Transorbital Page 3

  “It’s supposed to even you out,” I said. “I guess that’s right. Makes the demons go away. What about you, baby? You got demons?”

  “None of yoll byusiness.”

  “Yeah, me too. But I’d just as soon get mine drunk, all things being equal.” The shit hit my system quicker than I thought it would, and I felt a bit nauseous. My face got soft and spongy for a moment, flush with chemical heat, and I thought I might black out.

  “Man alive…”

  Then I stabilized. Leveled out.

  And suddenly…I was fine. Just fine. I wasn’t inebriated. I wasn’t floating. It was in no way euphoric. I was simply fine. I was just very…very…very slow.

  “Last chance, doll,” I said, getting ever slower, and more numb. “I don’t think I’ll be able to do it for you in more than a minute’s time.”

  “I can’t haff ugly track marks on my arms,” she said nervously. “Ees bad for byusiness.”

  “Understood. It’s a…buyer’s market out there.”

  I watched her mull it over for a moment or two. Then—

  Finally, she held up her foot to me.

  “No one notice my feet, yes? Can go betveen my toes, yes?”

  I tried to smile, but it seemed like needless effort. I felt my expression becoming increasingly flat and slack as I rubbed a vein up on her foot, and injected her. I sat slowly onto the bed.

  “There it is…” I said, as well as I could.

  “Ooooh…”

  “I’m certainly…yeah…”

  And we both fell into a mindless stupor.

  “Me…momtsons…es…”

  “Yeah, I like it all right too.”

  The room appeared to be covered in beige cheesecloth. We sat, completely blank and dazed for what could have been hours. Or seconds. I couldn’t really tell.

  Finally she turned to me and asked, “Soooooo you vant…Two-foll-von special?”

  She slowly climbed on top of me, and we tried to give it another go ‘round.

  Too listless. Gave up.

  “Rain check, satin doll…”

  “Diakhhh…”

  She rolled off of me, and fell fast asleep.

  This became a pattern with us. She’d forget to stay awake, I’d forget to pay her. For a time, it worked out OK.

  Chapter 6

  When I think back on the symposium at Columbia University, the abiding memory would have to be standing on the side of the stage in the lecture hall watching Doc Freeman hammer a metal spike into the eye socket of an eerily realistic child-size dummy—

  “…So here we simply angle the leucotome, careful to avoid the orb itself, and then forcefully prod the tip directly into the frontal lobe…”

  —and looking out into the hall to see the look of horror and nausea on the faces of the assembled medical muckety-mucks.

  “Appalling!”

  “Outrageous!”

  “This is thoroughly unacceptable!”

  “He’s not even a proper surgeon!”

  “Hurumph hurumph!”

  Had it not been for the thin sheen of Thorazine haze coating my system at the moment, I would not have been able to stop myself from cackling like a deranged baboon. It was just so damned funny.

  “…And from there,” Doc continued casually, “we simply let the instrument swing free, cutting safely through the offending tissue of the rightmost frontal lobe.”

  A loud outburst of protest rose up from the audience of renowned doctors and neurosurgeons, and some Doctor So-and-so from Someplace, Important just had to stand up and speak.

  “Dr. Freeman,” Doc So-and-so said, his face ruby red and damp with shock and indignation, “please tell me this is some sort of gag! Your methods, as evident to all in attendance here, are beyond unethical. They are thoroughly, shockingly, bafflingly reckless.”

  Shouts of agreement popped from the crowd hither and thither. And yon. Doc Freeman just smiled and nodded.

  “Thank you, doctor. Your input is most appreciated. Moving on—”

  “Dr. Freeman,” the interrupter continued, “isn’t it true that you have no formal training in surgery whatsoever? And you are, in fact, a neurologist?”

  “Sir,” said Freeman remaining calm, “I have never professed otherwise. I believe what you will find is so beneficial about the transorbital lobotomy, is the relative ease in which anyone—”

  Finally some surgeon from Topeka stood up and shouted—

  “To call this man a neurologist is to degrade fine neurologists everywhere! You, sir, are nothing but a dangerous quack, a cheap huckster and a charlatan!”

