Disappearing from My Life

I suddenly found it all a bit overwhelming to be laying there with all of these white coats peering down at me as though I was the three-headed calf at the state fair. 

For those who've never been through it, the process of breaking an operator is much more complex than you have been led to believe.

Sure, torture and sleep deprivation are part of the game: same as they ever were, but you expect it. It's just like on television, when they show you a merchant carefully stacking produce in his open-air stall. You can be sure that before the final commercial somebody is going to drive a car right into it.

It's kind of comforting really.

But, until they break out the rubber hoses, it's like you have come into the middle of a play with no program and no way to figure out what the characters are talking about.

I knew I was being watched. I knew they were looking for triggers, anything they could use against me.

We were working a play in the East once and that bitch Cinnamon let it slip that she was claustrophobic and when she was taken, they pushed that button hard. Even though they were able to trade her out, she never really came back after that.

I had to figure that they—whoever “they” were—had been probing for buttons since I was brought in.

Some, or all, of this was just for my benefit. Hell, the whole thing could be a false flag. Sure seemed like a real hospital, but that's what the mark is supposed to think.

One of the Q-tips crowding my field of vision was the boss, the puppet master. One of the fresh-faced wanna-bees was the lead interrogator.

The doctor? The one all the “students” were staring at? Perhaps he was the boss?

Not likely.... Most probably a stalking horse: the obvious target. He would be someone for me to focus on and direct my rage at.
No, someone else was the real power center. I just had to figure out which one it was.

To his credit, the Horse played his part very well. He was the over-bearing teacher to what were supposed to be his interns and casually dismissive to me.

“And how are we this morning?”

I never understood this question.

I have been in all manner of hospitals all over the world and, without fail, they all ask this same fucked-up question in some form.

It reminds me of the time I got my car fixed. There was a problem with the brakes and I didn't have time to get into it. Barney sent me to a guy he knew and the guy seemed okay. He had just the right amount of tattoos: not so many that you'd take him for a crook and not so few that you thought he'd never been in a garage before.

I'm up against a deadline. I don't know, I think we may have been going out of town on a job. So, I'm in a rush trying to do the prep work to justify disappearing from my life and the guy calls me and tells me to come and pick up my car.

I did not have the time.

I asked him he he had fixed the brakes.

“I don't know, I think so. They seem pretty good to me, but I want to know what you think.”

They were fixed, or they weren't: my input was irrelevant. I was either well, or I wasn't and they were supposed to tell me.

And if you try and take them at their word and interpret their concern as somehow genuine, they they will act all the more indifferent to your answer. It's like they don't care if you answer and don't believe you if you do.

I grunted.

“That's nice,” said the Horse without even looking at me.

Rapport was established.

“Patient was rescued from a fire. Was brought in with no I.D., and thus far has not told us who he is. No one has come looking for him. He presented severely dehydrated. Possibly delusional. Claimed to have started the fire in order to smoke out an unseen attacker. Keeps asking about a dog. Vitals appear normal and patient seems to be responding well to medication. Diagnosis?”

“Amnesia?” came from one of the Q-tips behind my head.

“Scans clear,” said the Horse without even looking up.

“Trauma-induced?” the unseen Q-tip asked.

“No sign of physical trauma.”

“Emotional? He was in a fire....” Her third strike.

“Let's assume the very unlikely scenario where you are right, how would we proceed?”

“Psych?” came the much less confident response.

“Psych?” The Horse had her attention now. “You feel we know enough about our patient to turn him over to those butchers? Have we done everything we can? Because, you know, once they start pumping him full of their shit, he won't ever know his own name and we won't be able to fix what they screw up.”

He looked around the room giving his full attention to each of his interns in turn.

“Have we done everything we can for this patient?” he asked. His gaze invited them in to the conversation and simultaneously bullied them into not answering.

The silence was deafening.

These guys were good. Their set-up was perfect. They had laid it out for me and told me what was at stake.

It was a perfect first act: there were heroes and villains, stakes and choices. Without saying so, they had brought me to the scene before the first act curtain. I had been presented with a proposition and the second act would entirely depend on the choice I made next.

“Where's my dog?” I said.

The horse looked at me for a long moment and then wrote something down in the chart, turned on his heel and left the room.

The Q-tips looked nervously from one to another and then followed after him.

I heard a cough from the other side of the room and then my roommate said, “What an asshole.”

These guys were very good.

I had to get out of this bed.

Simple and Direct

“Pay close attention,” I kept repeating this to myself as I turned over what Phelps had said to me. 

All I had to do was stick to the legend.... 

Which one? 

Why? 

Who was the mark? 

I had been sheetcaked. I was out, no longer a player. 

I remember that very clearly: trading life and limb for a Wal-Mart sheetcake. I remember exactly how that felt. 

And I remember the years spent in the weeds trying to pass as a civilian. How do they do it? 

