A TRAVELLING CHRISTIAN SPEAKES
"Is your existence as much of an effrontery to yourself as it is to me?" Dr. Porter Loafe, MD, Ph.D. framed the question matter-of-factly as he reclined further in the leather and velour recliner.
The girl in the straight backed, metal folding chair, sitting at the foot of the recliner, pushed her strawberry blonde, disheveled hair back from a mascara-furrowed face. "What?" she asked.
"Put simply," Porter said, continuing to work on the obscene limerick about blubbering, busty blondes that had dominated the session so far, "it amazes me your mother carried such a should-be abortion to term. Haven't you ever wondered why?"
"How dare you say something like that to me?" the blonde said, trying to scrunch angry indignance into her face, in hope of recovering some small part of the dignity a half hour session with Dr. Porter Loafe, MD, Ph.D. had sucked from her. She didn't succeed.
"I dare because you are a pitiful human being with your plethora of phobias and manias. The tedium of your whining endurable only because I will be handsomely remunerated for just listening to a half hour of blubbering. And because I cannot think of one thing that justifies your existence."
Porter finished the limerick simultaneously with the diagnosis. He tapped the pencil with finality on the clipboard, laid it face down across his massive stomach and reclined fully, closing his eyes.
He hoped she'd leave without requiring further encouragement. He'd like nothing more than a snack and a nap before having to deal with the day's further ranting and ravings.
"Christian Speakes says I'm like Ben-Gay after a day of ditch-digging: soothing, warm and invited," the blond said.
At the mention of the name. Porter catapulted himself from the chair causing the clipboard to hit the floor with a resounding shot.
He landed a foot in front of the blonde's chair, and with one hand tipped it back on its two back legs, while sticking his bearded, acne-scarred face close enough to her to make her shrink back further from his incredible bad breath (He'd snacked on a pair of Gyros and a large order of onion Rings in preparation for her session.).
"Never, ever, ever, never juxtapose my learned, expensive opinion with that of a corn-pone, chronic, paranoid schizophrenic Medicare recipient again!" Porter screamed into her now twitching face.
She tried to pour herself from the chair then, in utter horror of both his breath and manner. But his stomach blocked her retreat, wedging her head securely between it and the back of the still tipped chair.
She kneeled whimpering into Porter's stomach.
The exertion caused Porter to let loose a belch -- gargantuan and fetid -- causing him to straighten up, rub his stomach and allow the blonde to snake her way on all fours to the door, which she managed through her tears to tear open on second effort.
"Don't forget your assignment," Porter said to her rapidly retreating back sticking a fingernail between his teeth. "Tell me why your mother carried you to term next time."
Porter ambled idly towards the door still picking his teeth and feeling very satisfied with himself. He felt he was finally making progress with the blonde's kleptomania.
He arrived in the doorway just in time to see Christian Speakes' St. Christopher medal smack him in the face as he jumped up and tapped the exit sign at the far end of the hall, signifying yet another completed orbit of the unit.
Porter couldn't help but note the broad smile that crossed Christian's face as he embraced the blonde who was still crying.
Christian let her cry on his t-shirted shoulder for a moment, before pulling a Kleenex from a pocket of his overalls. He put both hands on her respective shoulders while she dabbed her eyes. He said something that made her bow her head and come up laughing.
Christian gave her another brief hug and started another lap around the unit.
Porter slammed the door angrily. He was going to have to get that damn Speakes off the unit. The guy undid in seconds what it took him sessions to achieve. Speakes was a chronic anyway, and a Medicare patient as well. He'd have him gone this afternoon.
Still, he wondered, what had Speakes said to the blonde?
Porter retrieved the clipboard and sat down in the recliner again to think how best to discharge Speakes without causing a riot on the unit. Speakes seemed to have the trust, respect, and ear of everyone -- staff and patients alike. Even Granny Claussen, which was a major accomplishment -- even Porter would grudgingly admit it to himself, but to himself only -- since she hadn't trusted anyone since her admission to St. Cassian's in 1948 when she'd had her break because her father chose her sister's pickle recipe over her chocolate chip cookie one for the family business.
It was Granny Claussen, or at least the thought of her, that caused Porter to rise before he'd thought the issue all the way through.
If his memory served -- and it always did -- Granny was the next ranter-and-raver of the day; something he just couldn't tolerate now, especially since the rest of the afternoon would be concerned with doing the paperwork for Christian Speakes' discharge.
He'd go get a snack and then work out the details. He schemed better on a full stomach.
Porter exited his office just as Christian Speakes was approaching the door on his latest orbit of the unit.
Christian passed Porter with a smile and a wave.
"How ya doin' Doc?"
"My condition would be infinitely more satisfactory could I explain your peripatetic revolutions around these confines, which I realize is beyond all reasonable hope, even for one as gifted as myself."
"There ya go, running yourself down again Doc," Christian said, turning around to face Porter after jumping and tapping the exit sign at the hallway's end. Christian palmed the St. Christopher's medal and pointed to it. "St. Chris is the patron saint of travelers. I"m a traveler."
"Patron saints are spiritual schmutz for the infirm, those incapable of living within their reality," Porter said strolling off up the hallway in the direction of the nursing station.
Christian simply reversed his loop around the unit and followed along behind Porter, mimicking the rolling stride footstep for footstep.
"You must have a bunch of them hangin' from the handlebars of your moped then, huh, Doc?"
Porter came to an abrupt halt. Christian, who'd turned around to wink at Granny Claussen who'd joined the parade down the hall, failed to notice and stepped on Porter's heels before he could stop.
"I have tolerated all the impertinence from you that I am going to," Porter bellowed in Chris' face. "Touch my being again and I will have you thrown into restraints. And as for your 'travelling' remember the immortal words of that seer Blaise Pascal: 'Most of man's evils arise from being unable to sit still in a room.'
"Quotes, eh, Doc? Especially one that proves you ain't ready for me to leave yet, that you still have lots to learn," Chris said, starting yet another circuit up the hall past the nurse's station.
"I told Blondie that it's better to be mad with the rest of the world than sane alone. That's Baltasar Gracian. Just in case you're wonderin' on either account. Later Doc."
Christian jumped up, tapped the exit sign, his St. Christopher's medal slapping him in the face, and went through the double doors at the end of the unit before turning a sharp left on his heel into his room.
As he disappeared into his room, Granny Claussen ran around in front of Porter before he could get to the desk and stuck her peaked nose into his face. "You remind me of a sow I shared a sty with once. 'Cept she could see the shit comin' out her ass."
Porter shoved her out of the way. "Cancel my appointments for the rest of the afternoon nurse. There are matters of much more import to attend to."
"I wanna new shrink!!! I wanna new shrink!!! One that don't stink of cucumber and cancels my sessions every week," Granny screeched jumping on Porter's back as he leaned over the desk to sign out and grab his huge overcoat.
Patients began gathering around the desk at Granny's screeching, trying to see what all the fuss was.
Porter spun around, ducking down as he did, sending Granny sprawling halfway across the desk, into the lap of a startled nurse. When Granny tried to scramble backwards off the desk, he rapped her once with his clipboard - soundly - across a withered forehead, sending her in a quivering heap onto the floor.
Tucking the clipboard into one huge overcoat pocket Porter strode from the unit. "Medicate that annoying anachronism," he said over his shoulder. "And bill that pickle company."
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Porter sat at the bar, directly below the revolving Clydesdales of the Budweiser clock, stuffing his fifth hot-dog -- with heavy mustard and onions -- into his mouth. His eyes stared without recognition at the television.
He finished the last bite of the hot-dog, took up the mug of beer in front of him and drained it in one gulp, before slamming it down loudly on the bar to draw the attention of the bartender.
He ordered another hot-dog and beer.
He ate the hot-dog in two bites and drank the beer in one gulp.
Porter had been presented with few three-hot-dog dilemmas in his life: a half dozen had failed to resolve the Christian Speakes conundrum.
Were he a less pathetic and pitiful personality -- Porter thought, starting on the peanuts in front of him, eyes never leaving the TV -- my brilliant therapeutic technique would have reduced him to the quivering mass necessary for the rebuilding of the personality (Porter was from the destroy -- and rebuild later -- school of psychology. It served his ego and bank account well.) But Speakes refused to act on Porter's illuminating insights, always just smiling, nodding and agreeing with Porter. Porter could tolerate that, it wasn't important to him if he helped anyone or not; the $150 an hour was what was important.
What Porter couldn't tolerate was Speakes making over everyone before he had properly destroyed them.
That was the problem though. Porter couldn't imagine what attraction the opinion of such a comical character as Speakes would hold for anyone, but apparently it did. And to just discharge him would be admitting the failure of Porter's methods, as well as unsettling the whole unit.
The TV over the bar suddenly went black, though Porter never removed his eyes. The bartender swore, threw his towel down on the bar and climbed up on a stool and reached behind the TV and started playing with the cord.
Abruptly there was a buzz. The bartender screamed, his hair stood on end, and he was thrown back onto the bar, practically in Porter's peanuts.
Porter sat up very straight. His eyes sparked as he rubbed his mustache across the sleeve of his shirt. He smiled deviously. "
"Indubitably. You are right. And I thought I was incapable of delving knowledge from such a base and disgusting individual as yourself," Porter said stuffing a five dollar bill into the mouth of the still recovering bartender.
"I will pay for my consumption of beverage. However the frankfurters were underdone and of inferior quality."
Porter raced to his moped. Hardly able to contain his glee at having resolved the Speakes problem, he almost leaned too far over the handlebars. As it was his bulk so far forward on the moped caused the rear tire to spin ineffectually twice before gaining traction.
What a wonderful idea! And what timing too, Porter thought, taking a short cut through a suddenly screaming widow's garden, trampling beans and knocking tomatoes from the vine. They'll be discussing the pathetic personality in staffing today.
Porter glided into the parking lot, ducked under the arm of the gate, and parked his moped in a handicapped parking zone.
Porter was in such good spirits as he huffed and puffed into the conference room that the oniony heartburn he suddenly felt didn't bother him.
All the seats in the room already being taken, Porter gave his fiercest glare to a young red-headed psychiatric technician, who withered instantly. Porter bumped him out of the way in his hurry to sit down.
