’m cute and felt strongly that he isn’t gay or a eunuch. That I know of. But something was wrong with him, mental, emotional, physical, I just didn’t know.
I was on campus now, heading for Ontario dorm, a girls’ residence. I hit myself on the forehead when I realized that I didn’t even ask for his name. How damn stupid is that? I berated myself and wondered what is my attraction. He’s certainly not one of the pretty boys, nor one of the handsome boys, just an average, usually boring type of guy.
The following Friday, in the early evening, I visited Liam’s again, alone, but he didn’t show up. I thought I guess I wasn’t all that appealing. Maybe I insulted him by interrupting his relaxation. He wasn’t really shy and didn’t seem insecure. A confident, rude arrogance, yes. Forget him, I thought.
I did the same the next Friday. As I walked toward Liam’s I felt insecure. Jesus! I thought, I haven’t felt insecure around a guy since fifth or sixth grade when my tits got large, and boys flocked around me like bees to flowers.
I walked through the door and the ever-present Jason shook his head as soon as he saw me. The guy, again, did not show up. I waited an hour. He still did not show up.
I talked to Jason who said, “He hasn’t been here all week, but a guy who said he was a friend asked for ‘Mark’ so at least you know his name is Mark something.”
“Thanks, Jason. Look, if he comes in, please don’t tell him I was looking for him. He’ll think I’m a stalker, probably.”
“You can stalk me anytime.”
“Yeah. Yeah, but thanks.” I departed.
There are few philosophy majors, so I went to the department head and talked to Mr. Edgars. I’d had him for the Introduction to Philosophy course. He was a good teacher. Not aloof in any way. He was seated in his office reading and grading papers. The door was open.
“Hi, Mr. Edgars.”
“Emma, how nice to see you. How are you doing?”
“I’m doing quite well, thank you.”
“You’re a what? In your Junior year now? Are your studies going OK? Oh, excuse me. Please sit. What can I help you with Emma?”
“Ah. This is not very kosher, but I’m looking for a double major and one of them is Philosophy. Tall, slim, black glasses, about 180 pounds and usually presents a serious countenance.”
“To the tee. You described Mark almost perfectly. Good student too. If he weren’t already a Philosophy major, I’d be trying to talk him into it, like I did for you, unsuccessfully.” He smiled conspiratorially at Emma. “He’s at the library looking up a reference concerning Bertrand Russell. You remember him from your introductory course?”
“Vaguely. The British philosopher. The Theory of Knowledge?”
“Good memory, Em. Mark, whose last name is Williamson, has taken a particular liking to his way of thinking. He’s looking for the detailed lecture that Russell gave in 1927 to the National Secular Society. The verbal lecture was much shorter than the one he had written. Mark’s looking for the complete text of the shortened lecture. Mark’s in my Philosophy of Religion course.”
“Why would he be doing that? Isn’t he a Christian?”
“Emma, you don’t know him well, do you.”
“Just met him a few days ago at a bar. He told me to ‘Go away.’”
“That’s Mark all right. Speaks honestly, frankly, even to me. I’ve taken him under my wing. He had the nerve to ask me if he could read my doctorate dissertation and he’s just a twenty-four-year-old freshman.”
“Twenty-four?”
“Yeah. Ex-military. Marine, I believe. Deceptive how he looks so young, I know. Other professors are wary of him because he is casual around them as if he were an equal. That’s not the kind of respect we professors normally experience. But he’s mature, dedicated, works hard, and writes well for a freshman.”
“What dorm is he in?”
“Jones Hall. I shouldn’t be giving you personal information, Em... Sorry. Let me ask you a question. Do you think you’d fit in with thirty-year-old students?”
“No. It would be awkward, but he’s certainly not thirty. Can’t be.”
“No. I think he’s twenty-four. He doesn’t comfortably fit in with teenagers. He’s matured fast due to some military situations with which he’s been involved. It’s a little awkward for him.”
I found Mark in a silent corner of the library and didn’t want him to say, “Go away,” so I waited for him on a bench outside the library. It didn’t take long.
I pretended that I was walking by and saw him. “Hey, don’t I know you?” His smile shocked me because the sternness of his facial features had melted away.
“Hey, back at you. Sorry, I was rude to you a while back, at the bar. Didn’t even ask for your name.” He paused.
“Emma Grace,” I said.
He stared at me, so I didn’t know what to expect next.
