One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Ken Kesey

  A successful Dismissal like this is a product brings joy to the Big Nurse's heart and speaks good of her craft and the whole industry in general. Everybody's happy with a Dismissal.

  But an Admission is a different story. Even the best-behaved Admission is bound to need some work to swing into routine, and, also, you never can tell when just that certain one might come in who's free enough to foul things up right and left, really make a hell of a mess and constitute a threat to the whole smoothness of the outfit. And, like I explain, the Big Nurse gets real put out if anything keeps her outfit from running smooth.

  BEFORE NOONTIME they're at the fog machine again but they haven't got it turned up full; it's not so thick but what I can see if I strain real hard. One of these days I'll quit straining and let myself go completely, lose myself in the fog the way some of the other Chronics have, but for the time being I'm interested in this new man--I want to see how he takes to the Group Meeting coming up.

  Ten minutes to one the fog dissolves completely and the black boys are telling Acutes to clear the floor for the meeting. All the tables are carried out of the day room to the tub room across the hall--leaves the floor, McMurphy says, like we was aiming to have us a little dance.

  The Big Nurse watches all this through her window. She hasn't moved from her spot in front of that one window for three solid hours, not even for lunch. The day-room floor gets cleared of tables, and at one o'clock the doctor comes out of his office down the hall, nods once at the nurse as he goes past where she's watching out her window, and sits in his chair just to the left of the door. The patients sit down when he does; then the little nurses and the residents straggle in. When everybody's down, the Big Nurse gets up from behind her window and goes back to the rear of the Nurses' Station to that steel panel with dials and buttons on it, sets some kind of automatic pilot to run things while she's away, and comes out into the day room, carrying the log book and a basketful of notes. Her uniform, even after she's been here half a day, is still starched so stiff it don't exactly bend any place; it cracks sharp at the joints with a sound like a frozen canvas being folded.

  She sits just to the right of the door.

  Soon as she's sat down, Old Pete Bancini sways to his feet and starts in wagging his head and wheezing. "I'm tired. Whew. O Lord. Oh, I'm awful tired ..." the way he always does whenever there's a new man on the ward who might listen to him.

  The Big Nurse doesn't look over at Pete. She's going through the papers in her basket. "Somebody go sit beside Mr. Bancini," she says. "Quiet him down so we can start the meeting."

  Billy Bibbit goes. Pete has turned facing McMurphy and is lolling his head from side to side like a signal light at a railroad crossing. He worked on the railroad thirty years; now he's wore clean out but still's functioning on the memory.

  "I'm ti-i-uhd," he says, wagging his face at McMurphy.

  "Take it easy, Pete," Billy says, lays a freckled hand on Pete's knee.

  "... Awful tired ..."

  "I know, Pete"--pats the skinny knee, and Pete pulls back his face, realizes nobody is going to heed his complaint today.

  The nurse takes off her wrist watch and looks at the ward clock and winds the watch and sets it face toward her in the basket. She takes a folder from the basket.

  "Now. Shall we get into the meeting?"

  She looks around to see if anybody else is about to interrupt her, smiling steady as her head turns in her collar. The guys won't meet her look; they're all looking for hangnails. Except McMurphy. He's got himself an armchair in the corner, sits in it like he's claimed it for good, and he's watching her every move. He's still got his cap on, jammed tight down on his red head like he's a motorcycle racer. A deck of cards in his lap opens for a one-handed cut, then clacks shut with a sound blown up loud by the silence. The nurse's swinging eyes hang on him for a second. She's been watching him play poker all morning and though she hasn't seen any money pass hands she suspects he's not exactly the type that is going to be happy with the ward rule of gambling for matches only. The deck whispers open and clacks shut again and then disappears somewhere in one of those big palms.

  The nurse looks at her watch again and pulls a slip of paper out of the folder she's holding, looks at it, and returns it to the folder. She puts the folder down and picks up the log book. Ellis coughs from his place on the wall; she waits until he stops.

