All three wear starched snow-white pants and white shirts, and white shoes polished like ice, and the shoes have red rubber soles silent as mice up and down the hall. They never make any noise when they move. They materialize in different parts of the ward every time a patient wants to check himself in private or whisper some secret to another guy. A patient’ll be in a corner all by himself, when all of a sudden he’ll hear a squeak, and frost forms along his cheek, and he turns in that direction and there’s a cold stone mask floating above him against the wall. He just sees the black face. No body. The walls are white as the white suits, polished clean as a refrigerator door, and it seems that the black face and hands float against it like a ghost.

After years of training all three black boys understand the Big Nurse very well. She never gives orders out loud or leaves written instructions that might be found by a visiting wife or schoolteacher. She doesn’t need to do it any more. The black boys do what she wants before she even thinks it.

So after the nurse gets her staff, efficiency locks ward like a watchman’s clock. Lights flash on in the dorm at six-thirty: the Acutes are up and out of bed quickly because otherwise the black boys will prod them out, make them do a lot of work in the hall. The Wheelers swing dead legs out on the floor and wait like seated statues when somebody’ll bring chairs to them. The Vegetables piss the bed, electric shock and buzzer activates and rolls them off on the tile where the black boys can hose them down and get them in clean greens…

Six-forty-five: the shavers buzz and the Acutes line up in alphabetical order at the mirrors, A, B, C, D… The walking Chronics like me walk in when the Acutes are done, then the Wheelers are wheeled in.

Seven o’clock: the mess hall opens and the order of line-up reverses: the Wheelers first, then the Walkers, then the Acutes pick up trays, corn flakes, bacon and eggs, toast and this morning a canned peach on a piece of green, torn lettuce. Some of the Acutes bring trays to the Wheelers. Most Wheelers are just Chronics with bad legs, they feed themselves, but there’re three Wheelers that have got no action from the neck down whatsoever, not much from the neck up. These are called Vegetables. The black boys push them in, wheel them against a wall, and bring them identical trays of muddy-looking food for these toothless three: eggs, ham, toast, bacon, all chewed thirty-two times by the stainless-steel machine in the kitchen.

The black boys feed the Vegetables quickly. They open their mouths with the spoon without ceremony, and they curse them all the time:“This ol’ fart Blastic. I can’t tell no more if I’m feeding him bacon puree or chunks of his own fuckin’ tongue.”…

Seven-thirty: back to the day room. The Big Nurse looks out through her special glass and nods at what she sees. She pushes a button and things start. Everything is in order. Acutes: sit on their side of the day room and wait when cards and Monopoly games will be brought out. Chronics: sit on their side and wait for puzzles from the Red Cross box.

Like a cartoon world, where the figures are flat and jerking through some kind of foolish story that might be really funny if the cartoon figures weren’t real guys…

Seven-forty-five: the black boys move down the line of Chronics and tape catheters on the ones that will hold still for it. Catheters are second-hand condoms the ends of which are cut off and fixed to tubes that run down pantlegs to a plastic sack.My job is to wash them at the end of each day. The black boys tape the condom to the hairs; old Catheter Chronics are hairless as babies from tape removal…

Eight o’clock: the speaker in the ceiling says, “Medications” in the Big Nurse’s voice. The Acutes line up at the glass door, A, B, C, D, then the Chronics, then the Wheelers. The guys get a capsule and a paper cup with water from the nurse and wash the capsule down. Very seldom some fool might ask what medication it is.

“Wait just a moment, honey; what are these two little red capsules in here with my vitamin?”

I know him. He’s a big Acute, already getting the reputation of a troublemaker.

“It’s just medication, Mr. Taber, good for you. Swallow it.”

“But I mean what kind of medication. Christ, I can see that they’re pills —”

“Just swallow it all, shall we, Mr. Taber – just for me?” He still isn’t ready to swallow something he doesn’t know what is, not even just for her.

“Miss, I don’t like to create trouble. But I don’t like to swallow something without knowing what it is. How do I know this isn’t one of those funny pills that makes me something I’m not?”

“Don’t get upset, Mr. Taber —”

“Upset? Christ, all I want to know —”

But the Big Nurse has come up quietly. “That’s all right, Miss Flinn,” she says. “If Mr. Taber chooses to act like a child, he will be treated as such. We’ve tried to be kind and considerate with him. Obviously, that’s not the answer. Hostility, hostility, that’s the thanks we get. You can go, Mr. Taber, if you don’t wish to take your medication orally.”

“All I wanted to know, for the —”

“You can go.”

