True Story©… Am-Knees-Ya pt. II - The Finale

 

… and we’re back!
if you weren’t here or don’t recall what transpired last week, please click here before continuing or this won’t end up making much sense to you.

     So the doctor comes sprinting down the ward and into the room, breathlessly asking the nurse what was awry.

Nurse: “The mescaline worked, but I don’t think it worked-worked"

Doctor: “W-what do you mean?”

Nurse: “Well…  As per norm, he was ‘up high’ for several hours and we expected that, and there were no traumas in his coming down.”

Doctor: “Okay, so what’s the problem?”

Me: “Y’all hursh!  I need to get some rest before my 12-hour shift on the factory floor tonight!”

Nurse: “Well…  That.”

Doctor: “What’s happening?”

Nurse: “It seems he is of the opinion that he is--…”

Me: “Sweetheart! S’cuse me, sweetheart!  Could you have that colored gal that was in here before bring me a whiskey and a cigarette?”

Doctor: “Oh shit.”

Me: “And when am I getting moved to the Whites hospital?”

Nurse: “Sir, there IS no such thing, we’ve told you this.”

Me: “Bad enough they let you people think you can be doctors, my pa’ always said that this would happen if we let you people--…”

Doctor: “SIR!!!”

Nurse: “He’s been nonstop since he came back to.”

Doctor: “This is unheard of.”

     Due to my constant interjections, they moved their conversation to the hallway where they could more easily remain undistracted by me.  I wish I knew what they were saying, I was DESPERATELY in need to get into my own bed to sleep out what remained of these daylight hours so I could be spry for my shift on the mattress factory floor and there was just too much going on around me.

     After their conversation about whatever they needed to converse about, I was informed that my “mother,” Jeffrey and my wife had all dispersed for a short while to handle some at-home errands while I was under the treatment with the mescaline and being monitored by the nurses.  They would be back soon enough.
“Mom” and the wife came back first.  When they came into the room, I heard them speaking with the nurse.

Mom: “How is he?”

Nurse: “Well, physically, he is as good as he was when he came in here, but mentally he is--…”

Me: “Where’s that gal with my whiskey!?”

Nurse: “Well…”

Mom: “He hasn’t drank whiskey in a year and a half.”

Nurse: “He isn’t himself right now.”

Mom: “Whoa boy.”

Me: “Who are THESE people?  When are y’all taking me to the other hospital!?”

Nurse: “There is not another hospital to take you to, we’ve told you that.  And this is your wife and mother.”

Me: “Beverly?  Where?”

Mom: “Who the hell is Beverly?”

Nurse: “I am gathering that ‘Beverly’ is the wife of whomever he currently thinks he is.”

Mom: “And he thinks he is…”

Nurse: “We haven’t made it that far yet, you see he thinks he is--…”

Me (still rambling to no one in particular): “…  I mean.  It’s bad enough they don’t have no more whites only hospitals, but they ain’t even got decent doctors and nurses in here?  I been waiting how long for my whiskey and cigarette? ”

Nurse: “… see?”

Mom: “So he thinks he’s--…  well…”

Nurse: “Yes”

Mom: “Does he at least have a name?”

Nurse: “He pretty much speaks in insults and racism thus far.”

Mom: “He has not reacted to us being right here, so I don’t think we should set him off right now.”

Nurse: “No, not after the wrestling match it took to get him INTO the bed and keep him there.”

     Again, they took the conversation out to the hallway outside of where I could hear to interrupt.  Eventually, I lost interest and fell asleep.

     To this point, I had been in this here hospital for days.  I was exhausted and apparently anxious about losing a job that didn’t exist due to not being able to call the operator to put me through to the foreman.  They kept telling me that the mattress factory had closed 40 years ago, but no one could prove it.  It was like they were TRYING to get me fired and replaced with some non-union scum.
My nap was interrupted by the sound of Jeffrey and “Beverly” speaking to the doctor and the nurse.

Wife Person™ Beverly: “Well what do you guys think?  Is it worth a shot?”

Nurse: “Whaddyathink, doc?”

Doctor: “Well…  Physically, he is nearly in better shape than me.  Perhaps showing him directly to things out and around might help.”

Wife Person™ Beverly: “So we, his brother and I, ride him around the city.  They’re twins so his brother will best know where they’ve ever been or lived or whatever.”

