Random Acts Part 10

"How are you feeling this morning?" he asks.

"How do I feel?" I have to think about this. How do I feel? "I feel like someone took my brain out of my head, dumped it into a blender and put it on puree. Then they poured it back into my head and here I sit."

"As I understand it, you involuntarily ingested a rather large dose of a hallucinogenic drug."

"Apparently so."

"You seem to have recovered. Have you?"

"I don't know."

"Are you still seeing hallucinations?"

"Are you real?"

Dr. Wakefield laughs. "Yes, I a.s.sure you I'm quite real."

"Then I think I've recovered."

"Okay, that's good. I'm going to check you over, and then we're going to keep you here for a while to see how you do."

"Sounds good, doctor."

He gives me a quick check, taking my blood pressure, my temperature, flashing a penlight in to my eyes, and finishes up by smacking me in the knee with a rubber hammer. "Your blood pressure is a bit on the high side," he tells me. "Your eye dilation is slow and your reflexes are delayed. Your blood tests show a significant concentration of LSD, and unfortunately this drug tends to stay in your body."

I nod. "I'm a biologist, doctor. I understand."

"Ah, yes. Good. You know, then, it's going to be in your fat cells, and when you exercise and burn off that fat there is a good chance it'll be released right back into your bloodstream. Are you familiar with the term 'flashback?'"

"Yes."

"Okay. You may tend to have them from time to time. That's why we want to keep an eye on your for a while. People with this much LSD in their body often lose all track of reality. You, however, seem completely lucid. You should consider yourself lucky."

"Lucky?"

"Yes, I'm serious. This could have been much worse. You could have become a permanent resident here." The doctor writes something on his clipboard. "Your friends who originally admitted you into the county hospital claimed they didn't know who it was who slipped you the drug. I was wondering if you happened to know."

"Yes, I do."

"Who was it?"

I come very close to telling him, but for some reason I hold back.

"I haven't decided if I want to turn him in or not."

"This person nearly gives you a chemical lobotomy and you don't want to turn him in?"

"As I said, I haven't decided."

"That's up to you. I'm going to warn you, though, that there will be some policemen here within the next few days, and they're going to want to know. If you don't cooperate with them, they just might decide that you took it yourself and charge you with drug abuse. So you should consider that, as well, when you make your decision. Is this person a friend of yours?"

"He used to be."

Dr. Wakefield nods. "Okay," he says. "I'm taking you off sedatives and letting you completely dry out. Please report any flashbacks or periods of disorientation to any of the staff immediately. We're here to help you, and I need you to help us do that. As a man of science, I expect you to see the logic in that."

"Of course."

"Good." With one last nod, he stands up and walks away.

Television takes up the rest of the day and all of the night. I sit next to mostly catatonic patients around the one color set in the wing.

Several of them have drooling problems. As I find out later, I'm in the drug rehabilitation section of the Menderson Sanitarium, across the bay in San Francisco.

The television programming is totally unfamiliar. There are reruns of programs I've never even heard of, let alone seen. This isn't that disturbing, as I rarely if ever watch television anyway, but the news program comes on and I find there is a war in Panama that I'd never heard about, and a President of the United States named William Miller.

I don't even remember a governor by that name. He's young, handsome, and very aggressive. The news reports that there's allegations that he's used the CIA to a.s.sa.s.sinate foreign power figures, and when asked to comment on that, he outright tells the news media that what the CIA does is secret and it's none of their d.a.m.n business. To my horror, he gets a standing ovation for this remark.

The next day Tom comes and visits me. "Hey there," he says.

"Tom! Am I glad to see you!"

He smiles. "You're definitely feeling better than the last time I saw you."

"Yeah. A lot better. Where's your hat?"

"Hat?" he says.

"Never mind. How's Pris?"

"Priscilla's fine. She's worried about you."

"Tell her I'm okay."

"Sure."

"I guess I really freaked out there, huh?"

Tom's grin fades. "Yes. You were catatonic. I thought . . . I'm glad you're doing better."

"Have you heard anything from Alvin Laurel?"

He stares at me with a blank look. "Who?"

"Our b.u.m?"

"Our . . . b.u.m?"

