Once a person becomes a pariah, they can’t live it down.  Either can the Wracks.  His father flew back with him to Mexico in case a legal imbroglio existed to get him back in school.  They play rough down here says Father Wracks.   A fellow student pokes his head in the room and says to the Wracks,

Es muy fuerte el, no le preocupes.

Licensario Aces is the superintendent of students and legal officer for the University.  The Wracks has an appointment with him today.  He waits outside the office in the stone room with the stone chairs and small windows and the electric bug zapper that is never turned off.   A pretty, tall woman who is probably part of the landed aristocracy ushers him into the lawyer’s office.   The lawyer beckons the Wracks to sit down.   He is a man of average height with white skin, and thick Indian hair cut short with a slight red tint to it.  His eyes are grey.

Hello, wracks.   I hear you had a problem with the police.  They wonder if I should let you back in the university and not expel you.   You might get into trouble again.   All the students at the university come from professional or upper-class families and they do not tolerate an outsider causing a commotion.   If you get into one more fistfight, you will expelled and escorted to the consulate.  Do you understand Mr. Wracker?  The only reason I let you back is because you have a near straight A average. 

Yes, I do licensure

I will admit you back to the university and you will start clinical respiratory medicine in one week.  Situate yourself appropriately and keep a low profile.   Do you understand Mr. Wracker?

Yes licensario, I will be on my best behavior.

The lawyer for the university and unquestionably one of Mexico’s elites stands up and offers his hand.  The Wracks shakes it.

Good luck and you will need it says the licensario.  Goodbye.

The Wracks are having a hard time finding accommodations.  No one will rent to him.  They run away saying, El es loco, sale.!  Finally, in the daily newspaper, they find an ad asking for a student to rent a room in the neighborhood next to the plaza.   His father says, take it, if no one will rent to you, your career here is over.  Father and son in a rented Volkswagen go to the house on the cobblestone street next to the Patria. The house is made of stone and has an eight-foot-high stone fence, and a steel garage door designed to stop high-power rifle bullets.  Father and son ring the bell and a small elderly lady with whitish hair that used to be blond, and grey eyes opens the door.

I hear you have a room for rent Madam.  Do you speak English?

My name is Ophelia and I am originally from Chicago. Would you like to see the room?

Yes, we would say the Wracks, can we come in? 

Yes, you can she says.

Ophelia has a small white poodle, daintily groomed by the local animal handler.  She sits on a cushion and wags her tail.   It is an adobe hut she says.   It is in the back of the property.  It has a bathroom adjoined to a single room.  It is five hundred pesos a month.  Do you want it?

Yes, I do says the Wracks.   When can I move in?

Anytime says Ophelia

Wracks and his father go back to the motel and get the luggage then go back to the house and move the Wracks in.  The unit has a single glass sliding door.  A small bed sits in a corner next to a small desk and chair.  There is electricity.   The bathroom is small and tiled and the water runs. The Wracks has a small tensor light he brought from the States, sits down and plugs it in and the semester begins.

At first, the Wracks couldn’t figure out why he would wake up in the morning with bite marks all over his body and a swollen face.  He finally realizes he is being bitten by reduviid beetles that are indigenous to southern Mexico.   These kissing beetles are known affectionately to the Mexicans as Cinche.  They hide in cracks and sit suspended upside down underneath the mattress of the bed.  The Wracks try mosquito netting but the maneuver is of no avail.   The black cockroach-like animals with a proboscis are smarter than he is.  He buys spray insecticide from the store and sprays his bed and floor before he goes to school but it is of no avail.   Either the bugs are immune to the poison or they keep coming.  The latch on the window sliding glass has a key but the mechanism is easy to pick and he can not believe his landlady is letting people in his room when he is at the university.  The best solution is to shower as soon as a person arises in the morning to wash the bug feces off your body.  The dreaded American trypanosomiasis or Mal de Chaga as it is called in Latin America transmits when the bug feces are rubbed into the bug bite by itching or scratching.  The infestation continues for a year until the Wracks secured habitation elsewhere with an American expatriate living in Mexico.

Ophelia periodically requests the Wracks to have coffee with her and talk.  She slides a coffee cup from the cupboard and shares a decanter with the Wracks.  She offers pasteurized crème in a ceramic pourer.  The Wracks notices she slides the same cup from the same place level to the table each time they meet.  The Wracks thinks she puts something in the coffee cup before, setting the cup in front of her and pouring coffee into it so the Wracks thinks the cup is clean and empty.  After all, she is the Landlord and the Wracks complies.  He pours some crème into the cup and only drinks half of it.  And so, it goes.   She speaks of all her luxurious Mexican friends, the help they have, and the marvelous life they live.  She says her friends have live-in maids who constantly wash vegetables and prepare food for them all day long.   In Mexico, the farmers use sewage to fertilize and the crops grow huge and fast but they are covered in Salmonella Bacteria.   It is wise never to eat a salad in Mexico unless the cook prepares it himself or herself.  She also talks about Juan Bond who sells chiclets on the street in a stand in front of the barrio.  The children scurry about and play with their toys and Juan Bond sells chiclets and Mexican cigarettes to the Wracks.  Juan Bond is the richest man in the city and he is small, Indian, with greying black hair, wearing thick cotton peasant clothes, and sporting a black mustache like Salvador Dali.  He smiles at the Wracks.   Ophelia also states that the city is getting too expensive to live and because she is a widow, she would like to move to Cuernavaca, would the Wracks like to come with her and share a mansion in this city?  When the Wracks tells her he is moving out, she swings a fist in an overhand right and tries to the Wracks in the head and he is finally gone to an apartment a mile away situated next to a tennis court.  The court is in Mexican clay, the finest surface in the world.

It is just hearsay, and conjecture at this point but the Mexican students tell the Wracks never to go to Cuernavaca because it is the city of the Vampires and the inhabitants bleed livestock and live on their blood.  Of course, the Wracks have never seen a vampire but from experience know they exist and now Ophelia is moving to Cuernavaca so she can be one of them.   The Wracks went to the house of justice in the city and told them about Ophelia but they told him politely to leave.  She has influential friends and the Wracks has left less than a year to go with life so strange, destination unknown. 

The rainy season begins in Mexico.  The vegetation is everywhere, greens and grows.  The Wracks stands in front of the foreign students’ office of the University.   He has acquired a house to rent and needs to find 2 or three roommates.   He waits outside the office on the stone abutment that even in the tropics, is cool to the touch.   In the tropics, they are built from stone because it lasts, doesn’t burn, and insulates well.

