The Ultimate Piece of Memorabilia

                                                      The Ultimate Piece of Memorabilia



         The ceiling lazily swirled into focus as Robin slowly opened his eyes.  He wrinkled his nose at the pungent aroma of antiseptic and flowers.  Turning his head towards the side of the bed intent on locating a pack of cigarettes, several unpleasant simultaneous images slammed into him all at once.  His smokes were nowhere to be found, the window to the left of the bed stand was encased in a thick wire mesh, and he was handcuffed to the bedrail.

“This is wrong on so many levels,” he sighed.

Frowning he closed his eyes and struggled to become reacquainted with his memory, which sputtered images of him plunging something hard into something soft. Just as these memories began to solidify into a more sensible arrangement, he heard someone come in.

Her presence swarmed into the room like a hive of angry bees.  Robin watched her march towards him with a mixture of fear and anticipation.  She announced herself and her profession by slapping a blood pressure cuff securely around his right bicep and began squeezing the bulb to inflate it.  Just as the tips of his fingers throbbed and threatened to explode, she mercifully released the pressure.  Then the nurse stuck a thermometer under his tongue and seconds later flashed a pinpoint of light into his right eye.  His head recoiled as if she’d skewered it with a shish-ka-bob prong complete with slices of red pepper, onion and raw cubes of steak.

“Uhgmph! Bitch! That hurt!” he snarled spitting out the thermometer.  Without expression she picked it up off his chest and glanced at it satisfied.  Walking to the end of the bed she recorded the readings on a small pad she pulled from a pocket in her smock.

“Do you know where you are?” she asked in a clipped eastern educated voice.

“At a distinct disadvantage?” rasped Robin as he rattled the cuffs against the railings of the bed.

“Got that one right,” she sniffed smirking. 

“Let me loose!”

“Doc will be in later, try not to get lost,” she chuckled.

“Wait!” screamed Robin to her retreating back.

Straining against the restraints Robin tried to sit-up.  The best he could do was to raise his head and shoulders up off the mattress a few precious inches.  Since it wasn’t a position he could maintain very long, he collapsed back with a frustrated grunt.  A film of sweat broke out on his upper lip and forehead, as the ceiling undulated like the belly of an exotic dancer.  The walls were liquefying and the bed was spinning.  He dove deep into the corridors of nothing running for his life.

The deliciously sensual floating sensation faded as he reluctantly broke though the surface of consciousness.  He opened his eyes hoping to see familiar surroundings.  Instead a mousy looking girl squeezing a sponge over a pink tub of soapy water shimmered into focus.  Then as if he were as delicate as finely blown glass, she wiped the sponge along his arm to his shoulder.  She exchanged the sponge for a dry white towel and with a firmer touch dried him off.

Robin watched her face as she stroked him with first the sponge and towel. Her expression didn’t change no matter which intimate areas of him she was cleaning.  No flash of interest or embarrassment or recognition.  This was very disturbing to a man whom when only slightly more dressed than this and holding his guitar low against his crotch had legions of women writhing with excitement.  But then he wasn’t singing or thrusting his hips hard against the smooth back of his guitar; didn’t she know who he was?

Robin rasped in a voice not quite his own, “Do you know me?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Well?” asked Robin impatiently.

“You are patient number 522B.”

“Noooo!  I’m Robin McBride!  Robin McBride!”

She nodded slightly, “Take it easy Mr. McBride.”

“I’m Robin McBride the lead singer of the band All Strung Up!  You’ve heard of us no doubt.  You have heard of us, right?”

“I’m sorry sir, no.” sensing his disappointment she cheerfully added. “My name is Claire.”

Robin studied her asking, “How old are you?”

“Twenty.  I’m a student nurse here at St. Henslowe’s Hospital.”

“HOSPITAL!!!” bellowed Robin. “What the…do you realize I have a concert in…”

His voice trailed off as it dawned on him that he’d been strung up in this bed for quite some time.

The growth of his beard, a man’s timekeeper, grazed the delicate skin of his shoulder.