  "Now. At the close of Friday's meeting ... we were discussing Mr. Harding's problem ... concerning his young wife. He had stated that his wife was extremely well endowed in the bosom and that this made him uneasy because she drew stares from men on the street." She starts opening to places in the log book; little slips of paper stick out of the top of the book to mark the pages. "According to the notes listed by various patients in the log, Mr. Harding has been heard to say that she 'damn well gives the bastards reason to stare.' He has also been heard to say that he may give her reason to seek further sexual attention. He has been heard to say, 'My dear sweet but illiterate wife thinks any word or gesture that does not smack of brickyard brawn and brutality is a word or gesture of weak dandyism."'

  She continues reading silently from the book for a while, then closes it.

  "He has also stated that his wife's ample bosom at times gives him a feeling of inferiority. So. Does anyone care to touch upon this subject further?"

  Harding shuts his eyes, and nobody else says anything. McMurphy looks around at the other guys, waiting to see if anybody is going to answer the nurse, then holds his hand up and snaps his fingers, like a school kid in class; the nurse nods at him.

  "Mr.--ah--McMurry?"

  "Touch upon what?"

  "What? Touch--"

  "You ask, I believe, 'Does anyone care to touch upon--"'

  "Touch upon the--subject, Mr. McMurry, the subject of Mr. Harding's problem with his wife."

  "Oh. I thought you mean touch upon her--something else."

  "Now what could you--"

  But she stops. She was almost flustered for a second there. Some of the Acutes hide grins, and McMurphy takes a huge stretch, yawns, winks at Harding. Then the nurse, calm as anything, puts the log book back in the basket and takes out another folder and opens it and starts reading.

  "McMurry, Randle Patrick. Committed by the state from the Pendleton Farm for Correction. For diagnosis and possible treatment. Thirty-five years old. Never married. Distinguished Service Cross in Korea, for leading an escape from a Communist prison camp. A dishonorable discharge, afterward, for insubordination. Followed by a history of street brawls and barroom fights and a series of arrests for Drunkenness, Assault and Battery, Disturbing the Peace, repeated gambling, and one arrest--for Rape."

  "Rape?" The doctor perks up.

  "Statutory, with a girl of--"

  "Whoa. Couldn't make that stick," McMurphy says to the doctor. "Girl wouldn't testify."

  "With a child of fifteen."

  "Said she was seventeen, Doc, and she was plenty willin'."

  "A court doctor's examination of the child proved entry, repeated entry, the record states--"

  "So willin', in fact, I took to sewing my pants shut."

  "The child refused to testify in spite of the doctor's findings. There seemed to be intimidation. Defendant left town shortly after the trial."

  "Hoo boy, I had to leave. Doc, let me tell you"--he leans forward with an elbow on a knee, lowering his voice to the doctor across the room--"that little hustler would of actually burnt me to a frazzle by the time she reached legal sixteen. She got to where she was tripping me and beating me to the floor."

  The nurse closes up the folder and passes it across the doorway to the doctor. "Our new Admission, Doctor Spivey," just like she's got a man folded up inside that yellow paper and can pass him on to be looked over. "I thought I might brief you on his record later today, but as he seems to insist on asserting himself in the Group Meeting, we might as well dispense with him now."

  The doctor fishes his glasses from his coat pocket b
y pulling on the string, works them on his nose in front of his eyes. They're tipped a little to the right, but he leans his head to the left and brings them level. He's smiling a little as he turns through the folder, just as tickled by this new man's brassy way of talking right up as the rest of us, but, just like the rest of us, he's careful not to let himself come right out and laugh. The doctor closes the folder when he gets to the end, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. He looks to where McMurphy is still leaned out at him from across the day room.

  "You've--it seems--no other psychiatric history, Mr. McMurry?"

  "McMurphy, Doc."

  "Oh? But I thought--the nurse was saying--"

  He opens the folder again, fishes out those glasses, looks the record over for another minute before he closes it, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. "Yes. McMurphy. That is correct. I beg your pardon."

  "It's okay, Doc. It was the lady there that started it, made the mistake. I've known some people inclined to do that. I had this uncle whose name was Hallahan, and he went with a woman once who kept acting like she couldn't remember his name right and calling him Hooligan just to get his goat. It went on for months before he stopped her. Stopped her good, too."

