I don’t do pain - never did and never will. I didn’t want to die, but more - I didn’t want to hurt. I didn’t think it was a good war, but that was only the secondary reason for avoiding the service. Hell, some even left school and volunteered. Other guys went to Vietnam after college. Life had too many potential pitfalls, and I have always wanted to play it safe. There were lots of people who told me it would be a stupid decision - that there was much of life for me to explore, possibly even to conquer but I chose to not listen. I wish that I could blame someone else for my mistake. As the plot unwinds, the reader learns a great deal about the nature of futility, frustration, and freedom. This is the interwoven story of their lives, a story that includes love, sexuality, violence, deaths, celebrations, circuses, and surprising twists. What is it like to work inside a state hospital or to be a patient in such a hospital? What is it like to live inside the mind of such a patient? This tragi-comic novel takes the reader inside the asylum, inside the worlds of three central characters: a narrator who has taken refuge from his fears of the world, a psychiatrist whose own life has been damaged by his father’s depression, and a catatonic schizophrenic whose world is trapped inside a crack in the wall opposite her bed.
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