As questions chased themselves around in his mind he caught up with one and asked, “Where am I?”

“St. Heslowe’s Hospital, Ward B. sir.”

“Ward B?” asked Robin quietly.

“Psych.”

“But, I’m not nuts!”

“That’s what they all say,” she whispered and added. “And another thing we don’t say nuts.”

“Oh?”

“Mentally challenged is ok but we never ever say, nuts…and Robin, we never, ever call them insane.”

She gathered up her tub and towels, “I’ll Google you.”

“What?” he asked to her retreating back.

Robin closed his eyes and yawned, “Google me?  That can’t be right maybe she said ogle.  God knows women have been doing that to me all my life.”

He drifted off again thinking how odd it was to name a hospital after a saint that didn’t exist.  Well, not that he knew of anyway.  He’d had just enough religious training to be confidant of that. Another part of him argued he should be more worried about how he came to be in a psych ward in the first place.  Still another part of him didn’t care and that was the voice he followed into a cozy quiet corner of his mind.

A vague sensation of activity around him drew him to reluctantly surface again.  This time the room held fast to well-established laws of physics.  A man with a closely cropped beard and wire frame glasses was sitting on a chair next to the bed.

“Dr. Watson I presume,” quipped Robin.

“Dr. Foster.”

“Close enough,” sighed Robin as he watched the doctor reading pages secured to a clipboard and tapping his front teeth with a gold pen.  An expensive Rolex watched gleamed just under the cuff of his white linen shirt and there was a faint smell of tobacco from a pipe that poked out of the pocket of his coat.  The pipe reminded him of a submarine’s periscope and it also reminded him he really needed a cigarette.

“Got any smokes?” asked Robin.

“That’s not good for you.”

“Hypocrite, what’s that then?” asked Robin pointing to the doctors’ jacket.

“Medicinal purposes friend.  How are you feeling?”

“Medicinal, that’s rich!”

“How are you feeling?”

“Thirsty,” said Robin softly.

Dr. Foster smiled and poured water from a decanter next to the bed into a cup.  Pulling off the condom like wrapping on the straw he held it in the cup as Robin drank greedily.

“Not too fast now, you’ll cramp up.”

Dr. Foster put the cup back on the bed stand but kept the straw.  He placed it in his coat pocket and studied Robin silently for a few moments.  Robin saw something vaguely familiar spark in his eyes but before he could categorize it the doctor had gone back to a more neutral facial expression.

“So, how are you?”

“Terrific!  Now un-do these damn things so I can get back to being me.”

“No can do, sorry.  What do you remember?”

Robin closed his eyes and said, “Painting in my art class.  The rest is a blank.  All I remember is that I had a bagel and went to class on Melbourne.  Know it?  I was starting on a new watercolor.  It had horses on a carousel with some balloons.  I felt dizzy and it all goes black.”  Actually, it had swirled into a mixing bowl colors and shifting shapes, but Robin kept that to himself because it sounded, well, crazy.

“Hmmm, well I can fill in the gaps if you like.  You had a violent psychotic episode.  You were painting that’s true.  But you were painting with coffee instead of paint and told the teacher it was your best effort ever.  You spouted off that George Orwell was your favorite painter.  She tried to explain to you that Orwell was a writer and the canvas was smeared with coffee; you grabbed her by the neck and shoved the poor ol’girls’ face into the wall. You broke her nose by the way and that wasn’t red paint you dipped your brush in.”

Robin recoiled back in horror, “No, that’s not possible!  I’d never…”

“We ran a few tests son. The lab has found traces of a hallucinogenic in your blood stream.  Care to elaborate on that?”

“But I don’t do that anymore?  Not since I was a kid.  I hated it; my guitar kept slithering around like a snake in my hands.  I could barely play the damn thing.”

“The police brought you in and I imagine there will be charges filed.  However, with the right kind of…shall we say co-operation, I think I can smooth some of the bumps out for you.  Know what I mean?”

