Narrator Paddy Chayefsky: "The intern who admitted Mr. Guernsey, however, accepted the diagnosis and prescribed morphine, a drug suitable for angina... In point of fact, the patient was in CO2 narcosis..." (0:00)
Nurse Perez tells another nurse, "Maybe I’m going crazy..."
”Isn’t room 806 the patient Guernsey?”
”This is the nuttiest thing I ever saw.” (0:05)
Dr. Brubaker tells Dr. Herbert Block, "Marty stopped me in the hall yesterday,.. said you sounded suicidal."
”Go down to Montego Bay, get drunk...”
Block: ”A standard case of menopausal melancholy.”
Block: ”I don’t want to see a psychiatrist. Stop worrying about me.” (0:09)
Head of nurses Mrs. Christie tells Block, “... the patient Guernsey was down for 25 mg. of Sparine..."
Block: ”... nurse Perez went in and sedated the patient Guernsey...” (0:12)
An administrator asks Block, "Which Dr. Einhorn, ophthalmology or psychiatry?"
”Psychiatry.” (0:16)
Block tells psychiatrist Einhorn, "I’ve been having periods of acute depression recently."
”I can remember entertaining suicidal thoughts as a college student.”
”Obviously sadomasochistic dependency... I’ve got a seventeen year old daughter... got arrested last week at a rock festival for pushing drugs.”
Einhorn: ”How serious are your suicidal speculations, Herb?”
Block: ”Well, I amuse myself with different ways of killing myself that don’t look like suicide.”
Einhorn: ”Are you impotent?” (0:16)
A patient tells a doctor in the emergency room, "Telescope sights, they follow me everywhere. Three big black men, naked, completely exposed, right in the street..."
A nurse asks Sally from billing: ”Is that a concussion” (0:23)
A physician tells Mead, "Dr. Kish has been driving me nuts about the OR schedule." (0:26)
Milton Mead tells his patient brother Willie Mead, "... you’re the one who phoned me in a panic..."
Milton asks Willie’s wife, ”Marilyn, will you talk some sense into this lunatic?”
Marilyn: ”He’s a lunatic.”
Milton: ”I’ll get you a tranquilizer.” (0:27)
Block tells the residents and students, "I wonder if there might not be some correlation between hepatic tuberculosis and drug addiction." (0:28)
Resident physician Brubaker tells Block, referring to patient Edmund Drummond, "He is at the moment comatose and requires intravenous feeding and meds."
”Welbeck turned up half stoned...”
”All vital signs are normal now, except he’s comatose”
Block: ”In short... in the space of one week, we... reduce him to coma...”
”You know, Brubaker, last night I sat in my hotel room... contemplating suicide... if there were an oven around here, I’d stick my head in it.”
Referring to two physicians, ”I’ll defrock those two cannibals.” (0:30)
Joe asks Block, "You think we have a mad killer stalking the halls of the hospital? Presumably Dr. Ives died of a heart attack, and Schaefer in a diabetic coma..." (0:35)
Nurse: "Mr. Mead, I have an injection for you." (0:37)
Barbara Drummond tells Block, referring to her father Edmund, "He was... a sober Methodist. One evening... he... suddenly found himself speaking in tongues... One day, I brought the Indian boy home just as my father was sinking to his knees... in one of his trances."
Bock: ”... you come in and tell me some demented story about your father’s religious conversion.”
Barbara: ”You see, I’d been hitting the acid pretty regularly at that time. I had achieved a few minor sensory deformities, some suicidal despair... I took up with... a portly psychiatrist, explained I was generated by an unresolved lust for my father... I cracked up... There was talk of institutionalizing me... My father is, of course, as mad as a hatter.”
Bock: ”I've been impotent for years.”
”What the hell is wrong with being impotent? Kids are more hung up on sex than the victorians... [referring to his mother and his son] When she died he didn’t even come to the funeral... Haven’t seen him since... You can’t even get it up anymore... If there is a despised, misunderstood minority in this country, it is us poor impotent bastards. Well I’m impotent, and I’m proud of it. Impotence is beautiful, baby. Power to the impotent.”
