“You’ve been told, Mr. McMurphy, that it’s against the policy to gamble for money on the ward.”

“Okay, then down soft enough to gamble for matches, for fly buttons — just turn the damn thing down!”

“Mr. McMurphy” — she waits and lets her calm schoolteacher tone sink in before she goes on; she knows every Acute on the ward is listening to them—”do you want to know what I think? I think you are being very selfish. Haven’t you noticed there are others in this hospital besides yourself? There are old men here who couldn’t hear the radio at all if it were lower, old fellows who simply aren’t capable of reading, or working puzzles — or playing cards to win other men’s cigarettes. Old fellows like Matterson and Kittling, that music coming from the loudspeaker is all they have. And you want to take that away from them. We like to hear suggestions and requests whenever we can, but I should think you might at least give some thought to others before you make your requests.”

He turns and looks over at the Chronic side and sees there’s something to what she says. He takes off his cap and runs his hand in his hair, finally turns back to her. He knows as well as she does that all the Acutes are listening to everything they say.

“Okay — I never thought about that.”

“I thought you hadn’t.”

He tugs at that little tuft of red showing out of the neck of his greens, then says. “Well, hey; what do you say to us taking the card game someplace else? Some other room? Like, say, that room you people put the tables in during that meeting. There’s nothing in there all the rest of the day. You could unlock that room and let the card-players go in there, and leave the old men out here with their radio — a good deal all around.”

She smiles and closes her eyes again and shakes her head gently. “Of course, you may take the suggestion up with the rest of the staff at some time, but I’m afraid everyone’s feelings will correspond with mine: we do not have adequate coverage for two day rooms. There isn’t enough personnel. And I wish you wouldn’t lean against the glass there, please; your hands are oily and staining the window. That means extra work for some of the other men.”

He jerks his hand away, and I see he starts to say something and then stops, realizing she didn’t leave him anything else to say, unless he wants to start cussing at her. His face and neck are red. He draws a long breath and concentrates on his will power, the way she did this morning, and tells her that he is very sorry to have bothered her, and goes back to the card table.

Everybody on the ward can feel that it’s started.

At eleven o’clock the doctor comes to the day-room door and calls over to McMurphy that he’d like to have him come down to his office for an interview. “I interview all new admissions on the second day.”

McMurphy lays down his cards and stands up and walks over to the doctor. The doctor asks him how his night was, but McMurphy just mumbles an answer.

“You look deep in thought today, Mr. McMurphy.”

“Oh, I’m a thinker all right,” McMurphy says, and they walk off together down the hall. When they come back what seems like days later, they’re both grinning and talking and happy about something. The doctor is wiping tears off his glasses and looks like he’s actually been laughing, and McMurphy is back as loud and full of brass and swagger as ever. He’s that way all through lunch, and at one o’clock he’s the first one in his seat for the meeting, his eyes blue and ornery from his place in the corner.

The Big Nurse comes into the day room with her covey of student nurses and her basket of notes. She picks the log book up from the table and frowns into it a minute (nobody’s informed on anybody all day long), then goes to her seat beside the door. She picks up some folders from the basket on her lap and riffles through them till she finds the one on Harding.

“As I recall, we were making quite a bit of headway yesterday with Mr. Harding’s problem—”

“Ah — before we go into that,” the doctor says, “I’d like to interrupt a moment, if I might. Concerning a talk Mr. McMurphy and I had in my office this morning. Reminiscing, actually. Talking over old times. You see Mr. McMurphy and I find we have something in common — we went to the same high school.”

The nurses look at one another and wonder what’s got into this man. The patients glance at McMurphy grinning from his corner and wait for the doctor to go on. He nods his head.

“Yes, the same high school. And in the course of our reminiscing we happened to bring up the carnivals the school used to sponsor — marvelous, noisy, gala occasions. Decorations, crepe streamers, booths, games — it was always one of the prime events of the year. I — as I mentioned to McMurphy — was the chairman of the high-school carnival both my junior and senior years — wonderful carefree years…”

It’s got real quiet in the day room. The doctor raises his head, peers around to see if he’s making a fool of himself. The Big Nurse is giving him a look that shouldn’t leave any doubts about it, but he doesn’t have on his glasses and the look misses him.

“Anyway — to put an end to this maudlin display of nostalgia — in the course of our conversation McMurphy and I wondered what would be the attitude of some of the men toward a carnival here on the ward?”

He puts on his glasses and peers around again. Nobody’s jumping up and down at the idea. Some of us can remember Taber trying to engineer a carnival a few years back, and what happened to it. As the doctor waits, a silence rears up from out of the nurse and looms over everybody, daring anybody to challenge it. I know McMurphy can’t because he was in on the planning of the carnival, and just as I’m thinking that nobody will be fool enough to break that silence, Cheswick, who sits right next to McMurphy, gives a grunt and is on his feet, rubbing his ribs, before he knows what happened.

“Uh — I personally believe, see” — he looks down at McMurphy’s fist on the chair arm beside him, with that big stiff thumb sticking straight up out of it like a cow prod — “that a carnival is a real good idea. Something to break the monotony.”

“That’s right, Charley,” the doctor says, appreciating Cheswick’s support, “and not altogether without therapeutic value.”

“Certainly not,” Cheswick says, looking happier now. “No. Lots of therapeutics in a carnival. You bet.”

“It would b-b-be fun,” Billy Bibbit says.

“Yeah, that too,” Cheswick says. “We could do it, Doctor Spivey, sure we could. Scanlon can do his human bomb act, and I can make a ring toss in Occupational Therapy.”

“I’ll tell fortunes,” Martini says and squints at a spot above his head.

“I’m rather good at diagnosing pathologies from palm reading, myself,” Harding says.

“Good, good,” Cheswick says and claps his hands. He’s never had anybody support anything he said before.

“Myself,” McMurphy drawls, “I’d be honored to work a skillo wheel. Had a little experience…”

“Oh, there are numerous possibilities,” the doctor says, sitting up straight in his chair and really warming to it. “Why, I’ve got a million ideas…”

He talks full steam ahead for another five minutes. You can tell a lot of the ideas are ideas he’s already talked over with McMurphy. He describes games, booths, talks of selling tickets, then stops as suddenly as though the Nurse’s look had hit him right between the eyes. He blinks at her and asks, “What do you think of the idea, Miss Ratched? Of a carnival? Here, on the ward?”

“I agree that it may have a number of therapeutic possibilities,” she says, and waits. She lets that silence rear up from her again. When she’s sure nobody’s going to challenge it, she goes on. “But I also believe that an idea like this should be discussed in staff meeting before a decision is reached. Wasn’t that your idea, Doctor?”