  "Oh? How did he stop her?" the doctor asks.

  McMurphy grins and rubs his nose with his thumb. "Ah-ah, now, I can't be tellin' that. I keep Unk Hallahan's method a strict secret, you see, in case I need to use it myself someday."

  He says it right at the nurse. She smiles right back at him, and he looks over at the doctor. "Now; what was you asking about my record, Doc?"

  "Yes. I was wondering if you've any previous psychiatric history. Any analysis, any time spent in any other institution?"

  "Well, counting state and county coolers--"

  "Mental institutions."

  "Ah. No, if that's the case. This is my first trip. But I am crazy, Doc. I swear I am. Well here--let me show you here. I believe that other doctor at the work farm ..."

  He gets up, slips the deck of cards in the pocket of his jacket, and comes across the room to lean over the doctor's shoulder and thumb through the folder in his lap. "Believe he wrote something, back at the back here somewhere ..."

  "Yes? I missed that. Just a moment." The doctor fishes his glasses out again and puts them on and looks to where McMurphy is pointing.

  "Right here, Doc. The nurse left this part out while she was summarizing my record. Where it says, 'Mr. McMurphy has evidenced repeated'--I just want to make sure I'm understood completely, Doc--'repeated outbreaks of passion that suggest the possible diagnosis of psychopath.' He told me that 'psychopath' means I fight and fuh--pardon me, ladies--means I am he put it overzealous in my sexual relations. Doctor, is that real serious?"

  He asks it with such a little-boy look of worry and concern all over his broad, tough face that the doctor can't help bending his head to hide another little snicker in his collar, and his glasses fall from his nose dead center back in his pocket. All of the Acutes are smiling too, now, and even some of the Chronics.

  "I mean that overzealousness, Doc, have you ever been troubled by it?"

  The doctor wipes his eyes. "No, Mr. McMurphy, I'll admit I haven't. I am interested, however, that the doctor at the work farm added this statement: 'Don't overlook the possibility that this man might be feigning psychosis to escape the drudgery of the work farm."' He looks up at McMurphy. "And what about that, Mr. McMurphy?"

  "Doctor"--he stands up to his full height, wrinkles his forehead, and holds out both arms, open and honest to all the wide world--"do I look like a sane man?"

  The doctor is working so hard to keep from giggling again he can't answer. McMurphy pivots away from the doctor and asks the same thing of the Big Nurse: "Do I?" Instead of answering she stands up and takes the manila folder away from the doctor and puts it back in the basket under her watch. She sits back down.

  "Perhaps, Doctor, you should advise Mr. McMurry on the protocol of these Group Meetings."

  "Ma'am," McMurphy says, "have I told you about my uncle Hallahan and the woman who used to screw up his name?"

  She looks at him for a long time without her smile. She has the ability to turn her smile into whatever expression she wants to use on somebody, but the look she turns it into is no different, just a calculated and mechanical expression to serve her purpose. Finally she says, "I beg your pardon. Mack-Murph-y." She turns back to the doctor. "Now, Doctor, if you would explain ..."

  The doctor folds his hands and leans back. "Yes. I suppose what I should do is explain the complete theory of our Therapeutic Community, while we're at it. Though I usually save it until later. Yes. A good idea, Miss Ratched, a fine idea."

  "Certainly the theory too, doctor, but what I had in mind was the rule that the patients remain seated during the course of the meeting."

  "Yes. Of course. Then I will explain the theory. Mr. McMurphy, one of the first things is that the patients remain seated during the course of the meeting. It's the only way, you see, for us to maintain order."

  "Sure, Doctor. I just got up to show you that thing in my record book."

  He goes over to his chair, gives another big stretch and yawn, sits down, and moves around for a while like a dog coming to rest. When he's comfortable, he looks over at the doctor, waiting.

  "As to the theory ..." The doctor takes a deep, happy breath.

  "Ffffuck da wife," Ruckly says. McMurphy hides his mouth behind the back of his hand and calls across the ward to Ruckly in a scratchy whisper, "Whose wife?" and Martini's head snaps up, eyes wide and staring. "Yeah," he says, "whose wife? Oh. Her? Yeah, I see her. Yeah."

