volume 120
ONE FLEW OVER THE TULIP PATCH.
“He who marches out of step hears another drum.”
- Ken Kesey.
July, 2039.
Cherry Hospital.
Goldsboro, North Carolina.
ACT I.
“It's been almost a week now,” the Doctor continued, whilst scrawling frantic notes upon his notepad and intermittently pushing his spectacles back up his nose. “Since you traded your orange jumpsuit for a white one.”
“Orange was never my colour,” the patient answered.
“Perhaps not, Patient V,” the Doctor replied. “But a change in wardrobe is only one of many reasons one might wish to transfer from the state penitentiary to Cherry Hospital.”
“What are you implying, Doc?” she asked. She knew what he was implying.
“Very well, Patient V, if you wish for me to be direct,” he went on, whilst finally placing his pen down onto his papers and leaning back in his chair. Physically, there was only his untidy desk between them, but a much wider chasm existed in her mind. “There are some here at the hospital who have raised concerns that your symptoms may be simulated.”
“And why would I do that?” she asked, with a cynical smirk that the Doctor found disconcerting.
“Most would agree that our hospital is a more pleasant environment than the local prison,” he answered, eliciting a sharp, involuntary scoff from his patient.
“You don't get to our ward often enough, Doc,” she said. “If you knew the Nurse and her bedside manner I'm sure you'd recant that statement.”
The Doctor narrowed his eyes slightly. Picked up his pen. Continued to write in his notepad.
“When we spoke yesterday,” he continued without eye contact. She was only sure he was talking to her because she was the only other person there. “We talked about regret. You spoke about an experience - a sexual experience - that occurred fifteen years ago. One that you're ashamed of.”
The patient didn't reply immediately. Something about the manner that the word sexual slithered off the Doctor’s forked tongue repulsed her.
“Sixteen years ago,” she corrected, eventually.
“Would you like to talk about that some more?” he asked, with eyes only for his notes.
“Would you like to talk about that some more?” she returned, suggestively. The question lingered in the air, the repetition sharp with accusation. The Doctor felt the need to justify himself.
“Yesterday, you framed your experiences in Mexico City in August, 2023 as the starting point of your descent,” the Doctor surmised, in a fashion the patient felt overly matter-of-fact. “Defeat to one man in the ring and another between the sheets. You point to another defeat in April, 2024, this time in Osaka, as the moment of implosion. I believe these two events are more closely related than you're willing to admit.”
The Doctor's evocation of those three men was sudden and unexpected but the images were not difficult to conjure. All three of them had left such an imprint upon her that the memories weren't really memories at all. She closed her eyes in Goldsboro in July of 2039. She opened them in Mexico City in 2023, another part of her being awakened from a long but restless slumber.
The array of drinks in front of Michelle was a familiar one: a neat, straight Jameson's and a cold bottle of Heineken. This is what she used to drink. This is what this part of her drank. She sipped at the beer and winced. A network of bruises sang across her torso, fresh and angry. Cracked ribs. A broken bone or two. This is what defeat tasted like, even if she hadn't actually lost.
In a blink of an eye she was in Osaka in April, 2024. She was half the world away but her surroundings hadn't changed all that much. Dive bars were much the same wherever you were. She sat at the bar and nursed the same tandem of drinks that she'd nursed for much of the last decade. An empty stool stood next to her. Twice someone had tried to occupy it and twice she'd told them she was saving it. That was half true. She didn't know if he'd really come. To here of all places.
The feeling of defeat was less urgent in Osaka than it was in Mexico City. There was, of course, the fact that she hadn't lost yet. She had ridden the wave of her return to a few wins against notable opponents, and her next one was wallowing in successive defeats. She was expected to win, almost. Even now, though, with the match still a few days in the stubborn future, the stench of her own failure was thick in the air. She was submerged in it, oppressed by it. Mexico City felt like yesterday, defeat and shame the twin harbingers of her downfall.
“Patient V?” the Doctor urged. She opened her eyes. She would allow the conversation to wash over her, safe in the knowledge that she wasn't really here.
“You're wrong,” she said, simply. “They both might be Bastards, but they are different men. Mexico City and Osaka are different things.”
The Doctor smiled. The patient found this curious. He almost appeared as though he thought he'd won a point.
“We'll leave it there for today,” he concluded, triumphantly. “Perhaps we will continue this thread in the morning. Return to your ward.”
By the time she returned to the ward, the other patients were already in the yard for the meagre provision that the state deemed recreation. About a week was enough for her to figure out the institution’s routines: those in place on account of the authorities and those that the patients had installed themselves. The yard was no different. Today she found the men that she cohabited with engaged in the same menial activities that they conducted every other day.
Most of the men on the ward were entirely unresponsive. They were dubbed the Chronics by both the orderlies and indeed the other patients. One of these, Patient X, stood at the fence around the yard’s perimeter and gazed towards the dense forestry that lay southwards. The other patients called him Chief on account of his heritage, but Patient X didn't answer to that or any other name. In fact, not a word had gone in or come out of the huge man since V had arrived (or long before). None of the others considered him much at all. They knew he was deaf and dumb, and surmised there wasn't much sense left in him anyway.
Patient T was attempting to play basketball with the orderlies, and the way he bounced the ball implied he possessed some athleticism in his long-forgotten youth. Now, though, the staff threw the ball around in an ever expanding triangle, T hustling to retrieve it but never quite quick enough. The arrangement didn't really seem fair. Patient R, meanwhile, walked in wide circles around the neglected gym equipment, muttering to his imaginary friends that had taken the places of the real ones he murdered. Patient B was nowhere to be seen, and she'd quickly learned that he spent his time inside with the Nurse, helping her with errands too tedious for even the orderlies.
She took a seat on a bench next to Patient A, who hadn't had a drink in the eight months since he'd been here but whose breath still stank of whiskey. He was fidgeting nervously like he always did. V watched the Chief as he gazed towards the trees.
