Awakenings Page #2

SULLIVAN:

Well, come on, Anthony, get him a

coat for Christ's sake.

-Sullivan thrusts his clipboard into Sayer's hand.

9. OMITTED 9.

10. INT. DAYROOM (A) -DAY 10.

A woman in a wheelchair uttering high-pitched screams (FEMALE

PATIENT 2). Sayer in a lab coat trying to calm her.

REV.12/15/89 (GREEN) Pg.7

10.CONT. SAYER . 10.

They're just pencils, pens.

He tries to prove it to her by removing one of them from the

pocket of his white coat. Screaming louder at the sight of it,

she tries to protect her face with her hands like a boxer being

beaten senseless.

11. INT. DAYROOM (B) -DAY v 11.

A man in his sixties confronts Sayer with an announcement in a

loud commanding voice

MALE PATIENT 1

X was born in I911f in

Kinasbridae, New York. I came

here in July of 1955. Prior to

July of 1955. I resided a£ the

Brooklyn Psychiatric Centerf

Brooklyn. New York. Prior to

thatP I was a person. And you.

sir.-i Who the* hell >are.*v.ou? .

12. INT. DAYROOM (C) -DAY 12.

Stepping around a wheelchair, Sayer finds in it an elderly

woman, nicely dressed, her hair done-up, a ribbon in it.

Glancing at the chart in his hand

SAYER:

Mrs. Cohen?

MRS. COHEN

He•s here?

She smiles, glances around. Sayer hesitates, uncertain who she

means.

SAYER:

I'm here.

(pause)

To examine you.

MRS. COHEN

Oh, no, I'm leaving today. My

son's coming to take me home.

(6 Confused,, Sayyer tries to find a dischargge form amongg the ppappers

on the clipboard. Unsuccessful, he excuses himself from her

and crosses the room to a nurse.

SAYER:

Excuse me. Mrs. Cohen's son.

He's coming today?

NURSE 1

I wouldn't bet on it, he hasn't

for twenty years.

The nurse turns away. Sayer crosses slowly back to Mrs. Cohen,

trying to find the words to tell her. He doesn't have to; his

discomfort does it. Her hand slowly reaches up and pulls the

ribbon from her hair.

v

13. OMITTED .

14. INT. EXAMINATION ROOM/OFFICE-LATER -DAY

Silence. Institutional beige walls. Glass cabinets, locked,

containing medical instruments. A metal examination table with

leather straps.

Sayer alone at one of three old desks in the large room, still

unsettled from the experience with Mrs. Cohen. Eventually, he

gets up, crosses to a window and tries to open it.

It's jammed shut, painted shut perhaps, but finally gives way,

sliding up. He lets the air from outside wash over his face as

he stares out absently at children on an elementary school

playground beyond a debris-strewn field.

MISS COSTELLO O.S.

(a matter of fact)

It gets easier.

Sayer turns to the voice, to Miss Costello, the hospital's head

nurse, a veteran of this place, a woman who has seen it all.

She's standing in the doorway.

MISS COSTELLO:

You don't think it will, but it

does.

A moment and she turns and leaves.

A:

14A. EXT. TENEMENT (LUCY'S) -ESTABLISH -DAY

15. INT. TENEMENT -NEW YORK.-DAY 1

The needle of a Victrola clawing at the endless music-less

innerbandsofa78 ... .* .

Cold eggs and toast and prescription medicine on a kitchenette

table. A puddle of coffee on the floor. Ceramic shards, a

broken cup. .

An old woman on her knees, eyes closed, arms tangled in an

aluminum walker, limp and stiff at once somehow, like the limbs

of a discarded marionette. Beyond her, beyond a threshold, a

shuttered living room. Furniture from another era and the

clutter of a lifetime.

A shadowy figure in a wicker wheelchair near the Victrola.

Another old woman, with spindly limbs, profoundly afflicted and

preposterously still. The back of her head is flat and bald,

the result of lying supine upon it for much of several decades.

On her passive face rest round wire-rim glasses. Insane or

retarded and unaware of the dead woman, she mumbles, just

barely audibly, a melody.

SAYER'S VOICE

Can you hear me? .

16. INT. EXAMINATION ROOM/OFFICE -BAINBRIDGE -DAY 16

Distant music of children's laughter. Perhaps real, emanating

from outside; perhaps imagined, remembered, playing in a remote

region of the woman's damaged mind. Arrested of all movement,

she stares, transfixed, at the blades of a fan.

SAYER'S VOICE

Do you know where you are?

(nothing back)

Do you remember being brought

here?

(nothing back)

Do you know what has happened?

If she does, she gives no indication. No word or gesture. No

change of expression on her mask of a face. She is elsewhere

(or nowhere), cut adrift by her illness, living in a private

world (or hell).

SAYER'S VOICE

Can you hear me?

Sayer, wearing a white lab coat, tries to read her eyes.

Behind thick lenses, uncleaned for weeks or months, the eyes

are inscrutable. . ••

REV. 12/5/89 (BLUE) Pg.-lO

16.CONT. 16.

Sayer reaches to her face and carefully pulls the glasses from

it. He cleans them with a flap of his lab coat — they are

loose, bent out of shape*— and gently slides the temples back

over her ears.

He turns away from her and types at a manual Underwood. The

form in the machine, at the top, reads — BAINBRIDGE HOSPITAL /

ADMISSIONS / CONSULTATION REQUEST / NEUROLOGY. Sayer types in

a lower section headed — FINDINGS / DIAGNOSIS.

He turns back in his chair to find the woman doubled-over in

her wheelchair, one arm very close to the floor, the hand

clutching the glasses. She is not moving, but she has moved.

That, or she is dead.

Sayer rights her, takes the glasses from her hand and slips

them back onto her face. He studies her for a moment, and for

that moment remains as still, as entranced, as her.

He takes the glasses from her face again and sets them on the

floor. He waits. She doesn't retrieve them. He picks them up

and holds them out to her. She doesn't move to take them. He

lets go of them and she lunges forward, catching them the

instant before they hit the floor. Sayer just stares.

SAYER«S VOICE

Her name is Lucy Fishman ...

r

16B. INT. CORRIDOR OUTSIDE EXAMINATION ROOM -LATE AFTERNOON 16B.

Dr. Kaufman, the hospital's Chief of Medicine, notices a number

of patients lined up in their wheelchairs as he passes them on

his way into Sayer's examination room

SAYER'S VOICE

She was found by neighbors with *

her sister, several days after the ,

sister had died ...

17. INT. EXAMINATION ROOM -LATE AFTERNOON 17.

The same room as before. The same woman. All that has changed

is the light. It's late afternoon.

SAYER (CONT'D)

According to the neighbors, *

she's never set foot outside her *

apartment, has no other living *

relatives, and has always been the *

way she is now -without any *

comprehension or response. *

Kaufman tries to feign interest. He glances to the others

Sayer has summoned to the room — two other doctors, Tyler and

Sullivan, and Miss Costello.

SAYER:

Andyet ...

Without any warning whatsoever Sayer tosses a tennis ball at

her. Her hand suddenly jerks up out of her lap and catches it.

And stays there, stiff, still.

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