In northern New Jersey, in a city that very much wanted to be part of New York, there lived a mild mannered accountant named Spalding Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery lived alone in a modest one-bedroom apartment on the 8th floor of a fifteen year-old building. He had a washer and dryer and was generally content with his lot in life. He liked his mindless job and his impersonal coworkers. He liked his tiny apartment and its efficient kitchenette. He liked being a bachelor and the hours of solitude it allowed him. He liked the way his face looked when it was clean-shaven and his slender, swimmer’s physique. His one gripe, the one card in his hand that he would have asked the dealer to swap out, was the brain that had been given him. Due to some chemical imbalance, whether dealt him by fate or by mere biological chance, he was prone to having periods of fantastic delusions, and this proclivity made it necessary for Mr. Montgomery to be under the almost constant surveillance of a psychiatrist and his prescription pad.
At the time of the main events related in this story, Mr. Montgomery is 28, and at this point he has experienced two major delusions. The first came to him while suffering through the miseries of a shy adolescence. It started small with the subtle belief that he was more sensitive than other people, which made his emotional pain more intense. Over the span of a few weeks this minor misconception grew to such proportions that he came to believe that he was, in fact, the Second Coming of Christ. The idea took root and defied all evidence to the contrary. It went on unchecked for nearly three full days, during which time young Spalding believed it absolutely and lamented the fact that he would have to continue to suffer his whole life for the good of mankind. He rebelled against the idea, asking himself, ‘What has mankind ever done for me?’ The fact that his parents had instilled in him a staunch agnosticism, and that, he therefore didn’t believe Jesus was the son of God, never gave pause to his confused teenage mind. After awhile he simply forgot about the whole affair and continued through his high school years without ever having really identified it as a warning sign of a problem.
His second major delusion came in his last year at Rutgers University. It was nearing the end of his final semester and the due date for a final project was fast approaching. The pressure of the imminent deadline found him working deep into the nights and when he lay down to sleep his mind raced with all the perceived problems and failings of the project. He went over revisions in his head for hours until he would wake at seven after stealing only two or three hours of fitful sleep. The stress of all this unhinged something in young Mr. Montgomery, and he began to oscillate between delusions of grandeur and bouts of critical self-loathing.
Two days before the deadline he was terribly unhappy and significantly dissipated. He wasn’t seeing anyone socially and rarely attended class. He began to believe there was something seriously wrong with him. The obvious culprits of stress and overwork didn’t occur to him. Instead, in a potentially life-changing eureka moment, he hit on an answer. “I’m gay!” he proclaimed to himself excitedly. That was why he had such a hard time relating to people – he wasn’t being his true self. It was a relief to finally know the root of all his tribulation. It was so simple. There was a cut and dry answer - he had been living with a false identity. But when he thought of the logical resolution of this new realization, namely, a sexual relationship with a man, his aversion was reminiscent of how he had felt about suffering for mankind. He again cursed his fortune bitterly, but, just like his not believing in Jesus wasn’t proof enough to dissuade him from thinking he was the Second Coming, his disinclination to share that kind of intimacy with a man wasn’t proof enough to dissuade him from believing he was homosexual. Young Mr. Montgomery suffered a week of misery and confusion before, with the help of his first psychiatrist, he overcame this second mistaken epiphany. It was at this time that he was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and was prescribed a daily regimen of Lamictil, an anti-psychotic, which, he was told, was a necessary precaution to stave of any future “breaks from reality.”
After graduation he enjoyed seven years of uneventful relative sanity. He went to work everyday without taking so much as one sick day. He cooked himself dinner six nights out of the week and rarely went out after work . Occasionally he went to see a movie by himself or took the train into New York to walk the busy streets, spying on the passersby, their fashions and hairstyles, catching bits of conversations. But aside from these infrequent diversions he lived his life on a straight line that ran from his apartment to his office and back.
Like this, seven years passed - seven years without an episode. But seven years was a long time. For seven years his imagination had no outlet. For seven years something was stirring in the deepest recesses of his psyche. For seven years it was peeking out only in the subconscious-ness of his dreams, which he never remembered.
