Deanna Clark.2

4/1/01

Story2

Through Glass Paneled Doors

She stood there watching the turntable in the microwave go round and round while the bowl of soup boiled over, covering the oven with bubbling cheese.

-Shari! What are you doing? Aren’t you watching that?

-What? Oh, crap…I guess I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t realize…

Her mind had drifted again. Lately she has had less control over where her mind went or what it thought. It drifted, often into a place, dark and enveloping. Her place. Safe. Separate from the crazy hell world she worked in.

Working with the lunatics was unraveling the threads of sanity within her mind. Or was it? She was having trouble differentiating the line between sanity and insanity. Maybe sanity wasn’t the cohesive thread of the mind at all, maybe it was rules and prejudices of society that bound the mind together with a vision of sanity. She couldn’t tell and this kind of thinking was certainly not going to get her work done. She would have time to think later, maybe under the influence of a couple of palmed Valium.

-Ok. Ronald, here are your meds.

-Good morning, Shari. You look bright and brooding on this fine morning.

-Ronald, it’s raining and windy outside.

-Yes it is isn’t it. Such a beautiful day.

He rolled his eyes towards the ceiling and breathed in the air as if drawing the aromas from a distant place in his own mind.

-Come on Ronald, am I going to have trouble with you today?

-Now, now, Shari. I never give you trouble, do I?

-Only the mental kind.

-My pleasure.

It was his pleasure, she knew that. Shari sometimes regretted ever speaking to Ronald Caswell, because he crept around in her head now like it was his marked territory. Today, however, she avoided his psychological questioning, moving hastily down the clinical white tile hall with pasty green walls to the next high-risk patient on her rounds, Hank Warner, a paranoid schizophrenic who believed all the people in the world except he and his mother were aliens.

-Hank, its time for your pills.

The doctors kept Hank on stronger pills than the other patients so he was safe for human contact.

-Why do you have to drug me so heavily day in and day out. I understand my place here. I won’t hurt you. I can’t even think straight.

-You wouldn’t be in here if you could think straight, Hank. Anyway, its not my choice. I just deliver them.

He spoke with slurred medicated speech, but behind the drugs was a smooth-talking, eye-gouging looney. She knew of two particular instances when he had not taken his pills and the nurses on duty the next day were viciously attacked. The doctors were able to save one nurse’s eyes but the other nurse now looks blindly at the world through glass eyes in two unusable sockets. Shari handed him his pills and watched, making sure they were swallowed. Then she made her way towards her most difficult patient, evil Evelyn.

That’s what the nurses called her anyway. Shari believed it. Evelyn was sent to Oakwood when she was only ten for throwing a ball out into the middle of a four-lane so she could watch her younger sister run to get it. Certified sociopath. Stamped "Unfit for Society." She’s almost twenty now and the doctors said she hasn’t shown any signs of rehabilitation.

Shari heard Evelyn before she started down the hall. She was screaming but not out of fear or pain. No, it sounded like howls of laughter.

-What’s going on? What are you doing in there Evelyn?

The laughing stopped and the derisive growl from the other side of the door began the string of profanity usually accompanied with anything Evelyn said.

-Its Shari the shitface come to make sure I swallow the little pink and white pills. Where you been Shari, fuckin the doctors.

Unsettling as it was, Shari remained steel-faced, having had similar remarks from Evelyn before. It never bothered her when the slurs were just insults, but sometimes Evelyn made deep cuts with her double-edged sword, cutting through layers of formality hitting the intimate area of ideas and aspirations. Not today though. Today Shari finished her rounds virtually unscathed, but as she walked slowly down the hall patients’ cries filled her consciousness.

-Macaroni and cheese. Like garden hoses full of cheese.

STOP. Reeling, her head squeezed against her waking consciousness pushing her and pulling her into the subconscious until she let go. Her body stood like a patient etherized while her mind wandered around the depths of her subconscious. The patients were there, her three high-risk patients. They sat in a circle, Ronald, Hank, and Evelyn, and talked, holding a conversation that sounded sane and sophisticated. Were they really insane? Sometimes it was hard to tell.

Hearing as if through a pane of glass, a voice called her name. Finally placing the voice as a colleague, Shari fought to open the door of her mind, coming around face to face with her head nurse.

-Shari, you need sleep. You haven’t been looking well these past couple of days. I called you three times just now and you stood there with that glassy-eyed look on your face.

-Sorry. Your’re right. I really haven’t been sleeping well. That must be the problem. It won’t happen again.

-Well, why don’t you take off early and go home, fix yourself a drink, and relax. Get some sleep.

Shari knew the translation: "You better get your act together soon or you won’t have a job to leave early from." But her mind was getting lost somehow and she became less and less in control of her own thoughts. As she rode the bus home, a picture of Ronald flashed inside her head. He would be handsome if he wasn’t insane, she thought. After murdering a whole family Ronald entered an insanity plea and against the odds he won. Now he spends his days and nights for the rest of his life in the stark hall of the mental institution. But Ronald was smart, maybe even a genius, and Shari sensed that he wouldn’t be staying his whole life. That he would in fact escape because she sensed he wasn’t insane at all.

