Transorbital Read online

  We did him right there in the office as his stepmom sat outside filing her peach painted fingernails. They matched her dress perfectly.

  “We’ll be done in two shakes, Mrs. Brinkley,” I said with a big smile spread across my face as I headed toward the office with the camera. “Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  “You just fix him good,” is all she said to me, never bothering to look up from her nails.

  I decided to be clean for this one, and I don’t know why. Of all the days to dull my senses, this would have been a good one. And as I started snapping shots, careful to keep the orbs in focus as Doc sloshed and squished about the kid’s brain with his spike, chuckling quietly to himself, I thought about how much better that boy’s life would be after he was fixed. What delightful company he would be. What an easy, affable presence he would now be in his home, and within the society at large. And as I stood there watching Doc Freeman tap the hammer and work his magic, I couldn’t help but think that that boy’s blank, glassy, bleeding eyes would never shimmer with life in them ever again. Never flash with a mischievous impulse or burn with rage. And it bothered me.

  And it bothered me.

  And it bothered me.

  And it bothered me.

  Chapter 10

  I sat on the corner of the bed, gulping from my tumbler of dark rum. She lay across the bed in her milk-white slip, blank and serene.

  “Vot I love about zis Thorazine?” she cooed lazily, “Ees not a high. Ees no high at oll…” She still needed me to shoot her up, not ready to work the needle herself, which was just as well. “Ees…just…nice and empty…”

  It’s good to be needed after all.

  “Too young…” I whispered to myself. “He was too young…”

  I downed the glass, and it burned my chest cavity like flaming gasoline.

  “Vonderfully empty…”

  I thought for a moment that I was not in an acceptable mindset that night to dose myself with any medicine stronger than liquor. But I wanted this feeling of grime and filth gone from me. And I knew that I couldn’t scrub it off.

  I picked up the dropper and needle from the bedside table. I loaded the syringe and saw the bubbles dancing inside. No matter. It was not going in the vein.

  “Like vaking dreamless sleep…”

  “Too young…just too damn young…”

  “Never vant to sink again…”

  I shot it into the back muscle of my left tricep. Still too much pinch. It made a squishing sound as I pressed the plunger in.

  “Nous avons foi au poison…”

  I looked back at her as my mouth filled with cotton, and my face turned to sponge. I could see her, but I felt myself losing the incentive to focus.

  “Didn’t know you spoke French, doll.”

  “I don’t,” she whispered. “I speak Rimbaud.”

  “Well I’ll be.”

  “Hollow…” she sang to herself, fond of the sound, and the feel of the word in her mouth, I suppose. “Hollow hollow hollow…”

  I lay down on the bed in what little room she had left for me. Curled on my right side, I was careful to keep my left arm up, as it was still tender. Putting the juice in my muscle instead of the vein would help it slide into my system more quickly. Or so I read. I hoped it would settle in as I fell asleep. The last thing I heard as I drifted off was Irina the Georgian whore half-singing, half-whispering—

  “Hollow…Hollow…Hoooollllooooooooowwwww…”

  Black nothing. And awake. Paralyzed. And suffocating. I force my eyelids open to mere slits, and I see her, still laying across the bed, singing to herself. Fingers dancing lightly in the air like floating feather lint. My mouth gapes and I desperately try to breathe. No air. I scream. No sound. I scream to her, Wake me up! WAKE ME UP!!! Nothing. Only my eyes can move. IRINA PLEASE! I strain my eyes into their corners, pushing hard, hoping the pain in the muscles will be enough to shock my body awake. Nothing. WAAAAAAKE MEEEE UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!!! She does not notice me. Oblivious. And hollow. I suck in a pinch of air…just enough to keep myself alive for the moment…I’m dying…I am dying…

  Irina…wake…me…up…Irina…please…wake…wake…me…wake me…wake me…up…

  Suddenly I jerked awake, thrashing about, dragging in great gulps of new air.

  “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!”

  She screamed and fell from the bed with a thud.

