Tony Burgess - Pontypool Changes Everything

The doctor comes back.

“Do you drink?”

You smile. Well, isn’t it a shame?

“I notice you have track marks on your arms.”

You make a face like Buster Keaton, tilting your jaw. Yes, the problem is huge, altogether too far gone, I think.

“I’ve been talking to another physician and he’s calling a detox for you now.”

You look up. No, you don’t have to do that for me, but thank you so very much. Do you think it will help? Doctor? You can tell she likes you, which is such a strong feeling that you are already looking forward to saying goodbye. A man appears in the door and they look at each other. A sweet history of desire links them and you believe, as you watch them, you see her panties tugging upward and the jelly mould of his cock melting down his leg. You believe that they are becoming linked through you.

“Uh… I contacted a detox and, well, you’ve been banned from there for thirty days.”

The female doctor drags four spears of black hair from her forehead with the plaster-speckled back of her hand.

“Well, there’s more than one detox in the city.”

You think they will take you home.

“Yeah, I know doctor, I’ve tried a few actually, and there’s a…” He nods to you, too late to say serious things, it’s time to load the bier. “There’s a province-wide ban on the fella.”

The doctor looks at you. The worse you are, the more you matter to her. She would do anything not to insult you now. Now that you are what these two have always shared, the patient still living who will be lost. She pauses dramatically over the wounds on your face, and you turn your head slightly, so the light catches the medical rainbow that bends across your left cheek.

“I can’t believe that. What are we supposed to do with him?”

With him, you think. She didn’t say for him. You feel a light whip turn over inside your arm. We all love each other, that is obvious now.

The emergency ward has wide windows that slide open at the prompting of ocean air, warm air that moves in across the sunlit desk. There is a white grit of beach sand on the floor emptied out from the sneakers of hundreds of children who pass the same foot wound back and forth around a giant log in English Bay. You are standing halfway to the sliding door, with a white cast and dark smelling clothes. She is upset, standing behind the desk. She looks to him, we can’t just let him go.

He looks back. We have to. We can’t kill him. He looks to you. I wish we could, but we can’t.

Then they smile. We have to learn how to say goodbye now. You smile back, not so confused by the pitch of emotion as they are. You are, after all, the one who is going to die, the one they’ll think about.

As you leave through the doors you look over your shoulder and see them hook arms; the wave they share to you says: No one has mattered until you, thank you. They have an enthusiasm about where you’re going that you know will take you there.

You decide that you have enjoyed saying goodbye so much that you will spend the rest of the day looking for people to say goodbye to. You make your way to the social services office.

You tell them that you are leaving the province. There are two women behind desks who are visibly relieved.

“Oh, I think that’s a wonderful idea.”

The other, more serious, looks up above her glasses.

“You would die here soon, you know. That’s what happens, I’ve seen it. Good for you. You should go.”

“Yes, yes, congratulations. I think you’ve finally come to something.”

It’s all they can do to remain at their desks and not come around and kiss you. You lift your cast and wiggle your fingers. They return the wave, nodding to your cast. It hangs now from a rear-view mirror. You include everything in the enthusiasm that you feel.

You have trouble finding more people to say goodbye to, and as the afternoon tips toward the end of office hours your Valium stay is starting to come loose. Buildings close in, much like you’d imagine, and you start to react fearfully to the people around you.

Soon you’re in a small parking lot between two cars fighting with two guys. They seem to think the key to the struggle is to pin your elbows together. You remember clearly piping in a voice to throw them off: A calmer head prevails, and, sirs, it is the same head that bites you.

You say in a universally appealing voice: “I can see a straitjacket working rather well in this type of situation.”

It is the first clear sentence that you’ve spoken aloud in weeks. One of the men raises his hand and grunts. He hates you. You grunt back. You’re not saying goodbye to these fuckers. As far as these things go, you’ll just stick to formula and soon you’ll be unconscious. Put there either by the blows they deliver or by violently ducking from hands that reach down to help you.

The next day you are a psychiatric patient at St. Joseph’s Hospital. They start you almost immediately on a diet of Lithium, Amitriptiline and Ativan, with a methadone taper. Fine, you think. You know exactly how long it will be before these drugs change your circuitry. Fine. A long way off. You spend the day sitting on the brand new couch in a tiny smoking room. Floating across the carpet at your feet, like an immense cat, is H/ellen.

H/ellen is about sixty, with long grey hair, and she is pulling at the hem of a light linen smock that is too short. She lies on her side, and you think she must weigh about three hundred pounds. She has the expression of an eight year old in trouble. Around her swollen hand on the carpet lie cigarette spokes. Twelve of them, browned at the tips, but unsmoked, they fan out from her splayed fingers.

“Gotta smoke?”

You flip H/ellen a cigarette. In ten minutes you flip her another, this time watching what she does with it. She puts it in her mouth and reaches down to a pack of matches folded into her sleeve. The heads of the matches are bent up like a fleeing mob and she twists off a stick to strike it. She manages this, rolling onto her back, and she takes the flare before it becomes orange and extinguishes it in the tip of the cigarette. She rolls back onto her side and smiles at you brattishly and asks for another cigarette. You give it to her. You think she confuses lighting cigarettes with putting them out. You think that’s it. You lay your pack open on the floor beside her, and she leaves it alone. Instead, she asks you for a cigarette every five minutes, without taking one. Soon she lies on her belly, drawing her hem midway up her back, rocking the giant white cheeks of her ass in the sun. She looks up at you, flirting and smiling. You return her looks and nudge the pack with your toe, closer to her. She laughs. You’ve surprised her somehow.

And then she says: “And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.”

“What is that?”

H/ellen knocks a cigarette out of the pack.

“Walt Whitman, part-time carpenter.”

You sit up on the edge of the couch, looking down at her face. You don’t know what else to ask. She looks up and licks the air between you.

“Ahhh. There you are. I’ve been looking for you, young man.”

A doctor is standing at H/ellen’s feet.

“Pull down your dress H/ellen. Do you think we all want to see you?”

The doctor pats you on the shoulder and stretches an arm leading to his office down the hall. You follow. As you approach his office you can tell that something is making him uncomfortable. Something is bothering him. You sit in his office and he flips open a file. You can tell he’s not reading it.

“So, so, so.” How twitchy this man is. You see a lot of doctors and you’ve begun to wonder: What on earth do they have in common?