“What do you think he's doing?” she asked, whilst lighting a cigarette. Patient A was a fool but he'd been here a long time, with nothing to drink and nothing to do except watch the other patients.
“The Chief?” he replied, almost confused by the question. It had been a while since he'd thought about Patient X. “I wouldn't pay him no mind. He's not thinking about you. None of the Chronics are. They're somewhere else entirely.”
“Maybe I am, too,” V said, mostly to herself. “How’d he come to be here?”
“He was sent here,” answered A, with a shrug. “Committed. He was Chief out there, too. Some bigshot tribe, respected across North America. Important guy, I heard, until he killed his wife. Would've done the same to his kid, too, if they hadn't stopped him. Hasn't said a word ever since. They say he cracked.”
“Did everyone here try to kill their whole family?” V asked. A shook his head.
“Just him, and R of course,” he corrected. “But R actually pulled it off, the son of a bitch. Still, two out of ten does seem a high percentage.”
As Patient A finished his thought, the smell of cheap whiskey that he drank eight months ago dripping off him, the orderlies began to usher the patients back towards the building. Time for group, they announced. V winced at the thought of it. Group was less frequent than her daily conversations with the Doctor, but it was also longer and a shared experience that made it altogether more unbearable.
“I guess that's why we're here,” V mused.
A didn’t hear her response. He was already scurrying back towards the building, heaving his large frame up the small hill between the yard and their first floor ward. Outside of the Chronics, her fellow inmates - or patients, as the staff euphemistically termed them - seemed to share a number of characteristics. They were each large and hulked about the place one step removed from dragging their knuckles along the floor, but these overlaps extended beyond the physical. She knew that they were all violent men, or at least had the potential to be violent men. She had heard enough about their histories to know this. They had all been trusted once, too. This is where their own paths departed from her own. Each had been betrayed and betrayed in turn, trust broken alongside their fragile grip on reality.
This was a dangerous place, perhaps. But why then did V feel at home?
The anonymity helped. Shedding the name that she'd carried around all her life like a burden fit for Atlas (or probably Sisyphus) had brought with it a sense of freedom that was easy to explain. V was a blank canvas to everyone but the Doctor, who had her file and thus a picture of who she was before. More than the anonymity, though, was the sense of clarity that came with being surrounded by such a fog of confusion. In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king, she'd once heard a priest or a politician say. In the land of the mad, the sane woman is king, she'd repeat to herself each night, sleep elusive and the sanctuary of her Dreams beyond her reach.
“And wouldn't you agree that your drinking, in this situation and in many others, has only kept you further from the truth? Further from clarity?”
The Nurse spoke softly and calmly, though her words carried a subtle edge. She was sterile to the point of hostile, speaking about connectivity and clarity and friendship whilst all-the-while staring right through you - into you and out the other side - with unblinking, cold eyes.
Meek and submissive, Patient A nodded his head. A small gesture of his defeat. None of the other patients were going to help him. They each knew this from experience. The twice weekly sessions masqueraded as group but were, in fact, individual interrogations at the hands of their blunt governess. You were on your own when she had her headlights upon you. Most of the others winced and flinched from her gaze. Patient B was the only exception, who sat up attentively like a secretary at the meeting. He would often forget that he was a patient. Even V knew this from her short time on the ward.
“You agree?” Nurse Best pressed further. A nod wasn't going to be enough. She wanted a verbal submission.
“I agree,” Patient A agreed.
“To what are you agreeing?” the Nurse asked. She scrawled a short note onto her clipboard, part of the act to conceal the torture as therapy. Patient A began to stammer and gently rock himself forward in his seat.
“I’m agreeing…” the beleaguered patient started, before trailing off into silence. Twice more he repeated the same two words before twice more managing to get to further. He recoiled from her unflinching gaze, the ends of her mouth unfurling into a smile.
“How can we expect to rebuild trust, both the trust of others and trust in ourselves, and eventually build those friendships that we crave, if we can't be honest with each other about our past mistakes?”
The patients felt that the Nurse’s question was rhetorical, each engaging in their own brand of weak and deflective silence. Nurse Best shook her head at their surrender.
“A little honesty will bring a little connectivity,” the Nurse said, finally releasing Patient A from her vice-like grip. “And that's exactly what you need.”
“Speaking of what we need,” Patient V interjected, drawing the Nurse's cool stare onto her and eliciting a sigh of relief from A. “I was talking to a few of the guys about a certain wrestling event that's taking place over in Raleigh tonight, and we were thinking that maybe we might be able to fire up that old television screen over there and watch the live feed.”
At first, the Nurse's only response to the change in subject was her gaze, alongside another thin smile that barely concealed her contempt.
“Patient V, I'm sure you're aware that the schedule allows for television time during Wednesday and Friday afternoons, and that we follow a carefully vetted schedule so as to not upset your fellow patients.”
The Nurse followed up with another note on her clipboard. Her demeanour suggested she considered the matter closed.
“Well, what I'm suggesting is we alter the schedule,” V continued, digging in her heels. “You see, some of the boys have never even seen a wrestling show, and I haven't missed a Back in Business since they started doing them. Even in prison, they let us watch Back in Business.”
Another pause. Another sinister smile.
“The schedule that we follow, Patient V, has been carefully put together by medical staff who work tirelessly for your own wellbeing and the wellbeing of your fellow patients. Many of them would find it very upsetting if we just altered the schedule, as you're suggesting. Not to mention the suitability of a live wrestling show, which I’m not sure would be appropriate for viewing here.”
“And that's the end of it?” V snarled, derisively. She folded her arms as if to further illustrate her disdain. “So declared Nurse Best?”
The Nurse was still smiling, but now her eyes almost seemed to contain pity. For what, the patients couldn't guess.
“Would a vote satisfy you?” she said, finally. V nodded her head, waving the Nurse on. “All those in favour of altering the carefully planned schedule to screen a violent wrestling show this evening, please raise your hands.”
