One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest: 50th Anniversary Edition by Ken Kesey Page B

She got to where she was tripping me and beating me to the floor.”
    The nurse closes up the folder and passes it across the doorway to the doctor. “Our new Admission, Doctor Spivey,” just like she’s got a man folded up inside that yellow paper and can pass him on to be looked over. “I thought I might brief you on his record later today, but as he seems to insist on asserting himself in the Group Meeting, we might as well dispense with him now.”
    The doctor fishes his glasses from his coat pocket by pulling on the string, works them on his nose in front of his eyes. They’re tipped a little to the right, but he leans his head to the left and brings them level. He’s smiling a little as he turns through the folder, just as tickled by this new man’s brassy way of talking right up as the rest of us, but, just like the rest of us, he’s careful not to let himself come right out and laugh. The doctor closes the folder when he gets to the end, and puts his glasses back in his pocket. He looks to where McMurphy is still leaned out at him from across the day room.
    “You’ve—it seems—no other psychiatric history, Mr. McMurry?”
    “Mc
Murphy
, Doc.”
    “Oh? But I thought—the nurse was saying—”
    He opens the folder again, fishes out those glasses, looks the record over 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. It was the lady there that started it, made the mistake. I’ve known some people inclined to do that. I had this uncle whose name was Hallahan, and he went with a woman once who kept acting like she couldn’t remember his name right and calling him Hooligan just to get his goat. It went on for months before he stopped her. Stopped her good, 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 be tellin’ that. I keep Unk Hallahan’s method a strict secret, you see, in case I need to use it myself someday.”
    He says it right at the nurse. She smiles right back at him, and he looks over at the doctor. “Now; what was you asking about my record, Doc?”
    “Yes. I was wondering if you’ve any previous psychiatric history. Any analysis, any time spent in any other institution?”
    “Well, counting state
and
county coolers—”
    “
Mental
institutions.”
    “Ah. No, if that’s the case. This is my first trip. But I
am
crazy, Doc. I swear I am. Well here—let me show you here. I believe that other doctor at the work farm …”
    He gets up, slips the deck of cards in the pocket of his jacket, and comes across the room to lean over the doctor’s shoulder and thumb 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 fishes his glasses out again and puts them on and looks to where McMurphy is pointing.
    “Right here, Doc. The nurse left this part out while she was
summarizing
my record. Where it says, ‘Mr. McMurphy has evidenced re
peated
’—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 I am he put it
over
zealous in my sexual relations. Doctor, is that real serious?”
    He asks it with such a little-boy look of worry and concern all over his broad, tough face that the doctor can’t help bending his head to hide another little snicker in his collar, and his glasses fall from his nose dead center 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: