"Then I started thinkin' about Albert. That kid's in bad fuckin' shape, man. He needs me around. They'll eat him alive if I ain't there. I tell you, if I ever split, he'll be the first casualty. Scumbag Harris was the one who told me that. The fuckin' guy pulls my coat about Albert, then he sets me up to split."

"You on the horns a the dilemma."

"I is on the hone a the scone." Stony chuckled. "But it ain't funny. None a this shit is funny. I'm in a lotta fuckin' pain, Butler. I feel like I'm jugglin' fifty-two oranges. It's not just me I'm thinkin' about, it's my parents. Chubby, Albert, the kids in the hospital, it's all them people. They're like flies aroun' my head, an' I jus' can't think straight."

"What kicked this off?" Butler looked around him in bewilderment. "Last I heard you were flyin' so high I thought you was gonna be the next Ben Casey."

"You know what turned me around? I'll tell you honest. I brought Albert into the hospital to meet the kids I was workin' with, right? He's playin' with 'em, everything's cool, then some nurse asks me who he is. I say he's my brother, she says he's gotta split, no kids allowed for visits. I was disappointed but I figure rules is rules so I go to take him home and get to the front door, some nurse says where you takin' that kid? I said I'm takin' him home. You know what she says? She says lemme see his discharge slip. Can you fuckin' believe that? I says he's my goddamn brother, he ain't no patient. She wouldn't let him leave until she checked it out with the children's ward! At first I was so fuckin' pissed I was spittin' blood, but then I took a good look at him, and I'll tell you something, if I was that nurse, I would have done the same fuckin' thing. That kid not only looked like a patient, but he didn't look in any way ready for a discharge either." Stony nodded emphatically. "That shook me up. He didn't look no different than the little niggers in wheelchairs, you know? He's a little nigger inna wheelchair too. Then I started thinkin', my whole family is just a bunch a little niggers in wheelchairs. They're all fuckin' cripples comin' an' goin'. Even my old lady. I usually just write her off as a dinosaur, a real whacko with a mean streak as long as my leg, but like, she don't know any better. I mean the way she acts aroun' Albert. My grandmother, my ol lady's mother, man, you wanna hear horror stories, you gotta hear what my mother had to go through as a kid with this cunt. You know when my old lady was six, her mother broke her nose because she wouldn't go to the store? Right? So what's somebody who had to go through that gonna be like as a mother? An' then my old man and Chubby, two fuckin' fifty-year-old pussy chasers. Whatta they tryin' a prove? Old men playin' stink-finger. Do you get what I'm tryin' to say? I mean, my whole family's like a private ward. There's enough goddamn pain in that house to knock a whole city block on its ass. An' I love them Butler, and they love me. If I was really serious about helpin' little niggers in wheelchairs I don't hafta work in no hospital."