  "I'd give a lot to have that man's eyes," McMurphy says of Martini and then doesn't say anything all the rest of the meeting. Just sits and watches and doesn't miss a thing that happens or a word that's said. The doctor talks about his theory until the Big Nurse finally decides he's used up time enough and asks him to hush so they can get on to Harding, and they talk the rest of the meeting about that.

  McMurphy sits forward in his chair a couple of times during the meeting like he might have something to say, but he decides better and leans back. There's a puzzled expression coming over his face. Something strange is going on here, he's finding out. He can't quite put his finger on it. Like the way nobody will laugh. Now he thought sure there would be a laugh when he asked Ruckly. "Whose wife?" but there wasn't even a sign of one. The air is pressed in by the walls, too tight for laughing. There's something strange about a place where the men won't let themselves loose and laugh, something strange about the way they all knuckle under to that smiling flour-faced old mother there with the too-red lipstick and the too-big boobs. And he thinks he'll just wait a while to see what the story is in this new place before he makes any kind of play. That's a good rule for a smart gambler: look the game over awhile before you draw yourself a hand.

  I've heard that theory of the Therapeutic Community enough times to repeat it forwards and backwards--how a guy has to learn to get along in a group before he'll be able to function in a normal society; how the group can help the guy by showing him where he's out of place; how society is what decides who's sane and who isn't, so you got to measure up. All that stuff. Every time we get a new patient on the ward the doctor goes into the theory with both feet; it's pretty near the only time he takes things over and runs the meeting. He tells how the goal of the Therapeutic Community is a democratic ward, run completely by the patients and their votes, working toward making worth-while citizens to turn back Outside onto the street. Any little gripe, any grievance, anything you want changed, he says, should be brought up before the group and discussed instead of letting it fester inside of you. Also you should feel at ease in your surroundings to the extent you can freely discuss emotional problems in front of patients and staff. Talk, he says, discuss, confess. And if you hear a friend say something during the course of your everyday conversation, then list it in the log book for the staff to see. It's not, as the movies call it, "squealin
g," it's helping your fellow. Bring these old sins into the open where they can be washed by the sight of all. And participate in Group Discussion. Help yourself and your friends probe into the secrets of the subconscious. There should be no need for secrets among friends.

  Our intention, he usually ends by saying, is to make this as much like your own democratic, free neighborhoods as possible--a little world Inside that is a made-to-scale prototype of the big world Outside that you will one day be taking your place in again.

  He's maybe got more to say, but about this point the Big Nurse usually hushes him, and in the lull old Pete stands up and wigwags that battered copper-pot head and tells everybody how tired he is, and the nurse tells somebody to go hush him up too, so the meeting can continue, and Pete is generally hushed and the meeting goes on.

  Once, just one time that I can remember, four or five years back, did it go any different. The doctor had finished his spiel, and the nurse had opened right up with, "Now. Who will start? Let out those old secrets." And she'd put all the Acutes in a trance by sitting there in silence for twenty minutes after the question, quiet as an electric alarm about to go off, waiting for somebody to start telling something about themselves. Her eyes swept back and forth over them as steady as a turning beacon. The day room was clamped silent for twenty long minutes, with all of the patients stunned where they sat. When twenty minutes had passed, she looked at her watch and said, "Am I to take it that there's not a man among you that has committed some act that he has never admitted?" She reached in the basket for the log book. "Must we go over past history?"

  That triggered something, some acoustic device in the walls, rigged to turn on at just the sound of those words coming from her mouth. The Acutes stiffened. Their mouths opened in unison. Her sweeping eyes stopped on the first man along the wall.

  His mouth worked. "I robbed a cash register in a service station."

  She moved to the next man.

  "I tried to take my little sister to bed."

  Her eyes clicked to the next man; each one jumped like a shooting-gallery target.

  "I--one time--wanted to take my brother to bed."

  "I killed my cat when I was six. Oh, God forgive me, I stoned her to death and said my neighbor did it."