His boyish good looks had hardened by now into a façade of stoic masculinity. His blond hair had lost its waviness and would have hung straight to his shoulders had he not kept it cropped short. Once upon a time he had his fair share of female admirers in the office but he always kept his relations there on a strictly professional basis. Everyone came to know this about him and they returned his indifference in kind. It was simpler, and if there was anything Mr. Montgomery strived for in life, it was simplicity. For seven years things had been the picture of simplicity, but seven years was a long time, and fantasy can find a way to reach us all in the unguarded corners.
It was a Sunday night in mid-October that Spalding Montgomery was lying in bed and sleep would not come. He rolled over, he shifted the pillow, he tried lying on his back, his side, and his belly, but still sleep eluded him. Something was keeping him up but he didn’t know what. His mind was alert but he didn’t know why. And then it started. Faintly at first, he began to hear small, tinny voices. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, he only recognized the melodic rise and fall of a speech pattern. He slowed his breathing and listened more intently. He began to pick out words here and there. It reminded Mr. Montgomery of the bits of conversation he heard when walking the streets of New York.
He sat up in bed trying to detect where the words were coming from. He held his breath but heard nothing. He brushed his covers off and swung his legs to the floor. From a kitchen cabinet he took a glass and put it to the wall with his ear pressed to the bottom. He heard nothing from his next-door neighbors’. He heard nothing from his downstairs neighbors’. The ceiling would be pointless as he was on the top floor. At a loss, he shook off the mystery, and, after drinking a glass of warm milk, returned to bed.
Within seconds of lying down, almost imperceptibly at first, the voices returned. Along with the voices he could hear other noises now, mechanical noises. Was that the rev of an engine? The honking of horns? The sound of a jackhammer breaking concrete? Mr. Montgomery began to worry that this was the start of a delusion. Through years of therapy he was conditioned to be aware of the signs. Was he having an episode? He shrugged the idea off. As an act of defiance he took the pillow from under his head and violently pulled it down over his face. For a split second he thought the noises had ceased. He experienced a surge of relief. But even before he took his next breath the noises returned. And what’s more, now they were louder.
Again Mr. Montgomery tossed and turned. Every time he got comfortable and became still the noises returned. “Why is this happening?” he questioned. “I take my meds.” he told himself. He flung his pillow to the floor in frustration. He kicked his blanket from the bed. He banged his fists against the mattress over and over and over again. “Stop! You’re not a child!” he reprimanded himself. He lay on the bed panting heavily. Once his breathing returned to normal he heard it. It was a wailing siren - a wailing siren that was unmistakably coming from inside his bed. Mr. Montgomery pressed his ear to the mattress and listened intently. In addition to the siren he heard panicked cries and blaring horns. He heard feedback come from speakers, which was followed by an announcement about an earthquake. Now Mr. Montgomery was sure he was completely and utterly out of his mind. His defected brain was telling him there were tiny people living inside his mattress.
He jumped from the bed and paced through the living room to the kitchenette. From the freezer he took a bottle of vodka. He poured a double into the glass that had most recently been used as a listening device. He gulped from the glass too eagerly and gagged, almost losing the contents of his stomach. His heart was racing. He forced down another gulp and took two deep breaths. This relaxed him. He focused on his breathing, becoming slightly more relaxed. Minutes passed. He found a carton of orange juice in his refrigerator and fixed himself a tall screwdriver. He took several sips. He could feel the effect of the alcohol now. He topped off his glass and walked warily into the living room. He watched TV awhile, not allowing himself to think anything about what had occurred in the bedroom. Gradually he sank down into the sofa, and he sailed off into oblivion and slept for a respectable five hours of undisturbed rest.
The next day at work went by like a half-remembered dream for Mr. Montgomery. Sitting behind his desk his usually intent blue eyes were glazed over in abstraction. His apparent distraction was noted but not commented on. Everyone in the office was very much his or her own boss, handling their own accounts and their own clients. That’s to say it was lucky for Mr. Montgomery that no one in the office depended on his ability to do his job, because it was seriously impaired. When he remembered his work at all he shifted between tasks with anxious furtiveness. With these spurts of nervous energy he accomplished very little, and he never kept his mind on his work for very long. He was certain the small, tinny voices were waiting for him back at his apartment. The thought was so real he began to imagine the things they would say. Pretty soon he feared the voices might even find him here, in the safety of his cubicle. At times throughout the day he actually believed there was a miniature city of tiny people living in his mattress. At these times he believed it so fully that he almost ventured to break through his “strictly professional” barrier and tell a nearby coworker. It was really amazing, after all. In fact, he actually started to, but when the man looked, a little surprised, in his direction, Mr. Montgomery lost his nerve.
After these ungrounded moments, these “breaks from reality,” he quickly identified them as such, but inevitably he soon forgot. It was a revolving door of remembering and forgetting. Every time he snapped back into his right mind, he realized it was absolutely necessary for him to leave the office immediately. He hated to do it - it would blemish his perfect attendance record. But it was imperative that he leave before his coworkers, or his boss, realized that he was mentally unsound. It would ruin his reputation, or even his career. He went to his boss’s office, knocking before he entered.
“Come in.” rang the always friendly, always positive voice of his boss.
Never having had to call out of work, Mr. Montgomery wasn’t quite sure how to begin. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Johnston.” he said shakily.
“Not at all.” he replied with a wave of his hand. “What can I do for you, Spalding?” Mr. Montgomery cringed at this familiar use of his first name.
“I’m not feeling well.” he stammered. “Would it be okay if I went home?” Mr. Montgomery was unable to look the man in the eye. He waited for an answer while gazing over at the clock on the wall. It was no more than three seconds before the reply came.
“I’m shocked, Spalding.” He smiled broadly with eyes open wide in mock disbelief. “I can’t remember you ever asking for a sick day.”
“I don’t think I ever have, sir.” he said almost apologetically, looking anywhere but the man’s face. He was afraid his eyes would betray him, that the man would be able to see the utter bewilderment in his gaze.
“In that case, I heartily approve, Spalding. And if you’re not feeling better tomorrow, just give us a call.”
Success surged blood through his heart. He thanked his boss and turned quickly to make his escape.
“Oh, Spalding?”
Mr. Montgomery froze in his tracks. What now? He had to force himself to turn around. With plain, cold fear, he met the man square in the eye for the first time during the exchange.
“Get well soon.”
Mr. Montgomery wanted nothing more than to get well soon. It was imperative he talk with his doctor.
From his office Mr. Montgomery drove straight to his psychiatrist’s office only to find the building locked. He immediately plunged back into the panic from which he had gradually risen during the car ride. His doctor was supposed to have fixed everything. He would have given him a Kolonopin to make the voices go away and make it possible to sleep. He was supposed to tell him he wasn’t crazy, and make it true. And now he wasn’t there. Now he had to spend another wakeful night in that apartment, that den of delusion. Sitting there in his car, in the parking lot, Mr. Montgomery began to make himself promises. He made several, all contingent on his survival and becoming sane again. He would get out more and be social. He would be more friendly toward his coworkers. He would be more forthright with his parents and his brother. He would join a gym. He would go to parties and out to bars and try to meet someone. He would do all of this and more, he told himself. He would embrace life instead of hiding from it. But first he must deal with the matter at hand, namely, his current, tenuous hold on reality.
Mr. Montgomery still had one last, small hope. It was a dim hope, but a hope nevertheless. He had never used it before but he had an emergency contact number for his doctor. He dialed it now.
“Hello?” came the voice at the other end.
“Dr. Welsh, it’s Spalding.” His doctor was one of the few people he used his first name with without it causing him a negative, knee-jerk reaction.
“Hi, Spalding. Is everything okay?” the doctor asked calmly.
“Well, no, I’m not really doing too good.” he stammered. “Awful, in fact. I can’t sleep. I’m hearing voices. I’m coming undone. My grasp on reality is slipping. I can feel it slipping.” Mr. Montgomery said all of this in one breath and gasped when he finally came up for air. He waited for the doctor’s reply with frantic hopelessness.
