When he reached Goldman’s side, the man was hunched over like he was in pain. The scent of Trina’s burned hair and skin still hung in the air. Had Goldman been hurt by the electrodes when he’d tried to remove them from Trina’s arms? Angel grabbed Goldman’s arms and tried to ask the question, but the words wouldn’t come to his mouth. They always fled when something bad happened so that even the few he could normally get out wouldn’t come out. The sounds that came out instead were angry, animal-like noises, frustratingly incoherent.
Ants still crawled beneath Angel’s skin. He heard Kelly, way on the other side of the room, far and faint, call out to him to stop. He struck out wildly, trying to stop her, trying to head off the shock he knew would be coming. If Goldman would just help him to take off his backpack, the shocks would stop for him too. He could go home and there would be no more shocks. He could put up with the hitting and other pain, if he just didn’t have to be shocked anymore.
He yelled in frustration, holding on to Goldman and trying to show him the marks the electrodes left behind. Goldman would let him go to the doctor too, with no electrodes. They could put cream on his skin where he picked and gouged at it to stop the ants, and he could watch the TV mounted up by the ceiling. Angel had been to the hospital many times, and he liked it when there was a TV.
Then the shocks came. It was too late for Goldman to prevent them. Fire raced through Angel’s body from one location to another. Kelly was pulsing the button so that the shocks didn’t go away, but multiplied like a hundred wasp stings inside his veins.
“Stop!” Goldman shouted. “Just leave him alone. I’m okay!”
The shocks stopped, the wasps gradually subsiding. Goldman was trying to pull off Angel’s backpack, growling curses. Then his hands were gone. When Angel opened his eyes, squinting through the red haze to see what was going on, Goldman was being pulled away by a couple of security staff, and more stood by to take Angel back to his unit.
Zachary watched them take Angel away, fighting back waves of fury and frustration. Angel was not fighting the security staff who led him away, but he still voiced and groaned. Kelly trailed after them. Zachary felt impotent, on the very edge of being able to understand what Angel was trying to communicate, but unable to interact with him further.
He didn’t understand what had made Angel come after him like that. Maybe he was confused after being shocked. Maybe it was because Zachary was the stranger there and Angel thought he was a threat. Maybe it was simply because he had been the center of attention and Angel had focused in on him.
Once Angel was removed from the lab, the security guards who had pulled Zachary away from Angel let him go. Zachary looked around the room at the pale, frightened faces of the other children.
After seeing three of the children shocked in quick succession, everyone seemed to just be waiting to be attacked or shocked themselves. They didn’t go back to working on their computers, they just kept looking around at each other and at the aides and guards, waiting for it to happen again.
Zachary prodded the tender tissue around his eye where Angel had hit him, already swelling up.
“Are you alright, sir?” one of the security guards asked. “I’m not sure who gave you permission to be in here, but you have to be aware that some of the residents can be violent.”
“Yes, I was aware of that,” Zachary said. Though he had to admit, he hadn’t foreseen being attacked himself. It drove home the message that Mira and Dr. Abato and others had been trying to convey to him; that living with a violent, unpredictable teen or adult was an untenable situation. Even in an institution like Summit, equipped with intensive therapy, aversives, one-on-one aides, and security staff couldn’t guarantee safety.
No one had suggested Quentin might have been killed by another inmate. But if the majority of the doors in his unit were not kept locked, then any of the other residents in the unit could have sneaked into his room during the night and strangled him.
The one hole in that scenario was lack of motive. But did the residents need the same kind of motive as neurotypicals? Hadn’t Angel just attacked Zachary out of the blue for no discernible reason?
Maybe one of them had a beef with Quentin, or maybe they were just acting out of impulse, confusion, or an effort to communicate something.
If the staff knew or suspected that Quentin had been killed by another resident, would they cover it up? Zachary had to think that they would. They were already under scrutiny for their use of aversives and a resident killing another would indicate that their program wasn’t quite as effective at quelling violence as Dr. Abato had claimed. It wouldn’t be hard to convert a third-party strangulation to a suicide. The staff had removed the blanket that had been wrapped around Quentin’s neck, so there was little that could be concluded from the scene. If there had been evidence that it had been another resident, it could have been removed.
“Mr. Goldman!”
Zachary turned around to see Dr. Abato approaching. “I did ask you to stay and wait for me.” Abato looked around. “What’s been going on here?”
One of the guards filled him in on the attack by Angel. Dr. Abato shook his head, but his expression was smug.
“Let’s get you some ice for that,” he suggested, and indicated the direction he and Zachary should walk. “I’m afraid you’ve just had a crash course in what we deal with every day here. I did my best to warn you, to explain the type of problems we are dealing with, but that’s not quite the same as when it walks up and hits you in the face.” He chuckled at his own turn of phrase. “Quite literally, in some cases. Like our residents, you need to learn to follow instructions. This wouldn’t have happened if you stayed put.”