  “VOT IS?! VOT IS?!”

  “Dying…” I gasped. “Screaming inside…my head…Wake up! Wake me up! You…you’re supposed to wake me up!”

  “Vot is matter vis you!?!?” she shrieked.

  “I told you…to wake me up…if I look like I’m in trouble!”

  “I can hardly just move!” she screeched at me, flailing her arms about, lost and disoriented. “Yoll idea!” she screamed. “Yoll idea to shoot me up!”

  Her hysterics were disproportionate to my relative anger. I was actually more relieved to be alive than I was mad at her. But she was beside herself.

  She began to sob, “I vant j-j-just fuck like normal trick! Ees no trah’ble! Zot ees vot I do!—sob- YOU give me Thorazine! L-Look! Look at my feet!” she screamed, attempting to life a foot and stumbling. “Holes in my feet LIKE JESUS!—sob- You do! YOU DO to me! Zis vas yoll idea!”

  “My idea was to live, dollface,” I said, finally catching my breath. “What am I paying you for after all?”

  Wrong thing to say. Her face contorted in rage.

  “YOLL BARELY PAYING ME!!!”

  She grabbed her clothes off the floor and stumbled from the room, sobbing. She left her shoes behind. Guess I could have kept them, Cinderella-style, but I didn’t.

  Her word rang in my head long after she had gone. Her words, but they were my voice. Your idea…this was your idea…

  I was too discombobulated to stand, and remained on the bed tangled in sheets, still gasping for air.

  After a while, I was sure I saw a figure standing at the foot of my bed, but I couldn’t make it out. Nothing but a dark silhouette.

  “Hello, lad,” Dr. Freeman said, muffled and distant as if through a tin horn. “Rest well, did we? I hate to always be the harbinger of ill tidings, but do you remember a Dr. Showalter of San Diego? It’s been a year at least, so perhaps you don’t.”

  He stepped forward, and into focus. Slight man though he was, it felt as if he were towering over me.

  “Seems he has fallen to his death from a third-story window,” he continued. “They’re not ruling out suicide. I didn’t know him so well, but still and all…It’s a loss I’m sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “So…I’m eager to hear of your findings.”

  “What findings would those be, Doc?”

  “You’ve been testing the new chemical. I know you’ve been scripting it yourself. I’d be bothered, of course, under normal circumstances. We could both be neck deep in hot soup if someone were to find this out. But I know you’re working for the greater good. I admire your renegade spirit, quite frankly.”

  “The study’s a failure, Doc. See? I’ve got no control case. It’s just me and the juice.”

  “Hmm. Well, tell me how you feel at least. Have you achieved some peace of mind?”

  “Do I look at peace to you, Walter?”

  “Alas. Perhaps then you should just come off the stuff now.”

  A jolt of terror and nausea shot through me at the thought of kicking.

  “NO,” I said, trying to shout, but failing. “Not a chance. I’m not coming off. I’m never coming off. It makes the world fuzzy and dull. Softer. Less sharp. Less of a hideous, jagged, stinking waste pit. It helps me not to care.”

  “Oh come now.”

  “Life is a mistake, Walter. A stupid, random, pointless mistake. A bad cosmic joke. Anything that blocks it out is a damn good thing I say. They ought to dump this shit in every box of Cracker Jacks.”

  “I see. Very
interesting hypothesis.”

  “You shouldn’t have done the child, Doc. You shouldn’t have done it. We shouldn’t have done it. We shouldn’t have carved up his brain. He was only twelve years old, Doc. His brain was still growing. How can you cut a brain that still needs to grow?”

  “He was sick,” he said. “They were all sick. And now they’re all better. Now the world they live in is that soft, rounded place you yourself will not relinquish. Only difference is…their new soft world is permanent. Yours is always a needle away. Yes? You know the pain and the madness, lad, it cannot be talked away, can it. Freud can take a hike, am I right? Right off the long pier. And it can’t be drunk away. Not with liquor. If anything, that makes it worse. Doesn’t it, lad. No, it needs to be cut out. Slashed and scrambled. The world needs a lobotomy, lad. You know that even better than I. I’ve come to bring peace to the world. Inner peace. Peace of mind. And I hope that you’ll continue to assist me. We are doing well, and we are doing good. For good.”

