Awakenings Page #17

HECTOR:

What's wrong with you, Len?

REV.12/15/89 (GREEN) Pg.12EV.12/15/89 (GREEN) Pg.122

222.CONT. LEONARD

(pause)

This is good, what you've got

here.

HECTOR:

I know that.

Leonard smiles; the man does know it, and appreciates it.

LEONARD:

Bye.

223. EXT. NEW YORK CITY -NIGHT 223.

Descending from a fire escape strung with a single strand

of Christmas lights . . . down to the street below, to Leonard,

moving along the sidewalk, noticing:

A young couple, bundled up, hurrying down the stairs of a .

basement apartment, fumbling with keys;

A Christmas tree too large for the doorway of an another

apartment across the street, being tugged at by someone inside,

unseen. >

Leonard smiles. His gait and tics, and especially the smile,

make him look insane. He passes a shop window with very simple

ornamentation as the proprietor inside switches out the lights,

and continues on, and into the darkness of the street ahead.

224. EXT. EAST RIVER -NIGHT -224.

Black water. The river. The drone of engines and syncopated

rhythms of wheels of unseen cars.

Leonard, at the river's edge, stares into the water. His hand

comes out of his pocket holding the bag of L-Dopa capsules, and

he lets it fall in. It floats for a moment before a force from

below, like a hand, pulls it under.

224A. EXT. EAST RIVER -DAWN 224A.

Leonard on a bench. Behind him, across an empty field, bums

huddled over a barrel fire warming their hands.

SAYER O.S.

Leonard?

Sayer's face appears against a pastel dawn sky. Leonard

glances up at him. Behind them, in the distance, Hector stands

outsidehisparkedcab. Sayersits. Longsilence. ..

[—\

;(l__J

'

REV.12/15/89 (GREEN) Pg.123

(continuity only)

224A.CONT. SAYER 224A.

I'm sorry.

LEONARD:

What for?

He smiles crookedly, then looks out across the water again.

LEONARD:

Isn't that something .. .

Sayer looks out. The morning colors are mirroring off the

water like paint on glass. They both watch. The colors are

deepening right before their eyes. Long, long silence

before...

LEONARD:

Can you take me home?

Sayer helps him up. And as they move slowly toward the waiting

taxi. Hector opens the rear door. The only sound is the hiss

of tires, the -rhythm of wheels, .until

LEONARD V.O.

When I was a boy I felt myself

being carried away by illness like

a swimmer sucked out by the tide.

Drifting slowly out across the water and the Brooklyn Bridge

stretching out across it.

LEONARD V.O.

I feel it again, only this time

J I've been somewhere. I vent to a

place and felt things I never

dreamed of. I went to a place and

felt hope and fear and hatred and

love, I glimpsed life ...

225. INT. LEONARD'S LIBRARY -BAINBRIDGE -DAY 225.

Drifting slowly across the faces of patients reading in

Leonard's library, and settling finally tight on him, "asleep."

LEONARD V.O.

It's good, life.

Spines of books on shelves lining the walls. And Paula's face,

considering the titles.

SAYER O.S.

It doesn't matter which one.

They're all his favorites.

r

REV.12/15/89 (GREEN) Pg.124

(continuity only)

225.CONT. 225

She pulls one of the books down at random and crosses the ,

library with Sayer, passing patients -including the woman with

multipple sclerosis -readinyyat tables with flowers on them.

SAYER O.S.

Leonard?

He's in a wheelchair, behind an oak desk on which rests, among

other things, the Ouija board. His eyes open but do not appear

to comprehend the doctor's presence or his surroundings. His

expression is absolutely "expressionless."

SAYER:

I'm sorry to wake you, but there's

someone here to see you.

Leonard remains still. "Asleep." And there's a long silence

broken only by the sound of pages being turned. And then, from

Dickens' "The Old Curiosity Shop" —

PAULA:

(reading)

"Night is generally my time for

walking. In the summer, I often

leave home early in the morning

and roam about fields and lanes.:

' "^

aallll ddaayy.. OOrr eevveenn eessccaappee ffoorr

days or weeks together ...

Leonard is unable to acknowledge in any way that he recognizes

the words or her voice . . . but he does. And as she reads,

the words become alive and the walls recede ...

PAULA:

"But saving in the country, I

seldom go out until after dark,

though Heaven be thanked, I love

its light and feel the

cheerfulness it sheds upon the

earth as much as any creature

living..."

And he is moving into the light.

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