He was sitting in his wheelchair. Both his feet were amputated because he had diabetes. Psychosis made him neglect to take his insulin properly, and his toes had blackened into charred stubs from oxygen deprivation. He had stepped on rusty nails in his garage, and because his nerves were damaged from glucose plaques like sugar slurry clogging his arteries, he couldn't feel anything. His feet were as numb as wooden blocks. The small puncture wounds allowed bacteria to enter and devour his flesh. He didn't notice until his socks were soaked in green pus and smelled like a gangrenous ulcer. By then it was too late. The infection couldn't be controlled and the surgeons hacked off his feet with scalpels and a bone saw.
The man was Southern. His black-grey hair was thinning and his expression hostile. He had lost an eye to shrapnel during the Vietnam war and had a prosthetic. When he was psychotic, like now, he tried to rip it from the socket, thinking it was a VC land mine implanted by enemies while he slept.
I had to get his 5150 renewed. I wandered into the room, ignoring his suspicious frown, thinking my good manners and charm could win his trust. New psych aides are so naive they believe a friendly disposition can tame the beast inside a paranoid schizophrenic. He would sense I was nice and his delusions would be temporarily quelled.
This type of thinking could have gotten me killed.
"Mr. Burke, I'm _____," I said with a smile. My eyes didn't quite meet his. One was dislocated, the prosthetic not properly set, staring at the ceiling. The other was focused on me with savage intensity, as if I had Asian features and a red bandanna knotted around my head. "I'm here to renew your 5150."
He glared at me as if I held a written confession that would implicate him as a traitor.
"Sir, your legal hold's expired." My voice quavered. "The doctor needs you to sign in on a voluntary basis."
Burke's face twisted into a scowl. "You're nothing but a f--ing coward," he snarled. He could see fear imprinted on my face.
I ignored this, holding out the legal document. "It's simple. You just sign it and I give it to the secretary."
He snatched the form from my hand. Crumpled it into a ball and tossed it in a garbage can. "I'll do no such thing," he bellowed. "The secretary's a scheming bitch and you're in the sack with her."
I was at a loss. An uncertain smile touched my lips.
Mistake.
He rolled his wheelchair forward so it bumped my leg. His face bristled with gleeful hatred. "You're the one who set the bomb. I can see it in your bloodthirsty eyes. You yellow bastard. You put it in the bushes and when I took a piss, it blew off both my feet. It rained blood for days. The jungle is stained with my insides and it will remain there for an eternity. Not even the monsoons will wash it away because it is evidence of your guilt..."
I backed away.
"That's it, run, snitch, because I just called in a report and they're going to napalm your ass. You will melt, I repeat, melt, because you have done such harm you will burn on earth as if it is a hell of your own making..."
Outside, I felt shaken by violent hands. I told myself over and over that the insults weren't personal, it was his psychosis speaking, spewing malice that had slumbered in his subcoscious for decades. Is that what psychosis is? The ability to sense what lies hidden in the brain, without a filter? My God, I thought, shaking my head. His stare pierced my soul. His mad prophet ranting tapped a motherlode of truth. He's crazy and I'm just like him. I can keep a lid on it now, but soon it will boil over.
I'm just like him.
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