“I’m sorry to hear you’re not feeling well. Unfortunately, I’m out of town until tomorrow. Are the voices telling you to do things?” he asked with professional concern.
“No, nothing like that, but they kept me awake last night. The only way I got any sleep at all was by getting drunk.”
“I see. Well, I can see you first thing in the morning. How does 8 o’clock sound?”
Mr. Montgomery stifled an agonizing shriek. Up until then he was still clinging to the desperate hope that the doctor would change his answer and meet him today after all.
“Eight’s fine.” he said despondently.
“Okay. Then I’ll see you in the morning. Try to remember the voices aren’t real. And, Spalding, don’t drink tonight. We’ll adjust your prescriptions tomorrow.”
As he hung up the phone Mr. Montgomery felt a chill and he shuddered violently in one quick, jarring spasm.
Now he found himself in the impossible position of needing to kill time in the midst of a mania. Under normal circumstances he excelled at this, but given the feverish state of his mind many of his usual pastimes were ruled out. The idea of being out in public where people could see him was unthinkable. Even the thought of being in the dark of a movie theater, an activity he normally found comforting, was terrifying to him. The thought of being back in his apartment was equally terrifying, but in the end he saw no other options. He drove there shakily.
As soon as Mr. Montgomery arrived home he sat on the sofa and put on the TV. He hadn’t eaten lunch but he had no appetite. He sat there like one in a trance, not caring what he was watching. Like this, time went by - but hardly. Minutes felt like hours – hours were an unimaginable measure of time. Thoughts flitted through his mind like slow motion, silent helicopter blades. He felt the perceived super intelligence of the mania. He imagined he was among the top 1% of the smartest people in the world. He pictured his brain as a giant, perfectly formed diamond. Ideas crystalized into shining examples of life’s highest echelon of beauty. He felt very special indeed. It felt like divine inspiration.
Sporadically at first, but then without stop, his thoughts returned to the sounds that had emanated from his mattress the night before. He pictured the whole city – a bustling uptown under where he lay his head, a poorer downtown under where he lay his feet. He saw everything in great detail. He saw people walking the streets talking on cell phones and hailing cabs. He saw construction workers tearing up sidewalks and renovating buildings. He saw rush hour traffic and subways and buses. He imagined it all so vividly that he actually began to make plans for the miniature city. Obviously, he would become famous for making the discovery. He would give interviews and go on talk shows. He would charge people to come and witness it. Finally, he could sell it to the highest bidder.
After he had pushed the idea as far as it would go he would come to his senses and remember that he didn’t believe it, and that it was all a figment of his imagination. It was like his mind was being torn in two. There was the part that believed in the city, and there was the part that didn’t, and knew it was all an absurd delusion. Unfortunately for Mr. Montgomery, that part that knew it was a delusion kept getting lost somewhere in the depths of his confusion, and the sheer, utter absurdity of the whole thing didn’t make it go away. The part of him that believed in the mattress city was quite happily mad. The part that didn’t was tormented by the drastic back and forth into and out of reality. Every time he snapped back out of the delusion he did so with an agonizing shriek. He thought of again resorting to booze but then remembered Dr. Welsh’s forbidding of it. He wished he’d been able to explain the extent of his distress to Dr. Welsh. If he had been fully apprised of the situation, the doctor might have agreed to a little emergency alcohol use. As it was, Mr. Montgomery was too afraid of being judged in the morning, so he would abstain. He would somehow get through the night sober.
After an indeterminable amount of time the sun went down and the city outside grew quiet. The sun left Mr. Montgomery under a thin blanket on the sofa in the fetal position. The only proof that he was awake or, indeed, alive, was the perspiration on his forehead and his bleary unblinking eyes. The TV still sent out its cacophony of fast prattle and canned laughter into the room, but it did not find its way into Mr. Montgomery’s consciousness. He had given up trying to fight off the delusions. His mind sailed hither and thither, to and fro, without ever landing on one substantial shore. The ship sailed with no one manning the rudder. It merely floated on and on through a dense, unyielding fog. But long ago, an hour or a year, in a moment of clarity, he had decided something. The decision seemed as if it had been with him a long, long while now, and it relaxed him. With the calm of a man who has accepted the inevitable, he rose, crossed the room, opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the balcony. Calmer still, he raised a leg over the railing. He brought the second leg over and now stood facing out toward the crisp autumn night. Finally, without so much as a flinch, or twitch, or shift of the eyes, Mr. Montgomery jumped out into the darkness and to the parking lot eight stories below.