The first person he encounters has sandy blond hair, is about five feet nine inches in height, and dresses in wranglers’ cargo pants with a clean linen shirt and Sperry topsider shoes.   He must be of the upper class so the Wracks approach him.  

Are you a student here asks the Wracks.   Would you like to rent a room in a house close to campus?

Yes, I would say the blond.   My name is Mr. Madera and do I get my choice of rooms?  

Yes you do says the Wracks, here is the address.   See you there

Mr. Madera smiles, turns like an automaton, and enters the foreign student’s office.  I have business he says

Next up is a tall man with black hair and a big nose.   He dresses in casual clothes unlike a local in the tropics and wears black socks.   He must be from the east coast of the U.S.    Would you like to rent a room in a new house close to campus, asks the Wracks.

Yes, I would say the tall student with bushy black hair.   My name is Mr. White.  

Here is the address says the Wracks.  See you soon.

They are the roommates for the first year.   And so, it goes.   The year begins

Mr. White is a jet setter.   He likes to go out twice a week to Mexican discothèques.   He dresses up, and in a shirt open to reveal his chest, he takes a taxi and leaves till late at night.   The wracks can not understand how he passes his classes.   Learning science is hard.  Learning science in a foreign language is harder.  His room is meticulously kept clean and ordered and he hires a housemaid to clean his room and the shared bathroom once a week. 

Mr. Madera is an athlete.   He has been chosen for the varsity water polo team at the university and goes to the campus pool three times a week from four to seven o’clock.  He studies until two o’clock at night and even later and lines up his coffee cups on the stairway rail for everyone to see.   They must be a badge of courage.   He has little need of sleep, and his schedule keeps the Wracks in awe.   Girlfriends from the United States fly in to see him and he has a Mexican girlfriend too who obtains the exams for him to study that he does not share.   He seems like an all-American, upper-class, success story in the making and the Wracks envy him until…

The Wracks sleeps a lot and sleeps hard but he dreams in the middle of the night that Mr. Madera is standing over him in a gold priest robe with a chalice and beginning a mass and the Wracks wakes up.  No one is there and it is two o’clock at night the wracks look outside of his room and Mr. Madera’s door is closed but a light shine outward from the space between the door and the floor.  The Wracks makes certain that the door in his room is functional and he checks it, locks it, and goes back to bed.  

The Wracks gets up early and goes to class.  He has a Mr. Coffee coffee maker in his room that is promptly broken so he goes to instant Mexican coffee.   Mr. Madera is up making his ethereal meal of fried egg on bimbo bread three or more times a day.  Mr. White goes out to eat breakfast every day.   The year goes on and time flies and the night becomes dark and finals in the first block occur.  The Wracks are up late making instant coffee with a traveling water boiler and smoking Mexican cigarettes.

Going up the stairs he spies Mr. Madera’s room light on.  A girlfriend from the United States is visiting him.  She is of average height, wears tight jeans, and has a good figure.  Her brown hair is cut short.  She darts out of Mr. Madera’s room in a towel and runs in the bathroom and turns on the shower.   The Wracks retreats to his room.  He is studying Gross Anatomy.  His wristwatch shows past eleven and he locks his door and goes to bed alone in the large bed that comes with the house.  Dreams begin.  In the Wracks’ dream, Mr. Madera’s girlfriend is in bed with him, like any young red-blooded American would and then he wakes up with a start because a woman is sitting on his face.  It is her, and she looks at him, and he looks at her, and Mr. Madera’s head looms over the bed and smiles and then he is asleep again.  He wakes up frightened and no one is in his room, just a vacant bed and a desk, and he peers outside and Mr. Madera’s room shows the light out the crack of the door.   Mr. White is gone for the night.  He double-checks the lock on his door, closes it, and goes to sleep. 

Mr. Madera says nothing about the incident and the Wracks wonders.   He comes home one day and Mr. Madera is buck naked on the floor, spreading his buttocks and saying, sodomy is an oath of fealty.  Mr. White is drinking a glass of baby formula and laughing and the Wracks until he gives up his house in June of next year and barricades his bedroom door every night with his desk and chair.  Sometimes late at night, Mr. Madera heads out the front door and visits the neighbors at two o’clock at night promptly returns in about an hour, and heads to his room.  Occasionally a pack of wild animals concentrate and growl and howl outside his room at night but he is dreaming.  One night before the barricade, the Wracks dream that a vampire is biting his neck and drinking his blood, and Mr. Madera is in his gold robe.  He wakes up in the morning and sees two fang marks on his neck.   The Wracks becomes a religious man and he lives in harmony with the others to survive

Mr. Faulkner was correct when he wrote the Great Gatsby novel.  The Great Gatsby says that the rich are different from you or me.   The Wracks secures his desk against the door, says a prayer and goes to bed.   I hope I transfer he thinks and he doesn’t know why.

A

Wracks, we are having a party this weekend at Eli’s.   Would you like to come

I don’t have a date says the Wracks.

Just show up anyway, it will be mostly graduate students and the staff of the School of Microbiology.  They will be giving oral final examinations and they want you to attend.

Where is it asks the Wracks.   I can use my father’s car.

At the very top of the canyon, there is an access road leading to Eli’s estate.  You can’t miss it; it is the only one up there.  There is a sign, here is his address.

Okay says the Wracks, I will see you there.

It is five o’clock in the afternoon and the Wracks takes the zigzag road up to the summit of Pang-oh.  He brings a bottle of wine and soon reaches the plateau at the top of the mountain where all the shops and restaurants are situated.  An ephemeral river lies below this mountain and meanders to the coast where it forms a surfing point that is good in the winter on a westerly swell.  I don’t see the number he thinks and travels a little farther up and looks at each driveway and can’t find the numbers or the entrance and when he is about ready to give up, he sees a dirt driveway the width of one car with a mailbox and the number posted in small letters on the top of the box.   Putting the car in low gear he moves up the driveway about fifty feet and it culminates in a flat area with ample parking and at least ten cars filling the lot.  The Wracks find a parking place, park, get out, and sight a large one-story Mediterranean ranch-style house that surrounds a small garden. 

Glad you made it says one of the grad students.   We were hungry and didn’t wait for you.  All the pasta with clam crème sauce is gone but we saved you some briquets of French bread.

That is fine says the Wracks.   I live on bread anyway.   Bread is the staff of life

He goes inside and the male grad students are hanging out talking, eating chips, and swilling beer and brown whisky.  Professor Nabut from Israel is there and waves to the Wracks.  Oral exams will soon commence.   Have some whiskey and wash it down with some beer fresh out of a chilled keg.   Take another shot.  All Immunologists must be prepared to work under pressure.  We are all going to swig whiskey and then take the oral exams.

