My Dark Places - James Ellroy [68]
It all came back. I recalled every detail. I started crying. I prayed and begged God to let me keep my mind.
A nurse came into the room. She undid my restraints and walked me to a shower. I stayed under the water until it turned cold. Another nurse dressed my cuts and abrasions. A doctor told me I’d have to stay here a month. I had an abscess on my left lung the size of a big man’s fist. I needed thirty days of intravenous antibiotics.
I asked him what went wrong with my mind. He said it was probably “post-alcohol brain syndrome.” Sober drunks went through it sometimes. He said I was lucky. Some people went crazy for good.
My lung condition might or might not be contagious. They were isolating me to be sure. They hooked me up to a drip gizmo and started pumping me full of antibiotics. They fed me tranquilizers to lull down my fear.
The tranks kept me woozy. I tried to sleep all day every day. Normal waking consciousness scared me. I kept imagining permanent brain malfunctions.
Those few insane hours summarized my life. The horror rendered everything that went before it irrelevant.
I reprised the horror all my waking hours. I couldn’t let it go. I wasn’t telling myself a cautionary tale or gloating over my survival. I was simply replaying the moments my entire life had worked toward.
The horror stayed with me. Nurses woke me out of blissful sleep to fuck with my drip gadget. I couldn’t run my mind in long-prescribed fantasy patterns. The horror wouldn’t let me.
I imagined permanent insanity. I punished myself with my now splendidly functioning brain.
The fear got unbearable. I checked out of the hospital over my doctor’s protests and caught a bus to Lloyd’s place. I stole a pint of gin, guzzled it and passed out on his floor. Lloyd called the paramedics again.
Another ambulance arrived. The paramedics woke me out of my stupor and led me down to it. They drove me straight back to the hospital. I was readmitted and placed in a four-man room on the lung ward.
A nurse hooked me up to another drip gadget. She gave me a big bottle to spit sputum in.
I was afraid I’d forget my name. I wrote it on the wall behind my bed as a reminder. I wrote “I will not go insane” beside it.
11
I spent a month hooked up to a needle. A respiration therapist beat on my back every day. It loosened big globs of sputum. I spat them in the jar by my bed.
The abscess went. My fear stayed.
My mind was functioning normally. I played memory games to test-fire it. I memorized magazine ads and slogans on milk cartons. I was building mind muscle to fight potential insanity.
I went insane once. It could happen again.
I couldn’t let the fear go. I fed on it all day every day. I didn’t analyze why I drove myself to the point of brain malfunction. I addressed the problem as a physical phenomenon.
My brain felt like an external appendage. My lifelong plaything was in no way indigenous to me. It was a specimen in a bottle. I was a doctor poking it with a stick.
I knew that booze, drugs and my tenuous abstention from them caused my brain burnout. My rational side told me that. My secondary response derived straight from guilt. God punished me for mentally fucking my mother.
I believed it. My fantasy was just that transgressive and worthy of divine intervention. I tortured myself with the concept. I exhumed the midwestern Protestant ethic my mother tried to outrun—and used it for self-flagellation.
My new mental kick was mental self-preservation. I did mental tricks to keep my mind limber. It fed my fear more than it buttressed my confidence.
My lung abscess healed completely. I checked out of the hospital and cut a deal with God.
I told him I wouldn’t drink or pop inhalers. I told him I wouldn’t steal. All I wanted was my mind back for keeps.
The deal jelled.
I went back to Lloyd’s roof. I didn’t drink or pop inhalers or steal. God kept my mind in sound working order.
The fear stayed.
I knew it could happen again. I understood the preposterous aspect of all divine contracts. Booze and inhaler residue could lurk in my cells.