He reached into his jacket and pulled out his clipboard and a dirty Kleenex, which he used to wipe his sweating forehead.
"Dr. Loafe. What a pleasure for you to attend one of our unit staff meetings," the head nurse said graciously.
Porter found her repulsive. He suspected Down's Syndrome somewhere in her ancestry.
"I am sure it will be far more your pleasure than mine,"Porter said, beginning an obscene caricature of the head nurse on the pad on his clipboard. "I am loathe to admit it. But I need staff input on the status of Christian Speakes, as I am considering instituting a new course of treatment."
"He's a hard one to figure," the red-headed tech who Porter had bumped said. "I've met crazier people in a bus station--"
"Which were certainly your parents as that is the most likely place for you to reside," Porter said, as the tech turned as red as his hair and burst from the room.
"Speakes' is a difficult case," Christian's young, attractive, busty, blonde social worker said. "On the one hand he seems irreconcilably paranoid schizophrenic, talking all the time about having to keep moving as his only defense from the evil that is so close behind."
"My sentiments exactly," Porter interjected.
"On the other hand,"the social worker continued, "his insight is remarkable. He seemingly knows things there's no way he could possibly have any idea about. There are definitely people in bus stations far less saner than Christian Speakes."
"And doubtless you have met them all. On your knees in the bathroom, a twenty in your greedy, sweating fist," Porter said, though he couldn't shake Christian's earlier reference to his moped.
The social worker closed her briefcase abruptly, and bolted for the door right before the cry sprang from her chest.
"Why do you treat people like this?" a young nurse asked. "You could learn a lot from Christian. And he does know lots he couldn't possibly know. He came up and told me my mortgage loan had been approved. And I hadn't talked to anybody around here about it. And the next day, I got word it had gone through."
"Banks take unadvised risks from time to time."
The nurse followed suit and left the room, but not before flipping Porter off.
Another tech shrugged on his way to the door. "The guy has real insight. He even makes Granny Claussen feel of worth. Doesn't talk much about himself though. Always just says if we knew what he knew we'd wish we didn't and we'd pace too."
Porter sat back and glared critically at the clipboard, trying to decide whether the head nurse needed a ring in her nose or a dog collar around her neck. He decided ring. After a hearty hot-dog belch, he added it.
"He's always preoccupied with the afterlife. I remember from his previous stays here," the AM charge nurse said slipping on her coat and holding her breath against Porter's breath. "But today more so than ever. He was talking about who should get which of his possessions and saying he'd written a letter to the person most important for carrying on the work he'd started."
"It's settled then," Porter said leaving the drawing where he knew the head nurse would find it. "We will institute electro-shock therapy in hopes of arresting his recidivistic paranoid schizophrenia and as an intervention in combating his suicidal tendencies."
The head nurse's mouth dropped open. "Doctor don't you think that's a bit drastic? He's only on the slightest of medication. Shouldn't that be used first and electro-shock only as a last resort? After all, Speakes does have a congenital heart condition as well. It could send him into cardiac arrest."
Porter stood up from the chair and pushed it across the room at the head nurse, the only person remaining in the room.
"You shall be written up for insubordination and impudence if the patient is not prepared in fifteen minutes for his first electro-shock treatment, nurse. If you had been meant to think you would have been given a banana, a colored collar, a round peg and a square hole."
Porter strode from the room, tucking his clipboard into his pocket just prior to entering the elevator. Feeling very pleased with himself he punched the fifth button.
It was amazing how everyone had seen Speakes' as sick as he was.
Two hours later Porter was awakened from his snooze in the recliner by the call of Code Blue to the fifth floor. Maybe Granny Claussen had finally eaten a pickle, Porter thought as he rolled from the recliner and waddled towards the therapy room.
Christian Speakes lay writhing convulsively on the table.
"Dr. Loafe. We tried to page you. He hasn't gone into cardiac arrest yet. But the intern was worried he would. He's been convulsing like this for fifteen minutes, that's why we called the code," the worried technician said fiddling with his key ring.
Porter pushed him out of the way. "The intern is an obvious twit. Every first year psychiatric intern knows status epilepticus -- continuous seizure activity -- when he sees it."
Porter stood over the quivering mass -- noting suddenly the peaceful smile on the face replace the contortions of seizure activity while the heart monitor abruptly whined flat-line -- before seeing the envelope in the pocket.
Porter reached over to the chest pocket in the overalls and grabbed the envelope and was shocked to see his name on it, written in the unmistakable hand of Christian Speakes.
The note inside ready simply: ˜Dear Doc, of all man's miseries the bitterest is to know so much and have control over so little. As you see, I'm still traveling', runnin' from that evil. Hopefully you've learned, but in case you haven't, enclosed you'll find a useful tool."
Porter looked back in the envelope and pulled out the St. Christopher's medal.
The heartburn suddenly overwhelmed him as bile ran up his throat. Porter staggered from the room, a St. Christopher's medal wrapped around his wrist, a tear in his eye, a gag in his throat and an uncertainty in his brain whether that last twitch in the eye had been a wink or status epilepticus.