Nurse: “It could work…  Doc?”

Doctor: “At this point, I am willing to try about anything.”

     So now there is a plan…  They wheel me to what I am to understand is my car and my brother drives us around giving me a tour of the city.  We visit places where he says we lived and played, where friends lived, schools we went to and other random places of interest.  All I could think, the whole ride was “when and why did they cut down all of the woods in the city?  It’s gonna make deer hunting hard if ain’t no trees and we won’t have enough to eat in the winter like that!”
After a couple of hours of this failed experiment, Jeffrey and Beverly returned me to the hospital for more attempts at doing this medically.  I am told that it is Saturday and I have been here a week now.  I just want to go.  They tried playing my favorite music for me to remind me, only for me to yell until they “turn off that damned jungle noise!”  There was never a waking moment where there was not at least one family member or family-adjacent friend somewhere nearby to receive info and play point to the rest.

     Wait… 
My shared custody agreement with my ex wife someone I had a wedding with once dictates custody exchange is a dropoff at the “receiving” parent’s house or otherwise agreed-upon location at 3pm on Sundays.  Apparently, my phone was commandeered and an arrangement made for my mother to receive her this week without alerting anyone that I was hospitalized or why, in hopes that things could be swiftly resolved.

     And this was the turn for the better…

Jeffrey Preston decided on Sunday afternoon that I should be taken for another ride.  Not a tour of the city this time, but to my own house where Wife Person™ Beverly would be with “Mom” and ‘someone special’ as they called it.
A straight shot from the hospital to my house took us about 13 minutes.  Not that I knew it was my house in the moment, but that was what he told me as we entered the neighborhood that I CLEARLY did not previously recall existing.
Until…

     We get out of Jeffrey Preston’s car and walked up the steps into the front of the house.
In the living room, there is Beverly, Mom, the perfectest (<-- new word!) little 12 year-old I have ever seen with three dogs…  The largest of the dogs is sitting in the 12 year-old’s lap and I felt something SNAP in my brain…

Me: “Chipmunk, get your grubby little mitts off of my puppy!”

The adults in the room snapped to attention…

Mom: “What did you say?”

Me: “I told your grandchild to stop touching Yetimer Bartholomew, that is MY puppy!”

Mom: “So you--…”

Me: “C’mere buddy!”

He complies…

Me: “Yeti down.”

He sits and looks at me, waiting for a command or his reward for compliance.  I scratch his ears.

Me: “Good boy.”

Mom: “Mimi, what you think?”

Wife Person™: “I think we take him back to the hospital for a minute to show them.”

Me: “What the hell are y’all talking about?”

Mom: “We’ll explain in a bit…  I’ll drive, let’s go.  Preston, take Ava with you for a while.”

…  and back to the hospital we went…

     Back up to the room I had been in for a whole-ass week, the doctor and nurses rushed to see what had come of the field trip.  Simultaneously, they braced themselves for the continuation of what I had been for the previous several days.
Mom and Wife Person™ had been speaking with the doctor in the hallway while I held court with the nurses in my room.  Finding Nemo was on TV…

Me: “If Finding Nemo was scientifically accurate when Nemo’s mom got her social security number expired, if his dad had been a true alpha, would have grown bigger and become a female.”

Nurse: “Huh?”

Me: “Yep, that is what clownfish do.  They’re a matriarchy and that’s how they operate naturally, a male can switch up gender and become ‘other’ respondent to necessity.”

The doctor walks in on the ass-end of this conversation and looked baffled, as if I had taken on a NEW persona.

Doctor: “I’m still concerned, has he assumed the memories of some kind of--…”

Wife Person™: “No…  He is just comfortable being weird and knows a lot of random ‘nothing’ facts.  That is his neurodivergent tick.  He won't stop even if you try to ignore him.”

I heard them talking, but I wasn’t done…

Me: “And Dory…  How she got ‘short term memory loss’ to that extreme, but remember exactly where the fuck that whale is and how to talk to him?”

Mom: “Yeah…  He’s back.”

     The hospital prepared my discharge paperwork and all the shit I would need to file for my employer to pay my leave (and for my return to work) and for the hospital indemnity folks to pay out a claim for my hospitalization.

 

Don’t get it fucked up, I am still back to hooping weekend after next though!