“I’m Mark Williamson. I didn’t notice that night how tall you were. Five feet eight or nine?”
“Nine.”
“Would you like to go to the Pizza Shack and talk?”
Surprised, I said, “Yeah, I have time.”
Entering the Pizza Shack, he asked me what I wanted and would I get a booth. It turns out he’s crazy about pizza.
We ate for a minute, flushed it down with a sip of Coke and he with juice.
He started. “Right up front I’ll tell you I didn’t intend to get close to anyone but teachers on campus, no offense intended. A double major is a lot of work and I didn’t think I’d have time, especially for drinking, partying, silly pranks, and no dope smoking. I’m at college to get the best education I can that coincides with my education goals.”
“That’s expected of any serious student.”
“Plus I have bouts of depression and a mild form of PTSD which can change my usual personality.”
“Jekyll and Hyde, huh?” Immediately I knew I had said the wrong thing.
“No more than you’re a female Amazon warrior. I’m certainly not that bad. Just disturbing memories. Mostly I’m quite normal and, I’m happy to say, that each day seems to get better.”
“You’re not the normal college freshman.”
“I’m not normal in many ways, none of them dangerous to you. I’ve been thinking about you since that night at Liam’s Bar.”
“Me too, but now you act like a different person than that night at the bar, where you rather rudely chased everyone away.”
“Jekyll and Hyde?”
“Maybe, but I saw that you had no friends with you and got curious.”
“So, it turns you on to see a quiet guy reading and drinking at a bar?”
I felt the redness rising from my neck to my hair. “You sure know how to make a girl feel uncomfortable.”
“A certain skill I developed to keep them away as serious distractions to my studies unless, of course, I determine that they have the ‘hots’ for me.”
“OK, you got your reaction to embarrass me, but if it’s another one of your techniques to get rid of me, forget it. Now tell me about yourself,” I asked, hesitantly.
And that’s how I heard Mark’s story.
*******
He started in a whisper, like a mild breeze to my ear. It was almost like being whispered to by a gentle voice carried by the warm wind on a mild summer day, a voice not threatening, but carrying sadness, and caution as a protective shield against the memories of mankind at its worst. Mr. Edgar thinks he may be so self-contained because he knows the degree of his potential violence and his desire to control but not brag about it like an immature high school bully.
“Mark said that after high school I needed to get away, out of town, away from everyone I knew. I didn’t discriminate about who, just getting away from every recognizable face and voice. They were as threads weaving together to form a straight-jacket that annihilated my thoughts, and opinions, assaulted reason and logic, brutalized individuality, and steered me toward fear and unwanted faith.”
“Bertrand Russel said every religion is primarily based on fear. Humans fear the unknown, and to alleviate the fear of death, people make up a mythical place and call it heaven. They wish for a deity to assist them, so they make one. They even make it look like them. Do you suppose that if a jackass believed in a deity, that deity would also look like a jackass? Of course, there’s the need to conjure impossible acts and miracles attached to that deity. What good is a religion if it’s not more powerful than human simpletons with religious faith in an invisible Super Daddy in the sky and belief in ludicrous virgin births, parting of seas, walking on water, multiplying fishes, and dozens of other unreasonable, unproven, erroneous beliefs? They even go as far as to say their deity is all-powerful, all-knowing, all good, and haven’t the courage to see that there are contradictions and impossibilities in being perfect. We all laugh at fables, myths, and legends, except for the untouchable religious ones or religious-oriented ones, but most especially if they can be found in the Bible.
“People of faith will fall to their knees to worship the impossible, again by suddenly refuting, denying reason, logic, and common sense. Suddenly logic means nothing to them. Faith can’t conquer logic and simple common sense, so the faithful need to accept and welcome, with open arms, illogical, and unreasonable stories, and the pure silliness passed on by ancient men who were just barely literate. They won’t even question how they got to be the religion they are. If they were born in Iran would they be Christian? So, what’s so special about any religion? Your religion will change depending on where and to whom you were born. Religion is nothing more than an inheritance from parents. Do they ever disagree with their parents? Of course, they do, but not with the religious indoctrination parents provided for them. Fear gives birth to religions, fear of death, fear of defeat, fear of abuse, fear of contrary thoughts, and fear of their man-made God.”
“But I’m a Protestant Christian. What do you think of me and my beliefs?”
