Instant Heaven Instantly

He was a large African-American man, at least half again as big as me. I was a psychiatric aide on the locked ward of a high rise hospital in downtown Atlanta working my way to an undergraduate degree in psychology at Georgia State – going to night school and happy to do so.

I was supervising his unpacking and saw a nylon stocking in his bag. "I will have to take that," I said, knowing it could be used for sui- or homi-cide. He looked unhappy. "I need to roll that up and put it on my head before I go to bed or my hair will be spronged all over in the morning." I could see he was right. His hair had a mind of its own. "I have to take it anyway," I said, "but I will ask if you can have it back."

Later, after I got to know him, he told me of a plan he had for striking it rich. Instant Heaven Instantly, he called it. He said he would arrange for people's corpses to be shot into space where they would be in heaven instantly and forever. I liked that man. He and I laughed a lot.

The head nurse caught me talking with him and with others and gave me a stern lecture that I was not supposed to talk with the patients. Only the psychiatrists could do so. Many years later, when I saw Nurse Ratched in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", I thought of her. I talked with everyone anyway. Now I had two reasons to do so.