  A hearty cheer of affirmation erupted from the crowd, and Doc visibly bristled. He turned to me and said,

  “Lad, fetch me the sack.”

  I knew just the sack he meant. We always carried it with us for events such as this, just in case.

  I dragged the large burlap bag out onto the stage amidst a chorus of grumbling, shouting and general protest.

  “What a sad collection of cowards and philistines have gathered at Columbia University this day,” Freeman said, his eyes a-twitch behind scratched, perfectly rounded spectacles. “Allow me to share something with you, gentleman.”

  He proceeded to up end the sack and dump out the pile of letters and cards contained therein. They scattered all about the floor of the stage in a great and dramatic display.

  “Do you see this?” he shouted. “Letters. Postcards. Holiday greetings. Birthday wishes. From whom? From patients and former patients alike. All of them thanking me. For what you ask? For SAVING THEIR LIVES!”

  A deafening hue and cry of sputtering outrage vomited forth from the audience. I stood there dumbly, not really paying much attention.

  “Where are your letters, gentlemen?” Doc continued. “Where are your well-wishes? How many people have you actually cured all together? Fifty? One hundred? I have cured THOUSANDS! That is just myself, to say nothing of my numerous students and protégés. And I will cure more poor souls this month then the assembled lot of you will in the entire remainder of your careers! This is the vanguard, my friends. Join in or prepare to be left behind.”

  He turned to me and said, “I’ll be in the Lobotomobile. I find this lack of vision tedious.”

  And with that, he stormed off in a huff, and I proceeded to gather up the letters and stuff them back into the sack. The shouting, angry doctors all exited as well, screaming their impotent outrages as they went.

  “Excuse me?” I heard a shaky voice ask from the front of the stage. I looked up to see a tall drink of water with a long, thin face, not but a couple of years older than me standing there awkwardly. “Hi,” he said. “Hello. Hi. How are you? Quite a time today, no?”

  “You said it, pal. And you are?”

  “Chris Williams,” he said, crawling up to the stage proper.

  We shook hands, and I continued packing up the test dummy and our demo gear.

  “Doctor?” I asked.

  “Someday, knock wood.”

  He looked around, presumably to find some wood to knock on. Finding none (missing the stage itself, apparently), he knocked on his own head.

  “Good to know ya,” I said, but I cannot honestly say that I was much impressed.

  “I’m, uh…I’m looking for Dr. Freeman?”

  “He’s in the Lobotomobi—he’s in the van.”

  “Um…all right. He’s in…? Just sitting there? By himself?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “And buddy, you best not bother him right now. I certainly wouldn’t if I were you. Just trust me on that.”

  “Oh. I see.” The young fellow rocked back on his heals nervously for a moment. “I really just wanted to shake his hand and tell him that I am just such a great admirer of his work. And to thank him for all that he’s done.”

  “I see.”

  “I saw him give a demonstration in San Diego last year. On a live patient. Some of my fellow
students actually fainted. Medical students fainting! Can you believe that?”

  “Yes I can.”

  “He’s a genius, Dr. Freeman is.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “More than a genius. He’s a…”

  “Go ahead.”

  “He’s a prophet. A seer. A healer, the likes of which I did not think actually existed.”

  “Well, I’ll be sure to pass that along.”

  “He can’t let these geezers discourage him. Old know-nothings, the lot of them. They’d still be leeching and bloodletting if they could. Don’t they understand that medicine must evolve? It’s like an organism. A living organism. New ideas come to life, and replace the old. Kill them off. And rightfully so.” He paused, looking off into the wings. “And to think, it all started with an ice pick. The humble ice pick.”

  “Let me ask you something, Chris Williams.”

  “OK.”

  “What are your thoughts on Thorazine?”

  He scrunched up his forehead, apparently affronted by the very question.

  “Nothing but a gauze bandage on a compound fracture,” he replied. “The transorbital lobotomy has no equal.”

