News - Rush flew over the cuckoo’s nest

The new Admission comes in. Everyone at Mercy Drug Treatment stops what they’re doing. The cokeheads quit their card game. The heroin-laced male prostitutes stop sleeping on the couch. And me, sitting in my easy chair, wearing flip-flops over white socks and a green gown, I turn away from the World Series.

The Admission is as big as a house and as pale as the morning clouds that used to hang over the fields on which I played, before the addictions took control. He looks at each of us. He laughs, brash, as if he knows everyone is listening.

“Well, if this ain’t liberal-commie heaven. Name’s McLimbaugh — R.P. McLimbaugh. Now, who’s got the drugs?”

He winks at me. I don’t respond. I find it’s better never to respond. That way, they let you go sooner — so you can go outside and score more drugs. McLimbaugh laughs again, big and proud.

Nurse Hillary walks in, her face tight with makeup, her hair in a bun under a white hat. She busies herself with various things, never looking at McLimbaugh. But she speaks in a voice nearly as loud as his.

“This is a drug treatment facility, Mr. McLimbaugh. No drugs, no talk of drugs, and no upsetting your fellow patients. Any questions?”

“Yeah,” he says. “What’s up your ass?”

Three large orderlies surround McLimbaugh. They wrestle with him. They take him to a white room where there’s lots of loud thumping. Nurse Hillary contains a smile as she leaves the room.

It’s nighttime. I am dreaming of a World Series homer and the coke-dusted party that would follow. McLimbaugh leans close to my ear.

“Straw,” he whispers to me. “You gotta get me some little blues.” I open my eyes. He’s sneering with beady eyes in the darkness. “I know you, Straw. I know you’ve got the connections.”

The lights come on. The ward is awake now, each man sitting up in his bed, looking at us.

“It’s against the rules,” says one of the shroom-heads. “Nurse Hillary will catch you. She will catch you, and you’ll be in big trouble. Yes sir.”

McLimbaugh seems pleased. He has his audience.

“Look at you people. You’re all pathetic. She’s got you all by the balls!”

“By the balls!” a cokehead shouts.

McLimbaugh stands. He swaggers around the room. He’s teaching class now.

“She’s trying to tell you what you can and cannot do according to her liberal-pansy sensibilities! She wants you to get better! Fuck better! Boys, I bet that bitch-on-wheels and her cheatin’ husband smoke the hell out of a bong when she gets home!”

“Madness!” a male prostitute shouts. “Fuck better!”

“We live in a free country, right? Right?”

Most everyone nods.

“If you want to take drugs, by golly, my friends, then take some drugs! If you want to get addicted, by golly, my friends, then get addicted! Little ol’ R.P. McLimbaugh never hurt anyone with his addiction! And I bet you haven’t either!”

The men cheer.

“There’s nothing more innocent,” he says in a low, conniving voice, “than a man who wants a little hillbilly heroin. A little smack. A little fried coke. Right, Straw?”

I nod. As this is my first reaction in months, the other men cheer. I feel like I’ve hit a home run. “Right,” I add. They cheer louder.

I stand. I take a wooden bat to the nearest window, crash through. I run to the corner store, score some reds and a snatch of coke. I bring it back to Mercy, and we all get high.

McLimbaugh is funny when he’s stoned.

The next morning in group, we sit in a circle, hung way over, with Nurse Hillary at 12 o’clock. McLimbaugh is smirking, red-eyed, like he knows a secret.

“Who would like to share first?” she says.

McLimbaugh thrusts a hand in the air. She nods at him.

“What gets you high, lady?” he asks.

“Pardon?”

“What drug turns you on the most? Share with the group.”

“I don’t do drugs.”

“Hey, that sounds familiar. Where did I hear that? Oh, I remember. I used to say it when I was stoned.”

We all buckle over with laughter.

“I think I said that last night,” he adds.

We laugh more, because it’s true.

“Mr. McLimbaugh, drugs are very bad for you,” she says. “They destroy lives. And destroying lives destroys the village.”

“Of course they do,” McLimbaugh says. “You and your liberal-commie friends would never lie about that, would you? Just to keep a good man down? Just to turn us all into straight-laced do-gooders? Right, Nurse Hitlery?”

When McLimbaugh returns from the white room, he’s drooling. I know immediately that his larynx has been removed. They did it to stop him from speaking out (and a few patients complained about his snoring). It’s the cruelest punishment I can imagine for him.

I will save him. This night, while he sleeps, I will bash him over the head with my bat. I will take away his misery. I will throw the bat through the window. And I will run for the fair-foul lines, for the white lines of freedom. It’s been too long since I was free.

Jamie Allen is addicted to many things.