”...when I say impotent, I don’t mean merely limp... When I say impotent, I mean I’ve lost.. my purpose... That’s what I mean when I say impotent.”
”That’s all I need now is clinical insight, some cockamamie, twenty-five-year-old acid head is gonna reassure me about the menopause now.” (0:44)
Block uses his belt as a tourniquet and injects himself.
Barbara: ”What are you shooting, doc?”
“It occurred to me... that you really were suicidal...”
Bock rages. (0:55)
Block tells Barbara, referring to her father Edmund, "There’s no reason to presume brain damage... he could very well come out of that coma at any time."
Barbara: ”Punched a couple of holes in your crusade for universal impotence...”
”... stampeding in one hideous suicidal mass into the sea.”
Block: ”I raped you in a suicidal rage.”
”You’re certifiable. Half the time you’re a perfectly intelligent young woman...”
Barbara: ”So how come eight hours ago you were trying to kill yourself with an overdose of potassium?”
”Utterly mad, I know... You did try to kill yourself last night.” (0:59)
A hospital official tells reporters, "... responsible leaders of the community approved the building of our new drug rehabilitation center."(1:06)
An administrator tells surgeon Welbeck, ”You’re the fellow with the Medicaid collecting business.” (1:08)
Protestor: "The issue at hand is the control of drug addiction" (1:08)
Mr. Mead tells the nurses, "You know, I hallucinated last night. I hallucinated there was an Indian doing a war dance."
Nurse: ”You weren’t hallucinating.” (1:09)
Anesthesiologist Dr. Chu: "Some jerk switched the nitrous oxide and the gas lines."
Chu tells surgeon Dr. Mallory, ”I may be crazy, doctor, but I don’t think this is your patient.” (1:12)
Bock tells head of nurses Mrs. Christie, "The malpractice here is monumental." (1:13)
Chu: "I thought it was funny that when they brought her in, she was out cold."
Dr. Mallory: ”I’ve already got one malpractice suit pending...” (1:16)
Barbara: "I can’t make it up here, Herf, I’ll crack up. I can retain my sanity only in a simple society." (1:17)
Bock tells another physician, "Every time I try to find somebody in this hospital, they either died of a heart attack in emergency or anesthesia shock in the operating room."
”He died yesterday of an overdose of insulin.” (1:19)
Bock tells Barbara, referring to Edmund, "He got a dialysis nurse, name of Campanella to die of anesthesia shock on an operating table... your father’s not the helpless comatose we thought he was. Well, don’t look at me like I’m the one who’s crazy. Ask your crazy father."
Edmond: ”They all three died by their own hands...” He continues delusional talk.
”I was to kill... and the dialysis nurse, Miss Campanella, whose negligence caused my coma.” (1:21)
Schaeffer tells his nurse lover: "Don’t worry." (1:24)
Drummond continues his story, "... he was... mislaid among... the teenage suicide, the paranoids, drunks... the overdosed addicts... concussions... the whole wounded madhouse of our times.”
”... last night I coshed Miss Campanella with a sandbag, sedated her with Thorazine...”
”Well, at X-ray, a sedated body lying around unattended for five hours wouldn’t seem unusual."
”She died officially of anesthesia shock.”
Barbara tells Bock, ”If you turn him in, they’ll just cage him in the Rockland State Hospital for the criminally insane.”
Bock: ”I’ll give him a shot of something to knock him out.” (1:26)
Edmond tells patient Meade, ”You’re hallucinating again.” (1:29)
Block tells Welbeck, "Eight days ago you showed up half-stoned for a simple nephrectomy..." (1:29)
Mead tells Milton, "I’ll tell you something else about this crazy place you’ve got here... That’s the kind of crazy place you’re running here, Milton... Milton, this is a crazy place.
”I thought I was going crazy.”
“He says, ‘You're’ hallucinating. I’m hallucinating, right?”
”You’re not going to leave me alone in this crazy place.” (1:30)
Milton tells Block, "I’m not going to try to tell you this crazy story my brother just told me." (1:31)
Mead: "I’m getting out of this nuthouse." (1:33)
Dr. Morse: "All right, let me have a cc. of Adrenalin and an intracardiac needle." (1:36)