A Concert of Lost Souls

By Rehaad Baksh

When Art Ali, a brilliant young student psychiatrist, finds himself in a psychiatric ward, he decides to lead the rest of his life with abandon in the arms of a beautiful, troubled affluent young girl.

A Concert of Lost Souls documents the life of a student psychiatrist diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder at the very onset of a highly promising medical career. The story is told poignantly as a series of flashbacks from the early days of the onset of the disease and its progressive erosion of his life while he still keeps it together. It is a tragic tale of love, lust, brilliance, madness, and the cutthroat competitiveness and cold reality of the medical profession. The reader is carried away on a myriad of emotions that mimic the very nature of the disease itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984539205

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Copyright © 2018 by Rehaad Baksh.

ISBN:                  Softcover                  978-1-9845-3921-2

                           eBook                        978-1-9845-3920-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 07/11/2018

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CONTENTS

Prologue

PART I

The World Wide Ward

Chapter 1 Dr. Ali

Chapter 2 Sycamore

Chapter 3 Seabiscuit Mother

Chapter 4 An Omage to the White Hotel

Chapter 5 Jokers Night Club

Chapter 6 Cusp of genius

Chapter 7 Fun

Chapter 8 Dinner at the Mistress’

Chapter 9 New Place

Chapter 10 Anglican or Catholic?

Chapter 11 Seasaw

Chapter 12 Why, The Threesome

Chapter 13 Threesome Again—The Cat

Chapter 14 Cleaning Up

Chapter 15 July: Lie

Chapter 16 Crazy for Lust

Chapter 17 Dr. Ali Decides to Sin: From Math to Geography

Chapter 18 He Gets Back in the Race

Chapter 19 The Weirdest Things

Chapter 20 M.A.D., B.A.D., & S.A.D.

Chapter 21 Exsanguinations

Chapter 22 Son of Guyana and Israel: Kats

Chapter 23 Women’s Day out. O.V.Arian

Chapter 24 Monday: Viagra Falls

Chapter 25 Original Uranus

Chapter 26 ZEN – Z, Z, Z

Chapter 27 Year One Bourne

PART II

The Plot

Chapter 28 Travelling Joined

Chapter 29 New York

Chapter 30 L.A. on the Brink of Death

Epilogue

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A Concert of Lost Souls

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Prologue

I did their wives for them. Tom—T.O.M.—the other man. He was not paid by the hour nor was he a chocolate flower of black lacking. The gold watch of seeing it for years. Voyeurs.

In the Hotel California of psychiatric wards, North York General Hospital—NYGH, there were many kinds. There were your psychotics, depressives, and manics. Then there was your weird and wonderful like the untreatable except for loads of vitamins. There were the functionally neurotic new to the games of life. There was your common Bipolar who could hear it occasionally especially if it was depressing. Hidden in the backwards were Hebephrenic Schizophrenics and other types of schizophrenics lost in this world of voices and sights stunk on. They would see and hear things others didn’t especially if they didn’t know togetherness and closeness. They were stuck; unlike your average worker at his desk who played mind games in wheel chairs. The grandest of all were your Multiple Personality Disorder dramatics. The sick truth was that everyone got sick to some degree including doctors and the rich. The one common fact was that they all were a phenomenon to some degree. Hidden secrets to the world’s problems. Carrying the world’s problems. Sleeping into a world of Narcolepsy—doctor-patient-doctor relationship—forever. Colleagues—Call-leagues; most doctors are. MAD BAD and SAD. The Marquis De Sade. Twisting that into this. The defence. Humour being the most mature. Everyone wanting to get better, grow and be more mature. Being well is just not good enough. Just another place to end the echoes. Echo-drive. Light at the end of the universe. Most things were common and classic like sickness of doctors who thought they had all the answers to lead the world into the new millennium like your common neurotic, psychotic or sociopath. Love is all the triumphs over evil and sickness—love with no borrowed causes just commonality and linkage. On any given night someone was going to the world wide ward or the holding pen. Books changed the world. What would the world wide ward or the TV hidden in the corner do? The TV was not reality. Books were not reality. Fine dining was reality and the night life was reality. Partying was reality. Shared experiences. Comfort food like fish. A book made of poetry and rules to save us of our fear of the other guy getting ahead. You can’t buy affection and love. You can’t buy manners. A world wide ward with books, pages, pictures, videos, poetry, music, religion, self-improvement, health, love lines, dating lines, food, recipes, your future, a window to city life.