I still have the bruises from hitting all the steps on the way down. And I remember the cold, sandy taste in my mouth when I hit bottom. 

Was it all a play? 

What did he mean? 

My toasty warm eiderdown was becoming oppressive. 

“Stick to the legend.” 

The legend is the story you tell the mark that makes them back your play. The legend is the map to the Inside Track, the Secret Passage that takes a mark out of their comfort zone and toward the parking spot between the rock and the very hard place. The legend wasn't real, it was never real. When we were working, we sold it like it was real, but it was never real. 

The time between that cake and this moment was real. 

It sure felt real. 

Were they playing me? 

Could they have played me? 

Was this another version of the too-small suit? 

And what was that about Rollin and Cinnamon? 

I had long ago lost track of that bitch and I remember being told that Rollin had died. I remember that. I remember the suit he gave me that day. 

Was it all for show? Was I being roped in? 

Is this what it feels like to get played? 

Holy fuck!

What about the car crash and the fire? Was that part of it? 

Could that have been part of it? 

Christ, I set fire to that house.... And for nothing? 

Didn't seem like nothing, but it could have been for nothing. 

I was beginning to feel sick. Really sick. 

helps always did like the long game, but who could he be playing against that would take this long to set up...? 

And why was I on the outside?  

Was this what it was like to be disavowed? 

The doctors were coming in...: this was the point where he chose to step in, so it had to mean something. Was the play against one of the doctors? 

“Stick to the legend.” Tell the story; make them believe it; make it real. 

But it was real. I had to be careful to make the truth seem like it was real: there's no way to do that and not look like you're lying. 

You're dead in the water the minute you find yourself using phrases like “This is a true story,” or “This really happened.” 

Was it that he wanted them not to believe me? Why didn't he want them to believe my story? 

The doctors were coming and Phelps had set me up so they were going to think I was lying. 

What would my story possibly mean to the doctors? 

I thought about that for a long time. 

It couldn't mean anything to them which meant that the play wasn't for them, but for whoever was responsible for the handcuffs. They'd be interested in why my story sounded like a legend. 

I was thinking too much and that was going to show in my telling of it. 

You can't over-think the legend, or it becomes a shaggy dog: entertaining, perhaps, but something better left with it owner than taken home and adopted. 

Simple and direct: walking the dog, was being followed, sought refuge in the vacant house, person or persons unknown set fire to smoke me out, rescued by the fire department, taken to hospital. 

Simple and direct. 

Simple and direct. 

The harsh overhead lights snapped on and a small company of white coats came into the room. 

They completely ignored the man in the next bed and his family of medical equipment and instead crowded around my bed like visitors to the zoo crowded around the viewing window trying to catch a glimpse of a new-born Panda. 

As far as I could tell, it was only tangentially relevant that I was even there. The white coats were focused on the one of their number who was standing closest to my cuffed hand. He was the expert, the Master of Ceremonies and he was about to introduce me.

Who's a Good Boy...?

My mouth was dry.

That was the first thing I remember.

My mouth was dry in the same way that mud is sticky:  everything from my lips to the back of my throat was stuck together with a kind of vacuum-packed glue that made the parts seem impossible to separate.

It got so bad I gave up on the mouth and started working on the eyes:  had to get them open.

Where was the dog?

I tried to call for him, but I couldn't make my mouth work.  I tried to look for him, but I couldn't make my eyes work.

The washcloth-thick hospital blanket felt like a wonderful eiderdown comforter whose warmth radiated through my body like a cat resting on my belly.

The exposed flesh of my arms and face felt cold by comparison.

It would be safer under the blanket.  I needed to stay under the blanket.

The strain of trying to wake up was making me sleepy.

I could only hope that we had trained each other well enough so that he would be there when I woke up again.

Who's a good boy...?

Another time I tried to wake up was when they brought in a tray.  It might have been food, it might have been surgical instruments, I couldn't tell the difference.

I could see, but I couldn't tell the difference.

I tried again to ask about my dog, but could not pry my lips apart.

"Do you want a popsicle?  I bet you want a popsicle....  What flavor...?  Do you like grape?  I bet you like grape.  Everybody likes grape....  I'll be back in a minute."

You stop me in the street and ask, I'm going to tell you that I fuckin' hate popsicles, but when she came back with that no-name-too-long-in-the-freezer-so-that-the-paper-sticks-to-the-frozen-kool-aid treasure, I was ecstatic.

What was this stuff they were pumping into me?

The popsicle was making me cold and so I had to keep putting it down to pull up my blanket.  I was toasty warm and freezing cold at the same time and the thermal confusion was making me sleepy again.

The last time I woke up I remember it seemed like it was in the middle of the night.  I only knew that because it was a little bit darker and a tiny bit quieter.

I didn't want to open my eyes.  I was savoring the momentary peace in the limbo that comes after sleep and before your feet hit the floor.