As usual, the Wracks are the last ones to be quizzed, and all the graduate students have moved out to the spacious garden in the middle of the estate.

Have another shot, says Dr. Nabut.  How long does it take for the immune response to mature

IgM begins to appear on day three post-challenge and is established within a week.  Then IgG appears in the serum and the immune response begins at fourteen days.

Good says Dr. Nabut.   Have another shot.  What is the function of T suppressor cells in the afferent wing of the immune response?

T suppressor cells function to stimulate memory factor Ia to limit the immune response.  T suppressor cells work to limit the immune response so auto-immunity does not happen and the immune system does not react against itself.

Wash it down with some beer says Dr. Nabut.  For the final question, how much Ig does it take to activate the complement system which is the effector link of the immune response?

One IgM molecule can activate complement.  It takes two IgG molecules to activate complement.

We are done says Dr. Nabut, you pass.   You must learn to function while obtunded.  All the students are in the garden with Eli.

Two naked women flash out of the bedroom space and smile at the Wracks. Then they are gone

Did you see that asks the Wracks?

They are Eli’s daughters.   Don’t mind them. 

The grad students sit in the garden around a pond.  The Wracks join them.  Mr. Simms is there.  He is part of the group studying bone marrow transplantation in mice.   He shows a foot-long joint of grass to the Wracks and smiles.  He lights the huge cigar, takes a couple of puffs, and hands it off to the graduate students.  All ten of the graduate students take a puff of the huge joint and then hand it to the Wracks.

What is it says the Wracks.  Is it OK? 

Take a huge drag and hold it in says Mr. Simms.  Then tell me what it is.

The Wracks takes a large puff and he is a cigarette smoker like his dad.  Eli sits on a large wicker throne at the head of the pond and is not smoking.   He looks at the Wracks.  Wracks is in heaven and a student plays guitar; the gang swills beer and time moves on.  As night begins the gang moves inside and the wracks sit on the sofa completely anesthetized and fall asleep.

The big greyish-blue eyes of the chief of Microbiology are peering at the Wracks.  The Wracks wakes up.

What hit me says the Wracks.  Where are the girls

It is past their bedtime and they have gone to bed.   The party is over and you can go. 

Thanks for the party, Eli.  I had a good time.  Eli waves from the front door and the Wracks finds his white Pinto runabout with the green coupe roof.  He slowly backs down the earthen entrance road.  Jan is down the way with a hunting rifle and a 3–9-inch scope that he carries recon style.   The Wracks waves and he waves back.   I guess he is guarding his field thinks the Wracks.

Down the mountain, he cruises slowly with high beams on.  There are no street lamps up here and the guard rails on the road are only three feet high and the river runs down below the serpentine highway.

He makes it down to Highway One and the moon is full, with a slight offshore wind blowing out of the canyon and small three-foot waves break down the point.  He pulls into the lot, gets out, and looks at the point, the moon, and the stars, and he gasps.   This beautiful.   I must check it out tomorrow morning.  Night is here in Tranquil Hills and unlike everyone else, the Wracks use the darkness to sleep.

Dr. Gull appears as a man of medium height and build with thick wavy black hair.  He dresses in a white physician’s smock, a white shirt and tie, black loafer shoes, and a Rolex watch.  He smokes Marlboro cigarettes incessantly.  His bright eyes search the surroundings through a thick grey wisp of tobacco smoke that slowly floats upwards and seems to linger everywhere; Dr. Gull holds the title of Chief of Oncology Services at the big U.  He likes to teach anyone who will listen, the Science of Tumor Immunology.  He will instruct a student if he or she has the IQ and prerequisites to enter the halls of the Health Sciences. In a small classroom in the School of Microbiology, Dr. Gull instructs medical residents, Graduate Students, visiting professors from other countries, and even Wracks.  

Good afternoon, Dr. Gull, says Wracks, I am enrolled in your course in Tumor Immunology.  I look forward to an exciting and enlightening quarter here while I work on an independent research project down the hall.   May I smoke also during the lecture?   I like Marlboro Red cigarettes also.

Sure, says Dr. Gull.   Most of my staff here and at Woodland Bethlehem Hospital are also smokers.  We need the lift to get us through the day.  Go right ahead and light up but bring your ashtray.  Get seated, I have to start the lecture.

Mr. Simms also completed upper-division Immunology with Wracks and now sits next to Wracks in the lecture hall.  Dr. Gull starts writing on the chalkboard the first topic of the course.  Sir Burnet’s theory of Immune surveillance.  All the medical residents pull a cigarette out of their coat pockets and light up.  The room slowly fills up with smoke and Dr. Gull lectures through a thick haze of photochemical smog.

Does everyone have to smoke, says Mr. Simms.  Mr. Simms stands as a tall-boned Nordic-derived student at the Big U.  All the smoke makes me sick.  Will everyone put out their cigarettes? Wracks extinguishes his cigarette immediately.    Two of the medical Residents blow heavy smoke clouds at Mr. Simms.  

Mr. Simms exclaims, if you do not stop smoking, I will drop the course and file a complaint against everyone.  

The residents continue to blow smoke toward Mr. Simms until he closes his notebook with a bang and storms out of the hall.   Dr. Gull tries to ignore the situation.  After time assures that Mr. Simms has left for good, everyone puts out their cigarettes as if inspired by unseen forces.   Dr. Gull turns to his audience and smiles.

Does everyone understand Sir Howard Burnett’s theory now that it is on the board?  

Everyone nods their heads in agreement and the instructor smoking cigarette in hand continues.

