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  From the New York Post, page 3:

  MIDTOWN HALLUCINATIONS HAVE POLICE SEEING DOUBLE

  Doug Drury and Kim Woody were enjoying a wonderful day exploring Manhattan when the California couple decided to grab some lunch at the Carnegie Deli. That’s when their afternoon took a turn for the bizarre.

  “This guy sitting at a table near the window jumped out of his chair and started yelling for everyone to hide,” Doug Drury said. “He claimed there were flying sharks circling above us; then he dove under our table and grabbed on to my legs like they were a life preserver and he didn’t know how to swim.”

  The man in question, identified as Brad Thompson from Manhattan, continued to rant and rave about sharks and other invisible creatures before he was eventually subdued by police and taken into custody.

  “I don’t know what happened to him,” Robert Solis said. A longtime employee at Carnegie Deli, Solis said he’s seen it all. “But I’ve never seen anything like this. He totally flipped out. It was like he was on a bad acid trip or something.”

  While the afternoon theatrics had everyone at the Carnegie Deli buzzing, it wasn’t the only unusual incident in the neighborhood. Ten minutes later, the patrons and employees at the Starbucks on West Fifty-Second were treated to a surreal striptease show.

  According to witnesses, a dark-haired woman who was standing in line waiting to place her order suddenly shouted out, “Oh my God!” and started taking off her clothes. David Kasama of Sacramento, California, had a front row seat.

  “She kept shouting, ‘Help! Help! I’m on fire!’ as she pulled off her clothes,” Kasama said. “Then she ran over and grabbed a pitcher of water and dumped it over her head. It was pretty hot, if you know what I mean.”

  After dousing herself with water, the woman told everyone in Starbucks they were all melting like wax candles before she ran out the door.

  Debra Dunbar was found twenty-five minutes later in the Pulitzer Fountain at Fifth Avenue and West Fifty-Eighth. She was taken to New York Presbyterian Hospital for evaluation.

  I’m sitting on a chair in an examination room with a disposable thermometer in my mouth and a blood pressure cuff around my upper left arm. On the walls around me are posters of vascular systems and reproductive organs. Fluorescent lights wash away any shadows. A clock ticks away the afternoon. Outside the closed door, someone asks for a breath mint.

  My lips have gone numb.

  This has never happened to me before. Usually I don’t get anything more than cotton-mouthed, drowsy, or light-headed. Occasionally I develop rashes or feel like I have food poisoning. More often than not, I’ll get a headache. Nothing major. We’re not talking migraine and vomiting. That would be serious. What I get is pretty typical, nothing 400 milligrams of ibuprofen won’t fix.

  But numbness in my lips? That’s definitely a first.

  The medical technician sitting across from me removes the thermometer and the cuff, then records my temperature and my blood pressure on a chart attached to a clipboard.

  The technician is male. Mid-thirties. Prematurely gray. He has a zit coming in on his chin. His breath smells like nachos.

  “How are you feeling today?” he asks.

  “Good,” I say, though my lips feel like they’re made of rubber.

  “Any problems with your vision?” he asks, looking down at his clipboard.

  I shake my head and say no.

  “Cognitive functions?”

  No.

  “Speech?”

  No.

  “Numbness or tingling in any of your extremities?”

  Technically my lips aren’t my extremities, but I tell him just in case and he writes it down in his notes.

  “Have you experienced any nausea or flu-like symptoms?” he asks.

  No.

  “Memory loss?”

  No.

  “Hallucinations? Seizures? Rashes?”

  Sometimes just hearing the word rash makes me want to itch, but I answer in the negative three more times.

  “Any bloating or rapid weight gain?” he asks.

  No.

  “Are you feeling dizzy or light-headed?”

  Most of the time, the questions are the same.

  Nausea. Headaches. Dizziness.

  Frequently they’ll throw in night sweats or loss of appetite, with an occasional sinus inflammation and the odd sexual-performance question. But I’ve never been asked about an irregular heartbeat. Or renal failure.

  “No,” I tell him. “No dizziness.”

  The tech takes a few more minutes to run through the rest of his questions. By the time he sends me off for my blood and urine tests, my lips have returned to normal.

  In another room, a phlebotomist wraps an elastic tourniquet around my arm and sterilizes the soft flesh just inside my left elbow.

  The phlebotomist is female. Early forties. Blond with frosted tips. She’s had Botox injections around her eyes. Her breath smells like peppermint.

  I’m not a big fan of needles. Even after more than five years, I still have to look away. So I take a deep breath and stare at the wall as she draws half a dozen blood samples into evacuated tubes. Normally before drawing samples, she’s supposed to ask a list of questions and record my answers on a form:

  Am I on anticoagulation therapy?

  Do I have a history of fits?

  Do I have any bleeding disorders?

  Have I fasted?

  Instead, she asks me the questions while taking the samples, except for the one about fasting. This test doesn’t require me to fast. I’m not a big fan of fasting. I’m not Baha’i or Buddhist, and I’ve never spent forty days and nights on a mountain with God, so abstaining from food and drink has never been my strong suit.