“You believe what is not true. I believe in the unicorn as a deity. When you believe in something you have faith, while faith is simply an unprovable strong opinion. There are quadruple trillions of opinions, my unicorn deity, for example. You do believe in my deity, right? Do you think I’m wrong? OK, I am wrong. Now apply the same mode of thought to your deity. If you believe something to be true, and you want me to believe it, then prove it to me. I’ll bet my whole bank account that you are of the same religion as your parents. Are you?”
“Yes.” But it shocked me to say that. I truly had inherited my religion. It wasn’t earned, researched, compared, analyzed. Nor was it a miraculous visit with or discussion with God. It was, however, the simplest, easiest, and undemanding of behaviors to copy-cat what parents believe. Utterly common, but certainly not sacred or reasoned. I wanted to cry. I wanted to leave, and that’s what he expected, I thought. I stayed. “Can we change the subject, please?”
“I expected that. But at least you didn’t run away or fall into the bottomless void of denial, where your echoes of faith will comfort you.”
“Mr. Edgar warned me that you spoke bluntly. Blunt can be cruel, too, you know. I can easily understand why people may not like you.”
“People don’t want to be upset. They want to believe what makes them comfortable about the future. The truth can be upsetting. The truth can hurt. Nobody likes being hurt, especially by the truth. Show me I’m wrong and I’ll gladly change.
“I didn’t join the Marines to see other countries, nor for macho reasons, nor girls attracted to the uniform. I joined to get away from everybody in my old life, and so I could get an education with the G.I. Bill, and because I’m patriotic. Plus, I liked the dress uniforms,” he said with humor and a smile.
“When I was discharged from the Marines I went to a community college. I took physics, chemistry, calculus, and some other stuff. The hardest part wasn’t the courses themselves but learning how to use that damnable slide rule.”
I had to laugh at Mark at that point because I knew what he meant and was damn glad when the digital age and computers came along.
“It turned out that what I did in the community college didn’t matter (except for college applications) since mid-course I received a letter from a military hospital saying I had a spot on my left lung, and I should see my family doctor and follow his advice. His advice was to get an X-ray. I did that. The spot was confirmed, but what it was due to was not known, though, most likely, it was cancer or tuberculosis. It was TB, so I spent an awful year in the Homer Folks TB recovery sanitarium in Oneonta, NY.
“I say ‘awful’ because I was to become acquainted with multiple deaths, many of them up close and very personal.
“Supposedly fresh cool air, bed rest, and medication were the panacea to cure my TB. There was a section of the place with double doors that entered a large porch. All the windows could be opened to let the cool, sometimes cold, air fill the room. Beds and wheelchairs were rolled into the room to stay for an hour or two, but only on cool or cold days. It had something to do with cold air’s beneficial effects on the diseased lung, although, when I asked, nurses seemed impatient to explain, as if the explanation needed to be accepted as fact and not questioned.
Then I would ask other questions like, “Why are the guys on the porch hooked to ECG machines? Bad hearts? They say they are being treated for bad hearts so why the machines.”
“Doctor’s orders. Now get away from here. Go to the library or go see Anne.”
As I was escorted to the administrative office to check in I noticed a diminutive, middle-aged man leaning to one side as he walked. Unfortunately, I was staring. He waved and forced a smile, then was on his way down the hallway. The nurse saw me staring and when I looked at her she said, “Operation. Had a lung removed. Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”
I had serious doubts about that comment. I was to hear it often.
“On that first day there, I was placed in a room in which the patient had died the night before. The medicinal smell and the guy’s body smell gagged me.
“‘You’ll get used to it,’ Nurse Ratched said with a twisted smile as if it pleased her to see me gag. We took an immediate dislike for each other that lasted the whole time I was there. I forgot her real name, so I’ll call the nurse ‘Ratched,’ after the sociopathic nurse in Ken Kesey’s 1962 book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
“I was the youngest male patient there, and since my TB was found early, I was able to take walks with no problems. Running would have to wait until I was further along in my recovery.”
“Oh my god. How long were you there?”
“Eleven months and one week. There was a high school teacher and an elementary school teacher there. The high school teacher’s name was Anne Mohar. She was a delight. She prepared me for college entrance tests. She was one of two ladies, not patients, who showed genuine concern for me, not so much as a TB patient, but what I would do after my discharge. I put them at ease saying I already intended to go to college. I said I was just amid an inconvenient delay while at the TB recovery sanatorium.
