Mad House

THOMAS DEAN: MAD HOUSE

Dogs or wolves will run a flock of sheep to exhaustion, pick out the weakest one and swoop in on the attack. It's an elementary rule of strategy. How long have I been in here in Davis Memorial Hospital? A year or two. What were conditions like on the outside? I had only a hazy picture.

I had my target Nurse Sally. Unlike other members of the staff, dressed in scrubs, Sally always wore the traditional nurse whites, preferring a dress over a pants suit. 4ft 11in 90lbs. soaking wet, Sally waited near 'The Portal,' to usher new patients from an incoming shipment to the nursing station, uttering her commands in nearly incomprehensible foreign squirrel yelps. At 5ft 1in weighing in at 95 pounds I could fit into her clothes.

The Portal was series of interconnected transparent acrylic enclosures running the length of the whole north wall where new patients were in -- processed for admission to the women's ward at Davis. An incoming shipment always attracted many of the girls held on the ward. "Jane," one of my ward-mates told me, "It's good Davis puts the newcomers on display the minute they reach here. Teaches the new girls there are no secrets here in Davis. Don't you agree, Jane?"

I smiled. "A secret is best shared by one."

"For all the time you spend in the library, you're unreadable -- like the sphinx," my ward-mate challenged me. "What do you learn there anyway? A way out?"

I sighed my name is Jane, plain Jane, but there was noting plain or ordinary behind my detention here as a political for attitude adjustment, a psychiatric specialty at Davis Memorial.

As my wardmate and I waited for the spectacle to begin, I fell into a rhyme, "Carried along by infernal ropes, cowered prisoner disrobed, showered, inspected and groped, enter ye damned abandon hope."

"Blither," my wardmate declared.

I sighed, nodding, silent agreement for I have learned it is better especially for a political to keep your own counsel.

How long ago, I mused, was I one of the girls in the hold wondering what would happen next? Did I stand in the hold, watching with eyes widened as a name was called?

When was I brought in here? I'm not sure. I was caught up in a roundup of politicals. Crammed in the holding area with the real nuts and criminals, I could see, among the politicals around me, defiance meld with apprehension, disbelief, and confusion. I felt bodies trembling and heard hearts pounding. The scent of fear rose as every name was called. An individual ordered forward hesitantly passed into the first air lock where she was unbound.

Typically, the prisoner stared at the red marks around her wrists left by the handcuffs before she felt her hands and fingers to restore the blood flow. The prisoner would thank the strapping orderly dressed in white utility clothes.

Ignoring the thanks, the orderly merely nodded the prisoner to advance into the second enclosure to be stripped. Receiving the command to strip from an orderly whose bulky white utility uniform could not conceal bulging muscles, almost all political prisoners yelped, "What?" Before the prisoner could protest further, the orderly's growled a promise to take shears and cut the girl's clothes off prompted the prisoner to begin undressing and tossing outer garments into a circular janitorial trash can, pushed at her by massive hands of the orderly. Most paused standing in their underwear, before at the orderly's grunt, bra and panties joined the rest of the garments in the bin. Standing naked, teary red-faced, hands across her chest, the prisoner plaintively asked, "what's next?"

In the next enclosure, the prisoner was sat in a chair bolted in the floor. "Eek," screeched most as their rear ends plopped on the cold hard steel.

In a pleasant voice, the barber, sporting the traditional white blouse, commiserated with the prisoner as he covered her naked body with a thin cloth, "Too bad rules don't allow me to put a pad on the chair. Cold steel may be a bit rough on the bare bum, but you need to hold still." As a robust orderly stood by, in seconds, the finest coifs were reduced to stubble.

"Don't worry, lassie," the barber assured the prisoner, "it grows back. Keep it short during your stay and you won't be shorn again."

Back in the holding area, a horrified prisoner watches the happenings up the receiving line. "Happens all the time," smirked an orderly in the holding area when I was brought through reception, "female patients cry more over losing their hair than losing their clothes. Think of it, ladies, upstairs, the guys you were brought in with lose more than hair. It makes them more manageable, less likely to -- think of straying."