He goes off and spends the morning thinking about those capsules. I once played as if I’d swallowed one of those same red capsules holding it under my tongue. I opened it later in the broom closet. For a tick of time, before it all turned into white dust, I saw that it was a miniature electronic element. I helped the Radar Corps work with such elements in the Army, microscopic wires and grids and transistors.This one was designed to dissolve on contact with air…

Eight-twenty: the cards and puzzles go out…

Eight-twenty-five: some Acute says that he liked to watch when his sister was taking her bath; the three guys at the table with him run to write it in the logbook…

Eight-thirty: the ward door opens and two technicians come in. They close the lab door behind them, and I sweep up close to the door and can hear their voices.

“What we got already at this ungodly hour of the morning?”

“We got to install a Curiosity Cutout in some nosy, fellow. She says that it must be done quickly.”

I sweep away before I’m caught eavesdropping.

The two big black boys catch Taber and drag him to the mattress room. He’s yelling and kicking, but they hold him tightly.

They push him face down on the mattress. One sits on his head, and the other pulls his pants down. He’s cursing into the mattress and the black boy sitting on his head is saying, “ Tha’s right, Mistuh Taber, tha’s right…” The nurse comes down the hall with ajar of Vaseline and a long needle, closes the door, so they’re out of sight for a second, then comes out, wiping the needle on a fragment of Taber’s pants. She’s left the Vaseline jar in the room. Before the black boy can close the door after her I see the one still sitting on Taber’s head, dabbing at him with a Kleenex. They’re in there a long time before the door opens up again and they come out, carrying him across the hall to the lab. He’s now wrapped up in a damp sheet…

Nine o’clock: young residents talk to Acutes for fifty minutes about what they did when they were little boys. The Big Nurse doesn’t like this time because she can’t control the process.

Nine-fifty: the residents leave and the everything is smooth again: that clean orderly movement of a cartoon comedy.

Taber is wheeled out of the lab on a Gurney bed. They’re taking him to Building One for EST (electric shock treatment).

The Big Nurse says to them, “Maybe after that take him to the electroencephalograph and check his head – we may find evidence of a need for brain work.”

Ten o’clock: the mail comes up. Sometimes you get the torn envelope…

Ten-thirty: Public Relation comes in. Members of a ladies’ club are following him. He claps his fat hands at the day-room door. “Oh, hello guys; look around, girls; isn’t it clean, so bright? This is Miss Ratched. I chose this ward because it’s her ward. She’s, girls, just like a mother. Not that I mean age, but you girls understand…”

He conducts these tours – serious women in blazer jackets, who nod to him as he points out how much things have become better over the years. He points out the TV, the big leather chairs, the sanitary drinking fountains; then they all go and have coffee in the Nurse’s Station.

Ten-forty, – forty-five, – fifty: patients go in and out of little rooms to different appointments for treatment.

The ward is a factory for the Combine. The hospital is for fixing up mistakes made in the neighborhoods and in the schools and in the churches. When a finished product goes back out into society, all fixed up, good as new, better than new sometimes, it brings joy to the Big Nurse’s heart; something that came in all twisted different is now a functioning, adjusted component. He’s adjusted to surroundings finally…

“Why, I’ve never seen anything like the change in Maxwell Taber since he’s got back from that hospital; a little black and blue around the eyes, a little weight lost, and, you know what? he’s a new man. God, modern American science…”

And the light is on in his basement window long after midnight every night as the Delayed Reaction,which the technicians installed in him, lend speed to his fingers as he bends over the drugged figure of his wife, his two little girls just four and six, the neighbor he goes bowling with on Mondays; he adjusts them as he was adjusted. This is the way they spread it.

When he finally dies after a pre-set number of years, the town loves him dearly, and there’s his picture in the paper, showing him helping the Boy Scouts last year on Graveyard Cleaning Day, and his wife gets a letter from the headmaster of the high school how Maxwell Wilson Taber was an inspirational figure to the youth of our fine community.

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

But an Admission is a different story. Even the best-behaved Admission must be taught routine. An Admission might really make a hell of a mess and be a threat to the order. And, as I explain, the Big Nurse gets really angry if anything threatens her smooth organization.

At ten minutes to one the black boys are telling Acutes to clear the floor for the group meeting. All the tables are carried out of the day room.

The Big Nurse watches all this through her window. 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 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 come in. When everybody’s down, the Big Nurse comes out into the day room, carrying the logbook and a basket full of notes. She sits just to the right of the door.

