Psycho Babble

He can't move his arms, because the straps are gnawing at his wrists. His hands throb, not painfully; the straps chew greedily tighter like leather shrinking in the sun, chew at his bones until they slice through like cheese wire, and he can wave his arms, strange blunt-pointed things, in the air. His hands are left behind on the mattress, and he wants to play with them, bat them around like water balloons filled with thick slow mercury, but he can't; he can't pick them up, because he doesn't have his hands.

He struggles free of clouds to see the orderly's face bending over him, peering smirking into him. Are we awake? Going to be good? the face asks. Call my Uncle Mike, he says, but his mouth won't move. Call Frank, I'm not supposed to be here. I'll give you the number... But he's being rolled into the dayroom, given a bowl of food and a spoon to eat it with. He eats slowly, choking; his throat is dry. There's a phone. He has to use the phone. But before he can think of how to reach it, the needle punctures him and lets all the thinking out.

In his dreams Sonny comes to him, grinning. Don't worry about it, Vinnie boy. I never did. At least, not until the end...and he's grabbing for the transformer, his eyes wide with fear and shock and pain, and this time Vinnie almost reaches him in time, is clutching him as he clutches death, and the lightning dances shrieking through them both. He wakes, shaking. Shock, pitching through him. They're giving him shock. Or they're going to... Either way, it's the end. Can't go through electroshock and be a field agent, he can just imagine Beckstead's response to that one. It's daylight, so he shouts for a nurse, pounding a weak fist against the bed. Are they giving me shock? Are they giving me shock?

Just calm down, Mr. Terranova. Let the doctors worry about that.

Don't let them give me shock.

Just calm down, Mr. Terranova. This will help.

And Sonny is in his dreams again, with a ridiculous pistol like the cap pistol he had when he was twelve, pressing it against his temple, and he thinks that's wrong, Sonny didn't shoot himself, but of course it isn't Sonny, it's himself, the gun is at his temple through his eye in his mouth and when it fires he swallows the bullet hot wet sticky. Frank I wish it was you.

He feels sick when he wakes up, nauseated; his head is spinning. But he can think again, although it's not easy; the drugs suck at the heels of his thoughts like mud. He's been committed to the psycho ward. There's been some horrible mistake.

Dr. Hasburgh has a face like a lemon, like a social worker peering at lice on a child's head. He says, you're acting hostile. He says, you aren't cooperating. He says, I think you should stay on the ward a while longer, let the drugs calm you down. He says, I think our time is up. Talking to him is like talking to oil; it's so hard even to focus on his face and he knows his voice is slurring, he can hear himself stammer, and he has to fight not to burst into tears, humiliated. They won't listen. They won't listen until he has nothing to say, and then they'll decide that he's well enough to listen to. But by then he'll be crazy.

He tries to go to sleep that night without the drugs, but they must have slipped them to him--in the food?--because he dreams about Frank, riding in on a white horse of all things. He snickers, tries to ask him how he fits his glasses behind the Ivanhoe helm he's wearing, but Frank grabs him roughly around the waist, slings him over the saddle, rides away. He's been rescued. In another dream that night he reaches a phone, calls the Lifeguard, and when he wakes up it takes him a moment to realize that it didn't happen, he hasn't done it. He's still here.

Sitting in the dayroom, keeping quiet because the orderlies are afraid of him, he can tell, and if he talks too loudly or tries to reach the phone they'll sedate him again. He can get through this. Sooner or later somebody will notice that he's missing, that he never came back. Think of it as an undercover job, he tells himself. He likes working undercover, at least sometimes he does, thinking fast and talking fast and hanging on the edge. He doesn't like it when it's over, when he has to tell them who he really is, and watch their faces collapse. None of them come back, and when he went to see Susan, she wasn't there.

Frank told him to go to the hospital. Frank went to look at a house. He told Susan to go look at the house. She didn't even struggle--not like him. Frank told him...

No. He's not supposed to be here, and he can get through this. Think of himself as an agent playing a mental patient. He knows how to play a hood, how to go from a good crook to an indispensable one, how to make himself over into what Sonny, or Mel, or Knox Pooley need him to be. All he has to do here is play a mental patient, then make himself into a recovering mental patient. One who doesn't need to be drugged. If they'd just stop drugging him, he could get out of here. He could think fast enough; he could know what to do.

But they're giving him something again, to help him sleep, they say, and he doesn't want it, tries to knock it away. If they drug him again he'll forget his role, he'll blow his cover, he'll forget he's a Fed playing a psycho and turn into a psycho playing a Fed playing a psycho playing... he'll lose count. They can't [mustn't] drug him again.

Only they do.

This time it's Frank in his dreams again. He'd felt like some ridiculous Santa, breaking into Frank's car in the morning mist to leave a box of money like a kitten on a doorstep. Please take care of this bear. Frank comes to him, angry and hurt, saying I can't take this money. Yes you can, Frank. You can. Please.

I'm trying to save your marriage. I'm trying to save Jenny's life. I'm trying to save your face, I don't want to see it collapse. I'm trying, Frank, I'm trying. Help me.

Frank all rumpled and woozy in the morning, undershirt and jockey shorts and socks, stumbling from the sofa to the bathroom to the kitchen where Vinnie has coffee waiting. Frank huddled on the doorstep, rain running down his glasses. She threw me out, Vinnie. Please take care of this bear. Lost boys. Second to the right and straight on...

Morning. There's someone in the dayroom, talking to him. It's so hard to see; his eyes itch, and he can't rub them, because his hands are tied. But you can't ask someone to rub your eyes for you, can you? If he smoked, then he could ask Taylor to light his cigarette. But he has to talk to him. That's his goal for today. Make contact with one person each day, get one person each day to listen to him, and eventually one of those people will be able to get him out of here. Frank takes his glasses off and rubs the bridge of his nose, squinting, when he's tired. He thinks it looks cute, actually, though he'd never tell Frank so; right now he wishes he could do it. If Frank were here, he'd rub his eyes for him. If Frank were here for him.

There's a sound like Tarzan's jungle, and he jerks around, confused; but it's only Taylor, whooping and yelping. Crazy. They all are.

Try someone else. There's the orderly, red hair and red face and red sharp nasty voice. Listen to me. Please, listen to me! but the red fingers only jam food in his mouth, dry and disgusting. He didn't mean it to hit the man, honestly, but he had to spit it out. He couldn't swallow. Back to the room with its window hacked into the door; the orderly glowers through it like a voyeur.

Asleep he is in Taylor's jungle, frantic on a vine attached to nothing while far below him the oblivious buzzards wheel and bank. Help me! he screams, but the leaves shred in his clutch and monkeys shriek. Agent four five six seven eight, daycode what day is it what day... He can't remember the codes, the Lifeguard won't pick up, and screaming he reels and falls forever into the bed--but just as he hits, just as he wakes, someone swings in and snatches him away from the messy thump and splatter on the jungle floor. He doesn't know who.

Yes he does. Because his head is clearer now, gasping heaves of cold morning air, and he can hear the sounds from the corridor, rapid angry feet bringing a scowl he loves, in this moment, more than his mother. Doors crashing and bouncing before him, coming in like Ivanhoe on his battle charger, like the lord of the apes, like the wrath of God. Frank. Frank, Frank, oh man am I glad to see you.