Journey From Heaven

by Joe Derkacht

  #

  “Do you hear voices?”

  I was unaccountably in the dayroom again—the same morning sun shining through the windows on my face, the same doctor, the same circle of inmates. The single glaring exception was Nurse Jo’s purple, swollen nose, impossible to hide under makeup but remarkable for the vanished bandage. One moment I thought it was glued to her face, the next it disappeared, like a magic trick. Had I taken my eyes off her face at the wrong moment?

  I must have looked blankly at the doctor, because he repeated the question, this time changing it to, “Are you hearing voices?”

  “Why, are you?” I asked in complete confusion.

  The circle nearly exploded with laughter. Because of my usual stammer? The man in charge held his lips in a tight, straight line. The nurse frowned as if swallowing bile.

  “This isn’t about me, Mr. Raventhorst,” said the doctor in measured tones. “You’re the one in treatment. Surely you remember that much?”

  “Sure, nothing’s wrong with my hearing.”

  He did a slow simmer. After a few moments he steadied himself and poised the pen over the open folder once more.

  “And what are these voices saying to you?”

  Hoping to discover some clue as to what my answer should be, I glanced at the others. Despite a couple of encouraging smiles, nothing came to me. Simpkins, who always looked like I was wasting his time and would just as soon kill me, threw me an angry smirk. Everyone else stared at their shoe tops.

  Harry Shin, the single Asian inmate in the circle, began to whistle thinly. He stopped at Nurse Jo’s sudden hiss.

  “We’re waiting, Mr. Raventhorst,” the doctor said. We’re all waiting.”

  “They keep asking me questions.”

  “Now we’re making progress— wh-wh-wh-what a-a-are these q-q-questions?”

  He had my attention now. Mimicking was a low blow, and cruel, especially coming from him. The explosion of laughter this time sounded like a pack of nervous hyenas.

  “They want to know if I’m hearing voices,” I answered.

  The laughter died away. The inmates sat in stunned silence. Eyes bulging in anticipation, every face turned toward the doctor. Unable to hold back any longer, they erupted in laughter, now against him.

  “All right, Jack, got him that time!”

  In the ensuing uproar I wasn’t sure I’d heard right, or if maybe several inmates had shouted it at the same time, though I would have sworn Simpkins was the loudest of the bunch. Instantly red-faced, the doctor bent over my folder and scribbled furiously. Stabbing the paper with a final period, he slapped the folder shut with all the violence he could muster.

  “I think that’s enough for the day.”

  Nurse Jo looked confused. “We’ve just started—”

  He rose to his feet. “If Mr. Ravinghorse,” he said, “can’t contribute to the group, and the group takes everything as cavalierly as he does, there’s no point in continuing, is there?”

  Nurse Jo gave me an evil look. “I don’t suppose there is, Doctor.

  “Do you,” she said, addressing the group, which was well along the way to moving the chairs to their usual places around the room, “do you, I ask, expect to get well, if you can’t take our work here seriously? Isn’t it important to you?”

  Dr. Laberly, folders and all, disappeared through the door, showing his back to us for the last time that day.

  Dog-eared playing cards were already coming out, a cribbage board, and several sets of dominoes. No one mentioned that people never seemed to get well under her ministrations or the doctor’s.

  “No games today!” She burst out.

  Mouths hung agape. Shin, eyes darting at me, nervously shuffled his deck of cards.

  “No entertainment!” She declared loudly. “No amusement! We are not amused!”

  She stood to her full height and thrust out her chest, her breasts shaking with fury. “Orderlies!”

  Three orderlies, huddled by the door since Laberly’s departure, answered in unison.

  “Yes?”

  “Make sure the card tables are put away.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “They may have their magazines—nothing else!”

  “Aahh—” Shin started, quickly lapsing into singsong incomprehensible to the rest of us.

  “Mr. Shin is to return to his room at once,” she cut him off. “If he doesn’t like it, use the restraints.” Imperiously, she added ,“This is Mr. Raventhorst’s fault, if any of you wish to lay blame where it belongs.”

  She stood watching, as if waiting for someone to respond to her hint. Most glanced in her direction and gave a shrug, shambling instead to the bookshelves arranged against the wall, to their stacks of outdated, well-thumbed magazines and paperbacks. Now that she had taken away their daily entertainment and offered no carrot of inducement, they lost interest. Except for Simpkins.

  Simpkins walked in my direction with the requisite saunter and bent threateningly over me. Throwing up one hand to ward off a blow, I started to rise from my chair.