At a nod, the prisoner was nudged forward into the next chamber where the outline of bare feet drawn on the floor around a drain indicated the place to stand under an overhead spigot. Down cascaded water so boiling hot, the prisoner yelped. The water abruptly stopped. For a full minute the stunned prisoner looked to the thong clad Nursing Assistant and pliantly awaited instructions. Suddenly torrents of soap bubbles fell on the prisoner. A fume rose from the tiled floor reeking of disinfectant and insecticide. A pause followed. Urging to rub it in, the aide chirped, "scrub -- a -- dub -- dub, sweetie."

Standing erect body covered in suds, the prisoner looked bewildered. "Don't stand there like a stone dummy, work it in," yelled the Nursing Assistant, "in your arm pits, under your boobs, up your sweet spot -- you got the idea, sweetie.' As the prisoner's arms moved rapidly over her body, the prisoner shrieked as she was pelted by cold water.

As I watched the first prisoner to inprocess in this haul of new inmates reach, my attention was broken by a friendly pat on the back. It was my partner smiling Merry who had reached into the slit in the back of my hospital gown to massage my back. "All that distinguishes the shower nurse from one of us is a couple of centimeters of strategically placed cloth coverings." Merry observed. When I shrugged, Merry added, "the shower nurse could be taken down and a prisoner could walk out in her garb."

"The Nursing Aide in the thong is about to hand the new girl the goo," I changed the subject, "to wax her legs and pubes."

Merry and I, linked hands, laughing as we recited in unison, "`Spill some goo on me,' the aides all say, "and I'll turn your skull into a cue ball.'"

I playfully massaged her scalp. "Your hair is coming back," I teased her. "You're well beyond your court ordered 30 day stay. With no calendars around here, you tell how long a person is here by the length of their hair."

"You keep your hair," Merry challenged me giggling, "at the two month level -- about the same length as Nurse Sally -- almost same color -- jet black. Is there method to your madness?"

"What a question to ask in a nuthouse!" I exclaimed.

Since her arrival, Merry and I had fun together here at Davis. Merry was a friend, my bunkmate, if you could call laying on the floor against one of the curtainless wall was a bunk. Davis had many problems. With all the upheaval outside, it had more people than beds. But even though Merry and I slept together since her arrival on a court referral for a 30-day evaluation which seemed to go on and on, I had to be on my guard. What was Merry suggesting? How far was she to be trusted?

"Nothing more entertaining than watching a new shipment humiliated," I looked around at the crush of bodies against the plexiglass, "to bring all the girls out to watch incoming stripped, shorn, studied, and inscribed in the registry."

"Misery loves company," Merry chirped. "Up comes the fun part."

In front of our eyes, the first prisoner was examined by the doctor. After cursorily checking her pulse, the doctor ordered, "Open wide." Depressing her tongue with an ice cream stick, he shown a penlight into her open mouth. "It'd be nice if the state gave me real `Ah sticks,' but the Eskimo pie that came off this stick was delicious.'"

When I came through, I told the Doctor, "The name Eskimo Pie has been discarded due to its racist overtones. The company dripped icy tears in self -- flagellation to atone for its politically incorrect sins."

"Huh," laughed the Doc, looking at the chart on his electronic notepad, "a political! Join one of the inclusion and diversity programs, spout the politically correct cue words, and you'll be out in a week."

I probably should have followed Doc's advice, but I preferred being by myself reading to self -- criticism, self -- reproach, and self -- abasement.

Like every other `patient,' I jumped when the cold steel of the stethoscope was held against my bare chest.

"OK, about -- face," the doctor came the next command in every exam, mine and the poor girl I was watching, "legs far apart, bend -- over and," he chuckled, "open wide -- this time -- at the other end." As one hand pressed down hard on her spine, gloved fingers penetrated her vagina. "It'd be nice," the doctor, righting himself, commented, "if the state bought me a gynecological table. The state believes in equality. Since the men don't need a gynecological table, neither do the women."

Patting the prisoner's bare bottom, Doc ordered her to hold the position. When the doctor, after changing gloves and dipping the new gloves in grease, rammed fingers up the girl's rectum, the girl gasped. Doc laughed. Giving her butt a good whack, the Doctor instructed the patient to right herself and shoved her toward to the next station, registration where identity was verified, prints and full -- length nudes taken front and back.

"Great bed side manner, that Doc," quipped Merry.

The startled prisoner stood in registration until the registry nurse growled, "Stand on the X on the floor, Straighten up, hands at your side, eyes forward. You're not posing for a gentleman's magazine."

Issued a hospital gown, the new patient looked bewildered.

