discovered another country for himself—almost like the cardboard box he’d jerry-built into his own space in a corner of the ramshackle structure the Boudreau family called home when he was a kid.
He’d stumbled on the place only a few days after his mother died in a room not so very different from this in a brownstone a dozen blocks downtown. And it was there, camped on the only cot still strong enough to support his weight, that he brooded on the bitter humiliations and injustices he had suffered in his life, culminating in the final ultimate castration by the bitch Clara Treadwell, who ruined his life and killed his mother.
It made Bobbie’s jaws hurt—set his throat afire, his whole head and brain, in fact—to think how evil that bitch Clara Treadwell was, how much he wanted her dead. After all his years of faithful service at the hospital, caring for the craziest of the crazy, people so vicious and dangerous the other nurses were scared to handle them. He’d cleaned up their shit, their vomit, dressed their wounds when they stabbed or burned themselves, stopped them when they pulled out their hair. He’d sedated them, calmed them with his touch. They’d loved and depended on him, and she’d swatted him down like a fly for a death he had had nothing to do with.
Nothing
to do with. He’d been scapegoated, humiliated, drummed out of his whole life when all he’d done was his job as he was told to do it, nothing more, not a thing more.
And it wasn’t the first time in his life this had happened, not by any means the first. How could life be so unfair? The answer was that people like Clara Treadwell always abused their power. They always hurt little people. They hurt anybody they felt like hurting. And good people had no way to protect themselves.
It was actually a photograph of Clara Treadwell in the Medical Center’s newspaper that gave Bobbie the idea of cutting out letters, pasting them into messages, and delivering them to the bitch herself. Her picture appeared with some regularity. He’d seen it in the
Post
when she was appointed to the President’s commission. The same picture appeared in the Medical Center newspaper. A month later there was an article about her condom lectures and her proposal to put condom machines in the adolescent clinic and inpatient departments of the Psychiatric Centre to prevent AIDS. The article talked about the furor her proposal caused.
That photo had also featured Dr. Harold Dickey, Chairman of the Quality Assurance Committee—the other fuck who deserved to die. Years ago Bobbie had walked into an empty patient room on a locked geriatric-depressive ward and found Dickey and the young Clara Treadwell groping each otherbehind the door. Lots of things just didn’t change. In the recent newspaper photo they stood beside a condom presentation on a blackboard. Dickey’s hand cupped Treadwell’s shoulder. Both were smiling.
For a few weeks after that photo appeared in the newspaper Bobbie put condoms in Treadwell’s files, left them on her chair in the boardroom, in her desk, in the toes of the running shoes in her closet. The locks were changed in the executive suite, but that never kept him out.
He sat on the cot, staring at his collection of bitch photos taped to the wall. The one that galled him the most was the one with the smiling arrogant foolish hypocritical Dr. Dickey. Those two thought they could get away with anything, thought no one knew what their relationship really was, what they were up to. Bobbie felt powerful, knowing about them and knowing they didn’t know he knew.
Like the colonel years ago who never knew how close he’d come that day to dying, Clara Treadwell didn’t believe she was in mortal danger. She didn’t believe in Bobbie’s power. He could see it in the way she walked, in the smile in her publicity photos. Foolish woman was going to lose her old lover. He stuck the photo back on the wall. Since the bum had had his accident and
He’d stumbled on the place only a few days after his mother died in a room not so very different from this in a brownstone a dozen blocks downtown. And it was there, camped on the only cot still strong enough to support his weight, that he brooded on the bitter humiliations and injustices he had suffered in his life, culminating in the final ultimate castration by the bitch Clara Treadwell, who ruined his life and killed his mother.
It made Bobbie’s jaws hurt—set his throat afire, his whole head and brain, in fact—to think how evil that bitch Clara Treadwell was, how much he wanted her dead. After all his years of faithful service at the hospital, caring for the craziest of the crazy, people so vicious and dangerous the other nurses were scared to handle them. He’d cleaned up their shit, their vomit, dressed their wounds when they stabbed or burned themselves, stopped them when they pulled out their hair. He’d sedated them, calmed them with his touch. They’d loved and depended on him, and she’d swatted him down like a fly for a death he had had nothing to do with.
Nothing
to do with. He’d been scapegoated, humiliated, drummed out of his whole life when all he’d done was his job as he was told to do it, nothing more, not a thing more.
And it wasn’t the first time in his life this had happened, not by any means the first. How could life be so unfair? The answer was that people like Clara Treadwell always abused their power. They always hurt little people. They hurt anybody they felt like hurting. And good people had no way to protect themselves.
It was actually a photograph of Clara Treadwell in the Medical Center’s newspaper that gave Bobbie the idea of cutting out letters, pasting them into messages, and delivering them to the bitch herself. Her picture appeared with some regularity. He’d seen it in the
Post
when she was appointed to the President’s commission. The same picture appeared in the Medical Center newspaper. A month later there was an article about her condom lectures and her proposal to put condom machines in the adolescent clinic and inpatient departments of the Psychiatric Centre to prevent AIDS. The article talked about the furor her proposal caused.
That photo had also featured Dr. Harold Dickey, Chairman of the Quality Assurance Committee—the other fuck who deserved to die. Years ago Bobbie had walked into an empty patient room on a locked geriatric-depressive ward and found Dickey and the young Clara Treadwell groping each otherbehind the door. Lots of things just didn’t change. In the recent newspaper photo they stood beside a condom presentation on a blackboard. Dickey’s hand cupped Treadwell’s shoulder. Both were smiling.
For a few weeks after that photo appeared in the newspaper Bobbie put condoms in Treadwell’s files, left them on her chair in the boardroom, in her desk, in the toes of the running shoes in her closet. The locks were changed in the executive suite, but that never kept him out.
He sat on the cot, staring at his collection of bitch photos taped to the wall. The one that galled him the most was the one with the smiling arrogant foolish hypocritical Dr. Dickey. Those two thought they could get away with anything, thought no one knew what their relationship really was, what they were up to. Bobbie felt powerful, knowing about them and knowing they didn’t know he knew.
Like the colonel years ago who never knew how close he’d come that day to dying, Clara Treadwell didn’t believe she was in mortal danger. She didn’t believe in Bobbie’s power. He could see it in the way she walked, in the smile in her publicity photos. Foolish woman was going to lose her old lover. He stuck the photo back on the wall. Since the bum had had his accident and
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