  He was quicker, grabbing my hand and using his full weight to force me back down.

  “I’d kill you, you sorry sack of—” he whispered loudly enough for the whole room to hear. More quietly, he said, “Some other time, loser. In my book, that was too funny.”

  Still grasping my upraised hand, he turned and kissed me on the cheek. I would have pushed him away but he was already swaggering off.

  “Plenty more where that came from,” he said, grinning at Nurse Jo. She smiled, seemingly pleased, and returned to her desk behind the dayroom’s glass partition.

  I wiped my cheek in astonishment. To me, it seemed Simpkins just pretended to craziness, though with his tattooed bald head, acne scarred face, and chipped teeth he looked the part. Why was he really in this place? And why the kiss, and why had he and the nurse exchanged a knowing glance between them?

  It didn’t make sense, and my presence in this place made even less sense. Why was I here? Thus far, all I could tell was that the people in authority seemed to hate stuttering and wanted to treat it like it was a product of insanity. If they didn’t like to hear me stutter, I would be glad to never speak again.

  The nurse sat at her desk, scratching words onto paperwork with a Bic pen. I tapped on the glass partition.

  “Go read a magazine, Mr. Raventhorst,” she said without looking up.

  “I want to know—”

  “I said, go read a magazine!”

  I tapped the glass, and kept tapping ever more urgently. Briefly, her eyes flitted in every direction but mine. Vainly hoping for the orderlies to return from hustling poor old Shin to confinement? At one time she might have been pretty, might have had a trace of compassion, might even have revealed interest in another human being. Now, as the blue eyes settled on me, all I saw was the sort of panic a woman has when she runs across a large, distasteful bug.

  “Why do you hate me? Is it my stutter?”

  She stared unblinkingly. Almost, I thought I could hear the calculator that was her brain clicking and whirring, millisecond by millisecond working to formulate a reasonable sounding answer. Or was it taking so long because I fought to push words from my mouth—words she had to struggle to translate?

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” she finally said, bending exaggeratedly over her paperwork.

  “Don’t be ridiculous—?”

  “Th-Th-That’s r-r-right!” She said.

  I don’t know what made me do it, if I simply reached forward or if my hand jerked involuntarily in her direction, as if the glass partition was non-existent—which it began to be—shattering in slow motion, cracks spreading outward from my fist like the spears of a snowflake. As the bright shards fell away, Nurse Jo screamed. The screams didn’t make sense. Why should she scream as if I were murdering her?

  White uniforms fell from the sky, a flurry of knees and fists driving at me, until I was overco
me, as though tumbled to the floor by a wave of the Pacific. But what did I care about fists, about pain, about being kneed repeatedly? Everything seemed as distant to me as the story in a magazine or the lights flashing on the screen of a drive-in theatre.

  Eventually, the flailing stopped. I nearly retched at the smell of onions exuding like a noxious mist from the man pinning me to the floor. I was vaguely aware of someone else on the floor, someone grunting and cursing. It was Simpkins, who had decided to join in on the fun, to give the orderlies a few licks in the confusion of the moment. Despite his bravado, they hadn’t been in much danger. Hubie, a thin diminutive black man, held him down, easily dodging his ineffective blows. Two orderlies, both of them stocky, sat on me, and I hadn’t even resisted.

  “Take them to their rooms,” Nurse Jo said. “Restrain them both and lock them in. We’ll see how much they enjoy a few days of rest without food or water.”

  “This one’s bleeding,” said the orderly on my chest.

  “I’m sure it’s not anything,” she began. Glancing down at herself, she saw a bloody crescent stained her white uniform. She stumbled backwards, falling onto her rolling chair, and gingerly ran one hand down her chest, checking for wounds.

  I felt a weight lift from my ankles. An orderly approached her. “Maybe one of us could help you with that?”

  She looked up with a snarl. “Get away from me, you animal!”

  Before he could answer, she was out of her chair and rushing toward the lavatory.

  “All I meant was—”

  “Yeah, right, we know what you meant,” laughed the man sitting on my chest. “But what do we do now? This guy’s bleeding bad.”

  Hubie rolled off of Simpkins and levered himself to his feet. “I’ll get Doc. You know the rules, no calling for an ambulance without permission.”

  “And what am I supposed to do?”

  “Find the first-aid kit. He’s not going anywhere. Put a tourniquet on that arm. You know your first aid.”

  “All right,” he said, grunting heavily, as if he were the one pinned to the floor.