“At least all single Army nurses,” McMurphy added. He asked how long we could expect to have the pleasure of her hospitality.

“Not very long, I’m afraid.”

“Not very long, you’re afraid?” McMurphy asked her.

“Yes. I’d like to keep men here sometimes instead of sending them back, but she has seniority. No, you probably won’t be very long — I mean — like you are now.”

The beds on Disturbed are all out of tune, too taut or too loose. We were assigned beds next to each other. They didn’t tie a sheet across me, though they left a little dim light on near the bed. Halfway through the night somebody screamed, “I’m starting to spin, Indian! Look me, look me!” I opened my eyes and saw a set of long yellow teeth glowing right in front of my face. It was the hungry-looking guy. “I’m starting to spin! Please look me!”

The aides got him from behind, two of them, dragged him laughing and yelling out of the dorm; “I’m starting to spin, Indian!” — then just laugh. He kept saying it and laughing all the way down the hall till the dorm was quiet again, and I could hear that one other guy saying, “Well… I wash my hands of the whole deal.”

“You had you a buddy for a second there, Chief,” McMurphy whispered and rolled over to sleep. I couldn’t sleep much the rest of the night and I kept seeing those yellow teeth and that guy’s hungry face, asking to Look me! Look me! Or, finally, as I did get to sleep, just asking. That face, just a yellow, starved need, come looming out of the dark in front of me, wanting things… asking things. I wondered how McMurphy slept, plagued by a hundred faces like that, or two hundred, or a thousand.

They’ve got an alarm on Disturbed to wake the patients. They don’t just turn on the lights like downstairs. This alarm sounds like a gigantic pencil-sharpener grinding up something awful. McMurphy and I both sat bolt upright when we heard it and were about to lie back down when a loudspeaker called for the two of us to come to the Nurses’ Station. I got out of bed, and my back had stiffened up overnight to where I could just barely bend; I could tell by the way McMurphy gimped around that he was as stiff as I was.

“What they got on the program for us now, Chief?” he asked. “The boot? The rack? I hope nothing too strenuous, because, man, am I stove up bad!”

I told him it wasn’t strenuous, but I didn’t tell him anything else, because I wasn’t sure myself till I got to the Nurses’ Station, and the nurse, a different one, said, “Mr. McMurphy and Mr. Bromden?” then handed us each a little paper cup.

I looked in mine, and there are three of those red capsules. This tsing whirs in any head I can’t stop.

“Hold on,” McMurphy says. “These are those knockout pills, aren’t they?”

The nurse nods, twists her head to check behind her; there’s two guys waiting with ice tongs, hunching forward with their elbows linked.

McMurphy hands back the cup, says, “No sir, ma’am, but I’ll forgo the blindfold. Could use a cigarette, though.”

I hand mine back too, and she says she must phone and she slips the glass door across between us, is at the phone before anybody can say anything else.

“I’m sorry if I got you into something, Chief,” McMurphy says, and I barely can hear him over the noise of the phone wires whistling in the walls. I can feel the scared downhill rush of thoughts in my head.

We’re sitting in the day room, those faces around us in a circle, when in the door comes the Big Nurse herself, the two big black boys on each side, a step behind her. I try to shrink down in my chair, away from her, but it’s too late. Too many people looking at me; sticky eyes hold me where I sit.

“Good morning,” she says, got her old smile back now. McMurphy says good morning, and I keep quiet even though she says good morning to me too, out loud. I’m watching the black boys; one has tape on his nose and his arm in a sling, gray hand dribbling out of the cloth like a drowned spider, and the other one is moving like he’s got some kind of cast around his ribs. They are both grinning a little. Probably could of stayed home with their hurts, but wouldn’t miss this for nothing. I grin back just to show them.

The Big Nurse talks to McMurphy, soft and patient, about the irresponsible thing he did, the childish thing, throwing a tantrum like a little boy — aren’t you ashamed? He says he guesses not and tells her to get on with it.

She talks to him about how they, the patients downstairs on our ward, at a special group meeting yesterday afternoon, agreed with the staff that it might be beneficial that he receive some shock therapy — unless he realizes his mistakes. All he has to do is admit he was wrong, to indicate, demonstrate rational contact, and the treatment would be canceled this time.

That circle of faces waits and watches. The nurse says it’s up to him.

“Yeah?” he says. “You got a paper I can sign?”

“Well, no, but if you feel it nec—”

“And why don’t you add some other things while you’re at it and get them out of the way — things like, oh, me being part of a plot to overthrow the government and like how I think life on your ward is the sweetest goddamned life this side of Hawaii — you know, that sort of crap.”

“I don’t believe that would—”

“Then, after I sign, you bring me a blanket and a package of Red Cross cigarettes. Hooee, those Chinese Commies could have learned a few things from you, lady.”

“Randle, we are trying to help you.”

But he’s on his feet, scratching at his belly, walking on past her and the black boys rearing back, toward the card tables. “O-kay, well well well, where’s this poker table, buddies…?”

The nurse stares after him a moment, then walks into the Nurses’ Station to use the phone.

Two colored aides and a white aide with curly blond hair walk us over to the Main Building. McMurphy talks with the white aide on the way over, just like he isn’t worried about a thing.

There’s frost thick on the grass, and the two colored aides in front trail puffs of breath like locomotives. The sun wedges apart some of the clouds and lights up the frost till the grounds are scattered with sparks. Sparrows fluffed out against the cold, scratching among the sparks for seeds. We cut across the crackling grass, past the digger squirrel holes where I saw the dog. Cold sparks. Frost down the holes, clear out of sight.

I feel that frost in my belly.

We get up to that door, and there’s a sound behind like bees stirred up. Two men in front of us, reeling under the red capsules, one bawling like a baby, saying, “It’s my cross, thank you Lord, it’s all I got, thank you Lord. …”

The other guy waiting is saying, “Guts ball, guts ball.” He’s the lifeguard from the pool. And he’s crying a little too.

I won’t cry or yell. Not with McMurphy here.

The technician asks us to take off our shoes, and McMurphy asks him if we get our pants slit and our heads shaved too. The technician says no such luck.

The metal door looks out with its rivet eyes.

The door opens, sucks the first man inside. The lifeguard won’t budge. A beam like neon smoke comes out of the black panel in the room, fastens on his cleat-marked forehead and drags him in like a dog on a leash. The beam spins him around three times before the door closes, and his face is scrambled fear. “Hut one,” he grunts. “Hut two! Hut three!”

I hear them in there pry up his forehead like a manhole cover, clash and snarl of jammed cogs.

Smoke blows the door open, and a Gurney comes out with the first man on it, and he rakes me with his eyes. That face. The Gurney goes back in and brings the lifeguard out. I can hear the yell-leaders spelling out his name.

The technician says, “Next group.”

The floor’s cold, frosted, crackling. Up above the light whines, tube long and white and icy. Can smell the graphite salve, like the smell in a garage. Can smell acid of fear. There’s one window, up high, small, and outside I see those puffy sparrows strung up on a wire like brown beads. Their heads sunk in the feathers against the cold. Something goes to blowing wind over my hollow bones, higher and higher, air raid! air raid!