  I chuckled. “Gotta love a true believer.”

  My packing up completed, I began dragging the load from the stage.

  “Well, you’re a busy man,” Chris Williams said. “I’ll let you get on with it. Just, please, if you could, let Dr. Freeman know that there are a lot of us out here, ready to follow him into that new frontier. We’re with him. We’re right behind him. We believe in him.”

  “Sure thing, pal. You got it.”

  I may have actually passed it on. Who can remember these things…

  Columbia was a bit of a debacle for Doc Freeman. But hey, it’s tough being a visionary in your own time. Too bad for him. New York City is always kind to me. That night I saw Bird play…at Birdland. Amazing? Stunning? Mystical? Transcendent (whatever that means)? You bet your aunt Fannie’s sweet ass. If I believed in God, I’d have to think he’d wanna be at Birdland too just then.

  It was a magical joint, Birdland. And I think, even when I’m old and feeble and I don’t have but two chipped marbles knocking around inside my coconut, I’ll always remember that place.

  But that night…I heard something different, something clear that night. Clearer than I had ever heard before. Past the melodies and the chromatic runs. Past the shifting, syncopated rhythms and barely controlled chaos. I heard Parker’s turmoil come through in the music that night. The pain…Charlie’s pain…goddamn, it was thick. The room was humid with it. Like every pitch-bended wail was a cry from his soul. A scream that Parker couldn’t actually scream himself. And I thought, You know, me and Doc Freeman…we could cure that man. We could make all those tiny devils eating away at him go away. All go away. Hopefully before it’s too late.

  I opted to not pursue the thought any further, though. For entirely selfish reasons. His pain was my pleasure. You cut that out of Bird, and he’s just one more brass honker amidst countless others.

  So I decided, once the show was through, to instead just go on back and sleep in the Lobotomobile. And shoot up Thorazine. I stand by that decision. Rooms in New York ain’t cheap don’t you know. And I’m on a budget.

  Chapter 7

  A few words on Thorazine if I may—

  A full three years before it was even available to the public, I had already developed my habit for the stuff. Notice: habit. Not addiction. I never craved…much less needed…the way this chemical made me feel. Rather, it was because of what I did not feel that made it irresistible to me. My habit was not based on what it gave me. I fell in love with it for what it robbed me of.

  Understand; I had never taken myself for a profoundly unhappy person. I lived my life, and what else can you do? But it took my first dose of chlorpromazine hydrochloride for me to become acutely aware of a particularly heavy dead sea bird anchored to my neck. In hindsight, it’s a wonder I was able to fulfill my assigned duties while weighed down by empathy.

  My years, short as they had been at the time, working the institution floors had eaten away great chunks of my self, exposing raw nerves in a way that I had never fully recognized, let alone articulated. This was due, in no small part, to the individuals around me then, and how they carried themselves.

  I was always impressed, if not a bit disturbed, by my fellow staff and crew for what appeared to be their rock-ribbed disregard for the general well-being of our charges (and that’s to say nothing of how the doctors regarded them). My heart always secretly ached for those poor wretches we had chained to the walls like rabid animals, or locked inside padded cells. They hadn’t asked for this. They had done nothing wrong to bring this upon themselves…or they had certainly not chosen to. It appalled me to see them restrained, often abandoned, and occasionally beaten. And, I loathed having to do the same myself.

  But I did it.

  I did it every time without a single word of protest.

  So I drank instead. I drank to quiet the sound of screams echoing through the corridors from patients strapped down during electro-therapy. I buried that horror deep.

  They were sick. They were sick people. They were sick people. But they were never treated as such. They were nothing more than a burden on their families and the state, and I had no doubt that if the state could have gotten away with dumping them all in a large dirt hole and burning them alive they would have gladly done so. I was sure of that. I thought about that a lot. And I drank.

  I seldom let on about any of this, of course. I wanted to be a big shot and a tough guy and all, right? And on the rare occasion that I confided in a fellow orderly that I’d like to see the asylums closed someday, he’d invariably just snort and say, “So you wanna be outta work? Go ahead and quit then, chum. I’ll take yer hours.” So I drank. A lot.

