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.
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