CourIer
on your bespattered face as you uncrossed your pretentious legs for once, took off the silly reading glasses-letting a few of the chunks they'd been holding plop into your lap-and looked around for something to clean up with. I could see that the only dignified option for me was to once again sit with my arms folded, ignore your questions and say nothing. I know what you wrote down on your pad: "Withdrawal." You and your quixotic ilk all believe you are improving the world by running around pasting labels on everything. If you'd paid any attention in History class, you would see that psychiatrists are the crusaders of our times. You think that getting me to regurgitate the sequence of events is part of "the healing process." You already know what happened. You must have at least read the police report and you've probably heard a version of the story from everyone who was present at my ambush. The only "process" I need to undergo is the removal of these ghastly lower appendages of mine. They are what keep me psychologically crippled. Why can't you accept that? As you have turned out to be useless, I have decided to leave this institution tonight. For your edification, I will leave this journal and include a last answer for you. Yes, of course the ambush brought things to a head. I realized no one on this earth would help me. The very next day, I stole a wheelchair, tied tourniquets around both my thighs and packed the legs in ice. My plan was that once gangrene had set in, I would admit myself to a hospital where amputation would be an absolute necessity. The flesh of my legs turned purple, then gray, but after a few days it didn't seem that I was making any more progress. I tightened the tourniquets and waited. My thoughts kept turning to the hacksaw I'd once seen in the basement along with other tools belonging to the landlady, who lives in the building. It was difficult getting down there and then pulling myself back up the stairs, but I managed. I dragged my phone into the bathroom, got into the tub, which I'd filled with ice cubes, and downed a bottle of painkillers. I began sawing just below the tourniquets, where there was almost no feeling, at least at first. But through the analgesic and the numbness my damaged nerves started shooting such pain and alarm to my brain that it was as if I were wrestling not just with the saw, but with the hands of Brandon, Dr. Drake and my family trying to tear it from my grasp. I was forced to turn my head at one point and throw up over the side of the tub onto the floor. Even in the delirium induced by physical agony and drugs, I realized I would have to work more quickly; I had to be capable of dialing 911 before I lost consciousness. I'd managed to completely sever the right leg and had started on the left when I felt so dizzy I decided to make the call. Most of the ice had melted and I was sitting 174
FUGUE #27