The "Expletive-Deleted" Case - Entry 12

I awoke again in the dreary confines of the hospital, surrounded by the same surly staff and the same irritated roommate-glares as before, though this time there was a doctor sitting at the end of my bed who greeted me with a sad smile of impossibly glowing white teeth. He was speaking to me in earnest tones, with a timber that Jazz station-DJs use at three o’clock in the morning, and I ignored him to ascertain what, exactly, I had been doing at the Shinkleblossom house that had gotten me shoved right back into this personal-hell of IV drips and the urine-on-metal stink of the bedpans, and what I remembered did, indeed, sound crazy.

I looked at Dr. White-Teeth and it became all-too-apparent that he was a psychologist; the male-pattern-baldness, the white shirt, the impeccably clean fingernails, the cologne...he had it all, but I knew that I wasn’t nearly as nuts as my foray to Shinkleblossom’s house would seem to have indicated. I knew I wasn’t at 100% mentally, that was sure, but I was positive it was from a lack of good coffee rather than some deeply-ingrained mental problems. I was feeling the mania in my head abating as I listened to the doctor drone on and on about how unnecessary it was for me to go back to Shinkleblossom’s house, and how I should, in fact, not ever go there again...not only because of the psychological implications on my fragile psyche, but also because there was now a restraining-order against me. I was to remain 500-feet clear of that house at all times, and that most certainly put a damper on my attempts at discerning where Shinkleblossom had taken Randy.

I nodded through all the right parts of what the doctor was saying and checked myself out again, heading with haste to my home, where fresh clothes and exotic coffee awaited me; I needed to step back and figure out what the next course of action should be, and there was only one place for those types of ruminations, and that was One Duke...where I had a hefty, delinquent bar-tab to pay, and nowhere near enough money to do so. This was going to take all the skill, and Iroquois Last-Supper coffee, as that was the begging for forgiveness blend, I could muster to get through this pickle I was in.

Entry 13