Doctor Foster stood up and walked over to the window.  Robin’s heart lurched in his chest as he thought he had glimpsed his bands’ logo on a tee-shirt underneath the white linen one the doctor was wearing.  But he couldn’t be sure.  Perhaps he was having another hallucination.  Then like the tumblers of a lock falling into place, his memory clicked open with a dull metallic snap.

That look in the doctors’ eyes he’d glimpsed earlier suddenly made sense.  He’d seen that look a thousand times before in the eyes of his rabid fans.

Looking over his shoulder and seeing Robin’s expression of recognition he dropped the pretense of professional indifference.  Moving closer to the bed he reached down and stroked Robins’ neck whispering reverently, “You have the voice of demon and angel.  I have all of your music.  I am your biggest fan.  Did you know that?  I had to have you to complete my collection.”

Robin felt a pulse of fear streak down his spine to his balls.  This was no episode of psychotic delusion!  It was something nasty in his coffee.  Robin had just found the coordinates back to reality.  A simple sharing of a flask of coffee the new girl had offered him.  Great tits and long legs that lulled him into a false sense of security.  It wasn’t long after that everything dipped and twirled.

“Christ!” Robin shouted his eyes as big as saucers. “What have you done?”

“Are you speaking to me or yourself?”

“Both!”

“The question is what have you done?”

“Eh?”

“Do you remember the concert a month ago?  No?  I asked you for an autograph but you never came over; just raised your beer and sneered.  That wasn’t very nice.  Did you know the girl next to me had come half-way across the country to see you?  You didn’t even look at her!  That really disappointed me.  Still, I forgave you.  I always forgive you.”

Robin pulled desperately at the cuffs until the tendons stood out in his arms, “I’ll tell them you kidnapped me and they’ll put you away you sick fuck!”

“Tell who?  Who would believe you?  You are delusional; it says so here on your chart.”

Robin collapsed back on the bed panting, “What do you want?”

“Now that’s the first sensible thing you have said today!” giggled Dr. Foster rubbing his hands together. “Well I have an impressive collection of All Strung Up memorabilia if I do say so myself.  But the wife came up with something none of the other fans have.  She really has a thing for you.  The best sex we have is when she is imagining you and fucking me!”

“Twisted,” grumbled Robin.

“We had everything but it wasn’t enough.  You know?”

“Not really interested.”

“Do you know what we needed?  We needed the ultimate piece of memorabilia!  Do you know what that is?” asked Dr. Foster as his eyes traveled from Robin’s eyes to his crotch.

“You got to be kidding me!” Robin groaned incredulously. “Plaster caster?”

“What? No we’ve already got that.”

“Say what?”

“We collected some of your essence.”

“Essence?”

“We gathered some of your sperm and now all we have to do is wait for the lab results.”

“What?”

The doctor moved away from the bed, “Yes, we have every reason to believe she’ll conceive and then we’ll have the ultimate piece of memorabilia…you to raise as our own.”

The erotic image of him pushing something hard into something soft swung back into focus, “You bastard, you can’t do that!  Let me out of here!  I’m not a goddamn piece of memorabilia!  I’ll get you.”

A nurse stood in the doorway with a syringe.

Robin cringed back into his bed, “No!  Wait!  I don’t like needles!  Please, I’ll be good.  Take as much as you want I’ve got plenty.  Listen to me, he’s insane!  I was raped!  No don’t, god not that, no!  Look under his shirt he has one of our concert tee-shirts on.  Please don’t hurt me.  Pleeease!!”

“Easy now Mr. McBride, just relax,” cooed Dr. Foster. “You are only making things worse for yourself by getting upset.”

Robin screamed a mournful nearly inhuman cry as the needle plunged into his arm.  As the pain ricocheted in his arm, tears rolled down his cheeks. 

Dr. Foster tenderly smoothed a tendril of blonde hair from his forehead and whispered soothingly, “We’ll talk more when you’re more co-operative.  I have to run along, I have to check on Mr. King down the hall.  He had the most unfortunate accident with a mini-van while walking down a country road.  Can you imagine that?  My brother was simply mortified being such a big fan and all.”