Soon after she’s sat down, Old Pete Bancini turns his face to McMurphy and starts complaining. “I’m tired. Whew. O Lord. Oh, I’m awfully tired…” he always does so whenever there’s a new man on the ward who might listen to him.

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

Billy Bibbit goes, sits down beside Pete and pats his knee. Pete realizes that nobody is going to listen to his complaint today. The nurse takes off her wrist watch and looks at the ward clock and puts the watch face toward her in the basket. She takes a folder from the basket.

“Now. Shall we get into the meeting?”

She looks around, smiling. The guys don’t look at her; they’re all looking at their nails. Except McMurphy. He’s sitting in an armchair in the corner, and he’s watching her every move. He’s still wearing his cap. A deck of cards in his lap opens and shuts with a loud sound. The nurse’s eyes stay on him for a second. She’s been watching his playing poker all morning and though no money has passed hands she suspects that he’s not exactly the type that is going to be happy with the ward rule of gambling for matches only. The deck opens and shuts again and then disappears somewhere in one of those big palms.

The nurse looks at her watch again and pulls a piece 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 logbook.

“Now. At the end of Friday’s meeting… we were discussing Mr. Harding’s problem… concerning his young wife. He had stated that his wife’s bosom attracted stares from men on the street and that this made him uneasy.” She opens a place in the logbook. “According to the notes in the logbook, Mr. Harding says that she ’damn well gives the bastards reason to stare’. He also says that he knows her reason to look for sexual attention. He says, ’My dear sweet but illiterate wife thinks that any word or gesture that isn’t brutal 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 big 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 to see if anybody is going to answer the nurse, then holds his hand up 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. Some of the Acutes hide grins, and McMurphy stretches himself, yawns, winks at Harding. Then the nurse, calm as anything, puts the logbook back in the basket and takes out another folder and opens it and starts reading.

“McMurry, Randle Patrick. Sent 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 looks up.

“Statutory, with a girl of —”

“Whoa. Couldn’t stick that,” 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 began to sew my pants shut.”

“The child refused to testify in spite of the doctor’s findings. It seems, there was intimidation. Defendant left town shortly after the trial.”

“Hoo boy, I had to leave. Doc, let me tell you” – he leans forward to the doctor across the room, lowering his voice – “that little hustler would have actually frazzled me by the time she reached legal sixteen.”

The nurse closes up the folder and passes it across the doorway to the doctor.

The doctor puts his glasses on. He’s smiling a little as he turns through the folder, but he doesn’t let himself laugh. The doctor closes the folder when he gets to the end, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. He looks at McMurphy.

“You’ve no other psychiatric history, Mr. McMurry?”

“McMurphy, Doc.”

“Oh? But I thought – the nurse was saying —”

He opens the folder again, looks through the record 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. That lady there made the mistake. I’ve known some people who did that. I had this uncle whose name was Hallahan, and he went with a woman once who acted as if she couldn’t remember his name right and called him Hooligan just to get his goat. It went on for months before he stopped her. Stopped her well, 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 tell that. I keep Uncle Hallahan’s method a strict secret, you see, in case I need to use it myself someday.”

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

“Yes. I asked if you’ve any previous psychiatric history. Any analysis, any time spent in any other institution?”

“Well, speaking of state and county coolers —”

“Mental institutions.”

“Ah. No, this is my first trip. But I am crazy, Doc. I really am. Well here – let me show you here. I believe that other doctor at the work farm…”

He gets up and comes across the room, leans over the doctor’s shoulder and thumbs 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 takes his glasses out again and puts them on and looks to where McMurphy is pointing.

“Right here, Doc. The nurse didn’t read it 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 that I am, as he put it, overzealous in my sexual relations. Doctor, is that very serious?”

He asks it with such a little-boy look of worry all over his broad, tough face that the doctor bends his head to hide another little smile in his collar, and his glasses fall from his nose 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: ’But there’s the possibility that this man might be feigning psychosis to escape the hard work 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 saneman?”

The doctor can’t answer because he tries not to snigger again. McMurphy turns away from the doctor and asks the same thing of the Big Nurse: “Do I?” She doesn’t answer. She stands up and takes the 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 rules of these Group Meetings.”

“Ma’am,” McMurphy says, “have I told you about my uncle Hallahan and the woman who didn’t pronounce his name properly?”

She looks at him for a long time without her smile. 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 think I’ll explain the complete theory of our Therapeutic Community, while we’re at it. Though I usually speak about it 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 stay seated during the meeting”.

“Yes. Of course. Then I will explain the theory. Mr. McMurphy, one of the first things is that the patients stay seated during the meeting.”

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