Forty-five minutes later the instructor concludes and assigns case studies and term papers to the students of his class.  Everyone leaves in a hurry because they all have work to do, families to go to, or a sweetheart somewhere.   Wracks has his dinner at the student union waiting for him and then a long bus ride home ending in a walk up a hill at night.   A wrack has no experiment scheduled now because his tissue-transplanted mice have to grow up.  Then their spleens and blood will be harvested and the statistical construct begin.  A wrack takes the elevator down to the first floor and emerges at the entrance to the school of medicine.  A huge black onyx building is in construction and the cranes hoist enormous steel girders into place as the sun sets in a reddish flame framed by grey petrochemical smog. Today wracks will enter the student cafeteria by an alternate route.  Walking underneath the suspended hallway connecting the health sciences with the biological sciences, Wracks takes the connecting road down to the front of campus past the big buildings that house the professional schools and clinics of the Big U.  Up the main promenade to the student store, in the front door and then take the elevator to the second floor.  Wracks exits the elevator, then walks left to the queue lines in front of the cafeteria.  The budget student menu does not draw the crowd expected for such a bargain and charity offering.  No other place on the west side delivers a full meal with all-you-can-drink coffee for one dollar and a quarter. Most of the student body eats instead at the fabulous exotic bars and discotheques located ten miles away.  For the more affluent students, the best restaurants in the state are less than five miles away on the miracle mile.    At five o’clock on a weekday, only twenty people utilize the vast resources of the student cafeteria.  Adjoining the student cafeteria situates the varsity athletes’ dining room.  The privileged few awesome athletes that join the fabulous and famous football and basketball teams, eat steak and hamburgers to infinity, cooked in front of them on a huge gas-fired charcoal grill.  Wracks sit in front of Kirk’s Hall and smell the delicious odors emanating from the athletes’ dining room every day while enjoying a cigarette and a cup of coffee.   Then an occasional nap in the huge leather armchairs decorating the picture windows in the student hall happens.  Curled up in bliss, in uteri in a friendly place, with warm feet and toes, Wracks knaps in the world of opulence.    The moment occurs now and tonight at five, Wracks chooses the chicken pot pie on the student menu with all-you-can-eat crackers.   Wracks grabs one of the large porcelain cups provided for the coffee-drinking student body.   In his usual spot, facing the entrance line, with his back to the wall sits Dahlman.  Both of Dahlmans’ Parents have accolades as tenured faculty members in the health sciences at the Big U.   Tonight, Dahlman dines on a sumptuous roast beef sandwich with de jour dressing, a bag of potato chips, and a tall glass of brown tea.  Wracks slams his stew out of a large beige bowl into his mouth and sends the food to his stomach with shooters of hot coffee with excesses of half and half creamer.   When the bowl licks clean, Wracks eats the first of his three packages of Nabisco saltine crackers.  

How did the war go on the southern flank, asks Dahlman.

More of the same says Wracks.   I go to class, then study for an hour in between, then go to the lab, check on my animals, go back to afternoon class, and then show up here.  We go to the Research library after dinner, put in two to three hours of exam preparation, and then take the bus home.  What happens on the North campus?

The same, says Dahlman, I research law books and take notes then transcribe the data to three by five cards.   Only three by five cards can be admitted to a courtroom if he or she is not the defending or prosecuting attorney.  Then I come here.   In the morning, I sit for exams until lunch. 

Why are we doing this asks Wracks.

There is no other way, says Dahlman.  Academic achievement occurs as the only game in town.   Everything else gets old.   Let’s get going.   See you at the end. 

Spring starts to break at the big U.  The large trees bear buds and the winter ebbs and the entire leaves have blown away three months ago.  The quad sits deserted in the dark twilight and the Romanesque forums stand adamant in utter solitude.  Up the steps to the marbled halls of myriad classrooms, and through the café connecting the old building with the new to the lighted entrance promenade signaling the Buckminster fuller rendition of glass that houses the research library.  Up the central elevator to the fifth-floor rocket the two students. On the fifth floor, they separate because the line of sight of movement distracts attention while reading.  A huge physics graduate student sits at a little desk next to the elevator and looks up to see if Wracks smokes.   Satisfied, he continues reading.  Sitting at his window to the opulent world Wracks surveys the beauty, organization, and technological majesty that money creates.   In this world of non-olfactory money, where source seems unimportant and effect paramount Wracks digs in at the end of the short winter and promises himself, that he will not fall asleep tonight. 

Let’s hit it!  Yells Dahlman at Wracks, we have only 12 minutes to catch the 8:55 bus. 

 Wracks throws his huge heavy books into his briefcase and jumps off to the run.  Trotting down the staircase, they bound through the glass frontal portal and lope across the North Campus Avenue.  Trotting down the hill they cross the entrance road and stand at the pole on the island where the RTD stops on Hill Street.  Just as they arrive a huge yellow bus without any passengers careens into view and stops suddenly without screeching its tires.  The door opens and both Wracks and Dahlman flash their monthly student passes at the bus driver.  The door closes and the huge yellow rectangle accelerates at magnum speed down the hill. 

One minute later we would have missed the bus, smiles Dahlman. At a jog, it takes eleven minutes to get to Hill Street and the bus was one minute early.    Ten seconds later we would have missed it.  It seems prudent to allocate at least fifteen minutes to transit to the Hill stop.  

I am tired says Wracks. I am glad today ends and tomorrow becomes Friday. 

On the undulating bus, Wracks falls asleep as usual clasping his heavy briefcase to his chest.  

Dahlman shouts this is my stop, see you tomorrow morning on the steps.

Wracks waves goodbye and Dahlman exits.   Two miles later on the hill of Moonrise Avenue, Wracks becomes the last passenger to leave the bus.   From here the bus travels to the ocean, turns around, and then goes back up moonrise to nightclub land.  He crosses the street in the darkness and walks across the gas station turf.   Up past the drug store, liquor store, and convenience market, Wracks heads up the long Quiz way and then up the hill to Bacon Way.   The nights are still chill and the wind blows offshore so the waves cannot be heard echoing up the canyon and the stars twinkle because the smog blows out to sea on nights like this.  The beautiful night lives and wracks cannot be enjoyed because the day as it lives tires the disciplined who must sleep to replenish the mind that drives them mercilessly.  Punkin wags his tail while sleeping on his cushion in the family room. He is the only one welcoming Wracks and wracks strips off his shoe’s pants and shirt, dives into bed, and falls asleep immediately after pounding the alarm clock that rests next to his bed.  Tomorrow is a new day. The Fonz is long gone.

Mental illness is not an inherited genetic proposition.  Inborn errors of metabolism may predispose but are not causal factors of the condition. Rather, mental illness results from intoxications and aversive lifestyles.  Acquired conditions like brain tumors, infectious disease, and generalized metabolic disorders can cause mental illness indirectly and the underlying condition is treated rather than the overt phenotypic reaction.  The main causes of schizophrenia are major intoxications that disturb cognitive thinking or elucidate aversive memories that disturb behavior. 

The intoxications that cause schizophrenia are atropine intoxication, psychedelic intoxication, and sympathomimetic analog intoxication.  These causal elements contain about 90 percent of all acute and chronic cases seen in the clinic and they can be treated. 