"You don't know who Alvin Laurel is?"

"I know there's a Berkeley Professor named Alvin Laurel, if that's who you mean."

"Okay, so you don't know anything about the project or the four-dimensional cube. Okay." I'm talking more to myself than to him, now. "Tom, I don't really know how to explain this to you, but . . ."

The look on his face stops me. It's fear. He's afraid that I've gone insane, that I've lost track of reality.

"What?" he says, prompting me to finish even though he doesn't want to hear it.

"Tom, I've had some pretty strange hallucinations, and I'm going to have to relearn what is and isn't real."

"Okay." He smiles. "I'll help."

"Am I a professor of Herpetology at the University of California, Berkeley?"

"Yes."

"Have you been trying to investigate a government-sponsored secret project on the Berkeley campus?"

"No."

"Did you and Pris recently break up?"

"Yes."

"At Heather's birthday party?"

"Yes."

"Did I spend the night with Pris night before last?"

"Yes."

"Did she say anything about this to you?"

"She said you guys talked all night and that she's glad you're her friend. She's very worried about you."

"Did Felix dump LSD into my beer?"

"I don't know. You said he did. He left right before you had your, um, breakdown." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "What happened between you two, anyway?"

"You don't know?"

"No."

"It's about Pris."

"Pris?"

"Yes. He and I have been at odds over Pris ever since you broke it off with her. Well, I won, and Felix wanted to get back at me. I think he was high when he did it, because I can't believe he would do something like this to me --- or anyone --- if he were sober."

"What do you mean, you won?"

"That night I spent with Pris, she and I . . . you know."

"You made it with her?"

I nod. "Don't tell her I told you this, she made me promise not to tell you. She didn't want you to know."

"You and her?" Tom seemed to be in shock for some reason. "Really?"

"Yes. Didn't you notice how she was hanging all over me the other night, right before the drugs took effect?"

"No." He stares at me with his camera lens eyes, his face expressing concern. Abruptly he looks at his watch, then stands up. "I only had a few minutes this morning, and I wanted you to know I'm in this with you all the way. You can count on me. If you need anything, let me know."

"Okay, Tom."

"I'll be back this evening, and I'll try to bring someone along with me. Right now I've got to rush to make an appointment."

"Okay."

We say good-bye, and he goes walking off. I have a sick feeling as I watch him go, like there are slugs crawling around in my stomach.

Despite everything, he thinks I've been brain damaged by the drug.

What's worse, he's started me thinking that maybe I have been brain damaged.

Felix shows up next. I can't believe he has the nerve, but there he is, dressed in denim and suede and grinning like nothing's happened. I'm sitting on a bench out on the grounds, which is like a large park --- the only difference between the hospital grounds and a park are the 30 foot walls that prevent me from leaving --- and he comes walking across the gra.s.s and sits down next to me. "I never thought I'd see you in an insane asylum."

"I never thought you'd try to kill me, either," I tell him.

He's still grinning, but now I see it's a mask hiding pain. He bends far forward, looking at the ground, and says, "I don't know where you got the idea that I drugged you. You asked for it, you specifically asked me to get you some LSD and you took it on your own."

"That is bulls.h.i.t. You're trying to use my confused state to absolve yourself of what you did, but I clearly remember what you said to me in the kitchen."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You outright told me you put a megadose of LSD in my beer."

"No I didn't! I swear to you, you dreamed this up! You specifically asked me to get you some LSD so that you could take it and see the forth dimension. That's what you said to me. Hey, I should have clued in that you were nuts back then, but I went along with it. I told you that I'd gotten you a lot, that you should take just a half hit, but you took it all! It messed up your memory, and now you're blaming me, and you're making everyone hate me --- and all I did was give you the stuff you asked me to get for you!"

I stare at him and he's not afraid to meet my gaze. His voice is sincere, or at least the pain is sincere. It is possible that he's telling the truth, and that this is the way it happened here, in this universe. Or --- what I was beginning to believe more and more --- it was also possible that he was telling the truth and the LSD trip itself has created all these false memories. After all, what is more realistic?

Parallel worlds, or drug-induced brain damage?

"You know," I tell him, "I have no choice but to believe you."

"Seriously?"