Page 21 - Demo

Kendallville Mental School15worse than the outside. The tile floors were dirty, cracked, and littered with candy wrappers, pop cans, and cigarette buts. It looked abandoned, but wasn%u2019t %u2014 it was just filthy. This was long before AIDS became an issue, but we seriously wondered about catching some incurable, debilitating disease. An ancient elevator delivered us to the appropriate floor. It was slow, and its walls were stained as a result of what was probably some disgusting activity. Upstairs, at the end of a long, dirty hall of cracked plaster, we found the correct room and told the nurse our purpose. She wore a standard nurse%u2019s uniform, almost-white, and a bit frayed. Her hair was beginning to gray and her white shoes needed polishing. The lenses in her eyeglasses were dirty and the unadorned tear-dropshaped frames were crying out for rhinestones. A moth-eaten army blanket was draped over a clothesline next to her desk, and someone was lying on a cot behind it moaning. The desk was covered with file folders, many of which were anointed with round coffee stains. The inside of her coffee mug was badly discolored %u2014 you could probably get a decent brew by filling it with hot water and letting the cup itself steep for a few minutes. Next to the black Bakelite phone was an ashtray with a pack-and-a-half of crushed-out butts, which explained her yellowed fingers. She pointed to a pair of rickety wooden folding chairs, which needed disinfectant and a coat of paint, and told us to sit. I remembered a similar chair collapsing under me when I was a kid, so I sat down carefully. Lynn mentioned having a fear of needles, so she required a considerable amount of reassuring that everything would be all right. Although I tried not to touch anything, I said the place was probably more sanitary than it looked. After our blood samples were taken and analyzed, we learned we were free from syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid, therefore fit to be married. We left by way of the stairs, thinking they might be less disgusting than the elevator. They weren%u2019t. We didn%u2019t see any dead bodies, but a decomposing corpse wouldn%u2019t have been out of place. That evening, Lynn%u2019s parents insisted on taking us out to dinner. Her mom asked where we%u2019d like to go, and Lynn mentioned a comfortable, quiet, modestly priced restaurant. I don%u2019t know why she was even asked, because the suggestion was ignored,