  And the screaming kept on well after I left the hospitals behind. Always echoing through the hallways of my skull. And there was nothing I could do to stop it. No action I could take.

  But then…like a bolt out of the blue…there was Doctor Walter Freeman. And he told me personally that his singular goal in life was to shut down the goddamned asylums once and for all. To create a world where they would no longer be needed. And the key to that world was the transorbital lobotomy. So simple…so quick…so permanent. I swore to stand by him all the way.

  But even then the screaming wouldn’t stop, until I discovered Thorazine. At last, at last. That did the trick. It quieted the screeching memories. It dulled every jagged edge. It is the perfect cure for emotion. And I loved it.

  I no longer feared falling asleep, because nightmares have no effect when you are no longer afraid of your own mind. And what difference does sleep paralysis make when your waking self is more or less in a state of mild paralysis anyway?

  If only Thorazine didn’t wear off. Because when it does, the darkness comes rushing back, and darker than it had been too. You’re always going to need more and more. And more. And once you’ve tasted life without care, without concern, without compassion, reality is far too cumbersome a weight to carry again. The scorching blare of the sun and the bitter, poisoned wind across your brow will destroy you.

  And who the hell needs that bullshit?

  Chapter 8

  “Who is the patient, Doctor?”

  “Joseph Brinkley. Age twelve. Severe difficulties at home. Possibly schizophrenic. His parents, particularly his stepmother, are at their wits’ end. My prognosis: a very serious case of—”

  “I…I’m sorry, what?”

  “What what?”

  “Could you…um…hold on just a minute here, Doc…”

  “Which part of that was unclear to you?”

  “Did you say the patient is twelve years old?”

  “I did, yes. Why? Is there a problem?”

  “Uh…Doc, far be it from me to judge your—”

  “Yes, far be it from you indeed.
What’s the matter with you?”

  “With all due respect, Dr. Freeman, isn’t performing a prefrontal lobotomy on a twelve-year-old boy a tad…extreme?”

  “No, it isn’t. Not in the least. And I’m troubled by your tone, quite frankly.”

  “Walter…come on.”

  “Come on?”

  “He’s twelve years old, for God’s sake.”

  “Yes, he’s twelve years old and he is sick and I am his doctor and he is my patient and you are my assistant. Now if no further clarification is required—”

  “Walter…you…you are planning to jab an ice pick—”

  “I will be using a leucotome.”

  “—into the brain of a twelve-year-old child! Provided he survives—”

  “Provided he survives? Provided he survives?! He will survive, of course, and he will be cured. Of course. Are you…having doubts about our work?”

  “Of course not. It’s just—”

  “Do you agree that the lobotomy is medicine?”

  “What?”

  “DO YOU AGREE that the lobotomy is medicine?”

  “Of course I do. Don’t be ridic—”

  “Of course you do. Because if you did not, that would make you a monster. A butcher. Or at least an accomplice to butchery. And that would be an unthinkable thought to ponder at this point, would it not, Lad?”

  “I don’t think…I mean, I don’t doubt—”

  “If we are in agreement that the lobotomy is indeed medicine, as I’m sure we all are, then is it not IMMORAL, besides being a violation of my oath as a doctor, to deny a sick child the treatment that he so desperately requires?”

  “It…it is. Yes.”

  “Make the preparations. Joseph and his parents are on their way. And make sure the camera has film. We will be remembered for this one.”

  Chapter 9

  Joseph Brinkley was a pudgy little so-and-so, and a great heap of a kid to be sure. Even knocked out cold he had something of a punk’s look about him, his gaping mouth like a silent, full-throated holler. It was a cinch to picture this kid giving his folks a hard way to go. Reminded me of some of the dirty fink bastards from back at the orphanage, the guys who would trap sewer rats in cardboard boxes in the back alley and then set them on fire. The type who grew up to join biker gangs, or the police force. Probably a real bite in the ass to every person who had to deal with him. And it bothered me.