Something squirmed on what sounded like a vynil-covered chair.

Was there a chair?  I didn't remember a chair.

"You can cut the shit, I know you can hear me."

If I didn't know better, I could have sworn I knew that voice.

"Willy!"  

There was a stabbing quality to his stage whisper that seemed to obliterate all pretense.  I think I may have even flinched.

"Jee-zuss Christ, Willy, we don't have much time."

It couldn't be Phelps, he was dead.

But I had to look, just to satisfy myself, just so I could go back to sleep.

I forced my eyes open and then, when I saw him, I couldn't stop them from opening.

"Ji--?"

"Shut up," he said.

"Listen," he said.  "We don't have a lot of time.  The docs are going to be here later this morning and it's important they buy-in to your legend."

Legend?  

I was having trouble organizing my thoughts.  What was the play?  Who was the mark?  What was the game?

"Look," said Phelps.  "I know you got questions, but there simply isn't time.  You're the rope on this one.  Cinnamon is the Inside and Rollin is working it from the other end.  All you got to do is make sure they buy your act."

"Act?"

"Just tell them what you saw and what you think you saw and that will be more than enough."

I could tell from his tone that Phelps was getting impatient.  His eyes kept looking past me toward what I assumed was the door.

"Dog?" 

Complex sentences seemed out of my reach.

"Don't worry," said Phelps.  "He's wrapped up and happy.  You just keep your head in the game."

Game?

I didn't have time to ask, because he was out of there like a shot.

Why couldn't I remember the play?

I was awake now.

I had to get out of this bed.

The Importance of a Good Night's Sleep

The first thing I became aware of was the shaking of the bed. It was like one of those “magic fingers” beds, but set to “annoying”: it wasn't relaxing, but it was just random enough to keep me from being able to go back to sleep.


Sleep: it was all I wanted to do.


It was all I could do, and yet it seemed to be the one thing that “they” very specifically wanted me not to do.


Just out of spite, I refused to open my eyes. I hoped that whatever it was would get bored and go shake somebody else's bed.


“Go and bother Mr. Leamus,” I said while once again trying unsuccessfully to roll over on my side.


Leamus had been wheeled in in the middle of the night, during one of my other unsuccessful attempts at trying to sleep.


He was big and loud and clearly very excited to be in the hospital. He wanted to know everybody's name and where they were from. And, when all the uniformed people left, he wanted to know my name and where I was from and what I was in for.


“A good night's sleep,” I said.


I never did find out what he was in for, but, whatever it was, it came with noisemakers.


It was like there were three of us in that room: me, Leamus and a small navy of medical equipment that wheezed and pinged, beeped and hummed. He was hooked to all of it and couldn't have been happier.


“I got most of this stuff at home,” he said.


I made some sort of “uh-huh” noise and, with my free hand, put my pillow over my face.


Leamus had been uncharacteristically quiet earlier in the evening and, foolishly, I thought that I could maybe sleep.


There was only a brief window between the time the second shift was satisfied that all their patients were bedded down for the night and when the third shift came on and had to take inventory all over again. I had two, maybe three hours, before some student nurse would come in, turn on all the harsh lights and take my vitals.


I had to try and get some sleep.


I could feel myself losing it which is why I was not very happy about the shaking.


And then I heard that familiar combination of grunting and snorting, followed by the cold damp nose that poked me in the back like it was marking a bingo card.

How did--?


Where did--?


Somehow, he had found me in this dog-forsaken place.


This was worth waking up for.


I thrashed around looking for the bed controls.


Eventually, I discovered the anything-but-wireless remote had somehow fallen between the bed rail and the mattress and was hanging just above the floor by its rat-like tail of a cable.


And now it was my turn to grunt and wheeze as I tried to haul in the catch of the day.


And then it was Mr. Leamus' turn to demand that I respect the fact that he was trying to sleep and to hold it down.


There followed a free, frank and explicit exchange of ideas about the importance of a good night's sleep during which Mr. Leamus apparently used his call button.


The rush of uniforms into the room really panicked me.


They were going to scare the dog. He was a lot like me: we didn't like a lot of people and this was a LOT of people.


I was aware that I was raising my voice.


Nobody was listening. They were going to hurt the dog. I didn't want them to hurt the dog.


I tried to show them that there was a dog and that there was a real chance that they could step on him if they didn't watch what they were doing.


The more I tried to show them, the more they swarmed over me and tried to pin me to the bed.


The funny thing is, I knew what was coming next.


Back in the day, we'd played this same scene any number of times against marks all over the world, but when THE nurse came rushing into this scene, I have to tell you I was really surprised.


And really freaked out.


She had a needle.


I was about to be benched and there was nothing I could do about it. But what about the dog? Who was going to look after the dog?


It wasn't his fault....


He's a good dog.


He was worried...


...about...


...me.