Praying for Sleep

One day in March of this year, John Orderly took Michael by the arm and pushed him into Suzie’s room. He slammed the door shut and aimed the video camera through the window.

They were alone, Michael and this twenty-four-year-old patient, on whose pretty face was only one blemish-a tiny indentation of scar in the middle of her forehead. Suzie looked at Michael carefully with her sunken eyes. She was someone whose only earthly power was in knowing what was expected of her. She observed that Michael was a man and immediately hiked her skirt over bulging thighs. Down went her panties and she rolled onto her hands and knees.

And Michael, knowing that John Orderly was just outside the door, also knew what to do-exactly the same. Pants down, on his hands and knees. Here they remained, butts bare to the world, while John Orderly fled down the hallway when a doctor unexpectedly happened by. The psychiatrist glanced inside the room and opened the door. He inquired what the patients were doing.

Michael answered, “Waiting for John Orderly. I’m ready for him and so is she. Make no mistake. Like all men of medicine, John Orderly’s got a very big cock.”

“Oh, my God.”

The investigation resulted in the dismissal of five orderlies, two nurses and two doctors from Cooperstown. Michael, however, never learned John Orderly’s fate because as one of the most victimized patients he was immediately transferred out of the Hard Ward into the voluntary-commitment section of the hospital. “Due to stabilization of his condition,” the report said. “Prognosis for improvement: fair to good.” In fact Michael was far sicker than when he’d been admitted but the administrators wanted to isolate him from the questioning reporters and state mental-health examiners who descended on the hospital to investigate what one newspaper dubbed “Psycho Ward Atrocities.”

Reforms were instituted, the reporters went elsewhere for their stories, and Cooperstown fell from the public eye-just as Michael himself was largely forgotten within the halls of the hospital.

A month after the scandal he was still a resident of the Cooperstown Soft Ward. One weekend he found himself unusually agitated. On Saturday evening the anxiety increased to massive proportions and he began to feel the walls of his room closing in on him. Breathing grew difficult. He suspected the Secret Service was behind this; agents frequently bombarded him with beams that electrified his nerves.

Michael didn’t know that his anxiety was due not to the federal government but to something much simpler: his medication instructions had been misplaced and he’d received no Haldol for four days.

Finally in desperation he decided to find the one person in his recent memory who might help him. He had, he recalled, accused Dr. A

Michael had no idea exactly where Dr. A

Around noon he found himself in the middle of a large parking lot. He paused, caught his breath and walked through the lot toward a row of trees, nauseous with anxiety. He ran through the lot and disappeared into the bushes just beyond the large wooden sign. He glanced at the words that were carved into it as if by a huge wood-burning iron.

Welcome to Indian Leap State Park

Michael Hrubek thought of that day now, six months later, as he steered his black Cadillac over the crest of a hill on Route 236. He saw before him a long smooth straightaway sailing into a distance filled with flashes of lightning and the soft glow of lights that perhaps were those of Ridgeton. He cringed as rain clattered on the roof and windshield.

“Betrayal,” he muttered. Then he repeated the word, bellowing. He was scalded with anxiety. “Eve of betrayal! Fuckers!”

In an instant his pulse rate leapt to 175 and sweat sprung from his pores. His teeth clattered like galloping hooves on concrete. His mind snapped shut. He forgot GET TO, he forgot Lis-bone, he forgot Eve, the conspirators and Dr. A

His hands quavered on the steering wheel. He gazed at the Cadillac’s hood with shock-as if he’d suddenly awakened and found himself riding a rampaging bull.

I’ll fight this, he thought. God, please help me fight this! He lowered his head and chewed on his i

And for a very brief moment he did.

For a very brief moment he gripped the ivory wheel firmly and forced the car back into the right lane of the highway.

For this brief moment Michael Hrubek was not a maladroit lunatic, a host holding an ancient killer’s soul. He was not driven by unbearable guilt. Abraham Lincoln was merely a great, sad figure from history whose face graced copper pe

And then this delusion vanished.

He could fight it no longer. He lost all conception of the controls and it was the pedal on the right upon which he stamped his huge foot in an effort to stop the skid. He covered his eyes, howled a plea for help and kept his foot to the floorboard as the car disappeared into a low stand of juniper and began turning over and over and over.

23

You’ve got this thing to do ahead of you…

Owen Atcheson remembered his platoon lieutenant looking steel-eyed and crazed from hits of local fu

Owen and three other Marines more often than not rolled their eyes at this pep talk. But, inspired by it nonetheless, they then clipped on their gear and blackened their faces and disappeared into the jungle to cut the throats of thin soldiers or murder politicians with silenced pistols or rig gelignite and C4 satchel charges.

Owen thought of those times now-as he stood on the ridge of a hill, looking at the antique Cadillac that sat upright, its roof half-staved in and windows spidered with fractures, one parking lamp the only light that had survived the crash. He opened the cylinder of his gun. He’d owned revolvers all his life and, fastidious about safety, had always kept the chamber under the hammer empty. He now loaded a sixth shell into the gun and swung the cylinder closed. He started toward the car. The incline was steep and Owen needed one hand to steady himself as he climbed down to a low hedge.