Сэмуэль Шэм - Mount Misery

"What are the voices saying?" "ACCEPT REJECT WAIT LIST WAISTLINE!" "Like in the Harvard Admissions Office, right?" "AW GEE ACCEPT!"

"And then who calls? Your baby boy." Mary Megan twitched and stared. "Isn't it sad, Mary. To lose that little baby boy. It's not fair."

"N-not fair n-no," she said through gritted teeth. "Yes, it's like death. So sad," Malik said softly, sincerely. No one spoke. No one moved, not even Mary. For a moment we were still, like birds caught, still, in a pocket of wind. You could almost touch the stillness, as if it were alive. It's hard to put into words what Malik had actually done, because it seemed so obvious but it was in fact so magical.

Suddenly Mary Megan's eyes pumped out tears, big fat globules that her twitchy hands couldn't wipe away, and Malik took a fresh tissue out of his pocket and unfolded it and dabbed the tears away as best he could from her jerky cheeks and eyes. He put a Cogentin in her palm. She moved it toward her mouth but at the last second twitched and plastered it on her forehead, where it stuck in sweat, and its edges started to ooze. He picked it off and, timing it between tongue flicks, popped it into her mouth.

"I'm sorry, Mary," Hannah said, "really sorry." "We regret to inform you that your application for admission to HARVARD! Has been denied Dr. HANNAH Silver you FUCKING ASSHOLE!" She shuffled away.

"Congratulations, Hannah," Malik said, "your therapy with her has begun."

"I care for that lady so much! I'm in agony." "Good. People like Mary do good with young therapists who care in agony."

"But I have no idea what to do." "Forget 'do,' Hannah," Malik said. " 'Be.' " "Be what?" "Basch? Solini?"

"Human," Henry and I said. "Be human." "How?" she asked.

"Ever been in love?" Hannah nodded. "Ever lost the person you love?" Hannah said nothing, but her eyes teared up. "With Mary just now, when everything went quiet, dinchafeel it?" We looked at each other. All of us nodded. "There it is, kids," Malik said.

" 'Love'?" Hannah asked with a touch of skepticism. "Like us all. All this is, really, is a lesson in love." He smiled, and walked into the nursing station. We followed. He got a fresh carrot out of the fridge and started chomping contentedly. The ward secretary handed Malik a stack of pink

messages, saying that they were from insurance companies and he had to call them back right away or else the patients on the pink sheets of paper would be discharged. She left. He threw them into the garbage.

Picking up Mary Megan's chart, Hannah asked, "One more thing, Malik. Medical Records is bugging me for a diagnosis on Mary Megan."

Malik chewed his carrot, picked up Sports Illustrated, and said, "Yeah, yeah, put down whatever bullshit you want."

"That is really really cynical, Malik," Hannah said hotly.

"Oh yeah?" he shot back angrily. "Did they make a perfect diagnosis OH Ike White? Yop. Endogenous depression. Did they give Ike White perfect treatment? Yop. Industrial-strength drugs and world-expert psychoanalysis." His face red with rage, he was almost shouting. "And nobody got with that poor bastard's pain! Where's this lady's pain, Hannah? Fucking Ike couldn't get with it with her, now you're her therapist so you get a shot. Be there!" He breathed a few times. "We'll help. Pray that Placedon shit wears off."

"Oh God," Hannah said, staring at Mary shuffling. "It seems hopeless."

"Yeah, it may be the worst moment of her life. But think of your own worst moment. Go on, all of you. Think: What's the worst moment of my life?"

We did. Malik asked us to tell them. Mine was looking out the eighth-floor window of the House of God, seeing the body of my friend splattered on the parking lot below. Solini's was just last year when his best boyhood friend, a Sioux named Everett Chasinghawk, had run off with his wife. Hannah said hers was too terrible to tell.

"But if you think of your whole life, it's just a moment, right? And that worst moment, if someone's right there right then with you and there's a 'click,' is the moment you mover He seemed to crackle with energy, all electric and jazzy, and even though I was dead tired I caught some, crackling a little inside, like a spark in the ashes. "So listen up. We gotta start to discharge these patients, 'cause a lot of 'em'll get worse with Heiler. We gotta empty beds."

"Man, how do we empty beds?"

"We keep the drug fascists away and we throw the insurance into the garbage and we discharge like crazy."

"But we can't just throw people out," Hannah said, "without aftercare."

"The LAMBS!" he said, that tight, slender face crackling with happiness.

We asked what was the LAMBS.

"The Leonard A. Malik Buddy System. Listen up. The big problem in society is that there's no more community. Parents don't live where their kids live, neighbors aren't friends. Where are your closest buddies? At least three hundred miles away, right?" We thought, and we nodded. " 'Member when you were kids at camp, the buddy system where, when you went swimmin', you had a buddy and you raised your arms and counted off? Felt great, right? So why don't we keep doin' it when we grow up? Each patient gets a buddy." He handed out computer sheets. "I matched 'em up by where they live. Matched you up too." Solini and I were buddies. Hannah and Amie Bozer were buddies.

"Have you ever tried this out?" Hannah asked skeptically. "Yop, on my group for depressed men, and it works! These guys were diagnosed depressed, tanked up on drugs, and now they're not! They threw down their Prozacs! They're better- their shrinks hate me!" "Why, man?"

" 'Cause they're betterl No more drugs, no more therapy, no more money!"

"And you really think," Hannah asked, "that it'll work with borderlines?"

"Borderlines don't exist. Will it work? It's got to. Eacha you, start calling up your buddy on the phone every day."

"Sounds simplistic," Hannah said, "and unorthodox. Freud would never-"

"Hannah!" I said, excitedly.

"What?"

"You! You're looking me right in the eye!"

"Mary Megan Scorato needs a trial of meds," said a voice in the doorway.

"To cure her Tardive dyskinesia," said another, beside the first.

Errol and Win, in their long white lab coats.

"Zephyrill," Errol said. "It's experimental." He held up a lavender sheet of paper. "She's just signed her informed consent to be in our study."

Hannah shot to her feet, eyes blazing now, and screamed, "I will not give that poor woman any more drugs! Placedon made her crazy and gave her Tard-"

"Because you gave her a low dose," Win said. "I said high dose."

"High dose would've killed her!"

"Wrong. Principle of Paradoxical Effect: the higher the dose, the lower the effect"

"Quiet!" Malik cried out, and then, his voice filled with reverence, he asked, "Errol, did I hear you right? You've found a drug to cure Tardive?"

"May well have done," Errol Cabot said modestly. "Yes."

"Fantastic. Think of the millions of people who have it. Roy, Henry, Hannah, this may be a historic moment. If this is true, this is-don't let me jinx you here, Errol-this is Nobel Prize stuff, wouldn't you say?"

Errol's eyes seemed to film over, as if he were going into a trance. "Yes, yes," he said dreamily, "if my clinical trial works. And Mary is-"

"Perfect to try it on," Malik interrupted. "Cure her, Errol,

you're in."

"Zephyrill," Errol said dreamily. He took out a bottle of pills, handling it carefully. "Brand name for phenylisotonery-lamine. Brought 'em back from Zimbabwe. Only pills in the West. High-tech psy-"

"Great," Malik said. "Nurse Hall? Handle that baby with care. Lock 'er up with the narcotics, understand?" The nurse took the bottle, handling it as if it were plutonium. "I'll stick that consent form in her chart."