A Miraculous Recovery

Hi folks,

Dr. Whiski Rae Shamrock here to let you know where we've all been for the past few weeks. Illness struck the Balzac Institute of Partial Recovery, affecting yours truly, our chef extraordinaire, Miz Gator Ethel Thibodeaux, our director of security and community relations, Y.Z. Newell, my brother, Durwood Del Monte Sherwood, assorted staff members, all of our patients and, most critically, my husband, Dr. Dusty Balzac. Simply put, we were quarantined because of treachery, or, more accurately, treachery's effects. Here's the story: everyone who knows him knows there's nothing Dusty loves to eat more than Andorran Jellied Eels mixed with Count Chocula cereal, and sprinkled with fried chipmunk paws, sweetbreads and brains spiced with cloves and nutmeg, and topped by a meringue crown whipped from fresh turkey eggs. Well, what pulls up to the gates of the Institute one fine fall day than a delivery van bearing a gift for Dusty. Yes, you guessed right, the present turned out to be an enormous tureen overflowing with Dusty's favorite repast, which he calls "Eel Surprise 3.0." Durwood was manning the entrance that morning and suspected nothing unusual about the transaction, though a review of videotape from a safety cam revealed that the van bore the familiar brown colors of a UPS truck but was emblazoned with the Fed/Ex logo. Still, an honest mistake, and one we all could make, particularly if strung out on Jaegermeister spiked with Coricidin and Adderall, as was, unfortunately, Durwood's case.

But whatever: forgiveness greases the world's axis and permits it to spin more smoothly. Back when I poled my way through Tulane University as a Welsh studies and cell biology major, I indirectly killed five Shriners at one go when they took a break from their conventioneering and enjoyed a river boat cruise. I'd just finished my senior thesis (a translation into medieval Welsh of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer") and was exhausted and intellectually spent. To revive myself, I elected to launch into a primitive and unrestrained artistic celebration of the female orgasm. I was very sleep deprived and undernourished, and as I danced I felt a giddy delirium sweep over me. The Shriners sat at a distant table, their fezzes tipped nearly to their eyes in an apparent effort to conceal themselves. I was wearing a tiny g-string no larger than a silver dollar, and ruby colored pasties with little propellers on them I twirled through shake-my-booty power. I concluded my regular performance with a variation of my customary signature dismount (leaping off the stage with legs apart, then twisting in the air until I faced backwards as I landed on some happy patron's heaving lap), this time springing from a small trampoline, thus allowing me to fly across the room and onto the Shriners' table, knocking over their beer bottles and upending their chicken baskets.

They seemed not to care, as I jumped to my feet and continued my dance atop their table, moaning and howling and shaking my love nub and mercy mound just inches from their bespectacled noses. I wailed and writhed and groaned and shuddered as though I was possessed, then taunted the men to come and have me, demanding they sate my deepest desires, and acting out what effect their ardent thrustings would have on me. The old boys really started to steam, and one got a little goofy with lust, he actually dropped his trousers and drawers and tried to climb onto the table, which was a serious breach of etiquette aboard our ship, the "Crescent City Crawfish," where the firm policy regarding the artistes was "look but only touch yourself." Not that the Shriner could have done much harm; he was a stalagatite, not -mite. Still and all, our bouncers took this offense seriously, and two of them, Bruiser and Ray Ray, hurried to my defense.

Here's where things start to blur, the confusion a welcome balm whose anodyne effects include sparing me from recalling the worst of the ensuing violence. But Miz Gator Ethel, who was also dancing that night, remembers the follwing: Bruiser and Ray Ray grabbed the Shriner and dragged him to the door, only to be pursued by his pack of friends. One old codger withdrew a .45 semiautomatic pistol from a hidden shoulder holster and pressed it against Ray Ray's neck. Bruiser yelled "Gun!" and Ray Ray wheeled around and grabbed the Shriner's arm. Nobody suspected that the other Shriners were packing heat, and in a flash they'd pulled out their guns, including the pantless offender, who shot both Ray Ray and Bruiser in their chests, dropping, and killing, them both. Meanwhile, our other bouncers, Terrence, Sam-a-lam and Kudjo, ran to their own comrades rescue, shotguns in hand. The Shriners formed a defensive circle like a herd of musk oxen and proceeded to fire coolly. Their pistols were no match for shotguns, however, and all five men fell in less than a minute to head shots. Sam-a-lam lost his testicles to a bullet but survived. Terrence and Kudjo were unscathed.

So, in many ways I was the proximate cause to this carnage, since I should not have danced on their table, as my boss reminded me sternly. But he also forgave me, for he hated Shriners and said that all secret societies were nothing but trouble, attracting the desperate and depraved; and that the Shriners were worst of all, for as a child he underwent a series of painful orthopaedic surgeries in one of their hospitals, enduring many failed attempts to correct a congenital problem where his feet pointed backwards. Infections came and went, and one morning he rolled over in bed and both of his feet fell off. He stole a wheelchair, wheeled himself out of the hospital around midnight, and hitchhiked to New Orleans and its renowned Jean Lafitte Pediatric Polyclinic, where he was fitted with peg legs and given a pet parrot and offered a job as a cabin boy on the "Crawfish," which he later captained and then owned. "Only in America, Whiski," he'd often say. "An America where one day the sun will set finally on all Shriners."