V raised hers first. After a few moments of inner turmoil, A followed. Perhaps this was more to thank her for distracting the Nurse from his interrogation than any inclination to watch the show. V didn't care what his motives were. When it became clear that nobody else was going to show their support, even those that had agreed to do so privately before the meeting, she felt grateful for even one person's support, useless though it was.
“I think we can table that matter,” the Nurse declared, victoriously. “That's all we have time for today, friends. I think we should all reflect upon our own regrets and our own shame. That is the path to redemption and clarity.”
That was the end of the meeting.
At a little after ten, Patients A and T were playing cards on the floor of the ward. The orderly in charge of their night care was much less diligent than those present during the day, and so long as they didn't make too much noise or hurt one another he mostly just slept away his shift in the office. A was winning, much to the chagrin of his highly competitive counterpart.
“You're cheating?” T insisted, whilst handing over a cigarette to settle the debt of his latest defeat. “You must be cheating. It's the only logical explanation.”
“Then why are you still playing?” A asked, with a chuckle.
“Maybe I'll stop,” T replied.
“Maybe you should stop,” A agreed.
Meanwhile, V leant against a large unit in the middle of the room, the top of which was dominated by a huge, domed sink. Arranged around the basin was an elaborate series of faucets, which she idly played with whilst the others bickered, turning them on and off and watching the water pool in the basin. She did this until the squabbling of her cohabitants became too much for her, at which point she collected a nozzle shaped like a small handgun that was semi-detachable from the main unit by a long chain. Water gushed out of the end of it and poured onto the ongoing card game, before its stream was directed onto Patient T, who tipped back in surprise at the sudden barrage.
The ruckus caused Patient B to sit up from his bed and bark a hushed whisper. He insisted they keep it down and go to bed, but his words had no power during the night. Nurse Best had her real life in her real home with her real friends to go to, and during those hours Patient B was as lost and alone as the rest of them. She doused him next, much to the delight of Patient A, who howled with laughter. He didn't escape her crosshairs, but he accepted his dousing with glee and encouragement.
She turned the tap off when the call came from the nurse’s office. The night orderly implored them to keep it down and then muttered to himself about the braindeads under his care. His words echoed around the ward but soon turned back to snores, at which stage V punctured a lingering silence.
“Only one of you showed any kind of spirit today,” she announced, grimly, with a shake of her head and a dull but unresigned expression on her face. “The rest of you aren't men. You're slaves. Serfs of that Empress who calls herself Nurse.”
“It doesn't matter what you think of us,” Patient B returned from his sodden bed. He, at least, was a willing serf, and seemed to wear this dishonour proudly. “You lost your vote. You're here in the mire with the rest of us and the television is off.”
“That's not the only television in North Carolina, tulip,” V replied, dismissively.
“It's the only one that matters to you,” B declared, whilst lying back in his bed and squelching as he tossed and turned.
“I think I'll just go out and watch the show,” V said. She looked out the window, as if determining a route across the grounds. “I think I'll go watch it in a bar somewhere. I know A likes that idea. How about it? Who's with me?”
B simply scoffed from his bed. A shuffled awkwardly and began to collect the damp cards. Even X had come over to watch the scene, lured in by the commotion and now looming over it like a silent, solemn giant. T shook his head dismissively, emboldened by B’s disbelief.
“You're just gonna walk out of here?” T asked, sarcastically.
“They lock the doors at night,” A advised her in little more than a whisper, leaning in as if taking her side and sharing a secret.
V, for her part, continued to look out of the window. She placed her fingers against the thin, metal bars that latticed across them, rattling them gently and listening to the echo.
“Seems pretty weak,” she said, absently. “I'll put them through with the sink. And then yes, T, I'm just gonna walk out of here.”
“Good luck lifting that thing,” T replied, with a sneer of his own. He began to deal another hand with the wet cards. A, though, wasn't interested in continuing the game, and joined the others in watching V as she positioned herself with a wide base next to the huge, metal sink in the middle of the room.
“You know, you could help me,” she said to T, as she adjusted her grip around its base.
“You're on your own,” T insisted, although he at least afforded her his attention, and placed the cards down on a dry patch of ground.
With a grimace and a grunt, V writhed under the exertion of the lift, attempting to unfasten the sink from the ground. It remained steadfast and stubborn, though, refusing to budge even an inch, the laws of physics too much for her slender frame to overcome.
“Giving up already?” B asked from his bed. V took a step back from the task. She was surprised that he'd delayed his sleep to watch her fail.
“Just need a better grip,” she said, returning her focus and her hands to the sink. Once more she wrestled with the task, her hands slipping into various grips along its cold, metal surface. Despite her efforts, it remained in place, defiant and even passive in the face of her struggle.
After a time that none of them measured, but at which all of them knew she'd been defeated, she gave up on the task. Her shoulders heaved as she sucked in the first few lung-fulls of oxygen afterwards, her eyes still fixed on her inorganic foe. The fact that it didn't know that it had won seemed to wound her more.
She walked away from the scene and climbed into bed.
“Well, I tried, didn't I?” she said, as she closed her eyes. “At least I did that.”
*
ACT II.
“You mentioned the Nurse yesterday,” the Doctor said, eyes intent upon the notes spread out in front of him on his desk. The change in subject was abrupt and marked. V surmised that the Doctor was through with talking about her childhood for the day. She came back into the present kicking and screaming. “And not in the most flattering terms.”
“Yes?” V affirmed, simply. Although the memory of the failed vote the day before was fresh she remained at least somewhat guarded. They were in legion, afterall.
“The Nurse told me about the vote yesterday,” the Doctor announced, immediately confirming B's suspicions. “It seems strange to me that you should wish to watch that particular show, given what happened in Mexico City in 2023.”
“I always watch Back in Business,” V insisted, a repetition of her futile argument with the Nurse yesterday. “I didn't expect to win the vote. Hell, I didn't expect the Nurse to even agree to one. Guess she wouldn't if she thought I had any chance of winning.”
“I'm not really interested in yesterday's vote,” the Doctor began, licking his lips with his forked tongue. “So much as what it says about that night sixteen years ago. We have been discussing feelings of shame and regret associated with what happened in Mexico City, both in the ring and later that night, at the Four Seasons.”
