One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey [50]
He turns and looks over at the Chronic side and sees there’s something to what she says. He takes off his cap and runs his hand in his hair, finally turns back to her. He knows as well as she does that all the Acutes are listening to everything they say.
“Okay—I never thought about that.”
“I thought you hadn’t.”
He tugs at that little tuft of red showing out of the neck of his greens, then says. “Well, hey; what do you say to us taking the card game someplace else? Some other room? Like, say, that room you people put the tables in during that meeting. There’s nothing in there all the rest of the day. You could unlock that room and let the card-players go in there, and leave the old men out here with their radio—a good deal all around.”
She smiles and closes her eyes again and shakes her head gently. “Of course, you take the suggestion up with the rest of the staff at some time, but I’m afraid everyone’s feelings will correspond with mine: we do not have adequate coverage for two day rooms. There isn’t enough personnel. And I wish you wouldn’t lean against the glass there, please; your hands are oily and staining the window. That means extra work for some of the other men.”
He jerks his hand away, and I see he starts to say something and then stops, realizing she didn’t leave him anything else to say, unless he wants to start cussing at her. His face and neck are red. He draws a long breath and concentrates on his willpower, the way she did this morning, and tells her that he is very sorry to have bothered her, and goes back to the card table.
Everybody on the ward can feel that it’s started.
At eleven o’clock the doctor comes to the day-room door and calls over to McMurphy that he’d like to have him come down to his office for an interview. “I interview all new admissions on the second day.”
McMurphy lays down his cards and stands up and walks over to the doctor. The doctor asks him how his night was, but McMurphy just mumbles an answer.
“You look deep in thought today, Mr. McMurphy.”
“Oh, I’m a thinker all right,” McMurphy says, and they walk off together down the hall. When they come back what seems like days later, they’re both grinning and talking and happy about something. The doctor is wiping tears off his glasses and looks like he’s actually been laughing, and McMurphy is back as loud and full of brass and swagger as ever. He’s that way all through lunch, and at one o’clock he’s the first one in his seat for the meeting, his eyes blue and ornery from his place in the corner.
The Big Nurse comes into the day room with her covey of student nurses and her basket of notes. She picks the log book up from the table and frowns into it a minute (nobody’s informed on anybody all day long), then goes to her seat beside the door. She picks up some folders from the basket on her lap and riffles through them till she finds the one on Harding.
“As I recall, we were making quite a bit of headway yesterday with Mr. Harding’s problem—”
“Ah—before we go into that,” the doctor says, “I’d like to interrupt a moment, if I might. Concerning a talk Mr. McMurphy and I had in my office this morning. Reminiscing, actually. Talking over old times. You see Mr. McMurphy and I find we have something in common—we went to the same high school.”
The nurses look at one another and wonder what’s got into this man. The patients glance at McMurphy grinning from his corner and wait for the doctor to go on. He nods his head.
“Yes, the same high school. And in the course of our reminiscing we happened to bring up the carnivals the school used to sponsor—marvelous, noisy, gala occasions. Decorations, crepe streamers, booths, games—it was always one of the prime events of the year. I—as I mentioned to McMurphy—was the chairman of the high-school carnival both my junior and senior years—wonderful carefree years…”
It’s got real