“Is this too boring? We can talk about something else.”
“If we talk about something else, would it be religion?”
“No, and I apologize for rambling on and on about religion. You have a right to your Christian beliefs even though they are wrong.”
He laughed at me, so I’d know that this time he was teasing me, but I smiled back and said, “Keep going, please.”
“Your wish is my command. Each month I was shown an X-ray of my left lung. The doctor pointed out a light gray ring that surrounded a black spot. Each month the white ring around the black spot grew larger as the black spot grew smaller.”
“I made friends with the older men, usually much older as if they were my grandfathers. But they had a vast resource of knowledge and I listened mostly. I have always found that if I talk too much I’m only saying things that I already know. But when I listen I learn new things and if I’m patient with my questions I learn much more. So, it has become a habit of mine to be taciturn.”
“What’s taciturn?”
“If a person is taciturn he or she is voluntarily silent and most of the time that describes me. In case you’re interested there’s a word that means almost the same thing. It’s ‘reticent.’ A reticent person is also frequently silent, but it’s not a thoughtful voluntary characteristic. Rather it’s like that person’s character or personality.”
“Show off,” I said to him.
“I wasn’t trying to show off. You said you wanted to understand me, and ‘taciturn’ is a voluntary part of me. How many people at Liam’s Pub did you or Jason or anyone else, see me talking with?”
“None that I saw, and Jason said the same thing.”
“See what I mean?”
“Stop teasing and get on with it.”
“In the eleven months I was there I kept making new friends because many of the old ones died. I don’t remember seeing anyone go home cured, except me but, I’m sure there were some. The older you were the less likely you would return to your former health.”
Mark stopped and stared straight ahead as if he’d time-traveled back in time to the sanitarium and was struggling to remember particulars, but his mind acted as a self-defense system and blocked the haunting memory that he was trying to expose. His eyes shone with moisture, but no tears. I touched his shoulder.
“Oh, sorry, I drifted off. I was imagining a long hallway with small rooms on both sides. I could see open doors and some patients lying in bed. ‘Mark, come talk to me,’ was a familiar sound. The emptiness and silence of the hallway and the rooms were disturbing. For safety, no visitors were allowed to come to the hallway or the rooms. We were mandatorily isolated. In eleven months, my only visit was when I was picked to go home. I’ve tried to forget but one can never unring a bell.
“Anyway, there was a lawyer across the hallway who was remarkably interesting to talk to. He would tell me about some of his interesting cases, the ones, he said, that weren’t boringly simple. He talked about his life, in general, his early days of learning the law, and defending someone before a judge and a jury. His wife had died, and his children were all grown up and married. They were scattered in the mid-west and the west coast and seldom had time to visit. His grandkids were strangers to him. His family had once been close, but the marriage ended that. He often cried. Sometimes I cried with him, thankful for the advantage of my youth. He had a bad streak of health, so I hadn’t seen him in a day or two, though I looked in on him often. He was asleep or was drugged and incoherent. I went to my room, shut the door, read, drafted sad poems, and got ready.
“I was ready, in the middle of the night, when I heard the unoiled wheels of the body cart come rolling down the hallway. My brain had anticipated it and I was suddenly awake, staring off into the darkness.
I got out of bed, opened my door slightly, peeked out, and soon saw him being wheeled away. It was strange to primarily remember the orderlies whispering so as not to bother the sleeping patients yet didn’t have the sense to oil the squeaky wheels.
“In the morning, I talked to a friend who had gotten there a few months before me. He called it the Dead Bed. Other guys heard us and if they could get to us they joined us with jokes about the Dead Bed coming for them. They enjoyed their gallows humor, but it took me a while before I accepted it and joined in on the laughter.
“Down the hallway, there was a middle-aged man who actually slept on a stiff plywood board covered with a sheet to simulate a mattress. I asked about it because I wasn’t allowed to visit him, yet his door was almost always open. I never even once saw him look at anything but the ceiling. It turned out that he had TB in his spine. I never heard of it being in someone’s spine. But he had to remain rigid, unmoving, or else he was in agony. His room was down the hallway from me. One day I heard an agonizing scream. Looking out my doorway I saw nurses, an orderly, and a doctor going in and out of his room. When his screams stopped I could still hear them, so I went outside for a walk with my portable radio playing Kenny Rodger’s song Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town. I had never listened to the lyrics closely. This time I needed the distraction, so I listened carefully. It’s about a helpless paralyzed Vietnam veteran whose wife is getting dressed up and putting make-up on so she can go to town in search of a lover. When I understood the words I looked back at the sanitarium thinking of the men, then sat down on the grass, put my hands over my face, and cried. I felt horrible and wished that I had never figured out the lyrics.
