Monkeybone Page #6

ALICE:

When he first came in to the sleep lab?

JULIE:

Yeah...before your time.

The canvas depicts a group of SURGEONS with the faces of wolves. They're

standing over a HUMAN PATIENT, replacing his internal organs with

MACHINE PARTS. The style is at once cartoony and unsettling.

ALICE:

Jesus, honey...he always joked about you curing

him, but I never realized what you cured him

from.

JULIE:

He hadn't gotten a good night's sleep in years.

The nightmares would wake him up, and he'd start

right in painting...

(chuckling)

That boy looked like pluperfect hell.

ALICE's gaze goes from the nightmare paintings to the MONKEYBONE strips

tacked up over the drafting table.

ALICE:

How do you get from here - to there?

JULIE:

Switch hands.

ALICE:

What?

JULIE:

I'm serious. It was bicameral disjunction -

right brain and left brain out of balance. He

was a rightie, so I made him switch the pencil

to his left hand. Just to see what'd come out.

A smile comes to JULIE's face. She settles in on the floor beside ALICE

and digs through the various portfolios until she comes up with a

quickie CARTOON on the back of a napkin - the prototype for...

ALICE:

Monkeybone?

JULIE:

Left-handed, he was funny. He'd been doing all

this scary, intense work...then he found out he

could draw this stuff, and make me laugh, and he

liked that.

(shrugging)

And then the nightmares just...stopped.

ALICE:

Wow - two guys in the same brain. - Which one

did you fall in love with?

JULIE smiles at the cartoon. She isn't telling.

JULIE:

I've put a ton of work into that boy, Alice. I

am not going to let him get away from me.

INT. ICU - MORNING

JULIE, in her white lab coat, wanders through Intensive Care and finds a

WOMAN hunched over STU's bed, BAWLING HER EYES OUT.

JULIE:

Kimmy...?

KIMMY looks up. She's crying so much she can barely recognize JULIE.

KIMMY:

Oh, Julie...my poor Stu...my poor baby

brother...

JULIE:

When'd you get in?

KIMMY:

An hour ago.

(gathering herself)

I tried to prepare myself, but I didn't know he

would be like, like this. I can't even bear to

look at him... How about you? You're okay?

JULIE:

I'm fine, Kimmy. Fine.

KIMMY:

I had so much I always wanted to say to him. At

least he had a chance to give you the ring.

JULIE:

The ring...

KIMMY:

Grandmama's ring. The engagement ring. He asked

me to send it to him -

JULIE turns to look at STU in the bed. The certain knowledge that he was

about to propose is like a knife in her heart. KIMMY feels bad as well,

having let the cat out of the bag, but before they can hash it out -

VOICE FROM BEHIND

Mrs. Brewster? Julie? I'm Dr. Edelstein.

Cheery DR. EDELSTEIN enters. He shakes hands with the women, then checks

STU's readouts, making notations on his clipboard.

DR. EDELSTEIN

Vital signs have stabilized. That's good.

KIMMY:

Can you give us a realistic sense of my

brother's chances?

DR. EDELSTEIN

He's held on this far. We can't do much but wait

and see.

KIMMY:

But these...machines are what's keeping him

alive, is that right?

This remark sends a shiver down JULIE's spine, but she keeps silent.

DR. EDELSTEIN

At the moment, yes.

KIMMY:

Can you give me a realistic idea...of how long

this is going to last?

DR. EDELSTEIN

Comas are unpredictable. He could wake up today,

tomorrow, a month from now...

KIMMY:

Honey, I have to clarify this. The thing is, Dr.

Edelstein, my brother has an absolute horror of

doctors - hospitals - needles - all of it -

JULIE:

Kimmy, he doesn't know what's going on. He

doesn't even know he's in a -

KIMMY:

Please, Julie. This is not easy for me. Our

father took a long time to die. A long time. It

just about killed us all. And Stu and I made a

pact that when our time came - we wouldn't let

it drag out.

JULIE:

It's too soon even to - talk about that!

KIMMY:

Give me a date, Doctor.

DR. EDELSTEIN

Three months.

(pause)

There's always some brain damage. But at three

months...the chances of coming back shrink

dramatically with every day.

KIMMY:

I want him to have every chance, Doctor. We can

certainly give it...three months.

No one says anything. But both women look at STU, and then at each

other, and everyone knows exactly where everyone else stands. JULIE has

a sinking feeling that STU is working on a 3-month deadline.

DISSOLVE TO:

INSERT - TELEVISION SCREEN

A beauty pageant - shapely INGENUES in EVENING GOWNS being introduced by

an EMCEE with enormous teeth.

EMCEE:

And now the last of our five finalists...Miss

Michigan...GEORGE T. WILLOUGHBY!

GEORGE is a pudgy shmoe with a small pencil mustache who's wearing

glasses, a necktie, and NOTHING ELSE. He steps forward, holding a

briefcase in front of his crotch, looking EXTREMELY MORTIFIED.

EMCEE:

And now George will give us his analysis of

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle as it

pertains to third-world economics!!

CAMERA PULLS BACK - and we realize we're in:

INT. COMA BAR - NIGHT

where BULL the BARTENDER and a number of PATRONS are watching GEORGE's

nightmare on the TV mounted over the bar.

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