At the time of the main events related in this story, Mr. Montgomery is 28, and at this point he has experienced two major delusions. The first came to him while suffering through the miseries of a shy adolescence. It started small with the subtle belief that he was more sensitive than other people, which made his emotional pain more intense. Over the span of a few weeks this minor misconception grew to such proportions that he came to believe that he was, in fact, the Second Coming of Christ. The idea took root and defied all evidence to the contrary. It went on unchecked for nearly three full days, during which time young Spalding believed it absolutely and lamented the fact that he would have to continue to suffer his whole life for the good of mankind. He rebelled against the idea, asking himself, ‘What has mankind ever done for me?’ The fact that his parents had instilled in him a staunch agnosticism, and that, he therefore didn’t believe Jesus was the son of God, never gave pause to his confused teenage mind. After awhile he simply forgot about the whole affair and continued through his high school years without ever having really identified it as a warning sign of a problem.
His second major delusion came in his last year at Rutgers University. It was nearing the end of his final semester and the due date for a final project was fast approaching. The pressure of the imminent deadline found him working deep into the nights and when he lay down to sleep his mind raced with all the perceived problems and failings of the project. He went over revisions in his head for hours until he would wake at seven after stealing only two or three hours of fitful sleep. The stress of all this unhinged something in young Mr. Montgomery, and he began to oscillate between delusions of grandeur and bouts of critical self-loathing.
Two days before the deadline he was terribly unhappy and significantly dissipated. He wasn’t seeing anyone socially and rarely attended class. He began to believe there was something seriously wrong with him. The obvious culprits of stress and overwork didn’t occur to him. Instead, in a potentially life-changing eureka moment, he hit on an answer. “I’m gay!” he proclaimed to himself excitedly. That was why he had such a hard time relating to people – he wasn’t being his true self. It was a relief to finally know the root of all his tribulation. It was so simple. There was a cut and dry answer - he had been living with a false identity. But when he thought of the logical resolution of this new realization, namely, a sexual relationship with a man, his aversion was reminiscent of how he had felt about suffering for mankind. He again cursed his fortune bitterly, but, just like his not believing in Jesus wasn’t proof enough to dissuade him from thinking he was the Second Coming, his disinclination to share that kind of intimacy with a man wasn’t proof enough to dissuade him from believing he was homosexual. Young Mr. Montgomery suffered a week of misery and confusion before, with the help of his first psychiatrist, he overcame this second mistaken epiphany. It was at this time that he was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and was prescribed a daily regimen of Lamictil, an anti-psychotic, which, he was told, was a necessary precaution to stave of any future “breaks from reality.”
After graduation he enjoyed seven years of uneventful relative sanity. He went to work everyday without taking so much as one sick day. He cooked himself dinner six nights out of the week and rarely went out after work . Occasionally he went to see a movie by himself or took the train into New York to walk the busy streets, spying on the passersby, their fashions and hairstyles, catching bits of conversations. But aside from these infrequent diversions he lived his life on a straight line that ran from his apartment to his office and back.
Like this, seven years passed - seven years without an episode. But seven years was a long time. For seven years his imagination had no outlet. For seven years something was stirring in the deepest recesses of his psyche. For seven years it was peeking out only in the subconscious-ness of his dreams, which he never remembered.
His boyish good looks had hardened by now into a façade of stoic masculinity. His blond hair had lost its waviness and would have hung straight to his shoulders had he not kept it cropped short. Once upon a time he had his fair share of female admirers in the office but he always kept his relations there on a strictly professional basis. Everyone came to know this about him and they returned his indifference in kind. It was simpler, and if there was anything Mr. Montgomery strived for in life, it was simplicity. For seven years things had been the picture of simplicity, but seven years was a long time, and fantasy can find a way to reach us all in the unguarded corners.
