The lunatics are driving me to distraction. There is one in particular. He has been the bane of my existence since coming to the hospital. I find him worse than the others on the basic principle that, unlike the others, he is armed with a degree and is given free range of the facilities. Perhaps you see through my joke. He is not, as it were, a patient, and as such, there are next to no limits to this doctor’s disruptive influence.
I don’t wish to bore you with the details of office politics here, but he is most counterproductive to the continuance of this institution. He is possessed of the absurd idea that we should be trying to reintegrate our subjects, that is, his goal is not the continued support of our madhouse, but he would see it empty of all patients and subsequently from all streams of revenue. Albeit, in principle, I agree that we are meant to help out, he has some absurd notion of calling them clients, but how can we help anyone if the institution can no longer parade our product around? I would say a good 10% of our income is derived from what he derides as “Our Freak Show.”
He is a terror. He’s already convinced Dr. Moreland to release three patients, one of them a regular of mine. Does that madman’s father plan on continuing to pay his monthly fee now that his boy is home again? Sure, he is grateful, but gratitude doesn’t pay any bills. The boy was barely twenty. He could live another seventy or eighty years, and all that time we would have been paid for it. This doctor has cost us thousands every year by healing this child, and everyone praises him for it; it makes me sick!
That is why I have to kill him. He is an idealist. I too enjoy the concept: Imagine how much money we could save if the cost of these patients’ keep were zero? But as the good book says, “Where no oxen are, the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox.” If he goes on like this, there will be no lunatics, no asylums, and subsequently, no doctors. Is it not better that one man should die for the sake of all of us?
Tale Told 