ONE FLEW OVER: Through Still Eyes
Part 1: Before
They position my bed at the same angle every morning, thirty degrees from the wall, facing into the day room. The orderlies think it’s so I can “participate” in group activities. Really, it’s so the Big Nurse can see my face from her station. She likes to monitor for changes. There won’t be any. There haven’t been for six years.
My world is a rectangle: three ceiling tiles deep, four fluorescent lights across. When they tilt my head for feeding, I can see the day room, the Nurse’s station, and the entrance to the hall. The staff move through this frame like actors on a stage, performing the same play every day. The patients shuffle through their assigned roles. Even the clock seems stuck, though I know it must move because the light changes, meals come, shifts end.
I’ve memorized every detail of my visible world. There’s a crack in the third ceiling tile that looks like Florida. The fluorescent light second from the left flickers sixty-seven times before stabilizing each morning. The Big Nurse adjusts her cap exactly four times during each shift. The youngest black boy has a scuff on his left shoe that he hasn’t noticed. These details are my company.
Sometimes they forget I can hear them. The staff discuss their lives, their complaints, their secrets just beside my bed. The black boys mock the patients. The little nurse with the birthmark whispers prayers while she changes my sheets. The patients talk too, when they think no one’s listening. But I’m always listening. It’s all I can do.
Part 2: The Change
McMurphy’s voice reached me before I saw him. It bounced off the walls like a rubber ball, so different from the ward’s usual whispers and mutters. When they walked him past my bed, his shadow crossed my face. He stopped – they always stop – to look at me. But instead of the usual pity or revulsion, he grinned.
“This one’s taking his own sweet time waking up, ain’t he?” he said, and laughed.
If I could have moved, I would have smiled. Six years, and he was the first one to treat me like I might be in on the joke.
From my fixed perspective, I watched him change everything. During card games, I could see both him and the Nurse’s station. She would watch him with her porcelain smile, and he would purposely turn his back. She would make announcements over the speaker, and he would talk louder. It was like watching a chess match where only one player knew they were playing.
The Chief was the first to change. I’d watched him push that broom for years, always careful to keep his eyes down, playing deaf. But after McMurphy came, he started watching too. He’d pause near my bed, stand straighter. Once, I saw him smile when he thought no one was looking. I wanted to tell McMurphy he was right about the Chief, that the big man wasn’t deaf, wasn’t dumb, wasn’t small. But my mouth stayed frozen, same as always.
Part 3: The Party
They forgot to lower my eyelids that night. Usually, the evening staff close them, a mercy I’ve grown to appreciate. But with the chaos of McMurphy’s planned party, they forgot. I lay in the dark, eyes open, watching shadows dance across my ceiling rectangle.
The ward smelled different. Alcohol, perfume, sweat – life, really. Real life had snuck in through the windows with those women. I heard Billy’s nervous stutter turn to laughter. Heard McMurphy teaching someone to dance. Music played softly, and feet shuffled past my bed.
A couple stumbled into view, silhouetted in my rectangle of vision. They were laughing, trying to shush each other. The woman – Candy, I’d heard them call her – noticed me. “Oh!” she said. “Should we… is he…?”
“Don’t mind him, honey,” McMurphy said. “He’s got the best seat in the house.”
I wanted to laugh. He had no idea how true that was.
Part 4: The Unraveling
I saw Billy’s face change that morning. From my bed, I watched Nurse Ratched destroy him with just a few words about his mother. I wanted to scream at her to stop. I wanted to tell Billy it didn’t matter, that he’d done nothing wrong. But I could only watch, same as always.
The doctor found him in his office. I heard the scream, saw the staff run past. Nurse Ratched walked past my bed slowly, deliberately. In profile, I saw something I’d never seen before: she was smiling. Not her usual plastic smile, but something real and terrible.
When McMurphy came for her, it happened just at the edge of my vision. I couldn’t turn to see it all, but I heard it. The sounds of fabric tearing, of struggles, of chaos. Someone bumped my bed during the fight, turning it two degrees to the left. For six weeks, that slight angle change was my only evidence that it had really happened.
Part 5: After
They brought McMurphy back on a bed like mine. Perfect symmetry: two men who couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even blink at will. But I was still in here. McMurphy was gone. I watched the Chief realize this, watched him understand what needed to be done.
I saw everything that last night. My bed faced directly toward McMurphy’s. I watched the Chief’s mercy. I would have nodded if I could, would have helped if I could. Instead, I just witnessed, like always.
When the Chief broke out, the crash sent vibrations through my bed. As people ran past, alarms blaring, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years: hope. Not for myself – I harbor no illusions about my condition. But hope that something of McMurphy had survived after all, had gotten free in the end.
Part 6: Still Here
The ward is different now. Quieter. Most of the men transferred out. The ones who stayed don’t look at me anymore. Maybe they’re afraid of seeing their future in my frozen face. Maybe they just want to forget.
Nurse Ratched still runs things, but her voice comes out wrong through her damaged throat. The black boys clean more quietly. Even the ceiling tiles seem dimmer. But I’m still watching. Still listening. Still screaming inside this useless body.
Sometimes at night, when the ward is dark and quiet, I try to remember McMurphy’s laugh. I run it through my mind like a favorite song: loud, free, real. I think he knew about me. Not at first, but later. Sometimes he’d walk past my bed and wink, like we were sharing a secret.
We were, in a way. I was his perfect audience. I saw everything, heard everything, and couldn’t tell anyone. I saw him build the men up. I saw him wear himself down doing it. I saw him choose to stay when he could have run. I saw him choose to fight when he could have surrendered.
I keep watching. It’s all I can do. New patients come and go. New staff members learn to ignore me. Life goes on around my bed like I’m just another piece of furniture. But I remember everything. I hold it all inside this paralyzed body: every laugh, every game, every small victory and final loss.
Sometimes, I dream they’ll find a way to let me move again, let me speak. I imagine telling them everything I’ve seen, everything I know. But until then – if that day ever comes – I lie here. Watching. Remembering. Adding each day’s small details to my collection.
The crack in the ceiling still looks like Florida. The fluorescent lights still flicker their morning count. The Big Nurse still adjusts her cap four times per shift. And somewhere, I hope, the Chief is still free.
That hope keeps me company in my rectangle of ceiling tiles and fluorescent lights. That, and the memory of a laugh that once shook these walls, shook all of us, even those of us who couldn’t show it.
I’m still here. Still watching. Still remembering.
Still alive inside.
[End]
This One Flew Over book re-imagining was written using an Ai called Claude 3.5 Sonnet 200k – You can view the entire conversation that was had between myself (a human) and Claude (the Ai) at this link: https://poe.com/s/AEAAD4H121RaboaxM9Fn
Check these links if interested in learning how to re-imagine books with Ai tools like Claude Sonnet 3.5 200k & other Ai Image Generator tools.