It was a Sunday night in mid-October that Spalding Montgomery was lying in bed and sleep would not come. He rolled over, he shifted the pillow, he tried lying on his back, his side, and his belly, but still sleep eluded him. Something was keeping him up but he didn’t know what. His mind was alert but he didn’t know why. And then it started. Faintly at first, he began to hear small, tinny voices. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, he only recognized the melodic rise and fall of a speech pattern. He slowed his breathing and listened more intently. He began to pick out words here and there. It reminded Mr. Montgomery of the bits of conversation he heard when walking the streets of New York.
He sat up in bed trying to detect where the words were coming from. He held his breath but heard nothing. He brushed his covers off and swung his legs to the floor. From a kitchen cabinet he took a glass and put it to the wall with his ear pressed to the bottom. He heard nothing from his next-door neighbors’. He heard nothing from his downstairs neighbors’. The ceiling would be pointless as he was on the top floor. At a loss, he shook off the mystery, and, after drinking a glass of warm milk, returned to bed.
Within seconds of lying down, almost imperceptibly at first, the voices returned. Along with the voices he could hear other noises now, mechanical noises. Was that the rev of an engine? The honking of horns? The sound of a jackhammer breaking concrete? Mr. Montgomery began to worry that this was the start of a delusion. Through years of therapy he was conditioned to be aware of the signs. Was he having an episode? He shrugged the idea off. As an act of defiance he took the pillow from under his head and violently pulled it down over his face. For a split second he thought the noises had ceased. He experienced a surge of relief. But even before he took his next breath the noises returned. And what’s more, now they were louder.
Again Mr. Montgomery tossed and turned. Every time he got comfortable and became still the noises returned. “Why is this happening?” he questioned. “I take my meds.” he told himself. He flung his pillow to the floor in frustration. He kicked his blanket from the bed. He banged his fists against the mattress over and over and over again. “Stop! You’re not a child!” he reprimanded himself. He lay on the bed panting heavily. Once his breathing returned to normal he heard it. It was a wailing siren - a wailing siren that was unmistakably coming from inside his bed. Mr. Montgomery pressed his ear to the mattress and listened intently. In addition to the siren he heard panicked cries and blaring horns. He heard feedback come from speakers, which was followed by an announcement about an earthquake. Now Mr. Montgomery was sure he was completely and utterly out of his mind. His defected brain was telling him there were tiny people living inside his mattress.
He jumped from the bed and paced through the living room to the kitchenette. From the freezer he took a bottle of vodka. He poured a double into the glass that had most recently been used as a listening device. He gulped from the glass too eagerly and gagged, almost losing the contents of his stomach. His heart was racing. He forced down another gulp and took two deep breaths. This relaxed him. He focused on his breathing, becoming slightly more relaxed. Minutes passed. He found a carton of orange juice in his refrigerator and fixed himself a tall screwdriver. He took several sips. He could feel the effect of the alcohol now. He topped off his glass and walked warily into the living room. He watched TV awhile, not allowing himself to think anything about what had occurred in the bedroom. Gradually he sank down into the sofa, and he sailed off into oblivion and slept for a respectable five hours of undisturbed rest.
The next day at work went by like a half-remembered dream for Mr. Montgomery. Sitting behind his desk his usually intent blue eyes were glazed over in abstraction. His apparent distraction was noted but not commented on. Everyone in the office was very much his or her own boss, handling their own accounts and their own clients. That’s to say it was lucky for Mr. Montgomery that no one in the office depended on his ability to do his job, because it was seriously impaired. When he remembered his work at all he shifted between tasks with anxious furtiveness. With these spurts of nervous energy he accomplished very little, and he never kept his mind on his work for very long. He was certain the small, tinny voices were waiting for him back at his apartment. The thought was so real he began to imagine the things they would say. Pretty soon he feared the voices might even find him here, in the safety of his cubicle. At times throughout the day he actually believed there was a miniature city of tiny people living in his mattress. At these times he believed it so fully that he almost ventured to break through his “strictly professional” barrier and tell a nearby coworker. It was really amazing, after all. In fact, he actually started to, but when the man looked, a little surprised, in his direction, Mr. Montgomery lost his nerve.