  “So what’s next, Walter? What’s the next step from here? Where do we go now?”

  “So glad you asked. We are booked for a two-week stint in West Virginia at the beginning of July. Two hundred and eighty-eight transorbital lobotomies in fourteen days. Imagine that. They’re calling it ‘Operation: Ice Pick.’ Isn’t that just grand?”

  “It’s a hoot and a holler, Doc.”

  “Come save the world with me, Lad. I’m eager to show you my new technique. Here soon I plan to double my productivity.”

  He smiled, and pulled out two leucotomes, one for each hand. Doc Freeman walked behind a white curtain I hadn’t noticed was there and pulled out a gurney with some patient strapped down to it. Gagged, awake, struggling, and terrified. Desperate. Pleading eyes clamped open. I didn’t recognize the patient. He was strange to me.

  “There there, Ralph, just relax,” Doc Freeman said, and quick as a wink, plunged both ice picks into both of the man’s eyes at the same time. I could only watch slack-jawed and numb as Freeman cackled madly to himself, furiously hammering both of the picks deeper and deeper into the poor sap’s head.

  And then it all went black again.

  I woke some hours later in that same motor lodge, in that same dingy room, still tangled in those same ratty sheets, relieved to discover that it had been a dream.

  Except that it hadn’t been a dream at all. It was a memory. Ralph Benton was cured by a two-fisted transorbital lobotomy on August 12, 1954. I must have been there. I have the photographs.

  Chapter 11

  The transorbital lobotomy, ever more by the day, became Doctor Freeman’s abiding obsession. Like an addiction. The pair of us traveled the country non-stop, performing as many as possible…almost as if old Doc knew his time as a lobotomist was coming to an end.

  Another symposium in San Francisco nearly erupted in chaos when Doc brought out then fourteen-year-old Joseph Brinkley as proof of the procedure’s safety and success. I barely remember this. I was drunk. I may have actually been asleep at the time. I do remember that Joseph was no small fry by then. Nearly six feet tall, and thick. He refused to speak, or make eye contact. His head was always down, black hair hung like a little curtain over his forehead, shielding his eyes, and if it had been longer he would have worn it like a mask. But, he was calm. He was obedient. He was quiet. He was good now. He was a success.

  As time ticked by, I was less and less convinced of the rightness of the procedure. So, in keeping with the way I tend to conduct my business, I numbed myself. I numbed my guilt with alcohol and Thorazine. I never had the guts to protest again, and I just blinded myself instead. It did not go unnoticed.

  “Your behavior, Lad, is becoming increasingly erratic. Do shape up.”

  The final straw? When Doc Freeman decided to perform a prefrontal lobotomy on an eight-year-old girl (and then he went younger still). That was it for me. When he set up an office in California, I did not go with him. I walked out on him. And I didn’t look back. I’ve always been partial to the East anyway, and I’m certainly not the Sunnyvale sort.

  And it was then that things started to go very, very wrong.

  People started dying. Old patients, early subjects, began suffering massive hemorrhages.

  And then shortly thereafter, the suicides began. The dead piled up.

  It was just a few at first, but they piled up. More and more. Higher and higher. Some people, it seems, just don’t take too comfortably to the prefrontal lobotomy.

  And even still…no one talked about it. It was seldom, if ever, discussed. It was as if, you know, oh well, these things happen. Medicine is not an exact science after all. If we start holding doctors accountable for every little misstep, they’ll become too timid and gun-shy to work at all. And where would that get us in the end?