He allowed the silence to linger, as if hoping the memories would be stirred up within her. Little did he know, she reminded herself, that she wasn't really here. She didn't need to remember Mexico City. Another part of her was still there.
She had only intended to leave the dive bar for a cigarette. She still had half a bottle of Heineken and the dregs of a Jameson's waiting for her behind the counter. The bartender looked like a good, honest sort. He'd no doubt keep them safe. She didn't return for them, though. The buzz of the city and the shadow cast by the tall hotel were enough to draw her away.
She knew what was in there. Who was in there, if she was to afford the man begrudging personification. She found it unhelpful to do so. It was better to think of him as an object to be used. Safer. Easier.
“You know where to find me,” he'd said, oozing in sleaze and superiority, as they'd passed one another in the hallway of the arena. She found his air of triumph uncomely and unearned. He'd been defeated himself, after all, for the second year straight and in eerily similar circumstances.
She held the card for the hotel - the Four Seasons - between outstretched, trembling fingers. He flashed her a smile that both repulsed and excited her.
“If you should change your mind, Dreamer.”
In Osaka, in April of 2024, she sat amid oncoming defeat and stank of it in a different dive bar that was the same even if on the other side of the world.
She didn't believe he'd really come until she saw him arrive. He looked at odds here in this sort of place but she supposed at least one of them would look misplaced in any location. He was dressed as she expected him to be dressed, in a sharp, grey business suit, and looked exactly as she remembered him. Not that they were ever more than distant acquaintances, but he cast a long shadow, and she had for a brief time danced beneath it.
For the man's obvious unfamiliarity with his current environs, it was difficult to say he was uncomfortable with them. If anything, he remained neutral towards the drab and dreary dive bar that he found himself striding through. It almost appeared as though he existed on a different plane altogether, and in his mind a higher one. He briskly arrived at the seat she'd been saving for him all night. He didn't order anything.
“I shouldn't have let you pick the place,” he said, whilst carefully removing his gloves.
“I wouldn't have come if you didn't,” she replied, draining her bottle and ordering another one. “I scarcely believed it was you. Especially when you agreed to come to a place like this. You must be desperate, Rupert.”
The old man didn't say anything. Eventually he shrugged, a taciturn acceptance in itself.
“Why are you here?” she asked. She hasn't put it together yet.
“Wouldn't you agree, Patient V?” the Doctor asked, once more bringing his counterpart back to the present. “It appears to me that your eagerness to watch this event contradicts your feelings towards this company and, more generally, the industry, based on the events of Mexico City and Osaka.”
“Seems you have it all worked out without me,” V allowed. She found these daily reminders of a past life better off left behind uncomfortable.
“I'm interested in your opinion,” the Doctor implored.
“Osaka was only a loss,” V insisted, defiantly. “I've had others. Worse.”
“But it led from Mexico City,” the Doctor began, as if in summary. “And it led to New York. To your Basterd, who had already humiliated you privately a year before, and would now do the same publicly.”
If there was a response, V didn't care to search for it. She simply watched the Doctor, observing his heavy breathing, his heart rate quickened by the excitement of his analysis. He was voyeuristic and predatory and she abhorred him. She refused to play into his daily fantasy.
“Can I go back to the ward?” she asked, after a period of silence too long to measure.
“Whenever you're ready,” he allowed.
“I would think that your competitive spirit is what drove these people away,” the Nurse continued, slicing through Patient T’s defences with deadly precision. He had been reduced to a quivering, whimpering wreck by her sharp and cutting appraisals. “Your parents, your wife, eventually even your children. Remembering them is painful because of what you did to them, but that is why we are here. Painful memories must be confronted if we are to rebuild trust.”
V felt that the Nurse only paused in her onslaught because of her arrival from the Doctor's office. Her unique situation meant more regular one-on-one sessions, but the tedium of the ward’s schedule continued in her absence. Nurse Best turned to face V as she entered the room. There was an implication that she should take the empty chair. The rest were occupied by the other patients, arranged in a horseshoe around the Nurse and her assistants, except for the free-roaming Chronics who had little time or need for group. V resisted the non-verbal instruction for as long as she could before taking the seat. Her rebellion couldn't be so obvious and so pointless. She folded her arms and sunk into her chair.
“Thank you for joining us, V,” the Nurse said, in her calm and quiet tone that sank into the patient like a knife between the shoulder blades. “We were just talking about competitive spirit. About how it's fine in small doses, but that winning isn't everything. Sometimes taking the long road and doing things properly can lead to a much richer reward.”
“I wanted to talk about competitive spirit, Nurse Best,” A began, finding his confidence and with it his voice.
“You have something you wish to share with the meeting?” The Nurse asked, barely concealing her surprise.
“Well, yesterday, Patient V raised the issue of altering the schedule so that we could watch a wrestling show,” A continued, stumbling slightly over each of his carefully constructed words, but speaking slowly enough to properly convey his meaning. “And I got to thinking that I've never even seen a wrestling show. Not once in my whole life, and I'm fifty eight years old. And I thought maybe I'd quite like to see a wrestling show, at least once. And Patient V told me that tonight we've got a new show?”
He turned towards her for back-up, and she knew that it was all that he could manage. He was buckling completely under the pressure, but he'd at least come this far.
“That's right, a new show,” V said, taking up the cause. “Night Two. And we want a new vote.”
The initial response was another cold, sly smile, the sort which Nurse Best reserved only for these infrequent and ultimately brief moments of defiance. V held firm, folding her arms and matching the Nurse's gaze.
“Would one more vote satisfy you, Patient V?” the Nurse asked, finally.
“One more vote,” V affirmed, before sitting up in her chair. “Let's hear you this time, tulips. Don't go forgetting you've got arms to raise.”
“All those in favour of disrupting the schedule, so that we can watch a violent and reprehensible portrait of moral decay misrepresenting itself as sporting endeavour, please raise your hands.”