After these ungrounded moments, these “breaks from reality,” he quickly identified them as such, but inevitably he soon forgot. It was a revolving door of remembering and forgetting. Every time he snapped back into his right mind, he realized it was absolutely necessary for him to leave the office immediately. He hated to do it - it would blemish his perfect attendance record. But it was imperative that he leave before his coworkers, or his boss, realized that he was mentally unsound. It would ruin his reputation, or even his career. He went to his boss’s office, knocking before he entered.
“Come in.” rang the always friendly, always positive voice of his boss.
Never having had to call out of work, Mr. Montgomery wasn’t quite sure how to begin. “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Johnston.” he said shakily.
“Not at all.” he replied with a wave of his hand. “What can I do for you, Spalding?” Mr. Montgomery cringed at this familiar use of his first name.
“I’m not feeling well.” he stammered. “Would it be okay if I went home?” Mr. Montgomery was unable to look the man in the eye. He waited for an answer while gazing over at the clock on the wall. It was no more than three seconds before the reply came.
“I’m shocked, Spalding.” He smiled broadly with eyes open wide in mock disbelief. “I can’t remember you ever asking for a sick day.”
“I don’t think I ever have, sir.” he said almost apologetically, looking anywhere but the man’s face. He was afraid his eyes would betray him, that the man would be able to see the utter bewilderment in his gaze.
“In that case, I heartily approve, Spalding. And if you’re not feeling better tomorrow, just give us a call.”
Success surged blood through his heart. He thanked his boss and turned quickly to make his escape.
“Oh, Spalding?”
Mr. Montgomery froze in his tracks. What now? He had to force himself to turn around. With plain, cold fear, he met the man square in the eye for the first time during the exchange.
“Get well soon.”
Mr. Montgomery wanted nothing more than to get well soon. It was imperative he talk with his doctor.
From his office Mr. Montgomery drove straight to his psychiatrist’s office only to find the building locked. He immediately plunged back into the panic from which he had gradually risen during the car ride. His doctor was supposed to have fixed everything. He would have given him a Kolonopin to make the voices go away and make it possible to sleep. He was supposed to tell him he wasn’t crazy, and make it true. And now he wasn’t there. Now he had to spend another wakeful night in that apartment, that den of delusion. Sitting there in his car, in the parking lot, Mr. Montgomery began to make himself promises. He made several, all contingent on his survival and becoming sane again. He would get out more and be social. He would be more friendly toward his coworkers. He would be more forthright with his parents and his brother. He would join a gym. He would go to parties and out to bars and try to meet someone. He would do all of this and more, he told himself. He would embrace life instead of hiding from it. But first he must deal with the matter at hand, namely, his current, tenuous hold on reality.
Mr. Montgomery still had one last, small hope. It was a dim hope, but a hope nevertheless. He had never used it before but he had an emergency contact number for his doctor. He dialed it now.
“Hello?” came the voice at the other end.
“Dr. Welsh, it’s Spalding.” His doctor was one of the few people he used his first name with without it causing him a negative, knee-jerk reaction.
“Hi, Spalding. Is everything okay?” the doctor asked calmly.
“Well, no, I’m not really doing too good.” he stammered. “Awful, in fact. I can’t sleep. I’m hearing voices. I’m coming undone. My grasp on reality is slipping. I can feel it slipping.” Mr. Montgomery said all of this in one breath and gasped when he finally came up for air. He waited for the doctor’s reply with frantic hopelessness.
“I’m sorry to hear you’re not feeling well. Unfortunately, I’m out of town until tomorrow. Are the voices telling you to do things?” he asked with professional concern.
“No, nothing like that, but they kept me awake last night. The only way I got any sleep at all was by getting drunk.”
“I see. Well, I can see you first thing in the morning. How does 8 o’clock sound?”
Mr. Montgomery stifled an agonizing shriek. Up until then he was still clinging to the desperate hope that the doctor would change his answer and meet him today after all.