“It just would have happened to someone else,” Zachary argued. “Angel was upset because he was shocked by mistake. And the girl who they meant to shock, her device malfunctioned, and it kept shocking her. She had electrical burns. I had to help get them off of her…”
“There will always be equipment malfunctions,” Abato sighed. “As I’m sure anyone who uses computers knows well. She’ll be taken care of, and she’ll be just fine. If it helps, you should know that the pain sensation is quite different for people with autism than it is for you or me. You’d be amazed at some of the injuries I have seen where the resident doesn’t even seem to know that they are hurt. They don’t have the same connection to their body as we do. So even though this was a terrible thing to happen to her, she’s probably already forgotten all about it.”
“Her skin was burned and blistered!”
“As I say, the severity of the injury really doesn’t seem to have an impact. Sometimes a resident goes quiet, and you really don’t know what the problem is, because they don’t act sick or hurt. Then you do an exam and find that they have a broken bone or ruptured appendix and never tried to tell anyone.”
Zachary tried to square this with what he had seen in his few visits to Summit. The electric shocks certainly seemed to cause pain. The kids that he had seen shocked reacted immediately, crying out, going rigid, even falling to the floor. They didn’t look like unfeeling zombies.
But the girl had initially laughed when she was shocked. Abato had suggested Angel might be seeking the shocks rather than avoiding them.
And Lovaas… what had Lovaas said? He had said something along the lines of some children being rewarded by negativity and punishment, so that the parent or therapist had to be very angry and hard on them to get the proper results, and that weeks or months of such intense therapy could be taxing on the parent. Poor parents, having to be so hard on their kids. Zachary shook his head, thinking about the arrogance of such a statement.
“Angel is one of those that I have concerns about,” Dr. Abato said, though Zachary hadn’t asked. “You saw how difficult it is to get his compliance, even with multiple shocks. We have a little engineering company that helps us to work out problems with our electronics, and they’re working on a device that is more powerful that our little units. More al
ong the lines of the stun belts they use for prisoners when they go to courts or have disciplinary problems. I am trying to get authorization to introduce them into our program for problem students like Angel. But so far,” he gave a little shrug, “no luck getting the necessary approvals.”
Zachary said nothing. Abato gave a shrug.
“But parents will have their way. Sooner or later, the bureaucrats in their little glass towers will be forced to see the reality of the situation. That these kids need stronger measures. That they’re not the same as we are. They are physiologically different. If we’re going to achieve any progress with them, we need to be able to do whatever it takes. However unpalatable that might be.”
Zachary stared down at his feet as he walked down the hall with the man who had to be the biggest lunatic in the asylum. “It seems like the devices they have on now do enough damage. I can’t imagine anyone approving something more powerful.”
“But that’s just the point, don’t you see? The damage occurs when you have to keep shocking repeatedly. Like Trina’s ESD malfunctioning. You don’t get damage from one shock. If you can give just one shock; one shock that is enough to get their attention and stop them from harmful behavior, then you don’t have to shock them again. They learn the first time. Do you know how much faster it is to train a dog with a shock collar? There’s no comparison! Why would anyone train any other way? If you can give one shock and get compliance, it changes the child’s life. It changes everyone’s lives.”
They arrived in a first aid room, and Abato went to a mini-fridge and retrieved an ice pack for Zachary. “There, that should help.”
Zachary put it over his face. The cool pack made his throbbing face feel a hundred times better.
“You said this is one of the only facilities like this in the country,” he said.
“Yes.” Dr. Abato drew himself up proudly. “That’s right.”
“Where do all of the other kids go?”
Abato shook his head. “Excuse me… what?”
“All of the other kids with autism. Kids who are violent like Quentin or Angel. Or who are adults now, not teenagers. Where do they call go? They can’t all come here.”
“Well, no!” Abato laughed. “I think we’d have to expand quite a bit for that. Where do they go…? They go to institutions, ninety-nine percent of the time. Because family members don’t want them in their homes. They can’t live independently, and they can’t live with their families. It’s too dangerous. So an institution. Like Summit, but not like Summit. Because they don’t have a progressive program like ours, so they can’t actually break kids of violence.”
Zachary nodded. Abato motioned to a couple of tubular chairs clustered around a break room table and they both sat down.
“Because they are violent, they have to be kept in isolation. There are no classes, no reward rooms, no socialization. A locked cell that they only see the outside of if they need to go see the doctor. Sometimes restraints to keep them from hurting themselves. Or, since the family tend to prefer it, put them on medications that reduce violent behaviors. Antipsychotics, anti-anxiety pills, sedatives. They drug them into a stupor, so they can’t do anything. They can’t form a thought. They can’t carry through an action. They probably can’t stand up or sit down without assistance. Kids like Quentin and Angel become zombies. Their parents don’t like it. They don’t like to lose their kids. So they pull them from those places and try to get them in here.”
“There isn’t anything in between?”
“Where is the in-between? We use ABA to train them to behave. Others use physical or chemical restraints to keep them from harming themselves or others. There is no middle ground, no other way to overcome the violent behaviors.”
