He looks so strange, the poor bastard. His mouth going on and on about how his new job is treating him and how he’s moving in with his girlfriend this weekend. I sit and laugh at him. More pity than anything. He talks and talks, but no one’s there to listen. Never is when I see him going like this. He’s lost it for sure. He wears white on white—even his shoes are white. But the nicotine stains on his fingers can’t hide the angst. No one likes to think the mind is so fragile. I sit and watch him and wish there was something I could do. He laughs to no one.
I see him every day. Sitting here in the lobby like I do most mornings. The poor bastard, he’s lost it for sure.
Writing small notes on his clipboard. Probably doesn’t even have a girlfriend to move in with. He picks up the phone, and it didn’t even ring, and he talks a little more. He sits there on the edge of the receptionist’s counter, looks around every-which-way. Probably paranoid. Clear sign. I sit and count my blessings. Held onto my mind, never let my thoughts get away.
He looks up at me and flashes a smile, but something’s missing behind his eyes. I can tell. I look around to see if anyone else can see this, but they’ve all lost their heads too. I’m more observant than most people. His little yellow fingers twitch and squirm like a dying frog. He almost glows in the fluorescent lights, draped in all white, something like an angel. But I can tell there’s something missing behind those pale eyes. He probably doesn’t even know it.
I’m only glad I’ve kept my head about me, that’s for sure. A blessing. Sometimes the mind is the last thing to go. Sometimes it’s the first. Sanity is so fragile, and his head is like cracked egg shells. I sit here and watch him, watch his fingers twitch, watch him talk into the phone to no one. Someone should put him out of his misery. Someone one with a clear head. I suppose I could do it. A quick blow to the back of his neck. He’d thank me for it, I’m sure, if only he knew how much I would be helping him.
“Mr. McCourt,” he says, walking over to me. “Time for your medicine, then Full House comes on. How does that sound?”
He smiles down at me, rolling me in my chair to the nurse’s station. They hand me my small cup of pills, and my mouth tastes like chalk for a moment. The room that has the T.V. is full, everyone wandering around aimlessly. I’m just glad I’ve kept my head about me. I look up at him as he pushes me towards the T.V.
Poor bastard. I’m sure he’d thank me.
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Good but not surprising. Well done!
Enjoyed your attention to detail in this story. I didn’t get the ending.
The one’s whom have to live in the cukoos nest, or a reality for me, living with teenager’s , crazy sad, good job
Perhaps I misread the piece, but I thought it was a great example of “it takes one to know one.” Here the guy’s observing someone he thinks is crazy, but he’s the one in the asylum and the crazy guy is one of the nurses, I presume. I enjoyed the story.
Me, too.
I enjoyed this good mental doodle. So that’s what those guys and gals were thinking about when I showered, fed, changed their beds, cleaned their butts way back when! It is a nice character piece, but to make it really zing you need to have some lapses of thought in there. Brain damaged folks actually get distracted by odd stimuli, and if you included those, then circumlocuted back to the nurse he was describing it would have made the old guy, the PTSD Vet, or the Cancer gal narrator more believable. The clarity of thought came from the writer not the brain damaged.
The beginning intrigued me and I enjoyed the end. Well done!
Loved this. An exercise in the imagination, that’s for sure!
The clarity of the piece is too grounded for an individual objectively institutionalized. Fragment the thoughts and bring it back again. Paint the scene with distractions that would be subtle to the staff but sirens to the sick and suffering.