Imagine eternal slumber—no stress; no responsibilities. Beautiful delicious eternal forever sleep. The scientific method is flawed. Pill and sideffect pill. Multifactorial is better. Light at the end of the universe is dust due to the friction of space matter and dust. Dust in the wind. Math got switched with geography. Einstein didn’t think the obvious—all five forces of nature—God?—is nuclear. Some kids went nuclear when they were born. Cold fusion could be had with D2O collided at high speeds in a particle accelerator with the end product of Helium and. Fusion was a relationship. ‘IT’ books were out. Art books were in like the art of bad grammer. Uranium fizzes—splits. There is much to say of immunoglobulins and IgE antibodies laced with toxins guided to proteins in the outer layer of viruses and cancers. All one would need is a lab to find the one common protein on their cells and on viruses in each individual. Diagnostics man.

I am Art Ali in first person of the first of a fifteen novel, novella and short stories series—call him Ishmael—the Mujadid of Canada in his own tortured mind. Environmental. Psychology versus psychiatry. Conventional medicine versus natural cures and naturopathic medicine. History versus those professing to know the evolving truth. Get the pay out of check and sick. Horrid places for housing them in places like 1-west and 7-west. 555 Bathurst with keys to 1-west—NYGH hellhole. That’s why. Alphabet soup and calendar hounds. Language nuts to the heights of linguistics—lingula—tonguing at the world with their mouths and keys. Farmers, construction workers, sinners and bankers. Pie. Paradise. Pair of gambling dicey situation.

NYGH. The horrendous place—catchment area—kidnapping people to make money for psychiatrists. Nightly jinn—heater parties and kidnapping of young people to fill the ranks of the disenfranchised especially if they are professionals—doctors. Catchment area.

Part I

The World Wide Ward

Chapter 1

Dr. Ali

The wages of sin is personal punishment. The fall guy. In the fall he got $4.7 million to publish. Mensa. Call him Ishmael your cousin of Abraham—the house of god. The cube of everlasting life. He was in a manic state of arousal. It was about commitment in the real sense of the word. Being in this world in a real way—ONE hearafter. RIBA-users. Worn physically lean by the ravages of his manic-depressive raging mind, he pushed the ward door open and walked for the stairway door with his walkman on full blast. Passing the nursing station he was home free. He had escaped the freaking photo taking camera in the ward. The alarm sounded as the exit door opened. He hurried down the eight-story building in all of his psychotic nudeness. She was watching him—look. Seeing things that weren’t there was his forte. Most people used sunglasses for that problem. Ask anyone with sunglasses on. Try it. And so the story started. He put on his sunglasses. He would later fiddle with his medical bag and use his flashlight to clear his blue eyes of vivid images. His name meant money in its interpretive sense and money in Persian—short change.

He was dressed for the day—matching time, colour and number. He also dressed for his own time to evade radar on clustered days. The days of mass paranoia and mass conversion/changes like the Solstice and Equinox. Earlier, he put on clothes that would be his shaming. ‘We all had to defend out clothes.’ We all had to be shamed. A reversal of fortune. Then a catapulting into the future. His future of wealth by chance—now clue in. God smiling on him. His mind still cluttered by A Clockwork Orange and a direct Ernest Hemingway. Anything to do while you organized your visage of voices and see-saw of sights. Get to the point. Love. Love hath no manners. The PEN Diet. He was a come-back artist—Art.

He bent down and picked up a pebble and dug it into his shoe. He was ready. All he needed now was a post-it note to his left eye to rid him of this strabismus of pale white right eye. That he knew since being borne.

Have you seen Art lately, said Donna, the head nurse of the evening shift, demanded.

I did a cheque fifteen minutes ago. He’s probable rabid for sex. muttered Tracy, the young attractive Italian nurse.