“The next morning, nurse Ratched came to give me my daily shot of streptomycin. We didn’t talk. It was always a shot in the buttocks. The shots were alternated between both buttocks.
Before I left the sanitarium I had had over three hundred intra-muscular shots into my buttocks, The scar tissue was so extensive that after about seven or eight months the needle had to be pushed through scar tissue to penetrate the muscle underneath. Sometimes the bleeding didn’t stop, and leaked through the bandage and underwear, even my pants, sometimes. Sometimes my bed sheet would be spotted with blood. When Nurse Ratched saw or heard about the blood, she would say, “Hey, you finally lost your virginity. At other times I got teased about starting my menstrual cycle. She enjoyed giving me those shots. I acted like none of it bothered me. She couldn’t hide the fact that it angered her if it didn’t bother me. I laughed at her frequently. I’d tease her about being a dwarf and having rat-nest gray hair. Sometimes she’d walk into my room and I would look over her head all around the room and pretend that she was so short that I could see her. I’d say, as I looked around the room, “Is somebody hear, I hear breathing. Now I heard steps coming toward me. The invisible nurse, is it? You should buy lifts for those tiny shoes, but stilts would be much better. Of course, the shots were more painful after that, but it was worth it. Most days there was repartee like that. Nurse Ratched was a simple sociopath having fun.
I also had to have my inner thigh artery cut open and blood collected. Never understood why that was needed. Nurse Ratched assisted the doctor with that. The bitch enjoyed any pain and discomfort I experienced as she looked at my groin and smiled at me.
Before Nurse Ratched departed, she asked, “Did you hear the commotion this morning?”
“Everyone heard it.”
“You’ll get used to it,” she said with a wicked smile.
“Sometimes she massages the buttock where the shot would go. That sounds reasonable, but I doubt that was her purpose. My penis would shrivel up so much that I couldn’t find it if I had to pee. Oh, shit! I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about who I was talking to. Sorry again.”
I didn’t know what to say to Mark. What he said surprised the words right out of me. My mouth suddenly dried up, so I just said, “It’s OK.”
“And there was this other guy who had emphysema, the only guy in my end of the sanitarium who didn’t have TB. He was a sad case. He was taller than me but stooped so much that his head and shoulders came level with the bottom of my neck. He usually had a rolling metal stand that had a bag of fluid attached to it that went into his arm intravenously. Luckily, the rolling stand stabilized him. Not as good as a walker but good enough since he could only walk about twenty feet at a time before he had to stop and catch his breath. If I was around, I walked with him and talked to him though he seldom answered me due to being out of breath. But every time I walked with him; he’d ask me for a cigarette. When I told him I didn’t smoke and that that’s probably how he got emphysema, he’d scowl at me and say, “Fuck you, Mark. Maybe a cigar?” Then he’d cough the rest of the way. Tragic, but somehow funny. Sometimes after he asked for a cigarette we’d both laugh or, I should say, I laughed, and he wheezed like a monotone accordion. Other times I could hear his phlegmy rattle noises. After a few coughs, the tissue was spotted red.
“It was disgusting to see him cough up a gob of puss-like phlegm and spit it into a tissue. It was nauseating, so I would turn my head away. Then I would chastise myself for thinking of Doc Holliday movies.
“A week later, while I was eating lunch in my room, I heard him fall. I heard the metal stand fall, a grunt and flesh slap onto the hard, tiled floor. We hardly know each other. I probably shouldn’t spill my guts on you. You look compassionate, but do you want to hear more of this story?”
“Please go on.”
“Glutton for punishment, you are. Some of the guys were looking out into the hallway, including me. A couple of nurses were already near him, one kneeling to find a pulse. The standing nurse looked over her shoulder at me. “You’ll get used to it,” burst from her lips, then she looked at the kneeling nurse who shook her head to indicate “no.” No pulse.
“A few minutes later the irritating sound of the Dead Bed could be heard from way up the hallway and two smiling orderlies pushing it. The staff was so used to deaths that they could carry on a conversation as they attended to a dead body. ‘I’ll get used to it?’ Bullshit! I will not.
