Oh south dallas va hospital red brick buildings blocks long and blocks wide with many wings, where the war-broken men wheel up and down the high-waxed grey-tiled corridors without legs without arms without eyes sometimes, hundreds of would-have-been-beautiful-well-made-men come to the hospital from that place called WAR: off-limits to women except those whose homes have been chosen in some male poker game parlor pentagon as a good War Zone. So the women who come to the va hospital are rarely there on their own account, but come instead with their husbands and lovers and brothers, the men leaning against the women with canes, holding the women’s hands, the women wheeling the chairs, the women writing out papers for them, just like me coming with my brother okie because his appointment slips come stamped in red TO BE ACCOMPANIED BY A FAMILY MEMBER, the two of us in the van he drove down from oklahoma pulling into the parking lot.
Now I’ve visited okie in the brig before, I’ve visited okie in the psychiatric wards, and I’ve visited okie in the oklahoma jail, and I’ve talked to the lawyers and jail wardens and policemen and psychiatric boards and judges. So I’m only a little bit nervous about talking to this va psychiatrist about okie’s va check which hasn’t been coming for the right amount of disability since he got out of jail.
Okie kills the engine, I stare out the passenger side window at this mausoleum/museum for the relics of war the junkyard of the war machine, six stories of hospital walls, drink down the last of my winchell’s donuts coffee like a final fortification a little caffeine vigor for my knock at the hospital door: oh excuse me Mr. Doctor, Mr. Bandaids-For-The-Millions-While-Top-Brass-Plan-The-Bombs-And-Clean-Their-Fingernails, I hate to bring it up but my brother here still has something coming from when he worked for you and I’ve come to help him collect what’s still due.
Okie is already out the door. He is standing by the van pulling his harley shirt over his head. He wads it up, throws it into the back of the van on the mattress where he’s been sleeping since he got out of jail five months ago. He shuffles through the tools cardboard junk food beer can slush behind my seat, pulls out a faded yellow pullover, dirty with oil but it doesn’t say harley.
The doctor might give me a hard time if I don’t change, he says. Doctors, he says while we’re walking up the front walk, think you’re weird if you ride a motorcycle. They see all kinds of things in it. They think you have a death wish.
Like women and horses, I say for the sake of saying, doctors think women who like horses go for big studs.
I don’t see why they don’t think the same thing about cars, he says. More people are killed on cars than they are on motorcycles.
Doctors like to see symbols I say like I’m the one to explain all social phenomena to him in generalizations. We are walking in the lobby where men are lounging in robes smoking cigarettes, talking with children who aren’t allowed upstairs. There is a maze of corridors, signs and arrows to labs and offices, waiting rooms, blood units, x-ray wards, pharmacies, long lines of men in front of windows, rooms full of men waiting to hear certain numbers called. We find room one-fourteen, the magic entry number of okie’s appointment slip, where a nurse tells us to wait in the hall. Men are lined up on both sides leaning against the walls, so we find a little space and join them. A blond long-hair is on okie’s other side, offers him a match for a cigarette. I don’t listen to what he is saying until I hear okie tell him something about thorazine. Then I hear them say some other drug names, and okie names some symptoms: dry mouth, dizziness, can’t read, can’t think, can’t stand up, the long-hair in agreement. So I understand that he’s come to get a change in his prescription and is shopping around for a better drug.
