I've started to watch him, lately. Sometimes, you're just near him, and you have to watch him, because he's fantastic and unexpected and spontaneous, the complete antidote to the clean white crisp machinations of Nurse Ratched. Sometimes, I don't realize I'm watching him, but suddenly I notice all the other patients are staring at the flexibility of the Queen Of Hearts, and I'm staring at his face, that wicked grin on his face and those devilish eyebrows arched high. Sometimes, I watch him when he's quiet. I watch him when he picks up a magazine on those days we get those old fishing papers and sports and other things I don't understand, and he goes through it slowly and deliberately, licking his thumb every so often, brow furrowed and those two bright blue eyes gleaming out. When he laughs, I'm not the only one looking, though, because when he laughs he throws back his head and slaps his leg and lets that raucous belly laugh echo out of his mouth and spread around the ward like heat from a stove. It's like music, like a lady's scent. We very rarely heard laughter before his.
When I watch him, I'm careful, though. If he knew how I watched him, I get the feeling he'd push me out of the group, call me names. I don't want anything like that to happen. Once, he caught me looking at him when he was dealing hands of poker, but he just gnawed on the end of his cigarette and winked. I don't think I can stop looking at him – there's something so alive about him. It's as though we were drowning, half dead, and he reached under the water and pulled us out by the scruff of our necks, slapped the water from our lungs and stood us up, grinning and looking us up and down as though we were his creation. We're out of the water, now, each and every one of us.
During the night, when I can't sleep, I watch him. There's something so frightening about watching such a strong force sleeping, chest rising and falling very slowly, blue eyes closed. It's as though he's dead. He's not, of course, but something tells me that if he ever did die, everyone would just leave. Everyone, who could, I mean. He's helped all of us more than those group therapy sessions. There'd be no reason to stay if he wasn't here. I know it sounds silly, but when I watch him at night, sleeping, eyes closed, I can't help but shiver.
He doesn't know how much I watch him. I hope he never will.