“At that point, I hated Nurse Ratched. She was cruel in her reaction to death. A couple decades of working there had not just numbed her but soured her toward a patient’s death.”
“Couldn’t you complain about her or fill out a report?”
“It wouldn’t have done any good, except to make her even worse than she was already. Plus, what do I say? ‘Nurse Ratched told me I’d get used to it?’ Really? You had to see her face, her smile, her tone of voice.
“There was the computer analyst who wasn’t supposed to die of TB. He didn’t. He died in the night due to a stroke. It was a place of rest, but the stress was everywhere, among patients, nurses, and doctors.
“There was a lawn service guy who was funny. He had a million jokes and could go on and on. Died of a sudden heart attack.
“There were guys down the hallway at the end that I didn’t know. In the time I was there, two or three died of TB. They wasted away day by day, I was told by a guy who knew about them.
“There was a guy who died while in the bathtub. He didn’t drown, but I never heard conclusively why he died, and another guy who died sitting on the toilet. The guys had tons of fun joking about that one. It was because of the sanitarium’s shitty treatment, his shitty attitude, his crappy jokes, etc. I won’t talk about any more of the deaths. Surrounded by death I couldn’t joke comfortably about it, yet, and I was almost six months into my stay there. I guess if the guys thought about the dead guy's family, they would be more sympathetic, and compassionate. But, like one guy said to me, “I don’t give a shit. They’ll all be joking about me soon enough.”
“Even after eleven months I never got used to it. Life is so valuable. We all only get one shot at it. It seemed a shame that Ratched would make light of someone’s death. I think about it to this very day. I will never forget. For me, it’s like remembering the worst room in a haunted house of memories.
“One day while I was on a walk, I met a woman named Amelia. We chatted and became friends. She was twice my age, but she looked older. Life had treated her badly. At one time she was a nurse at the sanitarium. She got TB. Her lungs reacted quickly and badly to the disease and, to make things so much worse for her, she was also allergic to the primary medications. She had been in and out of the sanitarium for over twenty years.
“We walked out in the woods and, by ‘woods’ I’m referring to a large number of trees forming a copse, like a mini-forest. We proceeded onto the grassy hillocks before we stopped for her to rest. Her ordeal had aged her. She was allergic to the main medication and alternative medications only had mild effects for only a short time. After just ten minutes of talking to her and I recognized her sharp, well-educated mind. She was well-read, even with a lot of the classics, some of which I hadn’t read yet. Well-spoken, too. Had a way with words. We had literature in common. We talked about books, books made into movies, underappreciated novels, our favorite novel, our favorite genre, and more. She recommended books for me to read. I reciprocated.
“Luckily, the sanitarium had a good library. Anne Mohar, whom I mentioned before, was the librarian during certain hours of the day and what books we wanted that the library did not have, Anne got at the local town library. It turns out that Amelia and Anne had been friends for years. I loved those ladies, platonically. Such great human beings.”
Mark paused, but before he could say anything I anticipated him and said, “I know what platonic means.”
“At times I felt mixed up, as if my thoughts were in a washing machine. Oops. Would that give me clean thoughts? Sorry.”
“God, that was a terrible joke.”
“Yeah. I agree. So, Amelia and I decided to read a classic that neither one of us had read and that appealed to both of us. Then we’d have the same book to discuss from our perspectives. We decided to read, For Whom The Bell Tolls, by Hemmingway. It had both romance and adventure.
“We set up a regular meeting time and met in her dorm room a couple times a week. After a few weeks, she started having more breathing difficulties, so we skipped the next week. She was overtly optimistic but covertly pessimistic and sad about her unending struggle to stay alive. She could never marry, never have kids, never have a normal social life, all due to TB. People were afraid to be around her for fear that she’d be contagious. She wasn’t.
“After a week of not seeing her, she left a message for me to come to her room that night, after dinner. I was pleased primarily because it must have meant that she was feeling better and, secondarily because I missed out on book discussions.
“Most days were boring, but I read poetry and wrote my own. I read a plethora of books, most of them from the sanitarium’s adequate library, some from Amelia, some from sanitarium friends, and others mailed to me by relatives.
“When 6:30 p.m. arrived I was happy, light-footed kind of joyful to see her and continue our book discussions.
“When I first met Amelia, I was serious and taciturn. My life…”
I interrupted Mark there. He looked at me with a questioning expression on his face, then said, “What?”
