Chapter Nine

Louis was thrown out of the Phantom Limb study at St. Charles. He didn't get rowdy or put a small dried piece of Nancy's dogshit in the lead Scientists Chicken Caesar Salad, well not until long after he was discarded from the project anyway. He was a victim of a flawed project. The Doctors working on the study were bound and determined to prove the "redirected" signal theory and Louis was screwing them up. They tickled his chest with feathers and stimulated every conceivable part of him with electricity but never got the results they were working for. The test that inevitably got him booted involved a bit of role playing, and to me the results should've become a case study, but they saw it more as a threat to their funding, and gave poor Mr. Tooth the heave-ho.

On a cold Tuesday afternoon in February they invited Louis into their darkened test lab. There was a table, standing straight up, as big as a man, with straps designed especially for Louis that would hold him in place while they rocked the table flat or in reverse to make him upside down. The side of the table where his right arm would go had an etched outline of his missing limb. They stripped poor Louis naked and strapped him onto the table. Then they got weird, they pretended as if his right arm was still there. They acted as if they were moving it into position and gently strapping in it where his wrist might have been. "Is that too tight?" said the oriental Doctor as he adjusted the strap and moved the invisible fingers like a schoolgirl pretending to serve tea to her dolls.
"Are you fucking with me?" Louis queried, in the exact same inflection as the question posed to him by the doctor. The scientists glanced at one another an carried on.

They attached electrodes all over his body and even on the invisible arm. The test started with the dripping of cold and warm liquids on various body parts and watching the meters as they jumped up and down. The scientists would look at the results and then at each other, seldom giving a reaction, but often showing disappointment with their eyes. After an hour of working him over they gathered together in the corner, shaking their heads and arguing. They all gathered at the right side of the table and began running the same tests on the empty arm etching. The test became more aggressive, involving needles, fire, ice, and water but their meters did not move. Finally one tall black doctor pulled a hammer from a drawer and tapped the invisible arm on the wrist. Louis' eyebrows raised due to anxiety. The scientists stared at one another, until the oriental man shouted "Give me that!" He grabbed the hammer and slammed in down right where Louis' index finger would have been. Without delay Louis screamed bloody murder, his legs, arm, and head snapped and writhed in agony. The doctors leapt back in disbelief.

"He's faking!" said the tall dark one. "He's pulling our legs!" he screamed. Louis continued to shout. Tears and snot were rolling into his wide open mouth. The doctors huddled together and their heads moved slowly upward simultaneously as Louis let go a fountain of pee. Being medical men they pretended to be unaffected as his bowels let go. One of the scientist called for a pair of medical assistants to come to the room and shepherd Louis to a recovery room. Another doctor turned on the lights and shut down the machinery as the little oriental one pushed the red button for a bio-cleaning crew.

The bio crew consisted of two portly polish women named Nadia and Katrina. They barely spoke English and only gave trying a half-hearted attempt. Nadia came to America to find a husband and relax in the good warm life of the United States. She could not only not find a worthy suitor but the only jobs available to non-English speaking pudgy polish women seemed to involve cleaning. At least being on the bio-hazard cleanup crew paid better than scrubbing the rough tile floors of the local bankers and socialites. Katrina was here to make as much money as she could and send it back to her large family in Poland. She worked several jobs and barely spent a cent in this country. Her luxuries included an occasional new hairnet, and a can of supermarket brand coffee.

As Nadia mopped up the floor in her plastic, yellow, hazard suit she spoke Polish to Katrina who was washing the table with her gloved hands. The words they exchanged sounded like backwards English to the Interns that wandered through. Katrina was talking about a new cleanser that she was told about that required less effort and cleaned faster, a subject she was very interested in. Nadia was complaining about the disgusting mess on the floor. Katrina had seen quite a bit in her career and chose to remain distant to it. She was sponging liquids and solids and humming a polish tune when she paused. She saw something that was common in other areas of the clinic but rarely, no never seen in this laboratory. She waved Nadia over to take a look. Nadia's face gave off an aura of "So what?!?" She grabbed Katrina's sponge, dipped it in cleanser and put it up to the etched outline of Louis' hand. Starting about where the knuckle would go she pressed hard and wiped downward, across the index finger, and on to the edge of the table, until every bit of the blood was gone. Louis' blood.