Atropine and its congeners are non-competitive analogs of acetylcholine.  The agent binds to neural receptors and won’t let go.  The brain is unable to break down or detoxify these agents.  The site of action is primarily the frontal and parietal lobes of the neocortex.   This is why the subject exhibits disordered thinking or abhorrent memories.  To treat an atropine overdose, the chemical that exerts the most effective competitive effect on neurons is nicotine.  Most mental patients must become cigarette smokers as nicotine pushes atropine off the neural receptors and the free base present in cigarette smoke is the most effective way to deliver nicotine.  Phenothiazine antipsychotics help by blocking the dopamine receptors in the Archi cerebrum and limbic structures so clinical behavior is not so violent or overt.  Newer novel atypical antipsychotics like risperidone that look like atropine molecularly may help displace atropine from neurons but at the cost of impaired mentation and a decrease in intelligence quotient.  Probably the best treatment for schizophrenia is non-polar volatile solvents liberally poured on a subject daily.  Hexane and ethylene diamine solubilize atropine, carry it to the bloodstream, and then excrete it by the kidneys., The use of non-polar solvent results in brown-colored urine, evidencing the presence of high levels of atropine.  People of low socioeconomic status use ethanol, present in alcoholic beverages to excrete atropine as ethanol is slightly polar and acidic which dissolves alkaloids for excretion.

Psychedelic drugs cause schizophrenia.  LSD, Mescaline, and psilocybin are indole alkaloids with a structure similar to serotonin and its primary metabolite, Hydroxy indoleacetic acid.   Psychedelic drugs pass to the Archi cerebrum or primitive animal brain, cause indole active neurons to fire, and are not broken down by cellular enzymes hence the long duration of action and persistent loitering effect.  They eventually diffuse out of the brain by physical osmotic laws of diffusion.  Hallucinations are the result of persistent firing in the occipital area of the neocortex area 18 as directed by the globus pallidus and limbic system.  Since all parts of the brain are intricately connected,  damage to the primitive brain can be evidenced by changes in cognition, disturbances of memory, and sensory abnormalities.   The visual disturbance of chronic alcoholism is probably due to Wernicke’s malnutrition rather than ethanol itself.

In our capitalistic society probably the agents of major abuse are sympathomimetic amines, notably methedrine also known as speed.  In a sad society where all good jobs are saved for the children of the wealthy,  citizens self-medicate with speed to avert the sordid feeling of poverty present in our society.  Methedrine abuse leads to high blood pressure and kidney failure, paranoid schizophrenia, and premature heart attack.   Because sympathomimetic congeners are competitive agents and broken down by Monoamine oxidase present in the dendritic end of neurons,  effects are short-lived, tolerance develops rapidly and habituation ensues with an ultimate nervous breakdown or heart attack.  On the street, speed is cheap and the most readily available of the aversive illegal substances of abuse.  Because sympathomimetic agents act in the nigrostriatal system of neurons in the archicerebrum, they can be blockaded with dopamine-blocking agents that penetrate the blood-brain barrier like the tricyclic phenothiazines first recognized in Germany in World War 2.  The use of phenothiazines is safe and economical and the often heralded side effect of Parkinsonianism is rarely seen except in unusually high doses or disease of chronic duration greater than 20 years.  The abandonment of phenothiazines in the treatment of mental illness resulted from the loss of patent rights of the drug companies and the synthesis of the newer atypical antipsychotics that have a patent duration of 30 years with one ten-year extension upon arbitration.  Nowadays, like everything, economic factors rule the day. 

Depression or more exactly endogenous depression not due to causal agents is a hot topic.  People whose life is horrible due to economic factors or poor intimate relationships become depressed.  It used to be that depressed people ate a lot of chocolate or drank hot cocoa because chocolate contains phenylethylamine, a nor-epinephrine congener.   That is no more.  Now Monoamine oxidase inhibitors are the mainstay with the side effects of psychosis and high blood pressure.   Additionally, some agents like bupropion are said causally to induce abdominal aneurysms.  Depression in reality can be due to an intoxication of a chronic nature with heavy metals most notably those of the uranium or lanthanide series.

The soldiers returning from Iraq with Chronic persistent depressive anomaly merely are soldiers that have been fed by the nationals,  the depleted uranium shells that tanks unceasingly hurl at them.  Uranium, and most notably thorium cause endogenous depression, and the treatment is chronic chelation therapy in the hands of a trained professional intravenously.  All the psychology in the world will not avert a gross systemic intoxication. 

Gone are the days of Sheldon’s somatotypes where tall lanky people are schizophrenics, short bald people are manic-depressives, and normal people or euthymics are people with mental illness which is not heritable but causal and elucidated by intoxication.  Medicine is now a big business and costs one-third of the national budget.  What happened to the days when doctors were welcomed everywhere and health science was a service, not a sale?   Vance Packard in all his genius had no direction or advice as to where the nation should head, regarding health care.  Will anyone care to ask him, again? 

Good morning Dr. Lector says Dr. Wracks.  I just had an egg, a strip of bacon two toast, and two cups of coffee and I feel great.   I have something I want you to see says Dr. Lector.    We don’t know what happened to this man or if there are any antecedents but his family brought him here to eventually be committed.   We have to evaluate him and the board will agree to a final disposition.   I feel he is a catatonic schizophrenic but he could be something else.   A fine line exists between genius and schizophrenia.   I would appreciate your opinion.   The patient is an older man with white hair, tall with an ectodermic somatotype.   He sits in a chair and doesn’t move a muscle for hours at a time and the staff cannot even see him breathe.  However sometimes upon observation, he will move rapidly to a position of superiority to his keepers, like a caged tiger.   Everyone is afraid of him and says it is spooky.  One of the staff reports that one day he was hanging from the ceiling like a bat and they don’t know how he did it.  The prognosis with the direst eventuality is catatonic schizophrenia and dual personality types. There exists no cure for catatonia or dual personality and clinicians like to keep them sedated for their lifespans.  I am going to show him to you, do not speak or make any noises until the conclusion of our observation.  Are you ready?

Yes Dr., Lector let’s go.

The padded cells stand on one side of the unit and are sequestered by a huge oak blast door.  If all else fails, a staff member must make it to this door and it closes automatically with an audible click.  The two clinicians come to the huge door and Dr. Wracks opens it with the key slung around his neck.  Dr, Lector precedes and they come to the final padded cell, the one closest to the end of the unit, the one it is easiest to run from.   Dr. Lector looks at Dr. Wracks and opens a portal in the solid wooden door.  The portal hangs at eye level, has a lock on it and swings open fully so a staff member can look inside.  The dimensions are 12 inches by 12 inches.  It is unlocked, the door swings open on two sturdy hinges and Dr. Wracks looks inside.  Sitting in a chair next to the table is the patient.   He has stark white hair and wraps bedsheets around his body so he looks like a Messiah.  He is tall and lanky with a long angular head.  He doesn’t move, not an inch, not a muscle almost like a plastic mannequin.  Dr. Wracks knows he only moves when no one is watching.  Dr. Lector Closes the door.   What do you think says Dr. Lector?

