One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [19]
Even the embalmers, usually a pair of penny-pinching tight-wads, are swayed. “Yeah, look at him there: old Max Taber, he was a good sort. What do you say we use that expensive thirty-weight at no extra charge to his wife. No, what the dickens, let’s make it on the house.”
A successful Dismissal like this is a product brings joy to the Big Nurse’s heart and speaks good of her craft and the whole industry in general. Everybody’s happy with a Dismissal.
But an Admission is a different story. Even the best-behaved Admission is bound to need some work to swing into routine, and, also, you never can tell when just that certain one might come in who’s free enough to foul things up right and left, really make a hell of a mess and constitute a threat to the whole smoothness of the outfit. And, like I explain, the Big Nurse gets real put out if anything keeps her outfit from running smooth.
Before noontime they’re at the fog machine again but they haven’t got it turned up full; it’s not so thick but what I can see if I strain real hard. One of these days I’ll quit straining and let myself go completely, lose myself in the fog the way some of the other Chronics have, but for the time being I’m interested in this new man—I want to see how he takes to the Group Meeting coming up.
Ten minutes to one the fog dissolves completely and the black boys are telling Acutes to clear the floor for the meeting. All the tables are carried out of the day room to the tub room across the hall—leaves the floor, McMurphy says, like we was aiming to have us a little dance.
The Big Nurse watches all this through her window. She hasn’t moved from her spot in front of that one window for three solid hours, not even for lunch. The day-room floor gets cleared of tables, and at one o’clock the doctor comes out of his office down the hall, nods once at the nurse as he goes past where she’s watching out her window, and sits in his chair just to the left of the door. The patients sit down when he does; then the little nurses and the residents straggle in. When everybody’s down, the Big Nurse gets up from behind her window and goes back to the rear of the Nurses’ Station to that steel panel with dials and buttons on it, sets some kind of automatic pilot to run things while she’s away, and comes out into the day room, carrying the log book and a basketful of notes. Her uniform, even after she’s been here half a day, is still starched so stiff it don’t exactly bend any place; it cracks sharp at the joints with a sound like a frozen canvas being folded.
She sits just to the right of the door.
Soon as she’s sat down, Old Pete Bancini sways to his feet and starts in wagging his head and wheezing. “I’m tired. Whew. O Lord. Oh, I’m awful tired…” the way he always does whenever there’s a new man on the ward who might listen to him.
The Big Nurse doesn’t look over at Pete. She’s going through the papers in her basket. “Somebody go sit beside Mr. Bancini,” she says. “Quiet him down so we can start the meeting.”
Billy Bibbit goes. Pete has turned facing McMurphy and is lolling his head from side to side like a signal light at a railroad crossing. He worked on the railroad thirty years; now he’s wore clean out but still’s functioning on the memory.
“I’m ti-i-uhd,” he says, wagging his face at McMurphy.
“Take it easy, Pete,” Billy says, lays a freckled hand on Pete’s knee.
“…Awful tired…”
“I know, Pete”—pats the skinny knee, and Pete pulls back his face, realizes nobody is going to heed his complaint today.
The nurse takes off her wristwatch and looks at the ward clock and winds the watch and sets it face toward her in the basket. She takes a folder from the basket.
“Now. Shall we get into the meeting?”
She looks around to see if anybody else is about to interrupt her, smiling steady as her head turns in her collar.