Blue Steel and the Left Hand
My mother had a drinking buddy named Lucille, though most folks called her Blue Steel. They met while my mother was taking night classes at Wilson Teachers College. Whenever Lucille came over, she brought a green bottle of Cutty Sark whiskey—and she wouldn’t leave until it was empty. Lucille was never in any shape to drive, even sober. The dents on her car told the truth better than she ever could. One night, after a long drinking session, she tried to drive herself home and ended up going the wrong way down a one-way street. The head-on collision left her in a coma for two weeks. When she finally woke up, she had no memory of the accident.At first, Lucille seemed the same. Still drank, still laughed loud, still told stories that made no sense. But something was different. There was something about her left hand.
It started acting… strange. It moved like it had a mind of its own. Not just a tremor or twitch—it acted. It didn’t listen to Lucille. And we all saw it.One evening, she came by with her usual Cutty Sark bottle. My mother poured her a glass over ice. With her right hand, Lucille lifted the bottle and filled her glass. But the moment she set it down, her left hand picked up the glass and—deliberately—threw the whiskey onto the floor. She looked embarrassed. “Girl, I’m just a little shaky,” she said, even though we’d all seen how sure that hand had moved. She asked for a cigarette. “My nerves is bad,” she muttered. My mother lit it for her. But just as Lucille took a drag, her left hand snatched the cigarette from her mouth and flung it onto the floor. Without saying another word, she gathered her bottle and her Parliament cigarettes and walked out, stone sober.
Later that night, we heard she’d tried to visit another friend, Minnie, just a few blocks away. But she didn’t make it. That same rogue left hand grabbed the steering wheel mid-drive and veered her car into a parked vehicle. When the police arrived, she was shouting, “The hand did it! The hand did it!”—and swearing she was going to kill it. Though she refused medical attention, they took her to the hospital anyway. After some first aid, she was transferred to the psych ward for observation. There, she told the doctors the truth: the hand had been ruining her life, keeping her from the things she loved—drinking, smoking, driving without hitting parked cars. She was tired of fighting it. She just wanted her hand to stop.
The doctors listened politely, but privately, they thought she was delusional. The left hand behaved itself under observation, only making Lucille seem crazier by the day. Then an old man on the ward, disheveled and quiet—one who had tried to end his life by walking in front of a city bus—spoke up. He said he used to be a psychiatrist and recognized her condition: Alien Hand Syndrome.
The staff laughed him off. No one believed the man had ever been anything other than a street-corner mutterer. But a week later, the staff watched Lucille’s left hand slap her sharply across the face. A specialist was finally brought in.Diagnosis confirmed: Alien Hand Syndrome. A rare condition. No known cure.
Lucille was released with a partial straightjacket that kept her left arm restrained. She went right back to drinking and smoking with her right hand like nothing had changed. She only had a few more car accidents after that—at least that we knew about. Each time, she blamed the left hand. Said it was still trying to take control.