Once, just one time that I can remember, four or five years back, did it go any different. The doctor had finished his spiel, and the nurse had opened right up with, "Now. Who will start? Let out those old secrets." And she'd put all the Acutes in a trance by sitting there in silence for twenty minutes after the question, quiet as an electric alarm about to go off, waiting for somebody to start telling something about themselves. Her eyes swept back and forth over them as steady as a turning beacon. The day room was clamped silent for twenty long minutes, with all of the patients stunned where they sat. When twenty minutes had passed, she looked at her watch and said, "Am I to take it that there's not a man among you that has committed some act that he has never admitted?" She reached in the basket for the log book. "Must we go over past history?"
That triggered something, some acoustic device in the walls, rigged to turn on at just the sound of those words coming from her mouth. The Acutes stiffened. Their mouths opened in unison. Her sweeping eyes stopped on the first man along the wall.
His mouth worked. "I robbed a cash register in a service station."
She moved to the next man.
"I tried to take my little sister to bed."
Her eyes clicked to the next man; each one jumped like a shooting-gallery target. "I-one time-wanted to take my brother to bed."
"I killed my cat when I was six. Oh, God forgive me, I stoned her to death and said my neighbor did it."
"I lied about trying. I did take my sister!"
"So did I! So did I!"
"And me! And me!"
It was better than she'd dreamed. They were all shouting to outdo one another, going further and further, no way of stopping, telling things that wouldn't ever let them look one another in the eye again. The nurse nodding at each confession and saying Yes, yes, yes.
Then old Pete was on his feet. "I'm tired!" was what he shouted, a strong, angry copper tone to his voice that no one had ever heard before.
Everyone hushed. They were somehow ashamed. It was as if he had suddenly said something that was real and true and important and it had put all their childish hollering to shame. The Big Nurse was furious. She swiveled and glared at him, the smile dripping over her chin; she'd just had it going so good.
"Somebody see to poor Mr. Bancini," she said. (1.5.75-89)
Big Nurse manipulates the men to spill all their secrets during Group Therapy. Part of her strategy is to turn the men against each other – but her purpose is foiled by the everyday needs of one of the men.