  Understand, though, Doc Freeman loved his patients. Don’t get me wrong. He loved them one and all. And even after the procedure fell out of favor, and even Doc himself mostly stopped doing them, he continued to travel the country coast to coast, making home visits. Checking on progress. Convincing himself that the results, whatever they were, affirmed the rightness of his technique.

  Three thousand, five hundred lobotomies, give or take. That’s how many he did himself. Some with me, many without. Eighteen thousand transorbitals all told when you factor in the work of his students and protégés. That’s a helluva lotta scrambled gray matter. An awful lot of people who would never be the same. People who would never think or feel or communicate as they once had.

  Doc was certainly convinced…still convinced it was all good and proper medicine. Maybe he was right. He was THE expert after all…and his own greatest disciple.

  As for me? I had to ramble too. Keep moving. I went back to the asylums. Pushing carts, dumping pans. Of course I did. It’s what I do. It is what I have always done.

  Somewhere along the grapevine I heard that one of Freeman’s protégés has been found dead of an apparent homicide. Attempted robbery, or something. Street mugging.

  And then another.

  And another.

  I couldn’t be concerned, though. Why would I be concerned? I was too busy…self-administering my own lobotomy. Who am I to try and figure these things after all?

  Who am I?

  Who am I?

  One night, in New York, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and fifty-five, in a smoky little Bowery dive, I saw Bird play for the last time. And I once again passed up the chance to talk to him, to meet him, even to just thank him for his music.

  That night both of us would go to our respective hotel rooms—he at The Stanhope, me somewhere cheaper—and shoot up. Only one of us would ever see the sun shine again. And not the one of us the world actually needed.

  Part Two

  The Transorbitals

  Chapter 12

  1968, baby, all right? Outta sight. Thirteen years…OK…thirteen years…

  But you know me; I just did my thing. Pushing carts, working the floors. Couldn’t stick to one place for too long. Always some new institution somewhere, always a brand-new key to add to the chain.

  I’d kept myself out of trouble, though, for the most part. Did a little time in ‘59 over a bar fight, but no real harm done.

  Kept a switchblade, a buck knife, and a blackjack on my utility belt. Lost count of all the dark figures who lurched on me from the alleyways. I’d Slash and stab my way out of it, and never seem to catch a face. Not so much as a glimpse. They’d all run off before I could. But that’s life, right? Sure it is.

  Of course, I could never be certain if they were really there or not. The eyes, the brain, they’re tricky vessels to be sure. I don’t trust anyone else’s, and I have no real cause to trust mine either.

  One thing I will say for that Vietnam they’ve got going on: good for business where I come from. Job security. Every other day yields a fresh batch of new patients. Hey hey, LBJ, you break another kid? Just send him our way!


  No concern of mine. Just do the job, pay the bills, make sure wherever you are, you’ve got a key to the medicine box. Thorazine’s there to keep me right and steady, and no harm done. No harm done.

  Couldn’t help but think back, though…sometimes…here and there…couldn’t help but think back on a time when I felt like we were really doing something. When we were really making a difference. Side by side with a superhero. That was sure something all right.

  But hey, at least it was good to be back at Riverside again.

  Chapter 13

  “Excuse me! You there, orderly!”

  I could work Riverside sleepwalking.

  “Over here!”

  I know those floors like I know old St. Joseph’s Orphanage where I grew up…

  “Hello there?”

  …Maybe better even. As such, I tended to switch into autopilot during my rounds.

  “I could really use your help with…You!”

  “Me?”

  I turned around to find a flustered, younger doctor trotting down the corridor toward me, his long, thin face red and sweaty. I thought I recognized him, but wasn’t entirely sure. Nor was I in any way interested.

  “It’s you!” he said, huffing and puffing up to me.

  “Are you sure?”

  “It IS you!”

  “Nah.”

  He approached as if he had made some sort of grand discovery.

  “Oh my God,” he exclaimed. “How have you be—…I’ve only just started here at Riverside…It’s been, what, almost twenty years. Do you remember me?”

  “No, doctor.”

  “The symposium?”