A raised his hand almost before V. They were followed soon after by R, along with E, and eventually even T. B remained stubborn with his arms folded, of course, but even he couldn't rain on her parade.
“I'm not interested in the pre-show,” she announced through a wide grin. “Main show starts at ten.”
“I'm sorry, Patient V,” the Nurse interjected. “But the result of today's vote is the same as yesterday's.”
“You're kidding, tulip?” V replied, nonplussed and bemused. “It's a landslide, is what it is!”
“There are ten patients on this ward, Patient V,” the Nurse declared, triumphantly. “You are short of the majority needed to change ward policy.”
“You're counting these guys?” V asked, incredulously, whilst gesturing at the Chronics that roamed the ward around them, oblivious to the events of the group session. “They don't even know what we're talking about!”
“Those patients rely on the schedule more than anyone, Patient V,” the Nurse explained, calmly and quietly and with the resounding triumph of a thousand trumpets. “To disrupt it might prove catastrophic to their already fragile mental states. Every member of this ward should get an equal say in ward policy, I'm sure you'd agree.”
“Okay, so I need one vote?” V asked, staring defeat in the face but not quite yet willing to accept it. “That's all?”
“It's time that we drew this meeting to a close, Patient V,” the Nurse said, clutching her notepad to her chest. If V heard her, she didn’t show it. Instead, she began to approach each of the Chronics in turn, desperately trying to drum up support for her motion. Her pleas mostly fell upon deaf ears, and those who did react to her protestations did so with bemusement or ambivalence.
V was about to give up when she got to Patient X. She began by patting the Chief on his shoulders and grinning broadly, employing open, warm, and positive body language that she hoped even he would understand. The Chief considered her as one might a fly with a peculiar insistence on buzzing in front of their eyes.
“So what do you say, Chief?” she asked, whilst modelling the act of raising one’s hand. “Want to watch some wrestling? Big, burly men throwing one another around? Or little, scrawny women, if that’s what you’d prefer. They’ve got it all under the big tent! All you’ve gotta do is raise your hand. It’s easy, Chief, look! Just like me. That’s it – put your hand in the air!”
“Patient V,” the Nurse declared, rising from her chair and projecting her voice so that it rolled through the ward like a hurricane. “This meeting has been adjourned. Please stop disturbing the other patients.”
“Just raise your hand, Chief!” V continued, undeterred. It seemed she was getting some traction, too. Patient X watched on with increased curiosity as she repeatedly raised her hand in demonstration, her barked orders that he should follow becoming louder and more insistent.
And eventually, he did.
“Yes, Chief! You beauty!” she declared, jumping up onto him to kiss him on the cheek. Then, she ran to the window to the nurse’s office, banging on the window and pointing at X. “The Chief raised his hand! 6-4! The Chief raised his hand!”
“I’m sorry, Patient V,” Nurse Best said, after eventually opening the window to the hatch. “The meeting closed a number of minutes ago. At that time, you didn’t have the majority that you needed. Therefore, the schedule can’t be disrupted this evening.”
“Oh, come on!” Michelle cried, her breathing heavy and her rage incurred. “That’s horse shit, Nurse! We got a majority!”
“The decision is final, Patient V,” the Nurse insisted. V clenched her fist as if to punch the wall, but after a couple of light taps on the plaster with her knuckles, she gradually unfurled her hand. Resistance in this form was futile.
Instead, she walked across the ward and sat down on one of the low couches in front of the television. The screen was turned off, and all that stared back at her was her own distorted reflection, scowling on the face of the black mirror. It was difficult to say whether she hoped it would be turned on. Such a hope belonged to a fool, and the V that we’ve come to know by another name is a long way from one. Perhaps time amongst the lost and the addled had cut through her own good sense and frail nerves, too.
A couple of minutes passed by. The television screen remained off, but V was steadfast in front of it. The intensity of her gaze, directed at a blank rectangle, drew a crowd of the other patients around her. They, too, were beginning to find themselves victims of a contagious fool’s hope.
And then, eventually, Michelle began to talk. Under her breath at first, but gradually rising in both volume and excitement.
“Ding! Ding! Ding! Ladies and gentlemen, the following contest is your Back in Business XXXIII: Night Two opening match, and is scheduled for one-fall with a sixty minute time limit! Introducing first, weighing in at one hundred and eighty pounds… Samantha Sullivan!! And her opponent… from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, weighing in at two hundred and eight pounds… ‘the Prodigy’s Prodigy’... Michael Parr Junior!”
As she concluded the introductions, the sudden excitement of her curious cohabitants only grew. Some of them even went so far as to cheer. Emboldened, Patient V continued with renewed vigour, painting a picture that she and (eventually) the others could see unravel before them.
“We’ve seen these second generation superstars butting heads constantly over the past two months,” she went on, assuming the role of generic play-by-play commentator, The voice was an amalgamation of several that she’d known during her tenure. “And it all comes down to this, with the winner said to be the next in line for a shot at the Undisputed World Championship.”
“Patients should disperse from the lounge area!” came the announcement over the speaker system. The Nurse’s voice sounded uncharacteristically shrill, as if compromised by panic. “Anyone still gathering in the lounge area will face consequences!”
“I had the opportunity to talk to Samantha Sullivan earlier today,” V continued, undeterred and unrelenting. She now embodied a third role, conducting the generically-witty commentary dynamic that her old company was known for. “And she spoke about Parr Junior as if he was a stepping stone. I admire the confidence, Jean-Rod, but I’m sure young Michael will have other ideas. Like father, like son!”
“Security!” went the frantic call on the speaker. “Security to ward one!”
“Both competitors are in the ring, and - Ding! Ding! - there it is! The opening bell! Sullivan and Parr circle the ring, a torrent of noise surrounding them here in Raleigh, North Carolina!”
As the gathered patients picked a side and began to cheer their chosen horse, a quartet of burly security men appeared on the scene. Nurse Best pointed at the commotion and continued to shout from the other side of the glass.
“There!” she declared, her voice conquered by rage and relief. “Take the disturbance away for processing, please!”
