Through the Cheif's Eyes: Prop Room

               The vents overhead make a constant thumping noise when they turn on each morning. They run for hours, for days and years at a time, pumping the fog into every corner of the room through the long white contraptions. They used to be more careful about the fog, hiding the machinery from our sight and making them as silent as possible, but they must have given up by the time they installed it in this room.

                Before McMurphy’s basketball accidents began, there was a statue of an angel in the corner. It didn’t have wings or even a halo, but everyone knew it was still an angel. One of the doctors, who worked here for about a week (long before Doctor Spivey made his job permanent), brought it in. He said it would bring good luck to the ward. Now it’s in the trash somewhere with a cracked open head and dirt caked into the creases of its dress, but when it was new and polished it was the color of the pearls that were worn around the necks of women who used to visit our ward. The type of women who always carry those extra-long clipboard with them, taking down notes with a scratchy ball point pen and sticking their noses into Nurse Ratchet’s life.

They were the only people, before McMurphy of course, who were able to make her show discomfort. She kept a blank look on her face, forcing up the corners of her mouth whenever she spoke, but her hands were always pulling at the threads on the ends of her sleeves. Under the women’s hawk-like gaze, everything about her became precise, not a single movement was made without prior planning. When she led the women past us in the day room the black boys became anxious too. They hurried around the room and their eyes jerked around so much that any normal person would have gotten dizzy and fallen over. It’s the machines installed deep inside them that kept them going.

The seam between the floor and the wall has a light dusting of white powder where the angel was broken by the basketball. I’ve swept over it hundreds of times, but every day when I go back it still looks like the sidewalks after a light dusting of snow has fallen on top of them. It’s the only place I can’t quite make spotless.