“Eight’s fine.” he said despondently.
“Okay. Then I’ll see you in the morning. Try to remember the voices aren’t real. And, Spalding, don’t drink tonight. We’ll adjust your prescriptions tomorrow.”
As he hung up the phone Mr. Montgomery felt a chill and he shuddered violently in one quick, jarring spasm.
Now he found himself in the impossible position of needing to kill time in the midst of a mania. Under normal circumstances he excelled at this, but given the feverish state of his mind many of his usual pastimes were ruled out. The idea of being out in public where people could see him was unthinkable. Even the thought of being in the dark of a movie theater, an activity he normally found comforting, was terrifying to him. The thought of being back in his apartment was equally terrifying, but in the end he saw no other options. He drove there shakily.
As soon as Mr. Montgomery arrived home he sat on the sofa and put on the TV. He hadn’t eaten lunch but he had no appetite. He sat there like one in a trance, not caring what he was watching. Like this, time went by - but hardly. Minutes felt like hours – hours were an unimaginable measure of time. Thoughts flitted through his mind like slow motion, silent helicopter blades. He felt the perceived super intelligence of the mania. He imagined he was among the top 1% of the smartest people in the world. He pictured his brain as a giant, perfectly formed diamond. Ideas crystalized into shining examples of life’s highest echelon of beauty. He felt very special indeed. It felt like divine inspiration.
Sporadically at first, but then without stop, his thoughts returned to the sounds that had emanated from his mattress the night before. He pictured the whole city – a bustling uptown under where he lay his head, a poorer downtown under where he lay his feet. He saw everything in great detail. He saw people walking the streets talking on cell phones and hailing cabs. He saw construction workers tearing up sidewalks and renovating buildings. He saw rush hour traffic and subways and buses. He imagined it all so vividly that he actually began to make plans for the miniature city. Obviously, he would become famous for making the discovery. He would give interviews and go on talk shows. He would charge people to come and witness it. Finally, he could sell it to the highest bidder.
After he had pushed the idea as far as it would go he would come to his senses and remember that he didn’t believe it, and that it was all a figment of his imagination. It was like his mind was being torn in two. There was the part that believed in the city, and there was the part that didn’t, and knew it was all an absurd delusion. Unfortunately for Mr. Montgomery, that part that knew it was a delusion kept getting lost somewhere in the depths of his confusion, and the sheer, utter absurdity of the whole thing didn’t make it go away. The part of him that believed in the mattress city was quite happily mad. The part that didn’t was tormented by the drastic back and forth into and out of reality. Every time he snapped back out of the delusion he did so with an agonizing shriek. He thought of again resorting to booze but then remembered Dr. Welsh’s forbidding of it. He wished he’d been able to explain the extent of his distress to Dr. Welsh. If he had been fully apprised of the situation, the doctor might have agreed to a little emergency alcohol use. As it was, Mr. Montgomery was too afraid of being judged in the morning, so he would abstain. He would somehow get through the night sober.
After an indeterminable amount of time the sun went down and the city outside grew quiet. The sun left Mr. Montgomery under a thin blanket on the sofa in the fetal position. The only proof that he was awake or, indeed, alive, was the perspiration on his forehead and his bleary unblinking eyes. The TV still sent out its cacophony of fast prattle and canned laughter into the room, but it did not find its way into Mr. Montgomery’s consciousness. He had given up trying to fight off the delusions. His mind sailed hither and thither, to and fro, without ever landing on one substantial shore. The ship sailed with no one manning the rudder. It merely floated on and on through a dense, unyielding fog. But long ago, an hour or a year, in a moment of clarity, he had decided something. The decision seemed as if it had been with him a long, long while now, and it relaxed him. With the calm of a man who has accepted the inevitable, he rose, crossed the room, opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the balcony. Calmer still, he raised a leg over the railing. He brought the second leg over and now stood facing out toward the crisp autumn night. Finally, without so much as a flinch, or twitch, or shift of the eyes, Mr. Montgomery jumped out into the darkness and to the parking lot eight stories below.
