Because I evinced an interest a few
of the younger doctors bought me a white
coat. It was quite a joke (there was even
some discussion of rubber instruments),
and I went along with it, often jamming
my hands into my pockets and dancing
around the room, humming “The Blue Danube.”
I enjoyed them: they were so much funnier
than the older ones with their monocles.
Usually, we stood around imitating
the more severely afflicted patients,
or just cracking jokes: “Take Napoleon.
Please.” I had a room with a river view—
it’s surprising what an honest appraisal
of one’s needs can avail—and my photos
of celebrities caught in compromising
positions (which I’d blown up to poster size)
became rather the rage. I acquired
a sort of cult following. They gave me
a nameplate and began to smuggle me
into the Staff Cafeteria—until
within a few years, the turnover rate
nearly as high as the one for suicide,
no one remained among the attendants
who remembered I’d once been a patient.
Eventually, I was given an office
and was formally welcomed to the staff.
No one was more surprised than I (which
distraction, along with the forged photostats
of my doctorate from Chicago, was taken
as the air of genius). I grew accustomed
to this respectful attitude. I became
quite a team player: I found I had a knack
for keeping everyone “loose.” Thus it was
I came to know my true calling: I
could see behind the fused mask of healing.
There were rooms leading into rooms. In each,
a child played with her toys, or dressed in his
mother’s clothes, or squinted along the barrel
of a toy rifle, dreaming of getting
a father in its sights… Amazing: it was
all true, what they said—yet they were
left in the ruins of their discoveries,
and no good came of them. At the staff dinners,
which I more and more often prepared,
the jokes about “a mother’s touch” became—
more accurately so—blurts of pain and fear,
unsurrounded by laughter. More than once,
after too much wine, I held someone’s head
to my breasts, stroking the damp hair…
But soon after I purchased the ham radio,
we all became buffs. So many stories,
out there, to be listened to—and perhaps