ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO S NEST

Admission. Everybody stops playing cards and Monopoly, turns towards the day-room door. Most days I'd be out sweeping the hall and see who they're signing in, but this morning, like I explain to you, the Big Nurse put a thousand pounds down me and I can't budge out of the chair. Most days I'm the first one to see the Admission, watch him creep in the door and slide along the wall and stand scared till the black boys come sign for him and take him into the shower room, where they strip him and leave him shivering with the door open while they all three run grinning up and down the halls looking for the Vaseline. 'We need that Vaseline,' they'll tell the Big Nurse, 'for the thermometer.' She looks from one to the other: 'I'm sure you do,' and hands them a jar holds at least a gallon, 'but mind you boys don't group up in there.' Then I see two, maybe all three of them in there, in that shower room with the Admission, running that thermometer around in the grease till it's coated the size of your finger, crooning, ‘Tha's right, mothah, tha's right,' and then shut the door and turn all the showers up to where you can't hear anything but the vicious hiss of water on the green tile. I'm out there most days, and I see it like that.