  After the phlebotomist draws my blood, she hands me a sterile plastic specimen container and points me to the bathroom.

  “Try to catch the urine in midstream,” she says. “It makes for a cleaner sample.”

  I nod as if this is something I’ve never heard before. As if this is my first time.

  Urine samples are standard procedure. While I’m not always asked to give blood, I almost always have to leave a sample of my urine. I’ve heard some guys have a hard time peeing on command into a cup. I’ve never had a problem, so I provide a midstream catch, deposit the specimen container in the cabinet, grab my backpack, and head to the waiting room—not a waiting room in Brooklyn with soft-cushioned seats and diffused lighting and copies of Rolling Stone and National Geographic, but a waiting room in Queens with hard plastic stacking chairs and fluorescent overhead lights and copies of Us and People.

  Randy stands at the front desk, hitting on the receptionist.

  The receptionist is female. Late twenties. Jet-black hair. She’s wearing too much foundation. Her breath smells like cloves.

  “Cardio is my nirvana.” Randy clasps his hands behind his head and flexes his biceps. “I run every day. I love working up a good sweat.”

  Randy is a six-foot-tall, two-hundred-pound walking erection. In the three years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him pass on the chance to chat up a woman.

  “I hear sweat’s a big turn-on for women,” I say.

  “Lloyd, my man!” Randy gives me a bro shake followed by a pound hug, even though we’ve seen each other almost every day for the pas
t week.

  Randy may not be subtle, but he wears his affability, like his muscles, for everyone to see.

  “Where’s Vic and Isaac?” I ask, looking around the otherwise empty waiting room.

  “Totally Eagles,” Randy says.

  Randy likes to make esoteric references to song and album titles by classic rock bands, leaving out the titles and figuring everyone knows what he’s talking about.

  “Already gone,” he says, with a wink to the receptionist.

  “Thank you for coming in, Mr. Prescott.” She ignores Randy and hands me some discharge literature and an envelope with my name on it. “We’ll see you for your follow-up on Tuesday.”

  “What about me?” Randy asks. “I’m free Friday night.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Ballard. I don’t date patients or clients. Plus I have a boyfriend.”

  “What if I wasn’t a patient or a client?” Randy asks.

  “I’d still have a boyfriend.”

  “Que sera, sera.” Randy shrugs and turns to me, his face lighting up with a smile as big as Long Island. “Hey, wanna grab some grub?”

  Randy and I head back to Manhattan on the J train after chowing down on a couple of slices from Alfie’s. It’s a forty-five-minute ride back to the Lower East Side and we’ve used up most of that time talking about baseball and sex and playing a few games of Guess That Prescription Drug.

  “Can it cause suicidal thoughts or actions?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Randy says.

  “Hallucinations?”

  “Yes.”

  “Seizures?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shortness of breath or trouble breathing?”

  “Yes.”

  That could be any number of antidepressants or antibiotics, but I’m guessing Randy didn’t pick an SSRI.

  “Yellowing of the skin?” I ask.

  Randy shakes his head. “Nope.”

  That rules out most of the antidepressants, though it’s not like you’ve won the lottery just because your medication doesn’t turn you into Homer Simpson.

  When playing Guess That Prescription Drug, we tend to stay away from side effects like diarrhea, dizziness, headaches, loss of appetite, nausea, and vomiting, because almost every pharmaceutical drug can possibly cause at least two or more of those. Instead, we focus on the more severe side effects.

  “Severe blistering, peeling, or red skin rash?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “Burning, numbing, or weakness in the extremities?”

  “Yes.”

  “Inability to move or bear weight on a joint or tendon?”

  “Yes!” Randy says. “You are so Van Halen right now.”

  I run through a possible list of Van Halen songs in my head. “Hot for teacher?”

  “On fire,” he says, as if it should be obvious.

  “Right. How did I not know that?”

  “I don’t know. It’s only the final track on one of the greatest debut rock albums of all time.”

  Randy’s knowledge of classic rock is rivaled only by his enthusiasm for getting laid.

  “Is it cipro?” I ask.

  “Nailed it!” Randy gives me a fist bump as the train pulls into the Marcy Avenue station. “Speaking of nailing it, did I tell you about the cute little blonde technician who works at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx?”

  Randy proceeds to tell me about the cute little blonde technician in more detail than I care to know. While he’s telling his sordid tale, three young white punks get on and stand in the middle of the car wearing sunglasses and wife beaters, with their pants halfway down their asses like they’ve never heard of a belt.

  “So how are things with you and Sophie?” Randy asks.

  “Good,” I say, as the doors close and the train continues toward Manhattan.

  “You two been together what? Four years now?”

  “Five,” I say.

  Randy nods and whistles. “I don’t think I’ve been with the same woman for more than five hours.”

  Randy’s not a big fan of long-term commitment.

  “You ever think about getting married?” Randy asks.

  “Sure,” I say.

  When I think about marriage, it’s always more in theory. Like time travel. Or the conspiracy to assassinate JFK.

