Philippe Djian - Betty Blue

She frowned at me and started for the door, but I got there first, blocking her way with my arm. She let out a cry-a petty little whine. I scooped up the pills dancing on the tray and shoved them under her nose.

“What is all this shit?” I asked.

I didn’t recognize my own voice-it was an octave lower, and very hoarse. It was all I could do to keep from grabbing her by the throat.

“I’m not the doctor!” she wailed. “Let me go!”

I burned my eyes into hers with all my might. She bit her lip. “No… you’re going to stay with her. I’ll go,” I growled.

Before I walked out, I turned and glanced at Betty. She had fallen over on her side.

I shot across the hall like a rocket and went into his office without knocking. He had his back to me, he was looking at an X ray in the daylight. When he heard the door slam, he spun around in his chair. He raised his eyebrows. I let out a laugh. I walked up to his desk and threw down the handful of drugs.

“What is all this?” I asked. “What are you giving her?”

I couldn’t tell if I was really trembling from head to foot or just imagining it. The doctor tried to be slick. He grabbed a huge pair of scissors that had been lying on his desk and played with them.

“Ah, young man,” he said. “I’ve been meaning to talk with you. Sit down.”

I was strangled by a sort of crazy rage. For me, the guy represented the source of all unhappiness, of all the world’s suffering. I’d unmasked the bastard, cornered him in his hole. He was out to ruin the zest for life. He wasn’t a doctor, he was a hideous mixture of every asshole on earth. Meeting somebody like that made you cry and laugh at the same time. Still, I controlled myself-I wanted to hear what he had to tell me; and anyway, there was no way out. I sat down. I had trouble bending my legs. Looking at the color of my hands, I knew that I must have been white as death. I must not have been too frightening to look at, though. He tried to intimidate me.

“Let’s make one thing clear,” he said. “You are neither her husband nor a member of her family. I therefore have no obligation to explain anything to you. I’m going to anyway, but because I choose to-not because I have to. Is this understood?”

You’re a millimeter from the goal line-don’t flinch, I told myself. Take this one last whipping. I nodded my head.

“Fine,” he said.

He opened one of his desk drawers and dropped the scissors into it, smiling. I swear, the clown thought he was completely invulnerable-either that, or God was on my side. He folded his hands in front of him and nodded his head for a good ten seconds before getting on with it.

“I won’t hide from you that her case is very worrisome,” he started. “Last night we had to strap her down-a horrible attack, really.”

I imagined a gang of them jumping on her, pinning her to the bed while they buckled the straps. It was a grade-Z horror film, and I was the only one in the audience. I lowered my head a little. I shoved my hands under my thighs. He started talking again, but someone had turned off the sound. I noted in the silence that everything was going downhill.

“… and it would be going out on a limb to say that one day she will completely regain her senses. No, we mustn’t hold out too much hope.”

This sentence, however, I heard loud and clear. It had a particular color to it-bronze, I’d say. It writhed like a rattlesnake. It squirmed right under my skin.

“We’ll look after her, though,” he went on. “You know, there have been some remarkable advances in chemistry. We still get fairly good results with electroshock treatment. And don’t listen to what they tell you about it-it’s perfectly safe.”

I bent forward to lean all my weight on my hands. I fixed my eyes between my feet, on a spot on the floor.

“I’m going to go get her,” I said. “I’m going to go get her and take her away with me.”

I heard him laugh.

“Look, young man, don’t be ridiculous. Maybe you haven’t completely understood. I’m telling you that the girl is insane, my friend. Strait-jacket insane.”

At this I coiled like a spring and hopped up onto his desk with both feet. Before he could make a move, I kicked him in the face. That’s when I noticed he wore dentures-they flew out of his mouth like flying fish. Thank you, God, I thought. He fell over backward in his chair, spitting up a small geyser of blood. The sound of breaking glass was his feet going through the windows of his bookcase. He started screaming. I jumped on top of him, pulling like a madman on his tie. I lifted him up. I got him in a figure-four grapevine hold, or something in the same family-rolling him over backward with his one hundred sixty pounds on my legs, then letting him loose just at the moment of takeoff. The wall shook.

I was barely back on my feet when three orderlies came in, single-file. The first one got an elbow in the kisser, the second one tackled me, and the third one sat on top of me-he was the fattest. He squeezed all the breath out of me and grabbed me by the hair. I squealed with rage. I saw the doctor getting back up on his feet, holding onto the wall. The first orderly bent over and drove his fist into my ear. I had a hot flash.

“I’m calling the cops,” he said. “They’ll put him away.”

The doctor sat down in a chair, a handkerchief over his mouth. He was missing one of his shoes, among other things.

“No,” he said. “Not the police. It’s bad for public relations. Throw him outside. And he’d better not try to set foot inside this hospital again!”

They picked me up. The one who wanted to call the cops slapped me across the face.

“You hear that?” he said.

My shoe found his nuts-I actually knocked him off his feet, which surprised everybody. I took advantage of the pause to get loose. I dove again at the doctor-I wanted to strangle him, obliterate him. He fell out of his chair, me on top of him.

The orderlies all came down on me. I heard the nurses screaming. Before I could push my fingers into the doctor’s throat, I felt myself being lifted by an incalculable number of hands and thrown out of the office. They bashed me a little going down the hall, but nothing too serious-they were all pretty embarrassed; in the end I suppose they didn’t really want to kill me.

We went through the lobby at a sprint. One of them had me in a hammerlock, another one had a handful of my hair, and an ear-this hurt most. They opened the doors and threw me down the steps.

“If we see you around here again, you’ve had it!” one of them shouted.

Those fuckers. They almost got me to cry. A tear fell onto the steps. It steamed like a drop of hydrochloric acid.

So I’d struck out. Moreover, I’d gotten myself banished from the hospital forever. The next few days were the worst of my life. I couldn’t go back and see her again, and my memory of what I’d seen was intolerable. All the zen I knew came to no good-I was overcome with despair. I suffered like the most foolish of fools. Without doubt, it was during this period that I did my best writing. Later I would be referred to as an “unsung stylist.” It wasn’t my fault that I wrote well and knew it, though. During this period I filled up half a notebook.

I probably would have written even more, but I couldn’t sit still during the day. I took many a shower, downed quantities of beer, miles of sausage, and paced hundreds of thousands of miles on the carpet. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I’d take a walk outside. I often found myself near the hospital. I knew better than to get too close-they once hit me with a beer can from fifty yards. Yes, they kept their eyes peeled. I stayed on the far side of the street and contented myself with looking at her window. Once in a while I’d see the curtain move.