His heart started to race as he neared the mezzanine of the twenty-five year old building. He couldn’t risk taking the elevators. The nurses would see him.

I’d like a cab to the front entrance of North York General going to the Valhalla on Highway 7 in Unionville, puffed Art Ali on the taxi phone near the entrance.

He lit one up and began to pace near the entrance. It was a damp October evening in Toronto. Just right—for those finding glee in other’s sorrows. They are the loosers.

Code yellow, code yellow. Patient has left 7 west, Rang the P.A. system. The nail that stands out gets pounded down as the Japanese would say. That was a cliché. Art looked nervously around his left shoulder to clear his mind of any ill-conceived notions of being followed. That, that, that. At that moment the taxi pulled up and he got inside.

The Valhalla on Highway 7, he said to the Russian cab driver—the cab driver took pride in earning twenty thousand a month tax free. Only the best—god.

You’d better call the police and write up a form nine for Art, sighed Donna.

Already did it, said Tracy. They’re on their way to his parent’s house

Art exited the taxi and paid the driver with a nice tip. He entered the hotel and strode into the gift shop. He was unconcerned about the police, something he had learnt by acclimatization and authority. He bought two packs of cigarettes for himself and two for Melissa. He knew she enjoyed Benson and Hedges ultra light — the holly of cigarettes. He took the elevator up to the forth floor and turned left towards her room. He rapped, careful not to upset the fine balance of Melissa’s sanctity—it was more like A FINE MESS. Like a chocolate wrapper. All in the name of constructive criticism. Remarks. Real projection. Four elements. Their world. Until you grasp at straws of sanity—real-e. Really.

"Melissa I thought I’d surprise you," smiled Art.

You’ve got a weekend pass? She exclaimed. Wait, no it’s Wednesday. You’ve flown the coop didn’t you? giggled Melissa. Come in. She had called him at the hospital and told him where she was staying.

Nice place you’ve got here, joked Art.

My brother helped me move in four weeks ago, she said.

Nice bed, he joked with a wry smile.

Want something to eat, she said.

A Ruben sandwich or… what are you having? Art asked smiling sheepishly referring to the room service at the hotel.

Free range eggs, Melissa winked.

I thought you were allergic, he said.

Melissa was allergic to wheat products, dairy products including eggs and a whole host of foods we eat without thinking. She did her shopping at a health food store. It included things like rice cakes, Soy milk, cashew butter and gluten free bread. The soy products were a man’s worst enemy—full of estrogen releasers—namely, giving a guy a period of impotence unlike Lycopene in tomatoes that has no side effects. More hockey. The Black Hawks didn’t win—now hoggey. Excuses.

She was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome three years ago. She had to quit the Gerontology program because of her illness. She liked working with the elderly because of her attachment to her now deceased grandmother. She was named for her grandmother.

Melissa had been living in the Valhalla with her father in separate rooms for a month now. Her parents were going through a protracted divorce. Her life in the last six months was a roller coaster ride of obtuse and acute angles. She had been on the streets selling Boy London knock-offs and Ray-Ban sunglasses in street-side stalls. She was living on the edge—which edge of the bell-curve was obvious. Her father had financed a small apartment on Lawrence Avenue. She was an attractive tall twenty-five year old with a long sweet face animated superficially and glowing chestnut hair. She had been battling Anorexia Nervosa for a year and her 5'10" frame showed it. She was a sensitive girl affected adversely by her intense ambivalent attitude towards her parents’ separation.

Family mattered to her—and Art; family madder and real squattier than the first one. The money would make his daughter chop her dad’s dick off and shave that beard. No mystery there. Speed and confusion.

They had microwaved eggs and gluten free bread for dinner and set about to watching

TV on the king-sized bed.

Art had one pot of coffee. Reminded him of his ex-friend turned pseudo-fag that had plastic surgery on his eyes—lasers. Lanal Juanita. His family were as happy as pigs in shit. Marijuana. Art had allergies for coffee and would sneeze at 500 KPH especially when he denied his visage the cigarette.

