Thrown Away

The hallways are long and endless. They are constructions of gray emptiness with polished, white linoleum floors that gleam like teeth. Strangled, yellow light glows in a pale radiance from artfully recessed fixtures in the ceiling. This light fills the hall in an imitation sunlight that illuminates every crevasse and crack, but still manages to look gray and dim. The walls are plastered with faded and peeling wallpaper, where painted flowers with a decidedly Victorian air, stiffly beautiful and proper, are arranged in neat and tidy rows of mechanistic beauty. Long, wooden bars, held tight by the stained, brassy claws of some city-bound architects dream bird, line the walls. The wood of these rails is stained and ugly with the ancient sweat of the nervous residents.

One of them is here now.

A battered manikin, tottering forward on legs of quivering fragility, is slowly making its unsteady way down the hall. It leans against the wall as it goes, pressing close so as to put as much weight as possible on the rail. Pale, doughy flesh hangs from this manikin like melting wax. The crooked mouth dangles open, a long drooling fragment of saliva dribbling into life at a sunken chin. The manikins left arm is dead at its side, the muscles having long since turned traitor, twisted by old illnesses into a grasping claw of immobile gristle. The other arm slides along the rail, knobby and swollen fingers clutching weakly at its slick surface.

About this manikin's frame, a loose gown of cheap cotton hangs, fitting it like some musty sheet thrown with idle indifference over a piece of broken furniture. The backside is open, straps undone, and one scrawny buttock, freckled with brown spots, protrudes. Suspended from a piece of metal hooked on to the wide collar of this ill-fitting suit, is a small rectangle of gleaming plastic. Within this plastic shell a badly cut rectangle of paper is encased. Upon the paper is pasted a photograph of the manikin it decorates. In faded black and white, the appearance is the same, save that some kindly photographer has shut the continually open mouth and the eyes are loosely focused ahead, instead of rolling back and forth in a confused daze.

Scrawled net to the photograph, in badly managed felt-tip, is written the following message, in bold, though sprawling, block style:

HI! My name is Alfred!

And beside this apparently gleeful statement, a small happy face has been drawn. But there wasn't enough room for the artists rendering, so the face is cramped and pinched, the eyes nearly touching and the smile a twisted grimace.

As Alfred struggled on, the exuded drool from his open mouth falls upon the placard, blurring the face beneath it into an unidentifiable smear of monochrome. Alfred was beyond caring. The whole of his mind, what frayed remnants were left of it, were focused on the rail. His breath came in harsh, shuddering gasps. He had no idea where he was going, just a vague, yet powerful, feeling that he should get there. He just struggled, like a weed in a railroad track, towards his goal.

It was Nurse Jamieson who found him, some twenty minutes later. She clicked her tongue disapprovingly when she saw him struggling feebly along the hallway. He looked like a trodden-upon crab trying to yank itself back to the comforting embrace of some unreachable ocean. She stopped and set her arms akimbo on her massive frame in the eternal gesture of parental disapproval. Her tiny eyes blinking rapidly in irritation behind the tightly clutching black-frame glasses.

Alfred flinched and turned away at the sound of the clicking. It was the sound of authority and of capture. He pressed his face against the wall, and began the grunting chant which was his only communication. What murmured excuses and pleadings may have been buried beneath his drooping lips Nurse Jamieson neither knew nor cared. She strode forth purposefully, trim white shoes squeaking importantly on the linoleum. She fixed a rigid smile upon her face of empty plastic and grasped Alfred by the shoulder.

"Now, now Alfred.", she said cajolingly, words slipping effortlessly from the rigid smile with out disturbing it one bit, " You know you're not supposed to go wandering around by yourself, and especially not without your wheelchair!"

As she spoke these automatic words, her eyes scanned his hands and feet carefully, searching for the slightest cut or abrasion. If the old fool had damaged himself she would be getting another bawling out from her supervisor, and it would have been the third succession she would have gotten for this silly old fart who seemed so unable to stay where he was put! While she thus considered him, Alfred continued to mumble in apologetic tones to the wall, which paid about as much attention as Nurse Jamieson."

Her brief examination complete, Nurse Jamieson took a better grip on Alfred and gently pried him away from the rail. A moment of resistance came when Alfred's scrabbling hand clutched at the bar, but the steady pressure of Nurse Jamieson's gravity pulled the hand loose from its grip. He clutched feebly at the empty air in a futile effort to stop the determined progress of his guide.

"Now let me just help you back to your room", she said, her smile of gleaming bright teeth getting larger at the slight strain of nearly hefting the old man off his feet. She began pulling him back down the hall, moving towards a nearby opening in the gray wall and into the darkness beyond. Alfred feebly grasped at the doorjambs as he was pulled through the doorway, his mumbling rising into a series of muttered grunts as he set his feet against the relentless iceberg which was hauling him away. But his feet turned in their sockets, for the muscles in his ankles had become atrophied by disuse. The feeble grasp of the old man clung weakly at the door frame as he lost his balance and was immediately gathered up into the doughy embrace of Nurse Jamieson. She hefted him up in her arms in a full carry position. And then they both disappeared into the doorway, Alfred's hooting grunts of despair fading into the darkness beyond.