She pulled the cord for her stop and when she got home she pulled the cord on the waking hours of day, and slept.

* * *

Monday, Shari sat in the workers’ lounge before her shift talking to the other nurses but more or less hearing herself speak from another place. They don’t even realize what really goes on around here. Over confidence and cultural prejudices cloud their minds. They can’t help it. They were taught and manipulated from the time of conception. Shari felt the weekend had allowed her to break free, in most respects, from the strings of the societal puppet master. Her mind filled with disconnected, unfiltered thoughts allowing her to view the patients through untainted lenses. They were not insane as the world deemed, but imprisoned.

The clock on the wall told her it was time to start her rounds. Today she felt better, more sure of herself, and not afraid of what the patients or the voices might say.

-Shari, how are you today, better I hope?

It was the head nurse again coming to check up on her, making sure she had her head on her shoulders today.

-Much better thank you. You were right, I just needed a long weekend to rest. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to get this work done.

-Not at all. Go right ahead.

Sure, fine, nothing that a little Valium won’t cure. But it didn’t cure it. What was there to be cured anyway? She would not make excuses anymore. Her mind was free and she would not be ashamed. The weekend, through Valium induced dreams, Shari worked out the voices and insecurities she had. She saw herself conversing with Ronald, Hank, and Evelyn. They helped her understand the truth behind the mental masquerade. She replaced the towels and other toiletries in the group bathrooms on the open ward. (Open because the patients were allowed out of their rooms without constant supervision, not open because they were free to come and go as they pleased.) Having finished putting the pills in the little plastic cups, Shari walked towards the glass paneled doors leading to wonderland. Her mood was light and her mind heavy. Today she wanted, craved, the inevitable mind-wrenching talk from Ronald, Hank, and Evelyn.

-Wakey, wakey Ronald. I’ve got a prescription with your name on it.

-Good afternoon. Should I thank you for waking me from my afternoon nap? I haven’t much else to do in this room I call my own. But enough about my nonexistence, you are obviously doing better, and different somehow.

-Weekends will do that to you.

-No. No weekend could change the way you think. And you have changed in your mind, haven’t you Shari.

For just a moment Shari felt uneasy, even afraid, but then she realized fear was an element of her culture, something her colleagues had. She had now passed that primitive emotion.

-Shari, you don’t fear me anymore, or what I might do to you. Maybe they need to be admitting you into one of these lovely hotel rooms.

-Ronald, why do you insist on subjecting me to your psychological babble? They’ve been letting you have those psychology journals again. Or probably you coerced them into giving them to you.

-And why do you insist on dimunitizing me with you preconceived notions of lunatics?

-You’re not a lun..I mean I don’t see you as inferior. You are a patient, no more no less.

She almost slipped up. Maybe he didn’t notice but that’s unlikely. He catches every nuance of conversation.

-You don’t think I’m crazy. If that’s the case then you might have a problem.

-Ronald, I never said that. I think it’s about time for me to move on anyway.

Worried, if not a little afraid of the consequences of that conversation, Shari pushed on down the hall to Hank’s room. As she went she could feel Ronald’s eyes as they watched her through the small glass panel that connected him with the outside world.

Hank’s room was four doors down and as she walked she thought about how she would talk to Hank today. Because Hank would never let go of his delusion of the world’s population being aliens, Shari accepted it and tried another form of reasoning.

-Hank, how are you today? Did you have a good weekend?

A silly question. She knew he hadn’t moved outside of the room since she left him on Friday.

-Don’t come to close. Your extraterrestrial vibes will infiltrate my immune system and infect me…

-Hank, you know, we may be aliens from another place but we don’t intend to hurt you. In fact, you insist on hurting us, gouging out our eyes, when we die just like you do. You don’t have to torture us.

-Well, if you don’t intend harm, then why am I in here, imprisoned and captive.

-If we let you out you would gouge our eyes out. Now, if we were sure you wouldn’t do that then you would be free to go.

-But you could never be sure, could you.

-No. I guess not.

Empathy and pity washed over her. He was helpless and alone in that small room. All he needed is someone who understood and accepted him for who he is and not who society tells him he is. She left him muttering something about his mother and the way the alien in the house always treated her. It occurred to Shari that Hank’s paranoia grew from childhood abuse. He had, after all gouged out his father’s eyes when he was fifteen. That was what bought the ticket to looneyville in the first place. He created the aliens to distance himself from the violence he had committed and now he can’t see beyond the fiction.

Evelyn peered expectantly through the window and looked poised for a verbal war when Shari approached.

-Here you go Evelyn. Take the pills please and let’s not spew vulgarities today.

-Fuck you, bitch.

-Well, that went over well. I guess I’ll have an order of the usual please. I hoped we could talk, actually carry on a civilized conversation today, but I can see you are clearly not in the mood.

Shari backed away from this troubled woman who insisted on mounting an offense every time she attempted communication. She started down the hall. Maybe she was better after all. No more crazy thoughts.

-Wait.