“It just seems like… there are so many people with autism or other disorders… they’re not all in institutions.”
“Ones that are that severe are. You can’t keep a child like that home.” Abato wiped a hand over his face, frowning. “Though, there is one other option some parents take.”
Zachary didn’t like the sound of that or Abato’s foreboding expression. He knew that Abato, with his flair for the dramatic, was waiting for Zachary to ask what it was. He hated to give him the satisfaction, but Abato was waiting.
“What?” Zachary finally prompted.
“You hear about it in the news more and more,” Abato drew out the tension. “I don’t know whether it is happening more, or if we are just hearing more of it due to modern communication systems. But more and more, you hear about parents who are killing their children. Especially children disabled by autism.”
Zachary had known he would regret asking.
“Maybe it is something that used to be kept under wraps,” Abato said. “Socially acceptable euthanasia. A pillow over their face while they sleep. Poison. Carbon monoxide. Throwing them off of a bridge. Parents are very creative. When they get to the end of their ropes, when there are no more services, no one else to help, they are burdened with a child who will drag them down for the rest of their lives…”
“You sound like you sympathize with them,” Zachary snapped. Acid burned in his chest. How could anyone think that there was any excuse?
“Of course I do. I see them every day, these parents who have been ground down and crushed by year after year of taking care of a child—or children—who are emotional sinkholes. They pour everything into them and get nothing back. Or maybe their reward is a black eye,” Abato nodded at Zachary’s face. “Or a broken arm. Or a ruptured kidney. Do I think it’s right to kill your child? Of course not! My whole job—my whole life—is about helping these children. And their families. I will do whatever it takes to save every child I can from being drugged into a stupor, restrained twenty-three hours a day, or killed by the people who are supposed to be protecting them.”
Zachary wished he could tell himself that Abato was exaggerating. That children like Angel and Quentin were not being consigned to either live in a hellhole or be killed by their caregivers. But he knew it was true. Every time he saw such a story in the news, his first reaction was a sense of relief that his mother had made the choice to break up the family and put the children into foster care rather than killing them. He’d read, with horrified fascination, the stories of mothers who drowned their children one at a time in the bathtub. Or stabbed them in their beds. Or drove them into the lake. Everyone nodded gravely and commented about what a hard row she’d had to hoe. Too many children. Children with handicaps or special needs. Children who were violent and too big to handle any longer.
Zachary’s mother had lived it. Six children too close together in age. An abusive marriage. Grinding poverty. No relatives to help. Social programs that had already been tapped out. Then the final straw… the house burning down. Being left with no home and no possessions.
She could have killed them, just like those other mothers who had chosen family annihilation. Many of them had not faced as many challenges as she had. But for some reason, she hadn’t. She’d given up on them, rejected them, but she hadn’t killed them.
Zachary’s first reaction was always relief and a sense of gratitude that she hadn’t.
But often, the feeling was followed by a sense of hopelessness. Looking back over his life and all of the trauma and suffering that had followed her choice. Had she been weak to choose to leave them to someone else to take care of instead of dispatching them like a litter of unwanted kittens? His pain and suffering could have ended three decades earlier, instead of being in the position he was in; alone, beaten down, hopeless, and once again homeless.
Dr. Abato nodded gravely. “We have to put a stop to it, Mr. Goldman. I have to save as many of these children as I can, by whatever means I can devise. To hell with rules and regulations. Somebody has to do something for them.”
His eyes were dark as burning coals, a lone voice crying out in the wilderness.
Chapter Fifteen
H
e was headed back to his car when h
e saw the woman standing a few feet outside the doors, a cigarette between her fingers. Dark hair pulled into a smooth, sleek ponytail. Young and pretty with perfectly-applied makeup. A common sight. Except for the one detail that Zachary’s shutter-quick eyes immediately took in. There was no smoke coming from her cigarette.
He saw the way that her head turned slightly in his direction when he exited the building. He slowed a little, waiting to see whether she was going to confront him, but she didn’t. Would she follow him to his car? Had she already planted a bomb or tracking device on his car and stayed to watch the fun?
Zachary measured the distance from the woman not smoking to the protesters. Was she one of them? Camouflaged by her nicotine habit so that she could get right up to the building when security was supposed to be keeping the protesters back fifty feet, at the property line? But she didn’t look over at them. Didn’t flash them any sign or signal.
Zachary stopped and patted his pockets as if he were looking for smokes of his own. “Do you have another one?” he asked, giving up on finding anything. “I’m trying to give it up by not carrying them with me, but… after this place… I need a hit.”
She looked nervous about Zachary talking to her, but she complied, pulling out her own pack of cigarettes and handing one to Zachary.
“You’re right,” she said cautiously. “It’s… quite the place.”
She didn’t stare at his black eye or ask him what had happened, which suggested she already knew. Zachary held the cigarette she had handed him and didn’t light it up or ask her for a light. They both stood there with their unlit cigarettes. Her face started to get pink. She was very attractive. Very young. It was probably her first job out of college.
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