Free Emergency! by MD Mark Brown Page B

extended from the base of Carl’s neck, down the front of his chest wall, across his shoulders, and down onto his abdomen.
    â€œHow did you get those scars? House fire?” I asked.
    â€œNo, Doc, I got lit on fire.”
    â€œWhat do you mean ‘lit on fire’? Were you drunk or something? Or accidentally splashed with gasoline?”
    â€œNope. Happened when I was a boy.”
    â€œFireworks?”
    â€œNo, Doc. I was set on fire.” Carl began his story:
    â€œWhen I was a boy, people like me with fits got sent to state hospitals for the insane. They’d keep us there because no one knew what to do with us. My poor parents were shamed into sending me. I remember my mom and dad fighting before I got sent away. The schools wouldn’t take me. They didn’t have to back then. A lot of good Christian people figured my parents must have done something evil and I was God’s punishment on them. The more upstanding, nonsuperstitious ones just figured I was a genetic misfit, kind of like a badly bred animal. Hell, back then some of them even thought I should be castrated so my bad genes couldn’t be passed on.
    â€œMy mom, she tried to protect me. She’d take me out like a normal kid, dress me good and all that, but I’d have these fits. I’d just fall down jerking in stores, in church, you name it. Then everyone would stand around looking scared and uncomfortable and Mom would hear all these things—she’d hear them even if they weren’t said— aboutwhat a fool she was not to put me away, what a monster I was, and always the questions about what was wrong with me and why did I act like that. My dad didn’t understand any better than anyone else back then. He kept hoping I’d grow out of it. He even tried beating it out of me on occasion. When that didn’t work, he started giving up on me.
    â€œI had two brothers at home. Mom could see Dad getting more and more desperate and depressed. She’d try to cheer him up. She was a tough woman. She’d cajole and smile and try to keep going, but it finally just wore her down. I guess she figured that she had to raise the two who were normal and give up on me, even though it broke her heart. That woman really loved me. So she did what all the others did back then: She sent me to the state hospital for the mentally ill.
    â€œIt was a hell of a place, Doc! They had wards of loonies, and kids with birth defects like you couldn’t believe! They had those kids with water on the brain, poor bastards. A lot of them were smart but they just had to lie there all the time because their necks wouldn’t hold up their heads. ‘Course, they got surgery for that now, but they didn’t back then. They had kids who screamed and ripped at themselves, and kids who just stared into the walls all day. A lot of them weren’t able to control their body functions, so the place smelled to high heaven, especially when it’d get hot. Some of us weren’t too bad off. We’d have our seizures, but the rest of the time we’d be like the cock-o’-the-walks. It was a hell of a place, but it was what I had and I was a kid, so I played.”
    â€œHow did you get burned?”
    â€œWell, I didn’t have much, of course. My parents were sent a letter about me every now and then, telling them how many seizures I was having, kind of like a batting average, I guess. Back then you didn’t travel easily like you can today, so I never saw them. My mom did send me letters. Once every month I’d get something from her with a little news and a lot of love between the lines. I kept them in a shoe box under my bed, and when I felt like crying, I’d read them. You see, I couldn’t run and cry to my mom. She wasn’t there, but the letters were.
    â€œOne day they decided to fumigate the place, kind of like spring cleaning. They went through everybody’s stuff, throwing away