All you needed to conquer a land is an Imam/Priest/Rabbi, Hookers and Prostitutes and an Army. Revenge of the Natives/Aboriginals/Native Indians: Tobacco, Alcohol and Herpes. Realie. Keep doing it and you’ll get far in life—hypertension. I look animated. They’re so insecure that all they have is control over their weight—anorexia. All external things. Joy de vivre. Tout-2. Least. Rental lease. Car lease.

At times Melissa would curl up on the bed in a state of ‘I want to be in coma for the rest of my days.’ But she was just too cute for Art to resist.

Let’s go downstairs for a drink. You could have a brown cow, winked Art.

Art! You know you shouldn’t be drinking with your medication, smiled Melissa.

We’ll chew on it later, smiled Art.

Melissa got dressed – she was a model that worked in New York so pattern recognition was her thing. They took the elevators downstairs to the restaurant. They each grabbed a seat in the restaurant at a corner table. The waiter approached.

Hello! The special today is veal parmesan with linguini, said the waiter.

What are you having Melissa? said Art sensitively.

I’ll have a Club Sandwich, she said.

I’ll have the linguini and a sprite, he said.

What can I get you to drink? the waiter asked.

Anthropology was his begging way.

I’ll have a Brown Cow, Melissa. Thank you

You wanna hear the latest on Sophia

She called the hospital a few times. She’s getting on with her life. She’s drinking like a fish now. She went to Jack Asters and had sixteen drinks, said Art.

Do you still have feelings for her, said Melissa taking a sip from her margarita.

No. I just want to be with you, said Art sipping his scotch.

Melissa beamed from ear to ear. Art! she exclaimed. You just broke up with my best friend. What do you think I am, she smiled in a melodramatic way.

My next girlfriend, smiled Art.

So… are you taking your Prozac, she giggled loudly so the other patrons could hear.

Actually, it’s Paxil, he smiled.

Oh! Pardon me. I can’t keep up, she joked.

Hey, little girl. Are you taking your Clonazepam, smiled Art so the next table could hear.

Yes!? she intonated. You’re no Archie Bunker type.

They finished their drinks and headed back to the hotel room.

They lay on the king sized bed and watched pay-per-view while munching on cheezies. Soon they were snuggling together. Art kissed Melissa and she was receptive. They began to kiss passionately with their tongue exploring each other’s mouth. She was an amazing French kisser. Something that Adam Sandler and the more advanced would understand. Art moved down towards her apple shaped breasts. He undid her top and her bra while kissing her. She was breathing heavily. He kissed her breasts and began to play with the nipples with the tip of his tongue. She cupped his crotch and began to play with his erection. They were intertwined. She when down and undid his pants.

He’s happy, she giggled. What’s his name?

Mickey, Art said. Actually, Major Dick MD.

Sounds like something cropped to six. And then some, she said lying on the bed—Bedouin style. She held back on all levels except when she screamed his name when they had wild passionate sex and came together. Scatology was the science of skiatorrhea. Crapper. Urolagia. Rivers.

Art felt sheepish. Wheeeeeo, she yelped in a teasing way as she signaled the onset of the lust marathon. Melissa Mylus. My lust.

They made love over and over again. He was not one to try and set records. He just wanted to please her and he had accomplished that—many times.

Art woke up two hours later and realized he’d been away four hours from the hospital. He’d have to return to 7 West. Somewhat like 1-West at Stouffville Hospital. Clash of cultures. He dressed in the dark and kissed Melissa.

Angel this is not the end, whispered Art. I love you. He mouthed it as if it seemed like ‘Elephant stew.’ I’ll give you a ring, he said from his days of living in London, England.

Melissa mumbled something in her sleep and rolled over. It’ll clear them out and set me straight, she said in half-jest. Tinnitus.

He took a taxi to NYGH. It was now four AM.

Where have you been, smiled the nurse.

I went for a drive with a girlfriend, he said.

Get some sleep, the nurse whispered.

He went to room number 745 and undressed. He slipped into bed quietly and did the psychotic find her thing then the socks. Sister burka-psychosis. A silver member of the Adam’s family.

Chapter 2

Sycamore

Long were the days of a woman’s ass being money—it was the man’s ass that was money. Welcome to the Jokers world. It was the girl-guys who made this happen until the shock of King Charles. Sorry queens.