“Are you sure you weren’t reticent instead of taciturn?” I giggled at the surprised look on his face.
“Such a funny woman. Shall I continue?”
I smiled and nodded for him to continue.
“As I was saying, I did not have the ‘Irish gift of gab’ at that time, except with Amelia and Anne, although I’d been to Ireland and kissed the Blarney Stone at the Blarney castle. At that time, it seemed that my life had made a frustrating U-turn, not taking me toward my goals but away from them. I’d quit my job at I.B.M. (I would have, anyway, just not as soon), then after I received a college acceptance letter I had to write to the admissions office to explain my situation and withdraw, temporarily, from attending college. My goals had to be set aside. Happiness was attacked successfully by depression and pessimism all due to a microscopic and insidious enemy that was growing inside my lung. Now I knew that if I could enlarge my situation a hundred times, I’d know how Amelia felt and lived. I was stunned by that thought as I walked to the elevator.
“I thought about forgetting it all when I got to Amelia’s room and wondered what she wanted to tell me. The message said that she wanted to tell me something. It must have been something to do with good news or a pleasant surprise. This thought lifted me out of my melancholy.
“I arrived at the elevator, pushed the UP button, and waited for the elevator to come down to get me. When it arrived with a ding- sound, the doors opened. Two orderlies were pushing the Dead Bed with a corpse on it, uncovered. The disrespect of that deed and the laughter of the orderlies infuriated me. “You two idiots,” I shouted. “You should have covered the body so no other patient can see what may be waiting for them. Assholes.”
“You’ll get used to it,” one of them said as they exited the elevator.
“As my anger was simmering, the cart rolled past me. I glanced. I shouted, “Stop!” and walked to the cart. It was Amelia. The corpse was Amelia. My brain froze. What the fuck,” I muttered. “All I could think to do was to grab the sheet on her chest and pull it over her head.
“The orderlies started to push again. I held the side of the cart rigidly still but let go.”
“Shit, man. You know her?”
“Assholes,” I remember saying, then watched her being pushed down the large main hallway toward the double doors with the morgue inside. As the Dead Bed, Amelia and the orderlies got smaller and smaller in my view, Amelia’s smiling face got larger and larger in my mind.
“When I turned I almost tripped over my own feet, staggered, and fell against the wall hitting my head. I turned and leaned my back against the wall and took deep breaths and tried to remedy my dizziness. Everything in view was a blur from tears so I stayed against the wall staring at the opposite wall.
“Niagara Falls was an amateur compared to the flow of my tears. I had been struck by a mighty blow, a sucker punch that staggered me physically and mentally, and took away my strength and clear vision. I wiped my eyes, cheeks, and jaw of wetness. I sensed that the breast of my shirt was sodden. My nose ran, the fluid following the contour of my upper lip. I remember the slippery feeling as I wiped at it. Disgusting now, but not then. My whole life seemed gross, empty, and hopeless at that time. My life ambitions all became distorted as I slipped into a dark void of depression and wanted to die so I wouldn’t have to think about what just happened.
“I kept one hand on the wall so I wouldn’t fall. I staggered and weaved unsteadily down the hallway, slowly, my vision still distorted. I heard muted voices coming my way. I did not acknowledge them. I entered my room and shut the door. I pulled a chair by the window and stared out at the lawn, the flowers, and the trees as a gentle breeze caused them to sway in a gentle rhythm. I saw Amelia and I walking toward the woods, as we often did, and then the vision disappeared as if we were two ghosts that melted into the tree trunks and foliage.
“It was mid-summer. The daytime was longer, the grass, flowers, and trees brighter, the sky bluer, the cumulus clouds whiter as if they were cotton-puffs. Then it all turned darker as if a storm were brewing.
“The dead look so different, naturally, but it was as if that body was at one point a bright, lively balloon animal floating happily to the sound of children's birthday party cheering, then the air burst from it and it became dull, wrinkled, flaccid, useless. That change is what we will all face. We die and become a useless, flaccid body with all signs of life flushed out of us. Years later I was to drive to my mother’s funeral showing and I didn’t recognize her. I honestly thought I was at the wrong funeral.
“Then I thought darkly. Images of distorted faces appeared shouting at me, but I know not what the message was, just like I didn’t know what Amelia wanted to tell me. Shadows of blackness moved and changed shapes, mostly ghostly and ominous figures, sometimes looking like angry faces, growling animals whose teeth seemed close enough to gnash at me, not to bite, but to incite fear, dread of how life sometimes ends.
