It was during the first hour of 2010 that I resolved to visit my friend Monty Gelstein in the hospital as often as possible. He won’t know I’m there, but I will. And hopefully that good karma will assuage the guilt I feel for putting him there in the first place. I’d never administered electroshock therapy and should have practiced a bit before treating my best friend.

We were in my basement drinking Maker’s Mark and watching the clock erase what was left of 2009 when Monty freaked out.

“Holy fuck!” he exclaimed.

“Dude, what’s your deal?” I asked, lighting a cigarette and poking my tumbler with my index finger to hear the ice cubes knock against the glass.

“It’s necrotizing fasciitis!” he screamed, rolling up his shirt sleeve and pointing to a rash on his inner elbow. “I’m going to fucking die, man!”

“Calm down, Monty, it’s just a little eczema.”

“Calm down? Calm down? I’m being consumed by a flesh-eating disease and you tell me to calm down?”

“Dude, you’re paranoid,” I said. “Come on, relax. You know when your mind’s playing tricks on you. We’ve talked about this. Don’t go down that road.”

Monty was shaking. It was awful to watch. He’d arrived at the intersection of rational and irrational. I had to do something.

“Come on, Monty,” I said, gently grabbing his wrist and leading him up the stairs and out of the basement.

He was sobbing, exhausted from living in constant fear.

I handed him his coat and gloves, put on mine, and led him onto the deck where a light snow was falling.

“Take it easy, dude,” I said softly. “Just lie down on the picnic table.”

Monty followed my directions and stretched out before me, staring through the snowflakes and past the stars. Tears escaped the corners of his eyes. I lit two cigarettes and pushed one into his mouth, which made him stop clenching his teeth.

“I’ll be right back, Monty,” I said, wiping snow from his forehead.

I went inside, took a pair of stainless-steel ice-cream scoops from a kitchen drawer, grabbed a roll of duct tape, and poured more bourbon into my glass. Then I went out the front door, took the jumper cables from the trunk of my Honda, pulled the car alongside the deck, and turned off the engine.

I looked at Monty. He hadn’t moved except to flick the ash from his cigarette. He looked peaceful and defeated, comfortable and resigned.

I propped open the hood of my car, took a healthy drink, and set the tumbler down in a dusting of snow. I hooked the jumper cables to the car battery, put the ice-cream scoops into the claws at the business end, and ran the cables onto the deck.

“OK, Monty,” I said, taking the cigarette from his mouth and flicking it into the snow. “I want you to lift your head up and hold these against your temples.”

I duct-taped the ice-cream scoops to the sides of my friend’s skull and gently lowered his head back onto the table. I dug Monty’s wallet from his jacket pocket, shoved it into his mouth, took a long drag from my cigarette, and flicked the butt in the same direction I’d flicked Monty’s. I exhaled slowly, watching the smoke mix with the snowflakes, and jumped off the deck.

I reached for my glass of bourbon and finished what remained. I looked onto the deck and saw Monty giving me the thumbs-up.

I got into my car and thought about how much voltage I should jolt Monty with. I didn’t have a clue. I remembered the basic routine used during electric-chair executions and figured I could simply substitute RPM for voltage and decrease the numbers by half.

I took a deep breath, started the car, and let the needle on the tachometer hover at 1,000 RPM for 10 seconds. (I remembered that the initial current sent through an electric chair is usually about 2,000 volts.) Then I eased up on the gas, keeping the needle at about 500 RPM for 30 seconds. I was guessing about the timing.

I shut off the engine, leaped out of the car and onto the deck, and stood over Monty’s body. I checked his pulse. He had one. But he smelled like burnt faux-sausage links. Steam rose from his unconscious body. He’d bitten through his wallet like a shark through a surfboard.

I ripped the duct tape from his head, carried him to my car, folded him into the passenger seat, buckled his seat belt, and headed for the hospital.

The doctors in the emergency room asked what had happened.

“I got there just in time,” I said, biting my lip. “Is he going to make it?”

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