The train to Pookipsie is a slow easy ride beginning in Grand Central station.  Underneath the huge coliseum of trains, the engine snakes and skittles across classic upstate countryside. Brownstones come into view and vanish and there is some green in-between the snowdrifts slowly melting in the end of a late winter and beginning of a beautiful spring blossom.  Somewhere near the classic town of Pookipsie, lies the biggest Psychiatric facility in the United States of America.  At least it was.   Now the Wracks hear the huge veterans’ facility near Pookipsie is closed down, shut up and the subterranean tunnels filled with snarling rodents and slithering serpents.  The classic tunnels were devised to connect the buildings for communication and transportation even during the heaviest winter storms. Now Dr. Wracks is here and the Head of Psychiatry at the Veterans administration welcomes us for a ten-week tour of duty at a Psychiatric facility lockup. The chief of the facility is a tall handsome man with silver hair.  His looks are marred by Popsicle sticks protruding from his nose splinting it securely.  Unfortunately, the chief had a mental lapse and got too close to a florid patient.  The patient was a black belt in Okinawa Karate and smashed his nose to pieces with a powerful back fist strike. He would make a good president.   The Popsicle sticks did not impair his diction as he welcomes us.   He says he will be in and out of his office during the week and that our liaison and mentor during our intern rotation will be Dr. Lecter M.D. 

     We meet Dr. Lecter at his office.  He sits in a space with a huge desk, a couch and a library of a thousand books.  The books are like a bullet proof barricade shielding him from the outside and reality.  He turns to us and passes out lecture notes.  He says these notes will help us identify neuroses and Psychoses before the behavior can affect us.  We are to memorize the notes because the knowledge might save our lives.   The Veterans facility is a Psychiatric lockup.   At the end of each hall is a huge oak door with a large deadbolt   the interns are to enter a corridor and close the deadbolt before proceeding further.  During the week huge wrestlers acting as Psychiatric aids will let us in and out of each level as we identify ourselves at the small window in the middle of the door.  It is our responsibility to make sure the door is locked behind us as we progress and transgress the environment that will soon be ours. Any failure to maintain security overtly will result in instant termination as some of the patients are violent with criminal records. The majority of patients are Veterans of foreign wars.  The minority are horrible curiosities too dangerous or too strange to be allowed to live in the community. Dr. Lecter is a man of average height like Dr. W.  He has long straight jet-black hair, like Dr. W.  He moves like he is levitated across the room.  He assures us that what we learn and see here will remain with us for the rest of our lives.  We are to eat with the patients because they have to see us to trust us.  Other wise there exists no reason why they shouldn’t attack us.   In the main cafeteria, we eat in the Doctors area, immediately next to the patient area.  We are to wear our white smocks everywhere as they identify us as professionals.  We are to shave or trim our beards neatly and keep our hair short.  There can not exist any interaction with the patients in public.  All communication must be in a public area or consult where the cameras can watch and alarm security if a patient becomes homicidal. Dr. Lecter assures the group he will be near should some excitement ensue. He introduces Dr. Beck.  Dr. Beck has black hair but is tall and lean.  He must be the protégé of Dr. Lecter.  Dr. Beck looks too serious to fool around with.  I note this instantly and file the anagram in the dominant temporal lobe.  Dr. Beck states that if we have any problems to come and see him during weekday hours. Now we will meet the staff.  Two huge psychiatric technicians patrol the unit.  The nurses sit in a guarded station with bulletproof glass and a ticket terminal to distribute psychiatric drugs to inmates.  Both aides are wrestlers but work only nine to five during the week.  On weekends the staff is skeletal and the interns must patrol the unit to insure all patients are present and that no one is hurt or killed by another patient.  During the day in the winter most patients sit in the recreation room and play ping pong, deal cards or watch TV.  Most of these people are normal looking except for a cross dresser who sits inordinately still and a huge African American football player who plays on a national championship team as a defensive lineman. Most of the patients turn to the interns and wave in validation.  They are used to being surveyed, assayed and evaluated for their behavior that really is not their fault. These people are casualties of society and their behavior is too violent or exaggerated for them to continue to lead functional lives in the community.  Some are Viet Nam veterans who have a disorder called traumatic stress syndrome.  The affected patients have flashbacks to situations the soldiers encountered in the jungles of Viet Nam.  Psychologically the reason for the traumatic syndrome is the psychoses induced by being forced to witness the killing and torturing of hundreds or thousands of civilians close at hand.  Some of these soldiers were forced to kill thousands of innocent people because they harbored the Viet Cong.  Some soldiers who served our country in Viet Nam could never readjust to civilian life because of what they witnessed or were forced to do.  The soldiers with traumatic stress syndrome come and go in this Veterans facility and it is their second home and the Nation pays for the burden of the horrible destruction of a thankless war.  The interns move on.  Soon lunch arrives and we head to the cafeteria.  The long hours of internship are broken by a meal. Army style the interns get in line with the patients and we are given a ration of provisions that will maintain our health.  A sandwich, potato chips, and some raw vegetables are it but we can get refills of orangeade or lemonade from the coolers.  Dr. W asks the distributor of food why we are given so little.  “So you do not get fat.” She speaks.  Dr. W grabs a sandwich and walks by.  We eat together, the eight of us and then move to our quarters to move in.  We each have a little nook with a bunk bed like the quarters on the “MASH” show on television.  Dr. W is expecting Hawkeye to appear out of nowhere and make him look ridiculous.  This never happens and Dr. W resigns himself to books, cigarettes, and packets of instant coffee to be used sparingly.  The facility sells cigarettes at the canteen for Armed services prices.  The quarter master says he will sell me several cartons at this price because he likes Dr. W.  He looks like Napolean Bonaparte on the “MASH” television show.

Dr. W does not react and accept the gift with humility and rancor.  Back in a pigeon hole, Dr. W lights up a Marlboro and begin to memorize the notes.

 He is up late and the niche fills with smoke and   he put out a butt and falls asleep by himself, waiting for reverie at 6 hundred hours military time tomorrow.