“When I became aware of where I was, it was nighttime which fit my mood. Then I heard the squeak of the Dead Bed coming down the hallway. The sound of it tortured me with its slow moaning and with the sharp, steady, flapping back and forth of those stiff, black rubber wheels. That noise was what must have brought me out of my daze. I plugged my ears with my index fingers, but a roaring and angry mouse squeaked inside my brain. The roar slowly increased. When the roar stopped, a body was picked up somewhere past my room. When it came close to my room again, I opened my door and screamed, “Oil those fuckin’ wheels. That sound is killing me.”
“Jesus Christ, man, you’ll get used to it.”
“I slammed the door shut. I was damn tired of hearing that phrase. I would do something about it tomorrow, I thought. I was awake most of the remainder of the night, thankful for no more deaths. However, the next day I didn’t want to do a damn thing. I remained in my pajamas and got lost in reading, but a flash of an idea poked its way into my thoughts. I drafted this poem for Amelia. I wish it could be more of a tribute to her than the gloomy one that I wrote.”
AMELIA 1/22/70
She walks the halls,
Roaming alone.
Her life has walls
Unlike her home.
She has walked the halls
For many years.
Pushed at those walls
With hands wet with tears.
Her life fettered by walls
That stand unyielding,
Endless, lonely walls,
Devoid of human feeling.
Her life is gallows walk
Down many lifeless halls,
Filled with apathetic medical talk,
And those invincible walls.
Who knows the unknown tomorrow,
Or of tomorrow’s dirge,
When on her life of sorrow,
Those walls shall converge.
“It’s been over a year,” Mark said to me, “and I still see it as clearly as I appear in a mirror. Clear, still thought about. Depression episodes are sometimes mild, sometimes bottomless. It’s a mortal memory that lives on in me and will die with me. Both my fate and I never must forget that good person but let the memory die with me. Death, the final solution to the hurt, and the wound that never heals.”
“Mark, please don’t say things like that. You made it to college, you have an indomitable spirit. How else can you explain where you were six or seven years ago and where you are now?”
“Yeah, I keep it bottled up, hidden from others. Pity, pity poor me. Look at my hurt and have sympathy. That’s not what I want. I don’t want pity or sympathy, so I hide those disturbing thoughts. I’m not the one that had an unfair and tragic life.
“You know, I never seriously gave a shit about dying. I care more now, but not for me, for relatives and friends. I’m kind of numb to death, to becoming that flaccid balloon. Cremate me, dump my ashes, and be done with it. Don’t be sad. Go on living, be happy, and enjoy the remainder of your life.
“I’ve seen more death, up close and personal, in my year at that Death House to turn my mind morbid, producing a stoicism of thoughts and personality. For some reason, those unoiled flapping wheels always remain in my ears. I don’t know how many times I saw it or just heard it, but I sometimes wake up startled by the ominous sounds of those squeaky wheels. Flap, flap, squeak, squeak, ice pick stabs in my ears. I guess I’ll never truly forget. Just have to deal with it.
“Wherever I go, whomever I talk to, I need to be guarded, cautious not to spill the filth of memories onto others. They are toxic. To you, too, Emma. You can do much better than me. You should leave, Emma. That’s not rudeness, that’s me trying to be compassionate, truthful.”
Mark looked into my eyes and whispered, ‘Go.’ Find a good man. Not me.”
God damn him. He was making me cry and I was getting mad. But I calmed, I forced myself to smile then said, ‘Don’t-cha know that nice girls are attracted to bad boys?’”
Mark surprised me with a hesitant smile. I told him that I needed to return to my dormitory room.”
“Ok,” is all he said, so I walked away, but as I got a few feet away from him, I thought I heard him say, ‘Once more into the breach.’”
I wondered what it meant. I’d find out.
So, that’s how I heard Mark’s story.
He and I have our own story together. Mostly happy, rewarding, and lengthy. He’s still taciturn, and I know now that he never got used to the deaths he witnessed at that sanitarium, nor the memories of all those deaths. Anne Mohar, his respected teacher and friend, died recently. She has her own, much more pleasant story, but Mark hasn’t written about it.
I privately hope death isn’t close to him, but far away, over the hill and out of sight, but that’s not how it works, is it?
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