Run With the Hunted by Charles Bukowski Page A

minutes. The doctor walked out with a clipboard in his hand.
    â€œMartinez?” the doctor asked. “José Martinez?”
    An old thin Mexican man stood up and began walking toward the doctor.
    â€œMartinez? Martinez, old boy, how are you?”
    â€œSick, doctor … I think I die …”
    â€œWell, now … Step in here …”
    Martinez was in there a long time. I picked up a discarded newspaper and tried to read it. But we were all thinking about Martinez. If Martinez ever got out of there, someone would be next.
    Then Martinez screamed. “AHHHHH! AHHHHH! STOP! STOP! AHHHH! MERCY! GOD! PLEASE STOP!”
    â€œNow, now, that doesn’t hurt …” said the doctor.
    Martinez screamed again. A nurse ran into the examination room. There was silence. All we could see was the black shadow of the half-open doorway. Then an orderly ran into the examination room. Martinez made a gurgling sound. He was taken out of there on a rolling stretcher. The nurse and the orderly pushed him down the hall and through some swinging doors. Martinez was under a sheet but he wasn’t dead because the sheet wasn’t pulled over his face.
    The doctor stayed in the examination room for another ten minutes. Then he came out with the clipboard.
    â€œJefferson Williams?” he asked.
    There was no answer.
    â€œIs Jefferson Williams here?”
    There was no response.
    â€œMary Blackthorne?”
    There was no answer.
    â€œHarry Lewis?”
    â€œYes, doctor?”
    â€œStep forward, please …”
    It was very slow. The doctor saw five more patients. Then he left the examination room, stopped at the desk, lit a cigarette and talked to the nurse for fifteen minutes. He looked like a very intelligent man. He had a twitch on the right side of his face, which kept jumping, and he had red hair with streaks of grey. He wore glasses and kept taking them off and putting them back on. Another nurse came in and gave him a cup of coffee. He took a sip, then holding the coffee in one hand he pushed the swinging doors open with the other and was gone.
    The office nurse came out from behind the desk with our long white cards and she called our names. As we answered, she handed each of us our card back. “This ward is closed for the day. Please return tomorrow if you wish. Your appointment time is stamped on your card.”
    I looked down at my card. It was stamped 8:30 a.m.
    â€” H AM ON R YE
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    It was like a wood drill, it might have been a wood drill, I could smell the oil burning, and they’d stick that thing into my head into my flesh and it would drill and bring up blood and pus, and I’d sit there the monkey of my soul-string dangling over the edge of a cliff. I was covered with boils the size of small apples. It was ridiculous and unbelievable. Worst case I ever saw, said one of the docs, and he was old. They’d gather around me like some freak. I was a freak. I’m still a freak. I rode the streetcar back and forth to the charity ward. Children on streetcars would stare and ask their mothers, “What’s wrong with that man? Mother, what’s wrong with that man’s face? ” And the mother would SHUUSSSHHH!!! That shuussshhh was the worst condemnation, and then they’d continue to let the little bastards and bastardesses stare from over the backs of their seats and I’d look out the window and watch the buildings go by, and I’d be drowning, slugged and drowning, nothing to do. The doctors for lack of anything else called it Acne Vulgaris. I’d sit for hours on a wooden bench while waiting for my wood drill. What a pity story, eh? I remember the old brick buildings, the easy and rested nurses, the doctors laughing, having it made. It was there that I learned of the fallacy of hospitals—that the doctors were kings and the patients were shit and the hospitals were there so the doctors could make it in their starched white