The doors at the end of the corridor swing open and three men appear, two with nurse smocks on either side of a small black-haired man, nervous pretty rosita-kind-of-woman trailing behind. They are almost to where we are standing, the black-haired man no more than two feet away from me, the nurse-man on my side even closer, and I am looking in the black-haired man’s face like everyone does in this hospital, wondering what his problem is when there are no arms or legs or other parts of the body missing, him looking straight ahead like he doesn’t see anyone, when his eyes widen just a little bit, like a realization of where he is has just struck him, and his body falls back like he has just been hit by a two by four, jerking back and out of the nurse-men’s arms, the back of his head thudding against the floor, his legs rigid, locked back at the knees. His rosita-woman goes down on her knees to help him, but the nurse-men push her out of the way. Then the man’s legs begin kicking out, trying to kick the legs of the nurse-men away from him, his arms flailing. I can’t see his face for the nurse-men’s backs who are leaning over him, their own elbows pushing around. Another nurse-man appears, all three of them leaning over the man I can’t see, except for his legs and feet which are pushing up and down along the gray floor tiles trying to push themselves backward, back up the corridor the way they came in. A few long seconds of flailing and pushing and grunting, me flat against the wall watching the feet kicking in black polished shoes so close to my own. Then the nurse-men come up again with him in the middle, his mouth closed, his face as calm and impenetrable as when he first came in. They walk past me and okie, each nurse-man now with two arms around each of the black-haired man’s, and they’re about three paces past when his body goes stiff and lunges back again, his head flung back so hard that I can see his entire face upside down, his legs pedaling against the floor. The nurse-men don’t lose their grip this time though. They follow him down, roll him onto his chest, pin one of his arms back, hold his head down. A security guard appears and then another one comes and equipment comes — a strait-jacket and a wheel-chair — and pretty soon the black-haired man is sitting in the wheelchair wearing the strait-jacket and the last few feet of the corridor are finally traveled, him wheeled through the set of doors at the end surrounded by guards, the rosita-woman crying, walking by herself two or three steps behind them, no one paying any attention to her, no one saying anything to her during the whole little drama, until she gets to the set of doors herself when one of the security guards turns to her finally and tells her to wait in the hall.
The men along the walls shift. Someone laughs a little, and I am thinking why was he so scared, there aren’t any operating rooms in there or labs, there are only office spaces for the doctors. And I say to okie, well, that guy sure didn’t want to see the doctor, trying to get okie to tell me what it was that the black-haired man must have suddenly thought about. But okie says oh, he was just a trouble-maker, no tolerance in his voice for the man who hasn’t learned yet what okie has learned, that trouble makes for trouble and the man who kicks in the va hospital gets his head kicked in.
So we lean against the wall, okie smokes cigarettes, I go out and bring coffee in, I buy a newspaper and read it, okie buys a hershey bar, goes to the bathroom, I go to the bathroom, I pick up the newspaper again and read the classifieds, finally when time has become meaningless a number is called and it is okie’s and we go into a room where dr. merkle is waiting.
Are you his sister? dr. merkle asks. Dr. merkle is not a man; she is a woman about my age with frizzed up hair like mine who doesn’t know War anymore than I do except what we read in books and get from the brother/news. I say yes and smile and sit down. Okie starts looking at the floor and swinging his head. When he looks at her, he looks at her sideways, and when she asks him questions, he waits too long to say anything.
Is he always like this? She makes a little face at me.
I wait too long to answer, too, and she goes back to him, ticking off the questions fast, like already in just this one day, she has asked them lots of times.
Have you ever heard voices that no one else around you was hearing? He shakes his head no. I wonder about the devil in los angeles, why okie isn’t telling her about the devil talk like he told me once and like I know he has told other psychiatrists because it is in the copy of his file our father keeps and has shown me. And I am thinking maybe okie should tell her about that one, or maybe I should remind him. But then when the devil came maybe there was no one else in the room to hear or not to hear, so maybe that’s why okie doesn’t think it is the answer to what she is asking. But before I can really think it out, dr. merkle goes on to the next question.
Have you ever felt that someone was controlling your thoughts?
I know, okie says after waiting for a while, studying his shoes, that someone is.
How do they do it?
No reply.
Do they do it to everybody or just to you?
Everybody. Well. He thinks it over. Everybody but mostly me.
Is it a person who is in control?
Okie is frowning. He is concentrating on the floor between his boots. She is looking at the same file our father has, I am following the scenario. It says okie has been told to do certain things by a voice from the moon, and I am sure dr. merkle is reading this and wanting to hear him say it all over again. I can see he isn’t going to say that this time, he is shaking his head and looking distracted, staring at the floor.
Dr. merkle has run out of time on that question anyway.
Are you receiving any medication?
I was but I’m not taking it.
She puts down her file and taps her pencil on the desk. And why not? Don’t you want to get well?
I heard on the television it wasn’t any good.
Who told you that?
People.
What did they say?
They said that medicine like I was taking will fuck you up.
They’re lying then, mr. allys. What were you taking?
Thorazine.
Thorazine is a wonderful drug for mood control.
Valium.
Valium is the best anti-depressant we have. She tosses her head a little. Unless the patients abuse it. She squints at okie. So why did you want to come in today?
He doesn’t say anything. I clear my throat. He wants to see about his va check. He hasn’t been getting it at one hundred percent evaluation. A paper came that said he wasn’t evaluated at one hundred percent anymore, and there hadn’t been any physical re-evaluation. So we wrote and got a slip back saying he should come in.
Oh well, she says. I can see he’s a hundred percent. She taps the file. Everyone here has rated him a hundred percent. I’ll certainly say a hundred percent. She has a pad of notepaper with the name of a drug across the top: HALDOL in large blue letters. She writes an address on it and hands it to me. Just write the adjudication officer about that. He’ll find out what’s wrong.
So mr. allys. She leans hack in her chair. Is there any special problem that’s bothering you right now?
Okie’s shoulders bunch up and he looks up at me. I suddenly feel heavy, woozy with weight. I nod my head a little. I think you should tell her, I say without any sound. He looks over at her for the first time. She is looking down at her clipboard.
Have you gotten anything from oklahoma city? he asks.
She starts leafing through the file, shaking her head, No. Waco, waco, san diego, dallas, no nothing here.
I think, I finally say, he’s wondering about an incident that happened in oklahoma that the va psychiatrists up there asked him about.
Okie is leaning toward me, hanging on the edge of his chair like he is trying to get me to say what he can’t say, and his need is so hot and close to the surface that it is burning everything in my mind away, my suspicions and fear and anger at the va hospital at the navy at the world the way it is gone for an instant, and I am only thinking here is a doctor, okie, like the word itself will make him well a doctor a doctor a doctor tell her that the thorazine and valium and hospital visits aren’t working, tell her that you killed a man, and it wasn’t in vietnam, either, it was in oklahoma, and it happened just five months ago.
Okie’s mouth hangs open like he needs more air.
Well don’t worry, she says, flipping the file shut because that was that. The last question. If you were admitted to the hospital in oklahoma we’ll be getting the papers soon. It always takes a little while.
She stands up, signaling it is time for us to stand up, too.
I’m recommending you come in, mr. allys. It shouldn’t take more than a couple of days. I’m not one for keeping a man in the hospital anymore than he needs to be. But we need to match the drugs you are taking to your individual biology. On an out-patient basis that could take months. In a hospital only a couple of days. She is walking us to the door. Thank you for coming, mrs. taylor. You tell him he needs to come in.
My face is burning. She is showing us out. Okie is in front of me, already through the door. I try to tell her all right, I’ll tell him, but I am choking, I can’t talk. My fist, I am thinking, should go through this door. I am nodding at her and then I am in the hallway, walking down the hall on the high polished linoleum tile. Wait, wait, I am thinking and I stop. I’ve got to stop it. I need to go back and shake her. I need to shake her very hard and tell her something, tell her to listen! Tell her she’s just not listening! Okie is walking down the hall. I am stopped. Her door is still open. He is going to lab. He looks back and waves me to come on. We walk on down the hall and I sit down on a chair, the fact that we got what we came for — one hundred percent — completely forgotten, while okie swims in the sea of disabled men and disappears by himself through a door.
This story appears in Pat Ellis Taylor’s new book, Afoot in a Field of Men and Other Stories from Dallas East Side (Slough Press, P.O. Box 1385, Austin, Texas 78767). © Copyright 1983 by Pat Ellis Taylor
We’ve published several of Pat’s stories before, including, “News from El Corizon” (Issue 88), “Sermon on the Rat” (Issue 82), “A Neighbor at the Door” (Issue 72), and “Birdseye” (Issue 69). These stories all appear in the book, the winner of the 1983 Austin Book Award; if you like Pat’s work in THE SUN — and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t — this is a book worth having.
— Ed.