  It’s not that I don’t like the idea of marrying Sophie. I like it just fine. And when I graduated from high school, I figured I’d be married by the time I hit thirty. But now that I’m here, getting married seems like something grown-ups do.

  “Yo man,” one of the punks says, loud enough for everyone to hear him. He has a buzz cut and a soul patch growing on his chin like black mold. “This car smells like piss.”

  “Yeah,” the second punk says, this one with a clean-shaven face and blond cornrows. “Like someone rolled around in it.”

  “Or took a bath in it,” the third punk says, his head shaved down to a cue ball.

  They laugh at their show of bravado and continue to stand in the middle of the car, daring anybody to make eye contact. Cue Ball makes a show of sniffing at the air and takes a few steps in our direction, while Cornrows and Soul Patch follow his lead, sniffing at some of the other passengers like dogs.

  Marcy Avenue is the last stop on the Brooklyn side of the East River, and it’s about an eight-minute ride to the Essex Street station, so our only options are to avoid eye contact or move to another car for the next five minutes. But New Yorkers like to act as though nothing bothers them, so everyone stays put and keeps their eyes trained on their books or on their iPhones or on the advertisements above the windows on the opposite side of the car, one of which is for depression.

  Are you feeling anxious? Have you lost interest in activities you used to enjoy? Are your dishes piling up in the sink? You just might have clinical depression. We can help!

  “I think it’s that motherfucker over there,” Cornrows says, nodding toward an apparent homeless man sitting by himself at the other end of the car. The three punks make their way toward where the man is sitting and start harassing him.

  “Yo man, you stink,” Soul Patch says.

  “Yeah,” Cornrows says. “Why the fuck did you bring your smelly ass onto this fuckin’ car?”

  “Now we have to breathe your fuckin’ stench until we get to the next fuckin’ stop,” Cue Ball says.

  “Leave me alone,” the man says, his voice high-pitched and pleading. “Just leave me alone!”

  They continue to berate the homeless man, who cowers in the corner, taking their abuse. No one in the entire subway car says anything. No one does anything. It may as well be happening on another planet.

  I feel bad for the guy. The problem is, I don’t know if the three assholes are carrying knives or guns, and I don’t really want to find out. I’m not much for fighting, especially when the odds are in favor of me getting my head kicked in.

  While my cupboards might be full of empathy, I haven’t exactly stocked up on heroism.

  The thugs keep at the homeless guy for a couple of minutes. When it starts to look like they’re about to escalate their verbal abuse to something more physical, Randy stands up.

  “Hey,” Randy says. “You heard the guy. Why don’t you leave him alone?”

  The three punks stop their badgering and turn to look at Randy.

  Cue Ball takes a step forward. “What the fuck did you say?”

  He stares at Randy from behind his sunglasses, flanked on either side by his buddies. Everyone in the car seems to be holding their breath, as if anticipating someone getting hurt. I’m sort of anticipating the same thing.

  “I asked you to leave him alone,” Randy says.

  While Cue Ball is a couple of inches taller, I’d say Randy outweighs him by a good twenty pounds. But I don’t know how much size matters in a street brawl, even if it’s on a subway train.

  “We’re not looking for any trouble,” I say, trying to think of something to keep Randy from ending up in the hospital. But eve
n to my own ears, I sound like a pussy.

  “Yeah, well, trouble is what you got.” Cue Ball starts to walk toward us, with Cornrows and Soul Patch following his lead.

  The people sitting in our general proximity finally decide this would be a good time to get up and find another place to sit. I’d like to join them, but I can’t bail on Randy.

  Shit, I think. Then I stand up to let Randy know I have his back.

  Randy flexes his hands and fidgets, shifting from one foot to the other, like a boxer dancing around on his feet. While Randy occasionally moonlights as a bouncer, he’s always struck me as more of a lover than a fighter, but he’s not backing down. Me? I’ve never been in a fight before in my life, never even thrown a punch, and I don’t really want to break my perfect record. Or my face.

  It’s only another minute or two before we reach the next station, and I’m hoping we get there fast enough for me to avoid words like fracture and contusion and hospital.

  “You should mind your own fuckin’ business,” Cue Ball says as he and his buddies close in.

  Yes. I agree. We should mind our own fucking business. But it’s a little too late for shoulds.

  I take a deep breath and curl my fingers into fists as my heart pounds inside my chest like it knows I’m about to get pummeled and is trying to warn me. My own personal robot shouting, Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!

  Next to me, Randy continues to fidget while Cue Ball gives us a cold, icy smile. Then the smile vanishes and I tense up, expecting the first blow to follow. Instead, Cue Ball gets this look on his face like he’s having a heart attack or crapping his pants. The next moment his face and arms break out in hives and he starts scratching at himself and shouting “What the fuck!” over and over.

  Cornrows and Soul Patch don’t want any part of whatever’s happening to their buddy and back away. Randy and I do the same, just in case whatever Cue Ball has is catching, and watch as he continues to suffer from what appears to be some kind of allergic reaction. To what, I have no idea. Maybe he used the wrong detergent. Or ate Moroccan food. Or wore a cheap polyester blend. But at least it looks like no one’s getting pummeled.