One of Those Weeks

Regina and Ferguson were quietly playing with their Barbara and Jenna action figures on the floor of the White House butler’s office. Their mother was looking at the updated itinerary for the Pope’s visit to Washington until her pager went off and she departed. The twins stood up to peek at the itinerary on the computer screen, then began discussing it in their secret twin language. Their discussion soon turned to bickering as they argued over who would come out stronger after this encounter—President Bush or the Pope. By the time that Clio returned, Barbara had been dunked head-first into a cup of coffee and Jenna’s head had been ripped off and speared with a sharp pencil. Clio exhaled deeply, folded her arms, and stood in the doorway silently until Reggie and Fergie were again playing quietly on the floor. It’s gonna be one of those weeks.

A mile to the west, Dr. Khalid Mohammad was sedating a homeless trumpeter listed on the chart only as “Dizzy”. The man was still trying to rip his left ear off as the orderlies struggled to get his arms into the restraints. Dr. Mohammad handed the syringe back to the emergency room nurse, Consuela Arroyo, and reached for Dizzy’s chart (which still had almost no information on it). Dr. Mohammad asked Dizzy again if he was on any medication or had taken any drugs or alcohol. “I’m telling you, it’s the ducks! They put bagpipes in my ear while I was sleeping! They know I hate bagpipe music more than anything!” Dr. Mohammad tossed the George Washington University Hospital chart aside without writing anything down. Arroyo asked if he wanted them to take specimens down to the lab, but he waved her off and indicated he would examine the ear as soon as Dizzy stopped thrashing: he suspected that Dizzy had slept too long in one position and had incurred a blood clot in the ear. Arroyo said nothing, but this wasn’t the first time she had heard the Urine Park ducks slandered at this hospital. As Dizzy quieted down, Dr. Mohammad explained to Dizzy that he was going to examine the ear to ascertain the best way to remove the bagpipes. The physician’s assistant tasked with holding Dizzy’s head still rolled his eyes to nobody in particular. It’s gonna be one of those weeks.

A couple of miles away, Dr. Ermann Esse was seeing his third psychiatry appointment of the day—a nervous White House staffer. Dr. Esse had tried hypnosis, family history, scream therapy, a number of visualization techniques, and a host of other interventions, but the man was simply paralyzed by fears he could not explain. Dr. Esse was even beginning to doubt his previous decision not to recommend drug therapy for the man, who might not be able to function within a month at the rate his psyche was deteriorating. “I had the strangest dream last night,” the staffer said, as he lay down on the couch and curled up in the fetal position. “I stumbled into a secret meeting of a league of superhero artists.” Dr. Esse raised his eyebrows to indicate a need for further explanation. “I don’t know what their powers were, but they were definitely superheroes. And they were immortal—I mean, everybody was there, from Michelangelo and Rembrandt to Picasso and Warhol. All the greats. Something really big was happening, and they had to do something about it. But I didn’t know what it was, or what they were going to do about it!” Dr. Esse wrote this all down, but did not sense any deeper meaning in the dream. It’s gonna be one of those weeks. “Then President Bush walked in and warned them not to interfere with the Moon Township plan. I mean, why would the President care what a bunch of artists were doing?” Dr. Esse paused, pen in mid-air. Moon Township? Some other patient had also been talking about that….

A few miles south, Laura Moreno was still wrinkling her nose at the heavy smell of margaritas and daiquiris emanating from the workroom trash can, where Chloe Cleavage and her posse had deposited the remnants of their weekend “work” far from the inquisitive eyes, noses, or hands of the partners and associates. It was not the first time the client had been billed for fifty hours of weekend overtime pay while Chloe’s crew got hammered, and it wouldn’t be the last time that the evidence would be dumped in the workroom where Laura lived like Harry Potter under the staircase. It’s gonna be one of those weeks. Not far away, former Senator Evermore Breadman was telephoning VIPs to come over to Prince and Prowling on Wednesday to take advantage of its bird’s eye view of the Papal motorcade which would be departing the White House. Of course, since Laura Moreno did not really exist at Prince and Prowling, she would not be put on the authorized occupant list for the building on Wednesday, and would end up turned away by security guards at the door and briefly put into the custody of the Capitol Police—not to mention, losing all of Wednesday’s pay—but she did not know any of that yet. She dug into the first box of documents “reviewed” over the weekend and began adding the hundreds of flags that Chloe’s crew had somehow missed.

Across the street at Urine Park, the ducks were gloating over their eviction of Dizzy and preparing for the upcoming Papal motorcade as the Shackled flew overhead to scout out the route.