“And it’s a -- yes, I knew it would be!” V bellowed, still in character, as her cohabitants hooted and the security team grasped her in their strong arms. “A collar and elbow tie-up! What a start to Back in Business XXXIII!”
She continued to call the moves to rapturous applause, even as she was dragged away.
A while later, the cheering had subsided. Many of the patients still wore wide smiles, but A’s countenance belied his concern.
“Processing?” he asked, when the others had calmed enough to consider what they’d just seen. “She means the Third Floor?”
R shrugged his shoulders. T nodded his head. B laughed heartily as he climbed into bed.
*
ACT III.
“We considered at great length whether it would be best to cancel this trip altogether,” Nurse Best said to her assembled crowd. The patients were positioned around her in a horseshoe, each of them intermittently glancing at the ominously empty chair at the end of the formation. Patient V still hadn't returned from the Third Floor, with those that remained on the ward greeting this news with varying levels of discontent. “However, it was decided that the visit has been scheduled for a long time, and many of you were looking forward to your grand march. To cancel the excursion on account of the actions of one individual would be unfair. As planned, the whole ward will take recreation time early today. Those of you able enough to go on such a visit will assemble by the outer gates at nine. There, you will await transport to take you to the zoo.”
“And what about V?” asked A. He folded his arms, an affectation of defiance he'd learned from the woman he referenced.
“I believe that Patient V will return to the ward any time now,” the Nurse informed them. “Perhaps even in time for recreation.”
“That's not what I mean,” A continued, agitated and emboldened. “Will V be able to come on the trip?”
“I'm not sure that would be appropriate given her outburst last night,” the Nurse said, softly and simply.
“If V doesn't go,” A replied, resolutely. “I don't go.”
“Be that as it may,” the Nurse answered, dismissively. “You will go to recreation. You can stay here afterwards with those unable to attend the excursion, if you so wish.”
It was as they prepared themselves for the yard that Patient V reappeared. A was pulling on his mittens when she was led through the main entrance, her eyes distant and her mouth agape. She was pale and absent, walking as though all of the life had been drained from her.
Even X turned away from his window to observe her entry. She tilted her head to face him, offering the Chief a slight smile and a subtle wink.
She continued to lumber like a zombie towards the group, eventually coming to a halt in-between A and T. They gazed at her in shock and awe, not quite believing that the fight had been zapped out of her in one visit to the Third Floor.
Just as they were beginning to accept this truth, V reached out and pulled hard on T’s nipples, making a loud buzzing noise as if she was transferring a current into the unexpecting receiver. T jolted backwards in shock of another kind. A allowed himself a bellow as V threw an arm around him.
“Great to be back home, tulips,” she said, with an eager and cunning smile. “They just put a spark in me, is all.”
“They're saying you can't go on the visit, V,” A informed her, as they emerged into the yard. T raced over to the basketball court, where three orderlies began to evade him with their passes.
“I wouldn't go to a zoo in any case,” she replied. “But I might make an exception today. I think I'll meet you there. In fact, that sounds like a great idea. I'll meet you there, A!”
“And how do you expect to do that?” A asked. “The nurse… she said…”
“It's about time you boys stopped putting stock in what the Nurse says,” V advised, before nodding across the yard. A followed her gaze, observing Nurse Best as she walked along a path on the other side of the fence and climbed into her car. “Besides, it's Sunday. The Nurse doesn't work Sunday afternoons. Which means…”
“Which means nobody's in charge,” A concluded.
“Which means I’m in charge,” V corrected. “I'll meet you there. Don't worry about me. In fact, I insist you don't think about me. You'll only give me away if you worry too much.”
A was hurt but understood, and soon disappeared to take his recreation time with the others. V walked around the perimeter of the yard, eventually finding X staring into the forest to the south beyond the fence. The Chief had his hands in his pockets and a pensive look on his face. The gigantic man's eyes were on a level with the barbed wire that ran across the top of the mesh barrier.
“How's it going, Chief?” she asked, whilst listing a cigarette and glancing back at the court. The three orderlies on duty were busy throwing the ball around in a triangle, easily and cruelly keeping it away from a hapless T. “You know, I had this idea. I don't know if you'll like it, but I just need you to hold still. Can you do that for me? Just hold still, big guy.”
By a happy accident, at the exact moment that V launched her escape plan, a distraction was forming organically (albeit somewhat predictably) behind her in the yard. It was at this point that Patient E, an elderly military man who fashioned himself as the Captain of the North American Friendship Battalion, chose to stage another of his rousing battle speeches. He did so every morning at half past eight. The rest of them thought that perhaps the change in routine might break that habit, but the great outdoors - meagre as they were for the patients of Cherry Hospital - only invigorated his sense of endeavour.
“Lovely morning for it, men!” he declared, whilst pacing back and forth along the edge of the basketball court. The other patients and, eventually, even the orderlies began to gather around him, hoping to find out which city they were laying siege to that afternoon.
Utilising the diversion that the Captain had both haphazardly and expertly laid, V began to clamber up over the silent giant’s frame and onto his shoulders. She hoped that the Chief would remain steadfast and compliant, as he unexpectedly had done during the ill-fated vote the day before. Her belief in him was well-founded, and soon enough she found herself standing on his shoulders, reaching out for the highest row of barbed wire as the Captain’s battle cry built through its crescendo. She hopped up and over the wire, straddling it carefully before lowering herself down on the other side. She dropped to the floor and rose with a wide grin, inspecting her torn palms before glancing up at Patient X.
“I'm sorry I can't take you with me, Chief,” she said. “Maybe next time.”
Then, she ran away with urgency towards the parking lot. The Chief leant against the fence, watching her disappear behind a large yellow bus
“Next time,” he mumbled.
Shortly afterwards, the gates to the yard were opened up and five of the patients - those deemed capable enough to go on the day's outing - were shuffled out by a single orderly towards the transport. The orderly began to fasten the gate to the fence when the doors of the yellow bus swung open. V was in the driver's seat, beckoning the others on with a sense of urgency. They scrambled in dutifully, Patient B requiring some prompting from A and R, who took their own seat at the windows to watch on as the orderly turned around. The bus doors closed before he could work out what was happening.