Catatonic says Dr. Wracks.  Overtly catatonic.  He washes himself and uses the toilet without help says Dr. Lector.   Could he be pretending to query Dr. Lector?   What is his medication asks Dr. Wracks.  We have him on Haloperidol ten mg each day IM with no effect.  There is no betterment or worsening of symptoms and the extrapyramidal effects of the butylphenones do not manifest.  If you must go inside bring an attendant with you and have him stand on one side.  For some reason, mental patients can move quickly when induced.  Please be on your guard with him.   You will check him twice a day through the portal and make a report if there are manifest changes of any kind.  Please keep me informed, asserts Dr. Lector.   I have things to do and he walks off. 

Having free rein in a psychiatric lockup may be exhilarating to some, and prestigious to others but Dr. Wracks views the situation as an ominous burden, not to be shared by a single individual.  Seven more weeks must pass before rotation back to surgery, thinks Wracks. He hopes the nose of the director heals quickly.  Would I like to do this for the rest of my life?

In and out of the subsections with the key and the doors close automatically with a large click.  Dr. Wracks makes the rounds.  He asks the medication nurse in the plexiglass enclosure if all is well and whether there have been any side effects or adverse reactions to the psychiatric medications.  Acute mania and violence quickly resolve with a 100 injection of Benadryl intramuscularly.  He asks the muscular attendants who circulate through the unit if there are any current episodes of violence or acting out.  They say no and the Wracks circulate and move to the canteen where the stabilized patients of long duration go to pass the time.  There is a big color television on the wall, and they sit around in sofas and chairs and smoke cigarettes, and look up at the large ticking wall clock to see how soon the five o’clock dinner will ensue.  Dr. Wracks makes rounds one more time and looks in to view the catatonic.  There is no one in the room and Dr. Wracks cannot see anything but a chair a table and a draped white sheet.   He knows the patient is crouching low in front of the door or to the side to preclude viewing, Dr. Wracks slowly closes the viewport, locks it, and precedes the blast door as fast as he can move.  The big door closes with a loud click.  Dr. Wracks asks the nurse in charge behind the screened barricade if the catatonic patient is in the medical unit to have some tests.  She says he is in his room and this happens often, usually furtive activity precedes a meltdown, says the Wracks.  Be certain that the attendants are present should you have to enter or give him his food tray.  She says she will and makes a note in her log. 

The Wracks exits the section and goes to dinner.   He has a piece of chicken, a vegetable, and a small shortbread biscuit.  For dessert, a small bowl of apple cobbler appears waiting for him.  He goes back to his room in the resident’s quarters and the gang for the most part exits to the local bar.   A Cuban student is there in her cell studying for the licensure examination.  He goes back to his cell, takes off his clothes, barricades the door with the reading table, pulls the covers over his body, says a prayer and goes to sleep. Seven weeks to go. 

What is Antimatter?

Antimatter can be thought of as the opposite of matter, or matter that has properties opposite or contra-positive of the normal steady state.  Simplistically, antimatter can have anti-protons that have the same mass as a proton but the charge of an electron, anti-neutrons: neutrons that have no charge but an opposite or -out-of-phase wave associated with it, and anti-electrons which have the same mass as electrons but a positive charge. In a more real and concrete interpretation, antimatter has the same properties as matter but in a 180-degree out-of-phase wave nature associated with it. To quantify these relationships is Albert Einstein’s dream: a unified field theory. The symbol of Tai Chi Chuan, which is two fishes In eight is in reality the sine wave.  Chinese ascetics believed that all matter exists in a wave function. Put another way, an antimatter particle, colliding with a matter particle will annihilate and release energy in the electromagnetic spectrum equivalent to the equation energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.  A gram of hydrogen annihilating another gram of anti-hydrogen could be said to liberate approximately ten to the thirty-ninth power joules of energy as a wave in a microsecond burst. This amount is identified as a wave addition out of phase annihilation. This amount of energy released per unit of time is astounding and cannot be harnessed for useful power because of its extreme magnitude.

Physics of antimatter annihilation

An antiparticle of a given mass can annihilate another particle of matter of the same atomic weight.  To use dissimilar particles of mass and anti-mass reveals a difficult means to bring them together to annihilate.  Using like particles of anti-matter and matter makes bringing the two particles together of the lower quantum threshold for capture and annihilation.  The reaction of plutonium fission can be likened tangentially to reacting antimatter with matter in the sense that the two components of the reaction must be held together for a minimum amount of time for the reaction to ensue or the elements will quickly separate and the reaction quench.  As in a fission bomb, plutonium wedges must be held together to initiate a chain reaction, two particles of matter, anti and real must be collided and maintained in union for annihilation to proceed. This is because the annihilation of matter and antimatter is not a usual or natural event and the forces of God keep them separate.  

Antimatter can be contained in a near vacuum within a magnetic field as long as matter opposite to the antimatter is not brought into proximity.  For example: an atom of hydrogen antimatter under real conditions will not react with an iron atom because of the dissimilarity of mass and the shielding of the nucleus by barrier particles.  These will only react at relativistic conditions found only in nature at the center of a sun or neutron star.

Production of antimatter

Antimatter can be produced on earth by spinning particles or atoms in a tokamak until the particles change nature at the speed of light.  Matter spun in a circle at the speed of light eventually changes character and can be siphoned off with magnets and contained in a vacuum.

Passing energy through various crystal lattices changes the frequency of the energy in the electromagnetic spectrum

Uses of Antimatter

At present no way exists to realize the great amount of energy liberated in a microsecond by the reaction of antimatter.   No other use comes to mind except in weapons of mass destruction. In the future, the energy released by antimatter annihilation will power starships to different galaxies and fuel huge and awesome lasers and particle weapons.  The harnessing of antimatter energy will provide the means to transgress time and the warp as envisioned by Albert Einstein.  Energy can be converted to specific forms such as gravity waves and the essence of time itself.

On a positive note

The universal field equation envisioned by Albert may soon become a plausible reality.

Good morning, Dr. Wracks, how was your breakfast asks Dr. Lector.

Fine says Dr. Wracks, but they only let you have one cup of coffee. They say you will get fat.

Get used to it Says Dr. Lector.   I have a new arrival I want you to work up.  He is very important.

His family is the richest family in New York State and they want him here for evaluation.  Be careful what you say.  The council want to know if the condition is a psychosis, a neurosis or medical, and how to deal with it.   He is a financial genius.   Do you think you can handle it?

I will do my best says Dr, Wracks.

He will be in the interview room at 11 o’clock.  Be sure to look your best. 