She turned, unsure if the voice was in her head or coming from the woman behind the glass.

-Wait, Shari. Just what is it you wanted to talk about.

Not in her head this time for sure. Shari heard the voice behind the obscenities for the first time since she had been working the high-risk patients.

-I guess I wanted to know what you think about all day locked up in there with only this piece of glass to view the outside world with. Even then, all you get is a view of the pasty green walls and an occasional nurse or doctor. There really should be windows in these rooms.

-Damn. What’s gotten into you?

Shari was wondering what it was going to be like when they finally put her in one those rooms. She didn’t answer.

-Okay, to direct. I’ll tell you what I think about. I imagine the sunlight and the outside world. I see people hurting. I think of all the scams I could’ve pulled if I hadn’t been shut up in here. And most of all I think about escaping from this fuckin’ hell. But I’m not all about pain. In my head, I wrestle with virtues and universal truths. I am good sometimes, whatever that means. But ultimately manipulation is my game and, well, I’m a certified sociopath, according to the doctors.

-But do you really believe that or is that what your doctors tell you? You find pleasure in pain, you think, but do you really or is that what you learned growing up?

-What are you smokin’ of course I do. Shit, I threw a ball out in the oncoming traffic because I knew my little sister would go after it.

-That’s not pleasure in pain and that’s not insanity Evelyn. That’s just plain evil.

At the word evil a sly Cheshire cat grin contorted Evelyn’s face and Shari realized she had uncovered something the doctors refused to acknowledge. Evelyn was no more insane than the head nurse. She was an element of evil in the world and she had been captured and imprisoned here at Oakwood. But even evil has good in it. There are no hard lines, only gray and Evelyn sat right in the middle, like she was sitting in the middle of the road waiting for the oncoming traffic.

-So Shari, what are you going to do with me now that you know my secret. I can see you have secret in your head too. And it’s tearing you apart. Do you feel your mind wrestling with itself?

-I don’t know what you’re talking about but I know the day is almost through and I need to finish these rounds.

-Yeah, sure. Whatever.

Shari’s mind indeed felt like a warped zipper, pulling itself apart in multiple directions. Retreat. She wanted retreat, back to her place in her head. Inviting and comfortable. She could be herself there. But another nurse interrupted her, telling her she had a message in the lounge.

The piece of paper taped to her locker told her the head nurse wanted to see her in her office immediately. She had sent Shari home early last week, what would she do today, prescribe pills for her?

Approaching the knob on the door, Shari realized her body felt a sense of dread and behind that, the slightest bit of intense anger sprang into action. She opened the door.

-Come in Shari. Sit down.

The office was cramped and medicinal. The harsh fluorescent lighting and lack of windows overexposed the room, increasing Shari’s heightened awareness.

-You wanted to see me.

-Yes…Shari it has been brought to my attention that you have been fraternizing with some of the patients. Another nurse saw you discussing questionable things with one of your high-risk patients earlier. I don’t know what to say. Your behavior the past few weeks has slowly declined and become unacceptable. I thought a long weekend would clear it up but I see I was wrong.

-What are you saying? Just because I talked to the patients I committed unacceptable behavior. Do you think yourself so high and mighty that you can’t mingle with a few commoners?

Her anger increased, welling up until she could feel it gripping her windpipe, setting her jaw, and clenching her teeth.

-Shari, its not like you were conversing with your friends in a bar, these are certified crazy people. Lunatics. They don’t know which way is up. They are unfit for society and it is our job to make sure they are so drugged they can’t think enough to try to get out. The citizens of this nation are scared of them, hell, so am I.

-Why can’t you just listen to them. There is no sanity. There is no insanity. But you won’t listen. You don’t understand them and you fear what you don’t understand. Fear is powerful and it is crippling you and the rest of society.

-I’m not afraid of a bunch of crazy people, which is what you are starting to sound like, Shari. You are way out of line and its safe to say you won’t be coming back tomorrow.

-There you go again making them lesser beings. They are captive in this prison and in their minds. You are crazy and deaf to them.

Shari, unaware that she had lunged across the table, spoke with authority and uncontrolled anger.

-Why won’t you listen? They speak in intelligent sentences just like you and me. They think about the sun and the weather and the outside just like us. You won’t listen because your mind blocks you from hearing. Just try to listen.

With each statement came the pounding of Shari’s palms against the nurse’s ears, shocking the nurse into compliance. But Shari had released the volcanic rage repeating the command escalating the blows.

-LISTEN.

Again.

-LISTEN.

And again.

-LISTEN.

And again until there was a trickle of blood running out of her ear and her eyes glassed over.

-LISTEN

Shari felt she had taught the nurse to listen, finally. She retreated to her chair, relieved. She vaguely remembered the pounding on the door and the male guards restraining her with handcuffs.

* * *

The trial lasted one week. The verdict pronounced Shari criminally insane and she too was stamped "Unfit for Society." The guards walked her down the hall she used to make her rounds on and she joined Evelyn in the women’s ward. The door at the end of the hall was hers and for the first time she saw the world from behind the single glass panel that now separated her from the rest of society.