Good morning Art, said Dr. Robert Weinstock.

He was a young psychiatrist that had done his post-graduate studies in psychiatry in New York. He was intelligent, insightful and cared about Art especially since Art was a Medical Graduate.

Dr. Ali, could you speculate on this girl’s diagnosis knowing that her medications include Lithium and Haldol, staff psychiatrist.

Bipolar, said Art. No! It’s schizoaffective and borderline on Axis III.

That’s right, said Dr. Joffin. You seem to know a wide array of it. Actually bipolar and schizoaffective are similar since you can hear voices with bipolar II.

Hmm!!!!!!!!!, said Art suspecting a hint of sarcasm coming from him. Maybe it was just his inability to appreciate himself or others to truly appreciate him and his only-mad-guy-in-the-world dumfounded attitude. These grand rounds never could be anything but a whole set of chimpanzees chewing on old gummy bears. If it weren’t for all these target-practice-aim-at the-resident rounds, medicine would be easy and why, logical and reasonable. See your way through the mass of patients, take a ‘shot in the clouds pills’ and treat their rotting label. Why all this ‘first lets turn up the heat for the cold hospital grand rounds.’ Smashing the connect-the-dot domicile house staff. Life is a hospital. Dr. Hospital with all the while being the target to make it easier on their lives—one day at a time—one hour at a time. The call room was a crazy house section of the house of pain. A pain in the rat’s ass. Of course, the pawing at knowledge has its merits. Like a grand mer—maire at grammar school for the white leathered skinned with perfume. Fine, he could sweat it out and go home in a feverish anger. You get used to it so it becomes this automotive beaten sponge like regurgitation of bald facts. During grand rounds he had hoped that the animal in charge could be as kind as to not touch him with his probing thousand questions and a ‘you can’t win scenario’, toss it in the air and stuff it in you. Magic, hey can anyone pull the answer out my pocket since I’m the chief of mad internal medicine with my delusions about Harrisons. Misfit. Bet you couldn’t find that in a Journal; even the Mayo covered smelly pages of the NJM. He felt like the whole black band of healers might just kindly not swing away or fire or would not fire copper slugs at him. It’s hard being the last find on earth. Merry denial of the last lover acquaintance sitting on you left trying to be real in popcorn spitting shooting blanks laced with hard afterthoughts. The skull rowing faster and faster on his treadmill with his bald lies shining true for his next bonus. Pounding away when she just wants blood ready at her disposal. All of their wives wanted money and to them marriage was a marriage of convenience to get a tighter hole to crawl into. Why the double check to $500,000 per year. You had to justify the money—why not some hooker in some backstreet. A lampoon. The blood sucking vampires catching up to the Simsons. Coffee, coffee, coffee. Tea for two British bees wanting their sugar hit. Let’s run on all cylinders and stuff it in a pot. Smile at the patient and stack ’em high and shuffle them like a deck of toxically caustic leaches. Heckle and Jeckle or more like Dr. Jeckle and Hr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde was the bad guy—wasn’t he? One day save ’em and the next fuck their asses to hell and back and see if it gets them anywhere. Like the Family Doctor with the sawed off shut-gun, the dead pathologist cutting himself to see if he’s as dead as his mortified corpses that he samples out of love or the shrink looking for a gift mouthed by a self-centered psychiatric loon. The ‘I’ of the storm. These cut neck Nazi medical keeners want to be the next back and bone doctor. Or slicing to the Promised Land. A word of caution they’d say, use the med speak, that emulating yes sir attitude makes for a great pack of sheep. Cooked, fried or frozen at Kelvin 11 letting them enjoy the fresh stench of skulls. Codes?—ASCII Codes. The computer in simplicity. Head Hunters. The genetic typing of residents that goes on—taking pokes at residents using patients. Meaningless dickless pagan popcorn, mnemonics, acronyms and let’s sound off the wave of arm pit oozing love-cable. Drip, drip, drip. Smoking guns with rifles masquerading as warlocks and wizards. Killers. Yule tide. Thanks. Medical misfits. Misunderstanding. She’s the one.

