ABSTRACT
With the jumpers and the drowners, McGee, you don’t pick up a pattern. That’s because a jumper damned near always makes it the first time, and a drowner is usually almost as successful, about the same rate as hangers. They get cut down maybe as rarely as the drowners get pulled out. So the patterns mostly come from the bleeders and the pill-takers and the shooters. Funny how many people survive a self-shooting. But if they don’t destroy a chunk of their brain, they get a chance at a second try. Like the bleeders cut themselves again, and the pill-takers keep trying. It’s always patterns. Never change. They pick the way that they want to go and keep after it until they make it. A pill-taker doesn’t turn into a jumper, and a drowner won’t shoot himself. Like they’ve got one picture of dying and that’s it and there’s no other way of going. (John MacDonald, The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper, 1968, p. 102)