"Here," Merry gasped my hand, "comes the memorable line in the script."

Processing complete, a hospital gown handed her, the prisoner cried out, "no panties."

Merry screamed, "Sweetie, you'll get used to your bum blustered by the billowing breeze and the cold creeping up your crack."

A wardmate heckled the new arrival, "Think yourself lucky Davis issues you one pad per month."

Merry and everyone standing around laughed hysterically. Some started pounding on the plexiglass which swayed under the crush of women pounding on the pane. "Like everything else around here, this pile of trash is ready to break," Merry looked up at the wavering barrier.

The agitation attracted Nurse Sally who started to yell in her usual squirrel yelps, "Waddies back you bieds."

After awhile here, you got used to Sally's accent and could figure out what she was trying to say, but it was still funny to hear her butcher the language. I suppose if I attended the diversity and inclusion courses, I could parrot the correct buzz words expressing "appreciation for Sally's struggle with an unfamiliar language" while I confessed my inability to understand a single word of hers. I might have spoilt the heartwarming mood with an observation that only in a nuthouse would it be suggested that a person with difficulty communicating should be put in a responsible position and made a psychiatric nurse.

Sally's squirrel yelps just worsened the pandemonium. Tapping me my bare back, Merry whispered, "Sally's a bit too weak for what a rough lot as us can throw at her. Let's split before the musclemen, the big bruising orderlies get off their bums to break up the disruption."

I knew better than to question Merry's judgement. At Merry's time to come through `The Portal, I was not yet into clustering around 'The Portal,' the enclosed inprocessing chamber where personhood was stripped away and what emerged was euphemistically called a `patient.' I'm Merry's ordeal must have been memorable.

On her arrival, Merry drew the spot next to mine on the floor by the baseboard heating which wasn't working that night. A blustery draft made a mournful howl as it blew through perforations in the transparent acrylic windowpanes above us, Nearby, all you could hear was chattering teeth from some and cooing from others cuddling up for warmth.

"Crooks have an advantage even in holes like this," Merry introduced herself, "They learn how to adapt. They know when to resist, when to comply. Above all they have no illusions about any special virtues. So, are we both going to freeze or will we double our covers by cuddling?"

Although I moved my bedding to join Merry. I, laying on my side facing Merry, warned her in a whisper, "I'm a little edgy. I'm straight as an arrow. I've never been with a woman before. Suppose I'm married -- to a guy of course."

"What if I told you I too enjoy riding the snake as it coils up warming my insides," Merry explained, "But your guy and mine aren't around. Would they prefer we froze to death? Hmm, you, the smartest gal in the nuthouse, I'm told, know the answer. Pretend the whole thing here in the nuthouse, the reason that landed you here, the people -- nuts -- homeless -- politicals like you and crooks like me -- around us, the people who threw us in here, all of this is just a game and you'll get through it."

"You a crook?" I protested, "I don't believe it. You're so -- small and cute. What could you possibly have done?"

"Bad question, newbee," Merry reproached me in a mock stern voice, "I won't say what I did -- or didn't do. You shouldn't tell me -- or anyone else what you said or wrote or what person, cause or faction that made you an enemy out to destroy our great multi -- cultural democracy. If someone around a place like this," Merry paused to look around, "knows something about you, they'll use it against you: Law of the jungle."

"How much of the country remains still under the control of the great multi -- cultural democracy after invasions of the hordes of vandals, occupation by foreigners, or rebellions by those few breakaway provinces able to defend themselves?" I asked.

"Not a question for you to ask -- until you're clear of here," Merry tapped her finger on the end on my nose. Merry's voice trailed off as her lips met mine. "I'm going to have you warmed up in a minute."

Merry fell silent. I could feel my heartbeat pick up the pace. Was I sweating in this cold? I snuggled closer to her. Our lips met. Our tongues collided in a battle for penetration. She rolled me on my back. Breaking the lip lock, Merry whispered in my ear, "I prefer the upper berth."

Her tongue lapped my neck and then the tip of her tongue left a trickle down my cleavage, around my under - boobs then up over my nipples. Instinctively, my hands, clasped her butt forcing her closer. Breathlessly I breathlessly urged her, "Don't stop! This feels so good."

Her tongue begins its trek down to my navel and then across my hairless mound. Merry broke contact. "You kept your pussy bare. Some say it's more sensuous. You don't have a girlfriend who's going to try to shank me in the shower. Do you?"

"You're my first -- girlfriend ever," I declared.

Her hands yanked my legs apart. I pushed her head between my legs and curled my legs over her stubble topped scalp. Her tongue lathered my clit. I could feel the convulsion coming on deep inside my core and spreading through my body in successive waves of increasing intensity. As the resulting throbs of the tsunami receded to a ripple and dissipated in gentle flutters, Merry pulled herself up, resting on her elbows. "No man ever did you like that, right? It takes a crook. We crooks put up the best show in the Portal. Don't we?"

I may have thought of my first night with Merry as Merry and I walked away from watching the inprocessing of new patients in the portal. Looking back, Merry remarked, "Watching the welcoming committee for the new arrivals breaks up the day, but wisdom dictates avoiding the threat of being caught up in a disturbance."

"Too bad we can't hang around to watch the crooks bandy about, clown around with the orderlies, and trade insults while they strip," I pouted, "and go through processing. The crooks sure utter some memorable lines."

"I like it when The Crooks ask Doc, `Hey Doc, can you see clear through my hole straight out my mouth?'" Merry suggested her favorite line.

Foregoing the spectacle in the Portal, the plexiglassed enclosed inprocessing chamber, Merry reflected, "all that agitation will scare the politicals, amuse the crooks, and agitate the loonies." Looking back at Nurse Sally as we walked away, "A bit too small and slender to deal with nuts capable of exploding without warning."

"The nuts are the most dangerous?" I questioned Merry.

"Homeless present their share of problems," Merry explained, "Some of the homeless can be unpredictable when they're pushed forward to be hosed down, inspected, and registered. Their only crime is being poor and wandering too close to the posh shops of the diamond district or touristed zones. Unlike the politicals or even most of the crazies, the Homeless have no place to go if Davis were to decide on release. Without a home to be discharged to, homeless could receive a life sentence in Bus Therapy shunted from here around the psychiatric hospitals up the river. Catch you later -- eh," Merry drifted off to a corner where she removed her gown twirling it in the air before she allowed it to drift to the pile of hospital gowns.

Merry stood there for a second back to me hands on hips, before she warmed up with twisting exercises exhibiting her sculpted apple shaped butt. Then she dropped to the tiled floor joining the other gals doing some squat thrusts.

Real criminals, like Merry, detested this place. What did Merry say shortly after she landed in here in Davis for `observation,' "everyone on The Rock thinks life is softer over here in in Davis. Some try to get here. Heck it's easy to get into Davis. Talk politics; act screwy and your ass lands in Davis."

"That simple," I prodded her.

"Oh yeah," the Merry explained, "Easy to get into Davis, hard to get out. On the Rock, all hoods have a status, however low, and some rights people recognize to an extent. When your time is up, the gate is open and out you go. Here in Davis, you're sick; you stay until they say you can go. What clothes does Davis allow you to wear? Here you're unshod wearing a thin sheet, a sheet open at the back. Here, no one has rights, no one respects a nut and no one listens to a nut."

I released a wistful sigh. As much as I had come to rely on Merry's street savvy, I knew one day, without warning, she'd be tapped on the shoulder and whisked away, back to jail or court and I'd never see her again.

I could watch Merry's gentle curves on her small 5 ft 2 in frame. From her luscious apple bottom inward to a slender waist flaring out to broad muscular back and shoulders, Merry exuded caged sexuality. Most gals put on weight in here, but Merry was incredibly self -- disciplined in working out every day. She did try to encourage me to join her in everyday calisthenics. I would spend some time exercising but preferred solitude in a quiet space in Davis' little electronic library.

I told Merry shortly after she landed here, "It's a hidden nook, your mind can wander, worlds of wonder, vistas neglected, unseen, overlooked, visit out yonder, in the magical realm of books."

"Talk like that," Merry snickered, "you'll be reclassified as a dangerous nut and shipped up yonder."

I thought of that conversation as I entered the quiet corner the little library Davis enjoyed. The corner boasted of a few terminals on tables. "Oh Jane, what have you came to read today, revised History, the sanitized Bible, ethno - sensitized classics, fake news or the constitution and laws of a state of non -- law?"

I couldn't help laughing at Darcy's, the inmate librarian's greeting. "I long to wander in realms untold with many wonders yet to behold. There I might uncover my stash of gold, the bequest the imagination bestowed."