The genocide that goes on in July. Hey, I killed my first patient. He’ll be digging his autobiography into the pine box—no, his casket—no his pine box. Reale, Railly. Genome warfare and who’s got the worst secrets hiding in their decodified DNA staring like vision of coprophagic love—Coco Channel locked away behind the computer not wanting to hit the key. A thesaurus of omission in his shriveled little brain. Bleep! The zoo’s about to start. Get the leaches out and let the waft stand lingering there, with an alliance of enemies leaving him in the corner flowing—his enemy mirrored in medical school. ‘Louise you got it; want a dog-e biscuit to lick at that.’ Six words from the bleeping zoo with gas filling up his…Did you catch the Indian article omission.

Let’s try this first honey: How about we admit we don’t know what the clue we’re doing but it feels like the right thing to do. Dolphins, fax modems and computer modems clicking away. Wrong of us to second guess. Hey, let’s admit it. It’s a god send mistake, medicine. Quacking to the annals of perfection. The key word: you-U-I—U straightened out— gotta try everything one thing at a time or just double up on it, triple up on it till the sorry ass patients and hearing lunes tic tack all day… rattle, rattle. Guts to the grassy four-eyed smuck and look in the mirror and see the perfect reflection— a woman, Perfart. This was clear, these cut throat lab coats some of them in wet camouflage feeding off and pills. I’ll cut you to pieces. Did you see him just standing there, naked? Gown. Cliques, cliterature, bands, faces in the crowd acting his mind to heaven. Holidays were the worst carnage. Greeting cards—shalom, Salam. Have a thank you card, but No thanks, I’ve got a pile in the filing cabinet waiting to be reread. Even if it was a Gandhi approach, the shelter of the house of God was a war of three books. Stack of bibles. Taste this one, poke that one, sister narcolepsy in his bed with a permafever. Jungle that it was—the nineties—hot. And so it was said, no more to say. One on one those sweet picture perfect angles could really dam up the tide and referee their intension secretive. Sitting there. Who the hell are they anyway, judging these poor Shiites? Some of the last psychotic groups hadn’t even registered on the radar like brown stealth bombers, silent night swimming. American Prophets—Mormons—another one. Sweet and sour they can’t even turn on the juices of love. Clay Egghead, wake up you ambivalent son of a bitch. Pick the pieces of the fence out of your ass and get on to your life, sliver after sliver. Sitting on leather seats watching the carnage-no, genocide-until they deciphered the DNA of the common nut. Then he knows the real heat of peanut butter stuck on the roof of his shut mouth. Taped to his black tongue. Grammar, grammar, language isn’t my best strength, but they were good at hovering; standing like a real weirdoes." Sadistic fantasies of getting someone to wiping them all out world by world until there’s just peanut butter emolliating itself into charred remains of black nut essence. The SS—Shit shits. S-2, S-1 behind their backs. Find the zero, decimated. Use it all for sex sarg, Boss, Bosnia paid. Kuwait, Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq. WE all paid. Price—integration. He didn’t want this for his children, that clueless fatherless of that litter. I want home sweet home. But he wants him to know that burnt rubber bears not sweet fruits except a banana. Self-defeating personality disorder to kill their own creation strongest and best. The best regards then as targets like him were the ultimate fried eggplant. He had made a choice and reneged to the worst; beyond words. Happy July twenty-fifth wedding. Hi Dad. Take what you want, but just don’t get in the way of grand-mer’s apple son. The Art of hope for an ever standing race of future kids. It’s OK! It’s all right. Just don’t let them see you cry as they fry your brains. Your treasures, their future carnage. Jump start her. Reset button—cliterature. The toffee EAR, some new difference. Indifference was no solution. The paper trail of progress notes led to a warehouse of echoing deaf patients. There was beauty in opposing the system but also carnage in war. The chink in the armour was always in the room using the shitzer and eating pieces of cat shit. If there was a seventh heaven he was totally unaware. Nothing could sink him deeper into the Shiites. He was sick of the pain, sick of learning of the Muslim target paradox. Wasn’t there heaven—1 to7. The Yes chief students always needed another enemy big enough to make a challenge, yet faithfully sufficient to be their own worst enemy. It all stemmed from the British Empire and the Billionare club goading their love and work ethic. SABOTAGE from the pilgrims. The Iran Iraq war was it. Supersuicidal 80’s. If they all go then we’ll just have roaches to smoke.

