Woman on the Edge of Time

They had decided to operate next week on Alice. They felt they knew just what tissue in her brain to coagulate now, where to burn a hole in what was called Alice. Then she would have her electrodes removed, they promised, just like Skip. They were tired of playing with Alice, who had become sullen and passive. At times she giggled a lot, she seemed drunk and slaphappy, sitting on the edge of her bed. Then she slumped into a blank depression.

Skip now had grounds privileges. He went to the canteen and brought back doughnuts, danishes, candy bars, cigarettes for any of the patients who had the money. The doctors had their own coffeemaker near the meeting room, and even the patients were sometimes allowed to make coffee in the afternoon in the small kitchen the lower staff used. Dolly had come by to visit her right after her operation, but had not been allowed in. Dolly had deposited some more money for Connie. Connie pretended to order sweets from the canteen with the others. Remembering Luciente’s urging, she withdrew change for an order but then quietly told Skip not to bring her anything. Seventy-five cents at a time, she was accumulating capital for escape. That much energy remained to her.

Wednesday Dr. Redding announced to Skip loudly, so that all the other patients could hear, that Skip was being granted a weekend furlough. He could go home to his parents from Friday night through Sunday afternoon. Dr. Redding rolled out the pronouncement with conscious drama, saying that if Skip proved he could handle himself, this was the first of many furloughs, the first step back into society. They were all to envy Skip; they all did. The doctors were almost done with Skip, unless further surgery should prove necessary, a little phrase they added.

Skip said he was grateful and he’d show them he could handle a visit home. He drooped there, no longer graceful under his shorn hair that spoke of the barracks, of the army, and looking Redding in the eyes, he told him how good he was going to be, how he was their cured and grateful little boy.

She felt a strange pang, like something plucked in her.

Friday, as Skip was organizing himself to go home and waiting for his parents to come to collect him, she got up for the first time since her operation, except for walking to the bathroom and back, and put on her robe. Shaking, she tied the loose cord and stumbled off to the men’s side. She sat down on Skip’s bed and waited for the dizziness to clear. She wasn’t allowed to do that, but the attendants hadn’t appeared yet.

Skip looked at her with bloodshot weary cautious eyes. “Hello, monster,” he said softly.

“Hello, monster,” she said back, and smiled for the first time since before her operation. “There’s too little of you and too much of me.”

“Can you feel it inside?”

“I feel rotten. Snowed.”

“I admire you for trying to get away, you know? I wish you’d made it.”

“If I get a chance, I’ll try it again,” she mouthed softly.

“But … with that thing in your head, you might die.”

“Maybe it’ll just wear out its batteries or whatever it runs on and give up. Use up the drug. I know a guy, Otis, who has a metal peg in his knee from Vietnam.”

“I think maybe something in the brain’s more dangerous … . But why not go down trying?”

“You’re going outside today.”

Skip grimaced. “Home with my loving parents. Back from the factory where they sent me for repairs, on a trial basis. Like if it’s broken, get it fixed. If it’s crooked, get it straightened out. If it’s kinky, iron it.”

“But you still got a will to fight them, I can feel it.”

“They won something. I don’t feel like fucking anybody. Or loving anybody. I don’t feel any love at all. I feel like a big block of ice.”

Tony walked by whistling, saw her sitting on the bed, and came in. To avoid his touch, she rose. “Take care, Skip.”

“I mean to take care.” He gave her a mirthless grin. Then he kissed her lightly on the mouth. “You keep trying.” His lips were cool and hard. Shyly she kissed him back.

Tony made obscene smacking noises. “Come on, break it up. No PC. They fixed you okay from being a faggot, but you’re crazy anyhow!”

As quickly as she could move on her heavy waterlogged legs, her dizzy body riding its private stormy weather, she lumbered back through the ward to her own bed.

Sunday night Skip did not return. By Monday the rumor crept through the ward as fast as patient could whisper to patient. Sunday morning early, Skip had slit his throat with an electric knife in the kitchen of his parents’ home. They had hidden the razor blades, the sleeping pills, the aspirin, but they had not thought of the electric carving knife.

Sybil murmured to Connie that she had heard that his father had been angry at Dr. Redding and called him a quack. They felt it was unacceptable for the hospital to send Skip home to kill himself in their kitchen.