Run With the Hunted (8 page)

I went to the desk. The nurse was staring down into a big fat book with names written in it. The phone rang. She answered it.

“Dr. Menen isn't here yet.” She hung up.

“Pardon me,” I said.

“Yes?” the nurse asked.

“The doctors aren't here yet. Can I come back later?”

“No.”

“But there's nobody here.”

“The doctors are on call.”

“But I have an 8:30 appointment.”

“Everybody here has an 8:30 appointment.”

There were 45 or 50 people waiting.

“Since I'm on the waiting list, suppose I come back in a couple of hours, maybe there will be some doctors here then.”

“If you leave now, you will automatically lose your appointment. You will have to return tomorrow if you still wish treatment.”

I walked back and sat in a chair. The others didn't protest. There was very little movement. Sometimes two or three nurses would walk by laughing. Once they pushed a man past in a wheelchair. Both of his legs were heavily bandaged and his ear on the side of his head toward me had been sliced off. There was a black hole divided into little sections, and it looked like a spider had gone in there and made a spider web. Hours passed. Noon came and went. Another hour. Two hours. We sat and waited. Then somebody said, “There's a doctor!”

The doctor walked into one of the examination rooms and closed the door. We all watched. Nothing. A nurse went in. We heard her laughing. Then she walked out. Five minutes. Ten minutes. The doctor walked out with a clipboard in his hand.

“Martinez?” the doctor asked. “José Martinez?”

An old thin Mexican man stood up and began walking toward the doctor.

“Martinez? Martinez, old boy, how are you?”

“Sick, doctor … I think I die …”

“Well, now … Step in here …”

Martinez was in there a long time. I picked up a discarded newspaper and tried to read it. But we were all thinking about Martinez. If Martinez ever got out of there, someone would be next.

Then Martinez screamed. “AHHHHH! AHHHHH! STOP! STOP! AHHHH! MERCY! GOD! PLEASE STOP!”

“Now, now, that doesn't hurt …” said the doctor.

Martinez screamed again. A nurse ran into the examination room. There was silence. All we could see was the black shadow of the half-open doorway. Then an orderly ran into the examination room. Martinez made a gurgling sound. He was taken out of there on a rolling stretcher. The nurse and the orderly pushed him down the hall and through some swinging doors. Martinez was under a sheet but he wasn't dead because the sheet wasn't pulled over his face.

The doctor stayed in the examination room for another ten minutes. Then he came out with the clipboard.

“Jefferson Williams?” he asked.

There was no answer.

“Is Jefferson Williams here?”

There was no response.

“Mary Blackthorne?”

There was no answer.

“Harry Lewis?”

“Yes, doctor?”

“Step forward, please …”

It was very slow. The doctor saw five more patients. Then he left the examination room, stopped at the desk, lit a cigarette and talked to the nurse for fifteen minutes. He looked like a very intelligent man. He had a twitch on the right side of his face, which kept jumping, and he had red hair with streaks of grey. He wore glasses and kept taking them off and putting them back on. Another nurse came in and gave him a cup of coffee. He took a sip, then holding the coffee in one hand he pushed the swinging doors open with the other and was gone.

The office nurse came out from behind the desk with our long white cards and she called our names. As we answered, she handed each of us our card back. “This ward is closed for the day. Please return tomorrow if you wish. Your appointment time is stamped on your card.”

I looked down at my card. It was stamped 8:30 a.m.

—
H
AM ON
R
YE

 

It was like a wood drill, it might have been a wood drill, I could smell the oil burning, and they'd stick that thing into my head into my flesh and it would drill and bring up blood and pus, and I'd sit there the monkey of my soul-string dangling over the edge of a cliff. I was covered with boils the size of small apples. It was ridiculous and unbelievable. Worst case I ever saw, said one of the docs, and he was old. They'd gather around me like some freak. I was a freak. I'm still a freak. I rode the streetcar back and forth to the charity ward. Children on streetcars would stare and ask their mothers, “What's wrong with that man? Mother, what's wrong with that man's
face?
” And the mother would SHUUSSSHHH!!! That shuussshhh was the worst condemnation, and then they'd continue to let the little bastards and bastardesses stare from over the backs of their seats and I'd look out the window and watch the buildings go by, and I'd be drowning, slugged and drowning, nothing to do. The doctors for lack of anything else called it Acne Vulgaris. I'd sit for hours on a wooden bench while waiting for my wood drill. What a pity story, eh? I remember the old brick buildings, the easy and rested nurses, the doctors laughing, having it made. It was there that I learned of the fallacy of hospitals—that the doctors were kings and the patients were shit and the hospitals were there so the doctors could make it in their starched white superiority, they could make it with the nurses too:—Dr. Dr. Dr. pinch my ass in the elevator, forget the stink of cancer, forget the stink of life. We are not the poor fools, we will never die; we drink our carrot juice, and when we feel bad we can take a pop, a needle, all the dope we need. Cheep, cheep, cheep, life will sing for us, Big-Time us. I'd go in and sit down and they'd put the drill into me. ZIRRRR ZIRRRR ZIRRRR, ZIR, the sun meanwhile raising dahlias and oranges and shining through nurses' dresses driving the poor freaks mad. Zirrrrrrr, zirrr, zirr.

“Never saw
anybody
go under the needle like that!”

“Look at him, cold as steel!”

Again a gathering of nurse-fuckers, a gathering of men who owned big homes and had time to laugh and to read and go to plays and buy paintings and forget how to think, forget how to feel anything. White starch and my defeat. The gathering.