It is interview time and Dr. Wracks has gone back to his cell, shaved and brushed his teeth and put on a tie.  His white clinician coat will do.  He precedes to the interview room.  Inside waits the patient.  He sits in a chair, and he is of average height with hair thinning in the calvarium and occipital regions, skin tone normal, slight freckling which might be due to hereditary factors and no odor, mannerisms or automatism.  Dr. Wracks introduces himself.  Good morning Mr. home, I am Dr. Wracks, a fifth pathway intern, sent here to interview you.  How are you today?

His eyes open wide and he says, Buy chock full of nuts.  

Dr. Wracks asks again, what is chock full of nuts?

Dimba, dimba, do says Mr., home

Is Chock full of nuts a stock, an equity or a possession

La la, ga ga, goo says Mr. Home

At this point the interrogator decides that this patient is compos mentis and decides to use Carl Rogers sounding board technique.   The Sounding board technique is designed to elucidate whether the patient is psychotic or not and to elucidate transference which will induce remission if successful.

Yakka yakka bop, says Mr. Home

Yakka yakka bop, says Dr, Wracks

Diddly de diddly does, says Mr. Home

Diddly de diddly does says Dr, Wracks

Bam bam bop says Mr. Ho

Bam bam bop says Dr. Wracker

At this point Mr. Home jumps up on the table and pulls down his pants exposing himself.

Dr. Wracks says.  Now you hear what you are saying.   Do you understand now why you are here

Mr. home pulls up his pants and sits back in his chair and is silent.

Dr. Lector and the council will place you on medication if you so desire to stabilize your condition.  Our interview is concluded.  Do you understand, Mr. Home

Mr. Home nods his head sullenly

Thank you very much for your time, and I hope to see you in the future.  Have an excellent day Mr. Home.  Dr. Wracks stands up, backsteps his way to the door and exits the interview room.  The door shuts and locks with a loud click.

Dr. Wracks adds to his notes.  There exists a possible hebephrenic condition not thought to be psychosis.  These mannerisms exist as possible reaction formation to an aversive situation.  A full blood workup indicates with attention to SGOT and BUN.   Screen for sympathomimetic addiction as people of high intelligence resort to substance abuse to maintain performance levels. The pupils are normal size and reactive to light.  The Patient is cognizant and responds to question and reacts to answer.

Dr. Wracks finishes the report and deposits it in Dr. Lectors office slot.

What ever happened to Mr. Home acts Dr. Wracks

He is better and his family requests he be requisitioned to more favorable and opulent surroundings.  Thank you very much Dr. Wracks.  Good Work says Dr. Lector.  Enjoy the rest of your day.

It is very spartan here at the VA.   Dr. Wracks sits in his cell with his light and his Harrisons principle of Internal Medicine and tries to read.  The Milky Way bar he bought from the prison concessionaire tastes really good and later he might visit the patient canteen and get a Styrofoam cup of rot gut coffee.  It is snowing outside in March and the administration suggests all unnecessary personnel go home before they are snowed in.  Dr. Wracks has no place to go and his cell is his room and the weekend will be long and this VA in upstate has long dark tunnels that connect the units which he will manage this weekend.

How where and when does man build a nuclear reactor that is safe and minimally impacts the community?

The answer is simple, not simplistic, and derives from common sense and good old Yankee ingenuity.

A reactor must be built in a place where an eventual meltdown will not cause a horrendous calamity. Safe places exist.  Because the most long-lived reactors in the world sit near a great body of water, so must water-cooled nuclear reactors reside. Evidence is the San Onofre nuclear reservation.   In a meltdown, huge quantities of water cool the core and bring the reaction back to equilibrium.  In the United States, safe places are on the seashores of coastal states and abutting the Great Lakes area where the lakes hold millions of gallons of extremely cold water benefiting only the Erie Canal and Niagara Falls. 

A reactor can also be built in a remote area where a meltdown has no direct effect on local populations.  In sparsely populated states in the northern forty’s longitude, a meltdown has little consequence and the energy produced by reactors can feed into a grid to serve populated cities and heavy product factories. 

The reality of meltdowns is that the core forms a superheated magma and sinks deep into the earth.   Intervention by man serves no purpose and the core remnants can be fenced off until radiation follows the logarithmic law of extinction.

Reactor shielding

Most current nuclear reactors are poorly shielded because of man’s inhumanity to man.   To shield a nuclear reactor, water serves to moderate small particles like quarks and bosons. Steel stops fast neutrons and eventually becomes radioactive, this is why old reactors are decommissioned.  The next shielding layer stops the most important aspect of nuclear radiation danger.  Bromstrellung is a German word for radiation secondary to the deceleration of basic particles like protons, neutrons, and electrons.  Bromstrellung registers in the gamma and x-ray region of ionizing radiation.  To create bromstrellung, an alkaline earth crystalloid like steel enters a higher energy level after absorbing a particle and then radiates a gamma photon.  This is the bremsstrahlung   Impacting particles generate gamma rays.    A secondary shield of high-mass number elements like lead or other heavy metals turns the bromstrellung into infrared radiation also known as heat utilizing the photoelectric effect.  In addendum, to shield a nuclear reactor emanating fast neutrons, gamma rays, heat, and light, three shields become necessary.  The first is an ionic shield that can be made from water.  The second is a braking radiation shield to be made from steel; the third is a gamma shield that fabricates from the use of any of the heavy metals in the periodic table of elements. This coupled with a calculation of radiation-safe distance employing a Geiger counter forms the parameters and specifics of the shape and size of the containing vessel. When dealing with radiation, length is safe and duration minimized

Breeder reactors

Breeder reactors are thorium breeders or uranium breeders.  Thorium breeds are safer because the core does not go critical as fast as a uranium breeder fired by plutonium.   The birth of uranium 235 or plutonium 239 using thorium or uranium breeders respectively occurs at a logarithmic rate.  The product must be removed concerning a logarithmic calculation based on breeding mass and size of the fissioning bed.   The math is simple; people are complex and amiss to err and behavior change. 

The rate of breeding is directly proportional to the rate of radiation emitting from a core.  New material is added as the product is born and the reactor is safe and fashionable.  In the event of a meltdown, non-reacted raw material pulls from the core and the reactor comes to rest.  Thank God for AI and robots to help us.