Now Alfred lies quiet in his bed. The nurse has strapped him in once again. She muttered to him in a voice he could barely hear, and then disappeared, and thus was completely forgotten in the space of a few seconds. Alfred's right eye, the left having long since disappeared under a snow blanket of cataracts, darts in confused fascination about the room. He takes in the small number of furnishings again and again as he tries to draw some meaning from the images with which they present him. There in the corner an old and massive desk. It is covered with gray dust and the gray-yellow blotches of the occasional food stain. He doesn't remember sitting behind that very desk for twenty years, directing his half of the partnership of the Lewis and Gibbon Insurance Agency. Doesn't remember the power he yielded from it and the deals for millions he signed and closed there. The drawers, once filled with backlogs uncounted of unfinished insurance forms and the bureaucratic nonsense needed to run a major company, now hold the freshly cleaned linens for his bed, (he needs a number of these, for Alfred tends to wet the sheets at least once a day, much to the irritation of Nurse Jamieson). But all this desk means to him now is a confusing lump of brown wood where he takes his meals.

His eye wanders again, taking in a rickety table, a series of yellowing photographs in K-Mart picture frames, a small empty bookcase, (all the books have long since been stolen, save for the King James Bible which props up the short leg of the table), and a chair which has never been graced with the presence of visiting friend or family. Then his eye wanders back to the desk, to start the cycle all over again. It is his only entertainment, his only game, and he plays it well.

Alfred's mind is frozen forever, by the ravages of old age and disease, in a moment of perpetual indecision. Everything he looks at he almost recognizes. The mental connection floats just out of reach: the brown lump (desk), the yellow planes, (walls), and the white obstructions (nurses), are all things he knows but cannot recognize, their names floating idiotically back and forth just beyond his reach. His sense of touch is too covered over by the scars of his infirmities to be able to feel anything, his nose too full of decay and snot to smell anything, and his ears too full of cotton to hear anything but inflections. All he has is one good eye, and what it shows him he is incapable of understanding.

Eventually, his mind grows tired of the game, and he feels the urge to move, to get up and find something. He doesn't know what, but he senses if he finds it, everything will be all right, everything will start to make sense again. But he can't move, his progress is blocked. He feebly heaves and pushes for awhile, his one good arm feebly trying to pull him to a sitting position so he can put his feet on the floor. But he finally gives it up and lies back down. His eye flits downward and takes in the silver buckle at his waist. He looks at it for some time and then tries to get back up again, feebly yanking at the bar until he falls back exhausted. Then he looks at the buckle again. Pokes at it with fingers, pulls at it, pushes it, and moves it back and forth.

He can keep this up for hours, his mind totally engrossed by the seemingly, infinite complexity of the silver buckle. Sometimes nothing he can do gets it loose, and he falls asleep, his hand cradled loosely around it. And sometimes the white obstruction comes in and take his hand away from the buckle, sliding it under his own buttock where he cannot muster the strength to pull it free. But other times, like now, it seems the buckle gets tired of the game and falls away from him. The game suddenly won, Alfred lies still for several moments, and then levers himself up to a sitting position.

He then turns his attentions to the latch on the bed-gate, a refreshingly easy challenge compared to the infinite complexities of the strap, and just after a half-hour of fumbling he manages to work the cold metal latch free, and the bed gate swings slowly open, the rusting hinges groaning as it does so. Alfred now turns feebly over onto his side and works his feet around to where he can lower them off the side of the bed. He clutches with his good hand at the other side of the bed-fence and pinwheels his feet frantically for several seconds before gravity slowly overcomes his resistance and brings his feet to the floor. Firmly based, Alfred pushes himself up and out of bed, turns toward the distant rectangle of light, and begins to feebly hobble towards it. He must get there in time or it will be too late, he must hurry or they'll all leave! And as these pale images of actual thought crawl through the collapsed tunnels of his mind, he makes his way slowly to the door.

The light of the outside hallway glows in the door frame, making a shining portal of radiance appear in the old man's eye. What lies beyond it, he cannot tell, he has forgotten, but in his journeys each stage is the culmination of his travels. For now the portal will do, it gleams brightly before him, beckoning, seeming to promise of a return of mind and purpose. Alfred hobbles on quickly, muttered groans of anxiety bubbling up from his ruined throat. Soon, soon, soon!

And then the light goes out. Alfred stops confused as the portal of light is suddenly filled with the great shadowy presence of the Nurse, and the clicking sound of disapproval rattles its way across his consciousness.

For a moment he stands trapped, a deer mesmerized by the killing glow of a flashlight. And then he begins to mutter again, but not the old apologetic murmuring but quick grunts of anger and irritation. He waves his good hand angrily back and forth in the air before him, (the fingers far too weak to make a weapon of it), and glares with his one good eye. He was so close! Something, not a thought, but a brief flash of resurgent instinct flashed through the clogged pipes of his mind and he surged forward, his feet tottering him forward in a rush that was half-limp and half-fall. He raised his hand feebly up as he did so, fingers half curled in the best fist his arthritis twisted fingers could make. Nurse Jamieson reached out and, as before, hefted him up into her massive arms.