His medical class had one black male student for four years of medical keeners. The Chinese students saying Blacks don’t want to be doctors. Why let them in. It’s debatable whether this was intentional policy, Canadian Politics or a sociological phenomenon. Maybe it was a mistake or wrong for Art even to care about the plight of the disenfranchised. There was one truth in Art’s mind—only the red Chinese could take them on monetarily. They just pushed him to the edge of the world almost like he didn’t belong. Not with the Indians, not with the Arabs, not with anyone. Maybe they did think of him as a Carribean despod. Even the lone Sikh found his friends and was accepted as a freak from hell fired up to maximum burn temperature by the cliquish assholes.

Medical school has its share of wild freaks that raised big red flags to the other students. The entire cast of the theatre production was curiously suspect—of what no on knew. One thing is certain, medical students were flaming, with their egos lit on fire, blazing bright for everyone to see especially the residents. They’d attended plays, have wine and cheese parties as if it were some metaphor to an orgy of vintage champagne wealth motivated weird sex. Anyone for aged ass or aged munch my ass. Make your first billion then drinks piss and eat crap and die.

It was like genocide inside that pressure cooker. The women of medical school, trying to be ambivalent were pushed to feminism, faith, sex, inter-racial fill my Miles to its depth, or extreme academia. The potential of a future with the letters M.D. including the periods was worth the ambivalence. Eventually everyone became ambivalent towards their patients and vicious towards their perceived subordinated. You didn’t know where the signs ended and the symptoms began; objectivity and subjectivity was lost in a surreal subjective abstract painting of the whole class in a wash of beige ambivalence.

Dr. Ali. What’s your prognosis for this girl. right in front of her.

That’s a function of her premorbid functioning, whether she had negative symptoms, her social support and her response to medication. The label isn’t always an accurate prediction of future outcome. Art’s responses were always textbook and he avoided making conclusions of judgement or worse yet any personal insight or anecdotes. The less feet you stepped on the better.

Art was full of emotions as he went through his final year psychiatry rotation. This was the very hospital he was once hospitalized in as a medical student. What motivated him to get back up on the horse every time he fell—and he probably fell fifteen times— was more likely just survival instinct as it was the desire to be a doctor. He knew one thing without even having to think; he could not be a lifelong mental patient. Life was not simply holding a good hand. Life was playing a poor hand well.

See, that’s my Danish, said the drugged up girl.

Sorry, I didn’t know you would claim communal food. Said Art.

They know here on the ninth floor that the Danish is my property. She drooled.

I’m not hungry anyway. I think I’ll just have a cup of coffee, he relinquished.

Be careful of the animals when it’s feeding time at the zoo, laughed one of the Psychiatric assistants. His Wop co-worker jolted. It was the story of the wop that converted to Judaism and she made him into a bisexual and left him with his father’s money. Bet he never said jewie anymore. He learnt what a Bagel was, a big duck egg.

The night before had been a nightmare for Art.

Get undressed and put on this gown. ordered the dominatrix nurse from Trinidad. Trinity.

I know my rights. I don’t have to take your medication and I can ask for a medical review. I’ve got three lines of appeal.

We’ve got the right to institute emergency treatment at our prerogative. If you don’t take the pills we’ll just give you an injection of Ativan, she said with a look of empathy on her face. For some reason Art could sense as if she was offering him a choice behind this delusional mind." He felt safe for just a moment. Fifth Heaven. He took the concoction of Haldol, Cogentin and Ativan. With the staff, other than doctors, there was always the possibility of finding an ally or a friend. More so with the patients. It was like a house of multicoloured mirrors; find your parallel universe and you shall find your friend. Sameness bred friction and resentment. Sameness was hard like someone saying find your own kind.

The Psychiatric ER is under renovations and the upper floors are full. We’ll have to keep you temporarily on the forth floor, said Rocky, the psych assistant, his voice hiding a snicker. He needed a snickers bar.

