By: Johnny Sa
There once was a little boy named Ralph who had dreams of becoming a doctor. He had no idea however what kind of doctor. He just wanted to heal something. He studied very hard throughout his life and never drank or partied with loose women and focused on his goals. He graduated top of his class, he did it! A lifetime of practice and vigilance and he was awarded for his efforts. He learned how to heal everything. He had doctorates in Physiology, Medicine, Dentistry, Botany, Pharmaceuticals and even in the Veterinary field.
He was absolutely the leading authority in anything healing, he even traveled to Nepal to learn from Buddhist Sham-man on the arts of herbal remedies and holistic healing.
As he aged he wrote several reports but never took on patients, he wanted to be ready, for anything. He just kept going back to school.
When he arrived home from a much needed vacation he sat in a chair and wept. He cried and cried and cried and did not know why. He felt empty he felt strange. He had no substance only thoughts. He tried to get some sleep but he began to hear whispers. Was he going mad? It started with two voices exchanging opinions on the best way to treat a senior citizen with alzeimers, and then it grew and grew until he could no longer hear himself think over the countless voices that were chatting.
He began to hear a voice in his head that was louder than the rest. It said, “calm yourself Ralph, breathe”, and so he did. Then the voice instructed him to very slowly count backwards from ten and get louder with each number, and so he did. He found comfort and trust in this voice.
When Ralph reached 1 the voices were gone, he was grateful and asked who the voice was. The voice replied, “I’ve always been here and always will”.
The man sensing his fractured mind’s breakdown did not fight it, he humored the voice from a intellectual stand point.
“well thank you, what were those voices?”
“those were the voices of all the teachers and text book authors you’ve read throughout the 30 years of your education. You have been collecting them, It seems. You’ve filled your mind to the absolute top with other men’s thoughts and now your own thoughts have no room for themselves.”
“that’s preposterous!”
“Now listen to me son, you’ve gone too far, those voices are real now, you can no longer control them they have their own agenda now, but they will go away if you tell them too. You must learn to move, breathe and work with them for the rest of your days.”
Hearing this Ralph begins to worry, “How can this happen?”
“You cannot heal your own mind, you can only learn to deal with it.”
Ralph swiftly runs into his cabinet where he has amassed a series of alcohol gifts throughout the years and promptly opens a bottle of Knob Creek and takes a few too many sips.
“You have approximately 72 brain cells that are in the process of being destroyed, your heart rate has incrementally been boosted faster by 5% and your liver has just been introduced to a substance it knows nothing about, I would very strongly recommend a tall glass of water, two aspirin and some carotene.”
Ralph winces and moves into the kitchen where his elbow lightly bumps into a very nice old house fern.
“The contusion to the left most leaves will definitely begin wilting and in order to save the root and stem the leaf will have to be amputated. I would recommend adding a vitamin of….”
“Get out of my head!”
“Talking to ones self is a clear symptom of schizophrenia.”
“What the hell is happening to me?”
“You are currently displaying symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder, perhaps this arose from a childhood of being neglected by your parents and left alone to your books. Perhaps it was when those bullies in the 4th grade tied you up and pee’d on you.”
The man runs into his cabinet and looks through his various medical samples in order to find a suitable medication for someone having this episode.
Like a beating drum he hears the prescriptions:
Prozac! Zoloft! Paxi! Celexa! Lexapro! Luvox! Viibryd! Effexor!
“My Head!”
Cymbalta! Pristiq! Elavil! Pamelor! Sinequan! Imipramine!
“I cant read with all this racket”
Dopaminergic! Wellbutrin! Monoamine! Nardil! Parnate! Emsam!Tetracyclic! Remeron!
The man reaches for the zoloft and consumes 4 pills. He rushes to his suitcase and as he opens it he hears:
“The Aligator used to create the skin of this briefcase was approximately 17 years old, it suffered from Alligator Mississippienisis a form of septicemia in alligators.”
“Oh shut up!”
Ralph consumes several herbs before his mind has time to react. He convulses onto the floor in a pile of his own vomit and hits his head on the dinning room table.
When he awakes, he is not alone. There are several men in white coats in the room. They have re-arranged his furniture to better serve his feng shui, there are hanging plants in every corner of the room there is soft therapeutic music playing and he now has a small cage of several exotic birds. Oddly the birds species escape him at the moment.
One by one the men in his home introduce themselves. They explain that he had a very bad reaction to a lifetime of ingestion and no experience.
When Ralph tries to respond he finds himself at a loss for words, in fact he finds himself at a loss of voice. He cannot speak, all the men in the room converse with each other on various topics and various studies as Ralph begins to panic, he gets on all fours and crawls with tears in his eyes searching.
Seeing this, one of the men, who is noticeably dressed differently from the rest, walks over and asks him what he’s looking for.
Ralph simply points to his head and throat and tries to hum a cry. The man helps Ralph to his feet and walks him to Ralph’s room.
“I think you’ll find what you’re looking for in here.”
To Ralph’s surprise there is a boy sleeping in his bed. The man points to the shelf in the room.
On the shelf are several objects, a toy car, a toy plane, building blocks, a rocket ship, comic books, a recipe book and at the very end is a picture of Ralph’s parents.
“Choose wisely son.”
Ralph begins a silent weep. He walks over the picture and brings it to the boy.
The boy awakens startled, he looks at the man in the doorway and calls out to him, “Grandpa, what’s happening?!”
“It’s okay son, he’s a friend.”
Ralph hands the boy the frame, “Call your parents and tell them you’re okay.”
The boy smiles.
Ralph awakens on a plane stunned. He lifts up the receiver in front of him and slides his card.
“Mom, I miss you. I don’t care what we’ve been through. I want to see you and daddy. I want to start over.”
And as all mothers do, she asks her son to come home.