Forgiveness, then, comes honestly to me, and I forgave the scamp Durwood for his drug-addled inattentiveness. The special treat bore a card for Dusty, and said only "Enjoy. Your secret chef." We were in his office when he lifted the cover off the tureen. The smell was hideous, as is the case with Andorran eels, which are pickled in goat urine; it is literally impossible to tell by their odor if they are tainted or not. Gator Ethel warned Dusty against eating this treat, as we didn't know its origins, but he abandoned his customary good judgment, reminding us that his digestion was far better than ours owing to his ferality. He offered bowls to the core staff, but even Y.Z., a fellow fourleg, declined, begging Dusty to consider that an enemy might have sent over the "delectable," Claude Balzac being the most likely suspect, who still could be relied upon to occasionally attempt to kill his twin brother. But Dusty would have none of it, and excusing himself, he placed the tureen on the floor, stripped off his clothing and gobbled up most of the pottage, abandoning knife and fork for the coyote style of burying his snout deep into his food and practically inhaling it.

We left Dusty's office upset at his stubborn refusal to follow the common sense precautions he'd expect everyone else to abide. Ten hours later he clung to me in our bathtub, where I was washing him after he'd uncorked the most spectacular GI explosions I've ever seen in my medical career. The crew had gathered for the Friday at Four meeting we held each week to decompress before the coming weekend. Y.Z. was discussing the need for additional security cameras and new check-in procedures, and at one point blew up at little brother Durwood, who was coming down from his special libation and did seem a bit dazed and disoriented. Perhaps this accounted for Durwood's charging Y.Z., who easily side-stepped him, then grabbed Durwood by the arm and wrenched it up and back into a submission hold, forcing my brother to the ground, and stepping lightly on his face while screaming "I could rip your fucking arm out of its socket and cram it up your arse!"

You can imagine the commotion, particularly with Gator Ethel in the room, who cut her teeth wrestling bobcats in carnivals when she was only five years old. Before she could pounce, though, Dusty, who was still nude from the morning save for the breechcloth he favored on Casual Friday afternoons, jumped onto the conference table and unleashed his piercing "coyodel," a ululating, yipping, tremunckulizing cry you could hear over the roar of a 747 thundering towards take-off. Dusty rarely coyodeled at work unless he was truly upset, so we all stopped what we were doing and regarded him closely. He looked terrible: his skin had the bluish-grey hue of old asphalt and he trembled like Pat Nixon on her wedding night when she first beheld what the late president invariably referred to as "The Great Nixini" (this from her underpraised memoir, "Thank God for Booze, Billy Graham and Barbs: A First Lady Copes").

The mess...the mess...the mess...

Dusty shat. And puked. And shat and puked and shat and puked. And shat some more and puked some more. And groaned and strained and retched. I've seen—and suffered from—dry heaves many times, but I've never seen nor had the dry shits. Dusty had them, after liters of fluids had shot from both of his alimentary orifices, then dribbled, then seeped, then stopped. Yet peristalsis persisted, no increased, wave after wave of deep abdominal contractions rippling through him, the cramping horrible, like a herd of charlie horses galloping through his colon. And though the room reeked worse than the foulest Andorran eel, a stench such as could not even emanate from the rankest charnel house on the hottest day in August, compassion filled us all, even as we had to scrape the thick film of excreta from our exposed skin, and knowing then that we'd likely fall ill in a few hours, which, as I've already noted, all of us did at the Institute, staff and patients alike.

I trained for one year at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, researching bubonic plague, and before I fell sick I placed a call to a dear friend who worked on one of the Center's emergency response teams. Within hours, nearly twenty physicians, nurses and epidemiologists rappeled out of hovering black helicopters into the Institute's courtyard. By then everyone was ill, and larger helicopters lowered four inflatable field hospitals that technicians set up in less than two hours. It was in these facilities we spent the next four weeks, Dusty drifting in and out of a coma. Fortunately his greedy appetite meant he consumed the lion's share of the pestilence, as it were, sparing the rest of us the worst of the toxins the stew contained.

And what were these poisons? Nobody knows. None of us was obviously infected by any known viruses, bacteria, fungi or protozoa. I use the word poison figuratively, for no evidence emerged to pinpoint any of the thirteen thousand known poisons with whom contact can sicken or kill. Leaving what?

"Voodoo," Miz Gator Ethel insisted. "It's th' only thing, cher, what does this to healthy folks like we all is. What happened is we done all been hexed."

Who's to say we weren't? Lacking another explanation, I'll go along with some serious hexing. Who hexed us, and why, also remains a mystery, but I've got my suspicions. When we went back and reexmained the morning's security tapes, we noticed that the delivery van was escorted to and then from the Institute by several middle-aged men on little motor scooters.

Yes, they were befezzed.

Yes, they were Shriners.

Love,

Whiski Rae