The forth floor was truly a psychopathic floor. Canadian Psycho. American Scio. Art wrote:

Canadian Psycho American Socio

John was on the way downhill like a check of JAPS of valley compatibility. He was a young professional on a Saturday night anger binge—his way to murder for all three reasons—love, money and revenge. His victim would be random—his anger. He hid the fact that she represented his anger for his long lost love of machine gun instincts. He had got the gun from her. He was Canadian in America-the US.

He has a history of depression in Canada. The lunes—the country of psychiatric wards. He’d been in everyone except the Pen up north. This was almost as bad as the Hatch he’d soon be in.

Mom, I going out, he tolled.

The fever has hit you again, she said.

Yes! This is the last one mom, I promise.

Sure.

Did you eat dinner out at Sue’s?

No shit!

GO.

The fever felt like a rush up his spine. He had to do it. The codes!

He tapped a few words on the computer-WORD and WordPerfect and they were now an intertwined partner. More money for Gates. AND OR NOT. Pure rush.

Edger Allen Poe was a mere traveler. Imagine. See it?

Words and conversations seemed like pictures-FLASH.

He toked up on Canadian Leaf. It was New York-New Pork. New Pork Museum.

He let it rip with his R.I.P. Jeans on. The music blared and pulsed through his soul. Anger—Rays of anger.

He saw his prey. She struggled to hold the tire iron to the nuts. He flipped down the passenger side window and offered to drive her to the nearby corner gas. She was a mirror of his Sue. Indian and the same visage. You married nothing.

It was set. He activated the door locks and she screamed of her fate to be. He took her to the parking lot where he had met Sue—the sewer rat. The met over the radio or was it over the line. The had spent months serenading each other with songs and escapades until they met side by side in separate cars—then the parking lot to meet face to face for the first time. It was like the merger of two hospitals—Dr. Hospital. She was a young nurse—easy as ever.

Want some pickled pig feet honey, she said.

Sure. The killing fields again? Anything better? What’s going on with Sue? Dad.

Her fate was now sealed. He was a Ritilin kid. Drugged up for ten years. A drugged chicken. He took her apart like a cheap car. His precision was precise even for a pathology resident.

He washed the car clean of all blood and dumped her in the sea. Lady Liberty. She had put up a fight like Sue had about his smaller penis.

Five reduced. They were reducing to one—hell of testosterone kick to a small penis. He was on the wrong edge of the bell curve—not a snake like he boasted.

He returned home to find the cops waiting.

We got a report from a cell phone number. You’re gonna hatch in prison, said the officer.

He got off all charges and was confined to Hatch for three months. He continued to kill—unimpeded.

Mom and Dad continued to watch A&E—Ass and End.

Art Ali. 26/03/1991. Palindrome year.

The Forensic Psychiatry floor for the killers that ate with plastic forks and knives. The toxic equivalent of Bernardo. Everyone else seemed like saints compared to those straddling the fence between prison and a psychiatric institution. They were the best functioning of all psychiatric patients too smart to want to give society the pleasure of killing themselves and too proud to give into depression. Really, they were sociopaths. They were the closest thing to survival of the fittest, able to defend themselves against any threat and to take what they felt entitled to and excluding others with a set of clannish rules and codes of behaviour. This place was made for Hannibal. They had faces like screens; poker faced or merely drugged up on life, an uncontrollable ‘Id’ or vitamin H. Entitlement throughout every cell in their body.

We’re moving you to the ninth floor. The mood disorders floor. How was your stay in Hotel California, snickered the psych assistant his will as strong as a rock. You can have your clothes back."

Nice sweater. Where’d you get it. two said in unison.

I had one like that when I was growing up.

Nice sweater, another one said.

I like the stripes.

Yea, nice sweater, perseverating like a brain damaged zebra in general quarters.

The onslaught of patients confused Art. Thanks. Where is she?

Who?

My nursie. I need a smoke

It’s a free for all in here. There’s no assigned nurses.

Wonderful.

You’ve got to surrender your clothes, said the young nurse.

I thought it worked something like that,