“Hey!” he shouted, dropping his bundle of keys on the ground and marching towards the bus. V slammed her foot on the gas and away they went.
It's fair to say that some of the patients were more willing kidnapees than others, but the excitement of those that had taken V’s hand and thrown themselves in was infectious. By the time they had reached the end of the road, they were all in for the ride. And it could have been any road, for all the joyriders knew or cared. They simply assumed that V knew where she was going.
And it appeared as though she did. She made a short stop at an apartment block in the suburbs of Raleigh, picking up a woman she'd met during a previous visit to the city. To listen to the stories that V told whilst driving the bus towards the state capital, she'd been there plenty of times in the past, and had at least some sort of emotional attachment to the place. They didn't push her too much on the point. The woman was in her thirties, slender, and pretty. Her name was Beth. She sat in the unoccupied seat next to the driver, staring back at the grinning faces of the other patients.
“You all crazy?” she asked, punctuating the question with a naive and innocent giggle. Most of them simply gazed back at Beth dreamily. Patient A went so far as to nod with excitement.
They arrived at the bar as it was opening up for the day. The middle-aged man preparing the premises for its first customers seemed to recognise V, and although he couldn't possibly have seen her for at least a year he let her in and gave her what she asked for. She ordered seven beers, passing them along the line to an awe-struck and cautious procession.
Each of them held their bottle into the air, as if waiting for a signal. A was the one to jump the gun. He could last no longer, pouring the amber into his mouth and breathing in deeply the memories that it stirred. He could hear the music of an orchestra. He silently toasted V, his saviour and leader, before greedily taking a second pull.
“Better follow suit and drink up, tulips,” V advised. “I don't know how long we have.”
An hour and a half later, T lined up a long and challenging shot at the pool table. The attempt was valiant, the black ball cannoning off the jaws of a pocket before ricocheting back into a central position. The patient had some skill at the table, but he was rusty and his senses weakened by the four beers he'd already worked his way through. V was fairing noticeably better. There were avenues to retain one's tolerance in prison, where a thriving black market could sustain almost any addiction. She potted the black ball and sealed T’s defeat. He winced and scowled, the pain of the loss too much for him to bear in silence.
“Cheer up, T,” V consoled him whilst ordering another round. “You should enjoy this whilst it lasts. And what is it your beloved nurse says? Winning isn't everything?”
“You sound like the rest of them,” the hulking, sulking man said as he retrieved the balls and arranged them within the triangle. “Mother, father, sister, wife, children. All of them said that. Not just the nurse.”
“Calm down, you're beginning to sound like R,” V said. She nodded towards the least cognizant of her contemporaries, who was in the middle of an intense conversation with the jukebox.
“They all saw eventually, though,” T continued, obliviously. He was grinning from ear to ear as he leant over to break up the balls. “They all found out in the end. Winning is everything.”
They played another game, which he went on to lose, unfortunately and ironically.
Another two hours went by, during which they convinced the kindly old bartender to stream a repeat of last night's Back in Business. They roared with delight when the opening contest, a grudge match between Samantha Sullivan and Michael Parr Junior, kicked off with a collar and elbow tie-up. None of them besides V really had much idea what was going on, but their camaraderie and the reprieve from the asylum’s tedium had them all in high spirits. T even managed to forget about his eight losses at the pool table, if only for a little while.
With the rest of the patients either passed out, blind with booze, or engrossed in a particularly gnarly steel cage match between Malik ‘the Milk-Man’ Garcia-Montgomery and WOLFPUP, V retired to the bathroom with Beth. She hopefully enquired whether the girl had remembered the stuff and was relieved to find that she'd remembered the stuff. She took two quick bumps using the key to Beth's apartment. It wasn't great coke but beggars can't be choosers and she'd been locked away for so long that any memory of good coke was just that a memory and for her good coke was whatever coke she had. She embarked on the task of preparing a proper line on the top of the toilet cistern, Beth's incessant affection a distraction, her hands creeping across her shoulders her back around her waist.
“You got a bill?” V asked.
“I spent out, Dreamer,” Beth answered. V lamented her position when a soft knock on the cubicle door disturbed her privacy.
“Um, V,” a shaken voice muttered. “I think you better come out here.”
“You got a bill, A?” she asked, after opening the door a few centimetres.
“I've got that ten you gave me earlier,” he said, nervously. “You said not to spend it all at once, and we have a tab here. But I really think you should come out here, there's –”
She reached through the gap in the door to snatch the note.
“I'll be out in a minute,” she said, eagerly. A heard the crinkling of paper from within the cubicle as his esteemed leader rolled the note up into a thin cylinder. “There's nothing we can't overcome together, A.”
It turns out she was wrong. Three state troopers awaited her in the bar, and try as she might, V could offer little resistance.
“These men say that you're in charge here,” their captain said, motioning to the other five patients. Some of them were unconscious, the rest frozen with fear. “Is that right?”
“That's right,” V confirmed. “We're from Cherry Hospital, the mental institution up in Goldsboro.”
“Is that so?” the captain asked, bemused by what he considered to be unexpected candour.
“I'm Dr. von Horrowitz,” V continued, without flinching. “We're in town for the 82nd annual convention of the North Carolina Psychiatric Association. These are my esteemed colleagues: Dr. Brontë, Dr. Adams, Dr. Teneson, the renowned Dr. Ellis, and Dr. Riolu. I'm sure you've heard of him. We only wish Dr. Xiang could be here with us, but he's presenting our work in Hong Kong. Will you officers stay for a drink?”
For a moment, none of the interlopers moved, as if they had been cast in a spell by the woman's smooth, almost-believable words. The small gesture of one of them, the short, bald, nervous one at the back of the group, tightening his grip on his nightstick was enough to dispel any magic she might have woven. The captain remained unmoved by the tale.
