It's Kind of a Funny Story

I flip it open—two new voice mails, who are they?—and hold END. Bye-bye, little phone.

“Now, this is very important; do you have anything sharp on your person?”

“My keys?”

“Same as the phone. We keep those.”

I plop them in a heap on the table; Monica sweeps them into a tray like an airport security worker.

“Wonderful—do you have anything else you can think of?”

Monica, I’m down to my wallet and the clothes on my back. I shake my head.

“Great, now hold on.” She gets up. “We’re going to have Bobby give you a tour.” Monica nods at me, keeps my charts, leaves me to review the papers, and goes into the hall. She returns a minute later with a gaunt, hollow man with big circles under his eyes and a nose that looks like it’s been broken in about three places. In contrast to floor policy, scruff lines his chin. He’s older but still has all his hair, a stately gray mop, combed half-heartedly. And he carries himself a little weird, leaning back as if he were on a headrest.

“Jesus, you’re a kid!” he says, curling his mouth. He reaches out a hand for me and his hand comes out sort of sideways, thumb crooked up.

“I’m Bobby,” he says.

His sweatshirt has Marvin the Martian on it and says WORLD DOMINATOR.

“Craig.” I stand up.

He nods, and his Adam’s apple, which has some extra gray whiskers on it, bobs. “You ready for the grand tour?”

twenty

Bobby leads me into the bright hall with his odd gait.

“Everybody’s in the dining room right now.” He gestures as we go down the sideways hall, the one that branches off of the one I entered. I look left—there’s the dining room, painted blue, overlooked by a television, full of circular tables, separated from the hall by that glass with the square wire mesh in it. Inside, the tables have been pushed aside, and a panoply of people sit in a loose circle.

I can’t even process them: they’re the motliest collection of people I’ve ever seen. An old man with a crazy beard (what happened to the shaving?) rocks back and forth; a gigantic black woman rests her chin on a cane; a burned-out-looking guy with long blond hair puts his hand through it; a stocky bald man with slitted eyes scratches his armpit and frowns; an older woman with glasses mimes what appears to be an eagle, talking, before turning and inspecting the back of her chair. The small man I saw in the hall twitches his leg. A girl with a streak of blue in her dark hair slumps over her chair like she’s obviously more messed up than the others; a big girl with a wan frown leans back and twiddles her thumbs; a black kid with wire-rim glasses sits perfectly still, and hey—there’s Jimmy from downstairs. He’s still got his stained shirt on, and he’s looking up at the lights. They must have processed him quick because he’s a return visitor.

You can tell who the meeting leader is: a thin woman with short dark hair. Out of a dozen or so people, she’s the only one in a suit. Some people aren’t even in their clothes, but in dark blue robes, loose and V-necked at the top.

“Hey, man,” Bobby says, pulling me down the hall. “If you’re really interested you can just sit in on the meeting.”

“No, I—”

“I’m doing the tour so I can get out.”

“Heh.”

“Now, smokes are at—wait, you don’t smoke, do you?”

“Uh . . . I smoke some things—”

“Cigarettes, I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Did they ask if you did?”

“No.”

“That’s probably because you’re underage. How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Jesus! Okay, well, smokes are after breakfast, after lunch, at three in the afternoon, after dinner, and before lights out. Five times a day.”

“All right.”

“Most people smoke. And if you had told them you smoked, they might have given you cigarettes.”

“Darn.” I chuckle.

“It’s one of the only hospitals left that lets you smoke.” Bobby points behind us. “The smoking lounge is in the other hall.”

We come across a third hall, perpendicular to the one we’re in. I see that Six North is shaped like an H: where you enter is at the bottom of the left leg; the nurses’ office is at the junction of the left leg and the center line; the dining room is at the junction of the center line and the right leg; and the rooms line the left and right legs. We’re passing them now, going toward the top right of the H: they’re simple doors with slots outside filled with slips of paper that say who’s living in them and who their doctor is. The patients are listed by their first names; the doctors by their last. I see Betty/Dr. Mahmoud, Peter/Dr. Mullens, Muqtada/Dr. Mahmoud.

“Where’s my room?”

“They probably don’t have it set up yet; they’ll have it after lunch for sure. Okay, so here’s the shower—” He points to the right, to a door with a pink sliding plastic block on it between the words VACANT and OCCUPIED.