"Now, now Alfred, " Nurse Jamieson pronounces in the stern voice of disapproval all parents know, "There's really no reason for you to carry on like this." She makes her way across the small room with slightly strained steps, the old man is light for his size, but its still no easy effort. "I really think..." and at this point her narration of thoughts was interrupted, for the weakly flailing arm of her charge had flung itself up at her face, knocking free the tiny black glasses which perched there. She gave a breathy gasp as the glasses flew free and the bent paper clip, which replaced a missing screw, tore a shallow gash into her ponderous forehead. She abruptly dropped Alfred, and he gave a feeble scream as he plummeted down the side of her bulk and into the stiff embrace of his tiny bed, the old, metal creaking alarmingly as he thumped down.

The glasses flew away from Nurse Jamieson's bulk, and broke into shivered fragments upon the imitation oak flooring, bits and pieces of glass and plastic scurrying like frightened mice into every corner of the tiny room.

"You miserable little shit!", she gasped as she groped at her face and felt the liquid blood running freely down her fat-swollen cheeks. She backed away form the bed, where Alfred lay gasping like a landed fish, and tottered backward in stuttering steps. Her legs, temporarily forgotten by their mistress, stumbled as they desperately tried to regain balance. She rocked back and forth for a few seconds, suspended on the edge of avalanche, before finally crashing down upon the floor, seeming to shake the building in its foundations as she did so. On the wall, a graying yellow picture of a woman Alfred had long since lost the ability to remember, fell down with a bang, the glass shattering as it hit the floor. .

Alfred, still unaware of what had happened, lay gasping on the bed, badly shaken by his short fall down the mountainside. His wandering mind searched for memories and thoughts to grab hold of, in order to establish order in the chaos. But Alfred has been unable to function that well for some time, and he is left with nothing but fear and trembling instinct. He writhes on the bed, moaning piteously at his state of affairs. His mind too far gone to decide upon any course of action other that herd-animal panic.

Alfred hears motion to his left, and with whatever vestige remains of his mind he moves away from that sound, his hand grasping at the steel bar barring his progress, he pulls and strains on the bars, but his efforts are useless. This gate is not jointed for movement like on the other side. Suddenly a great force drops down upon his shoulder. A thousand half-memories of nightmare come plunging back into his enfeebled mind and he howls dismally in his murmuring tongue. It has come, he screams in nonsense, the darkness, the shadow, Satan himself! Help me! God, please!

But the force on his shoulder is unbroken, either by waking or the beneficent hand of God. Instead it yanks him onto his back, thrusting him down against the rumpled covers, the cheap plastic of his wrapped pillow crinkling in a hemisphere around his bony skull.

And he looks up with his one good eye into the face of Nurse Jamieson. And Alfred begins to scream. Her teeth are clenched and the lips pulled back in a grimace of animal hate. Her usually shiny teeth are obscured in a filmy haze by the blood coursing down her face from the pulped remains of her nose. The eyes above the shattered remains of this once sizable protuberance are white with rage and empty of any thought. She brings up one great boulder of fist in which three little pieces of transparent plastic sprout bloodily from her knuckles.

Blood drips down in Alfred's face and the one eye not obscured into dull white by cataracts, gapes wide in shock as the great hand plunges down and slaps him, slamming his head sideways into the pillow.

"You miserable old farting filth!", Nurse Jamieson cries, and hauls back her bleeding hand and raises it high to give the old bastard another slap and another, until the fact drives home finally that she is in charge here! She is the one who makes the decisions for this doddering old fool who can't even keep himself from drooling like some half-brained monkey! He has always been trouble, she thinks somewhere in the back of her rage clouded mind, he's always been trouble. Crawling out of his bed at all hours, always finding a way to loose himself from the restraining straps, always finding away to loosen the locks she placed upon the bed rail's gate. He was always thwarting her!

Alfred painfully groans as the second slap rocks him. His eyes fill with rheumy tears and snot begins to run freely from his nose as he begins to cry. His one good eye wanders and crawls in its socket, desperately seeking some explanation for what is happening, but if it sees anything that could be processed, the mind beyond that eye is certainly incapable of thinking it through.

"Miserable little....", at this point Nurse Jamieson's tirade of curses was cut off by a flurry of arms and hands suddenly grasping at her massive frame. Two sets of hands dart up to capture her raised arm. She stands there motionless for a second, straining slightly with her arm against the hands holding it so that she might once again slap the selfish old bastard, when her eyes suddenly widen in comprehension. Her mouth looses its bestial snarl and drops open in stupid surprise. It is with that same look of dumfounded amazement that she is yanked away from Alfred's view, arm still upraised and fingers dangling limply in the air.

Alfred lies there, still gasping for breath, and around him he senses more of the white clothed figures dashing madly back and forth. But the vagueness has eaten him alive now. He sees them, but cannot recognize them as anything but shifting shades of gray. Everything is a variation of gray. Even when the darkness of the room suddenly becomes the light of the beckoning portal, all the colors are gray. And then they become black.