“I know exactly who you are,” he said. “Let's get you back to the hospital.”
The officer's word was good. It took him just over an hour to load them into the back of a riot van and transport them back to Goldsboro. They left the yellow school bus behind and none of them gave it much thought after they'd made it onto the highway. Back at the hospital, most of the patients were returned to the ward, where they excitedly discussed their exploits from the day. They mostly didn't realise that V was taken directly to the Doctor's office, along with X, who sat next to her for reasons she didn't fully understand.
“You must understand the danger that you put your fellow patients in?” the Doctor asked from the other side of the untidy desk. The Nurse was standing at his shoulder, a scowl upon her face to demonstrate just how much trouble the pair were in. She’d come back to the hospital on a Sunday evening, neglecting her real life in her real home with her real friends. She didn’t look particularly pleased about this fact. “Nurse Best tells me that she's gone to great lengths to explain to you the importance of the schedule. An experience like today could prove traumatic for some of the men on your ward.”
The Doctor continued in this way, with the occasional illustrative interjection from the Nurse, but as was often the case in this office she wasn't really here. She closed her eyes, allowing the one-sided conversation to wash over her.
Mexico City, 2023. She stands in front of a hotel room door on the seventh floor of the Four Seasons. The numbers on it are obscured by her own lack of focus.
She lingers here for a moment before knocking the door. She knows what such a gesture would mean. She knows that there is no going back from the other side of this moment.
Finally, she knocks the door three times. Softly but clearly.
He answers the door.
“I knew you'd come,” he said. The relieved smile on his face suggests otherwise.
She says something in response but it's inaudible. This part of the memory is incomplete. It's been drowned out by the noise. A flood fills her ears as she follows him into the room.
Osaka, 2024. The old businessman looms over her, the small piece of paper in his outstretched hand. He holds it in front of her. She can count the zeros. Not a bad pay day. She reaches around it to collect her drink.
“I know what you did with my sons, Michelle,” he says, redundantly. “Both of them. This is the carrot, next is the stick. You won't like the stick. Take it.”
She grasps the cheque and pulls it from his fingers.
“It shouldn't be too difficult,” he adds as he leaves. “You already stink of defeat.”
Cherry Hospital, 2039.
“You're just going to sit there in silence?” the Doctor asked, indignant at her lack of reply. “You have nothing to say in your defence?”
V stared up at her two captors, and then across at the Chief.
“What's he doing here?” she asked. “The Chief didn't do anything.”
“You involved the Chief in this mess the moment you climbed over him,” the Nurse replied.
“If you've nothing else to say,” the Doctor added. “Then you'll go to the third floor for processing.”
“Of course,” V said, as they shuffled out of the office.
V and X sat on a low bench in the waiting room next to the third floor reception. A fat, elderly nurse worked behind the station, doing her best to completely ignore the two newcomers as she went about her business.
“They should get me a bed here,” V mused, as she stretched out her legs and folded her arms. “Two nights in a row. Guess I'm a regular.”
The Chief’s countenance remained as solemn as ever. He slowly shook his head.
“A fine mess,” he muttered.
It took V a few moments to realise the significance of these three words, but when she did she turned to face him with a broad, knowing grin.
“Jesus, Chief, you can talk?!” she asked. She kept her voice down so as to avoid the staff's attention but a glint in her eye belied her excitement. “You old, sly dog! Can you hear me, too?!”
“I can hear you,” he confirmed. V allowed a short burst of laughter to escape her lips.
“You old, sly dog!” she repeated. “You've got ‘em all fooled, Chief! Jesus! You know, I'm only sorry I couldn't take you with me, Chief. Like I said at the fence. Maybe next time.”
“Maybe,” the Chief replied, noncommittally. “I don't know. I'm too small for something like that. You're much bigger than me.”
If Michelle intended to respond, perhaps to point out X’s notably gargantuan size, she didn't get the chance. The Chief was summoned to his room on the Third Floor. He got to his feet and considered V with a sad, searching look.
“What about me?” V asked the woman at the desk, as X lingered by the bench.
“You're going upstairs,” the nurse explained. “To the Fourth Floor.”
She said no more and disappeared into the backroom. V glanced at X, the look of a lost child about her.
“What's on the Fourth Floor?” she asked. He only shrugged in response, and was led away to his room.
The Chief had returned to the ward before the sun rose, where he did his best to pretend to sleep. His mind was racing with thoughts on the day behind him, which were complicated and without resolution. He gave up on even trying to feign sleep when footsteps were led through the room. They were unmistakable as hers, light and delicate as they were, but they were accompanied by heavy boots and traversed the room in a slow, laboured shuffle. She was placed into her bed and the heavy boots walked away without her.
X carefully removed his bed sheets and, as lightly as his huge frame would allow, crept across the room to her bedside. It was her alright. For the briefest of moments, the Chief thought that she was awake. Her eyes were wide open. But when he filled her vision with himself she stared right through him. There was a distance in her eyes that he’d seen only once before.
“Oh, no, no, no,” he muttered, as he pushed her hair out of her eyes. The act revealed a thin, fresh scar running across the length of her forehead, as if her skull had been cracked open like an eggshell.
He shook her shoulders but he knew it was useless.
It didn't take him long to work out what to do next. He could hear the drums from afar. Drums from the mountain. Drums from his home.
He placed the pillow over her face and clamped it down with one huge hand. She didn't offer much resistance. She struggled for a few moments, and then she left. He intended to follow.
With the drums gathering and pipes joining the song, he crouched beside the large sink in the middle of the ward. He gripped onto the bottom of it with his hands and, heaving with the exertion, dragged the structure free from the ground. Nuts and bolts tore out of the fixture and rolled across the floor of the ward. He didn't worry about waking anybody up. He'd come too far, and nobody would be able to stop him now that he had decided.
The bars and the window itself collapsed beneath the weight of the sink. He was through. The pipes whistled above pounding drums.
The grass felt soft beneath his bare feet. Only the forest lay before him.