“How do you feel?”

“Wonderful.”

“Don't you find the needle painful?”

“Fuck you.”

“What?”

“I said—fuck you.”

“He's just a boy. He's bitter. Can't blame him. How old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

“I was only praising you for your courage, the way you took the needle. You're tough.”

“Fuck you.”

“You can't talk to me that way.”

“Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.”

“You ought to bear up better. Supposing you were blind?”

“Then I wouldn't have to look at your goddamned face.”

“The kid's crazy.”

“Sure he is, leave him alone.”

That was some hospital and I never realized that 20 years later I'd be back, again in the charity ward. Hospitals and jails and whores: these are the universities of life. I've got several degrees. Call me Mr.

—
S
OUTH OF
N
O
N
ORTH

 

The ultra-violet ray machine clicked off. I had been treated on both sides. I took off the goggles and began to dress. Miss Ackerman walked in.

“Not yet,” she said, “keep your clothes off.”

What is she going to do to me, I thought?

“Sit up on the edge of the table.”

I sat there and she began rubbing salve over my face. It was a thick buttery substance.

“The doctors have decided on a new approach. We're going to bandage your face to effect drainage.”

“Miss Ackerman, what ever happened to that man with the big nose? The nose that kept growing?”

“Mr. Sleeth?”

“The man with the big nose.”

“That was Mr. Sleeth.”

“I don't see him anymore. Did he get cured?”

“He's dead.”

“You mean he died from that big nose?”

“Suicide.” Miss Ackerman continued to apply the salve.

Then I heard a man scream from the next ward, “
Joe, where are you? Joe, you said you'd come back! Joe, where are you?
”

The voice was loud and so sad, so agonized.

“He's done that every afternoon this week,” said Miss Ackerman, “and Joe's not going to come get him.”

“Can't they help him?”

“I don't know. They all quiet down, finally. Now take your finger and hold this pad while I bandage you. There. Yes. That's it. Now let go. Fine.”

“
Joe! Joe, you said you'd come back! Where are you, Joe?
”

“Now, hold your finger on this pad. There. Hold it there. I'm going to wrap you up good! There. Now I'll secure the dressings.”

Then she was finished.

“O.K., put on your clothes. See you the day after tomorrow. Goodbye, Henry.”

“Goodbye, Miss Ackerman.”

I got dressed, left the room and walked down the hall. There was a mirror on a cigarette machine in the lobby. I looked into the mirror. It was great. My whole head was bandaged. I was all white. Nothing could be seen but my eyes, my mouth and my ears, and some tufts of hair sticking up at the top of my head. I was
hidden
. It was wonderful. I stood and lit a cigarette and glanced about the lobby. Some in-patients were sitting about reading magazines and newspapers. I felt very exceptional and a bit evil. Nobody had any idea of what had happened to me. Car crash. A fight to the death. A murder. Fire. Nobody knew.

I walked out of the lobby and out of the building and I stood on the sidewalk. I could still hear him. “
Joe! Joe! Where are you, Joe!
”

Joe wasn't coming. It didn't pay to trust another human being. Humans didn't have it, whatever it took.

On the streetcar ride back I sat in the back smoking cigarettes out of my bandaged head. People stared but I didn't care. There was more fear than horror in their eyes now. I hoped I could stay this way forever.

I rode to the end of the line and got off. The afternoon was going into evening and I stood on the corner of Washington Boulevard and Westview Avenue watching the people. Those few who had jobs were coming home from work. My father would soon be driving home from his fake job. I didn't have a job, I didn't go to school. I didn't do anything. I was bandaged, I was standing on the corner smoking a cigarette. I was a tough man, I was a dangerous man. I knew things. Sleeth had suicided. I wasn't going to suicide. I'd rather kill some of them. I'd take four or five of them with me. I'd show them what it meant to play around with me.

A woman walked down the street toward me. She had fine legs. First I stared right into her eyes and then I looked down at her legs, and as she passed I watched her ass, I drank her ass in. I memorized her ass and the seams of her silk stockings.

I never could have done that without my bandage

The bandages were helpful. L.A. County Hospital had finally come up with something. The boils drained. They didn't vanish but they flattened a bit. Yet some new ones would appear and rise up again. They drilled me and wrapped me again.

My sessions with the drill were endless. Thirty-two, thirty-six, thirty-eight times. There was no fear of the drill anymore. There never had been. Only an anger. But the anger was gone. There wasn't even resignation on my part, only disgust, a disgust that this had happened to me, and a disgust with the doctors who couldn't do anything about it. They were helpless and I was helpless, the only difference being that I was the victim. They could go home to their lives and forget while I was stuck with the same face.

But there were changes in my life. My father found a job. He passed an examination at the L.A. County Museum and got a job as a guard. My father was good at exams. He loved math and history. He passed the exam and finally had a place to go each morning. There had been three vacancies for guards and he had gotten one of them.

L.A. County General Hospital somehow found out and Miss Ackerman told me one day, “Henry, this is your last treatment. I'm going to miss you.”

“Aw come on,” I said, “stop your kidding. You're going to miss me like I'm going to miss that electric needle!”

But she was very strange that day. Those big eyes were watery. I heard her blow her nose.

I heard one of the nurses ask her, “Why, Janice, what's wrong with you?”

“Nothing. I'm all right.”

Poor Miss Ackerman. I was 15 years old and in love with her and I was covered with boils and there was nothing that either of us could do.