Reactor design

A circle of concentric rods seems the safest and most logical picture of a reactor core.  The rods suspend through a chain or wire just as a guillotine blade hangs over the head of a criminal.  If the core overheats, moderator rods can be inserted or the raw material can drop out of the core into a concrete tomb.  The reactor sits safely away from supervising staff and controls occur by action of chains, wires, and levers pulled or guided from a remote location by robots.  Distance is lifesaving

Radioactive waste

Radioactive waste equals strontium ninety, and cesium 137 along with radioactive water.  Strontium 90 mainly emits alpha particles with a half-life of five thousand years and cesium 137 emits gamma rays with a half-life of 120 days.  In the future, man will collect radioactive waste as the positive byproduct of a nuclear reactor and use the waste as a source of heat or a source of electrons forming batteries by the device of the photoelectric effect turning gamma into electron movement in a wire.  Currently, the best way to store radioactive waste is to drop it into a chasm that empties into the center of the earth.

Fission or Fusion Oh My!

Fission reactors tend to overheat and go critical.   Fusion reactors burn at full throttle and can die in an instant.   Fission reactors produce large amounts of gamma-generating waste and fusion reactors generate helium which when it accumulates is one of the most toxic elements to biological life forms. The choice will be made by the next generation.  I, for one, choose fission because fission reactors do not go out, they refuse to die. I exclude fusion because of the generation of huge amounts of helium.  In my mind, fusion reactors will only serve as power for military vehicles because they require less shielding.  However, I am just a dreamer with my hands in my hair and the imagination is a canvas of beauty and optimism.  Others will choose.

Where is everyone, asks Dr. Wracks.   I saw them at breakfast in the cafeteria

They are in the outpatient venue says Dr. Lector.   They have enough to do.

Don’t you think it is dangerous, just you and me in a lockup with twenty-five patients?

There is plenty of staff, and the nurses sit behind bulletproof windows. Says Dr. Lector

I don’t mean them says Dr. Wracks, I mean you and me.

Remember what I said about inappropriate comments, says Dr. Lector.   If you are sick, they can sense it.  Just don’t say anything or make noises and you will be OK.  Stay close to the doors.  You can see it in their faces before they turn.  Be smart.  I have a new admission I want you to work up. Says Dr. Lector.  He is from a wealthy family, and he became a marine and went to Vietnam.    He is one of the few survivors of the Tet Offensive and his superiors don’t know how he survived. He is back in the States now and got into a bit of trouble.  It seems someone gave his sister a venereal infection so he broke into their house in broad daylight and beat them all into unconsciousness, all five of them.   The perpetrator he beat into the ICU with a phone book. He is on a respirator.   He says he did not want to hurt his hands.   His lawyers have commended him into my care until the judiciary decides what to do with him.  He is five feet eight inches tall but he can move very quickly.   Follow me, I will show him to you.  He is in a padded cell.

Dr. Wracks and Dr. Lector move to the holding area of the building.  On a large oak door is a port hole with a door on it.  Dr. Lector opens the port and behind wire bars, a leering face with widely dilated grey eyes stares at the two outside.  

Mr. Carl, it is Dr. Lector.   I have a resident from the general hospital here to evaluate you.  Will you accept his care?   The patient nods his head slightly.   He will see you in the interview room after lunch.  His name is Dr. Wracks.   He will see you in two hours, and he slowly closes the porthole.

What else do you have on him asks Dr. Wracks, so I can be prepared.

He is maintained on 100mg of Thorazine twice a day, with 100 mg of Benadryl to sedate and prevent an extrapyramidal reaction.  He is a middle-aged nourished male with good conduct issued by the military.   His lawyers want to learn whether the attack was provoked and if there is an underlying drug addiction.  If you think there is an underlying physical or metabolic condition please transcribe it to your notes.   On the front lines in Vietnam, often the soldiers would mainline heroin to desensitize themselves from the constant shelling and explosions.  Please note any physical manifestations of addiction.   This man is a decorated soldier.  Put your file in my office and I will peruse it this afternoon and contact his attorney.  Have a good day Dr. Wracks.

Dr. Lector gravitates away and disappears.   He is never around but always appears when needed.

The interview room is well-lit and white, and Mr. Carl sits in a foldout chair, at a foldout desk, facing the door.  Good afternoon, Mr. Carl says Dr. Wracks.   I am an internist doing an internship here at the Veterans’ Administration for eight weeks.   May I interview you?   Yes, says Mr. Carl.     Is the facility giving you adequate care here at the Veterans facility?   Yes, Says Mr. Carl.  The medication you are now receiving is sedating and this means that any anger you still harbor will be abolished and soon eliminated.   How is the medication working for you?  Fine says Mr. Carl, except it makes me slur my words.   That is to be expected says Dr. Wracks.  The medication will make you less angry.   Do you feel like running around or having to walk around, this is called akathisia, and this is a common reaction to the medication.  No, I am fine.   Time passes by with ominous silence.   His pupils are dilatated but not fixed, and he is not salivating, shaking, or exhibiting autonomic mannerisms.  He dresses in denim jeans, sneakers, and a linen, buttoned, plaid shirt, in earth tones.  He is not talkative.   Would you like a cigarette, asks Dr. Wracks.   I don’t smoke says Mr. Carl.   If you have any questions or any other problems, ring the charge nurse and she will call me.   I will be checking in on you.    Wracks turns to the door and a muscular attendant opens the door for him.  Wracks edges out back first keeping his eyes on the patient.  The door closes and then locks.

In his evaluation, Dr. Wracks writes: that the subject is a well-nourished male in mid-life.   He is of average height and build.   He sports brown hair, and grey eyes, and seems of European descent.  Pupils are dilated, sclera not erythematous or injected, and there is no evidence of intravenous drug abuse.  A urine methamphetamine assay ordered.   Order head x-ray, frontal, lateral, and Townes view.    Standard blood profile indicated.   Will monitor for medication side effects.   Acyl phenothiazines are anticholinergic and sedating, and this patient does not manifest overt sedation or drowsiness.  Evaluate for sympathomimetic drug abuse and occult intracerebral neoplasm by the neurologist.  Suggest continued holding and evaluation until stable. The district attorney should be comfortable with these results.  The only psychiatric mannerism noticed by the evaluator is that the subject remains perfectly still but not catatonic.  Continue patient care. 

Dr. Wracks is done for today until afternoon rounds.   He is to sit with the incarcerated schizophrenics and observe their behavior.   He is to inform the pharmacist staff If extrapyramidal side effects manifest in any of the patients or if there is a violent acting out.  Then he will go to dinner and sit in his little room with a bed, a table, and a chair and sleep until tomorrow if it comes.  It is today’s world, one day at a time.

A storm blows into upstate and snow covers the facility with ten feet of snow.   More is on the way, and the radiators are hot, and steam blows out the vent holes in a whisper, night overtakes and the Wracks end the day with a prayer.