Coffee leaned forward to add, “But every living thing needs to eat, Pepper. You can keep something in a cage, but then you have to feed it. Now look at us here. The food makes us fat. The drugs make us slow. We’re cattle. Food. For it. And best of all, for New Hyde, no one notices when people like us end up dead.”
Behind the group, a new skirmish unfolded. Mr. Mack’s half hour of television privileges had passed. This was as much of a rule on the unit as the medication schedule. The only way to keep so many different patients occupied. It was Sammy’s turn to hold the remote. But Mr. Mack wouldn’t let it go. He and Sammy were now tugging at either end of it like it was the key to New Hyde’s front door.
The orderly intervened. “Your time is up, Mr. Mack.”
“I got one minute left! I got one minute!”
“You got milk breath!” Sammy yelled back at him. “And your teeth are yellow!”
Behind Sammy, Sam added, “And those are his good qualities!”
Frank Waverly, Mr. Mack’s friend, nodded at this. Even though Mr. Mack was his best friend, he couldn’t disagree with Sam’s point.
Now the orderly clomped over to the tables to break up their nonsense.
Dorry, Loochie, and Coffee paid this chaos no mind. They were on another plane. Dorry leaned in to speak, snatching that wretched cookie off Pepper’s tray and dropping it into her lap before opening her mouth. “I’m going to tell you the truth about what you saw last night.” She glared at the others. “Not stories.”
She stole the cookies off Coffee’s tray, then Loochie’s with surprising quickness and dropped them into her lap.
“I’ve been here longer than Coffee and Loochie combined. I have the distinction of being the second patient ever committed to Northwest. And that thing you saw the other night? He was the first. Let me tell you this, with no ambiguity. He’s a man. Deformed. Very troubled. Very angry. But just a man.”
Pepper could feel that breath burning his ear again. Could see those white eyes, missing their pupils. Felt the fur. “I’ve never seen a man like that,” he argued.
Loochie and Coffee nodded solemnly.
Dorry shook her head. “I’m telling you what I know.”
The orderly stood over Mr. Mack now and put his hand out in a gesture common to any parent. Exasperated authority. Mr. Mack looked at his wristwatch and counted out loud. “Nine … eight … seven … six …”
When he reached zero, he opened his hand and held the remote out to Sammy, but the orderly snatched it first to turn the volume down. When Sammy got her turn, she chose an episode of American Chopper.
She and Sam pulled their chairs right up under the screen. Even the patients who didn’t like the show remained in their seats and watched to pass some time. On the screen a burly guy with a graying mustache slapped the side of a silver motorcycle, grinned at the camera, and said, “This beast looks like it was forged in hell!”
Coffee rose from his chair. “Why don’t we just show him?”
Dorry shook her head. “Not yet.”
Pepper said, “Show me what?”
Loochie picked the green apple off her tray. She bit into it and chewed.
“Show you where it lives,” she said.
The four of them walked down Northwest 5 as a pack. Loochie and Coffee in the lead, Dorry and Pepper behind.
Dorry said, “What’s on Northwest One?”
Pepper said, “The exit.”
Loochie said, “That’s no exit.”
Coffee said, “It’s just an entrance, for us.”
Dorry asked, “What’s on Northwest Two?”
Pepper said, “Male patients.”
Dorry asked, “What’s on Northwest Three?”
Pepper said, “Female patients.”
As they entered the room at the hub of the unit, Dorry said, “And what’s on Northwest Five?”
Pepper said, “Television lounge.”
Loochie turned back to him and the pom-poms on her knit cap bounced. “We would’ve accepted smoker’s area, too.”
They ignored the staff members sitting inside the nurses’ station just as the staff members ignored them. They were in two overlapping realities.
Dorry touched Pepper’s shoulder to stop him. “So what’s left?”
“Northwest Four,” Pepper said. “You told me not to go anywhere near it.”
Loochie and Coffee and Dorry and Pepper gathered at the threshold of that hallway. Northwest 4 looked like all the others. Eggshell-white walls, beige tiled floors, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. There were doors running down either side, but here was the first difference: None of the doors had knobs. Even from the lip of Northwest 4, Pepper could see door after door with the handle removed and the lock sealed. A whole hallway of rooms that were never used.
At the far end of Northwest 4 sat a large stainless-steel door.
It looked like the little cousin of the secure door in Northwest 1. Stainless steel instead of cast iron, sleek where that other one was rough. But it, too, had a shatterproof window. The lights of the room behind that door were out. Totally dark.
“There,” Dorry said quietly.
Loochie lifted one foot. “Watch this.”
Her baby-blue Nike crossed the threshold of the hallway, and instantly Miss Chris called out from the nurses’ station.
“Off-limits.”
Loochie winked at Pepper and planted her foot over the line. She lifted her back foot and brought that one over, too. There she stood, just barely, in Northwest 4.
Scotch Tape stood up and leaned his elbows on the desktop of the nurses’ station.
“Loochie,” he growled. “You heard what Miss Chris said?”
Loochie stepped back.
“They protect it,” Coffee whispered.
Pepper couldn’t look away from the stainless-steel door one hundred feet down Northwest 4. It bent the light cast down from the ceiling so that something seemed to move behind the plastic window. A figure on the other side, or just a reflection of something on this side? Pepper stared at the small window. His legs stiffened. His face turned warm.
He felt watched.
Then he heard his own voice in his head. It was saying, No, no, no, no, no. Not disbelief but refusal.
“I don’t belong here,” he told the other three. “This isn’t my fight.”
His spoken voice sounded so small. He watched Dorry and Loochie and Coffee deflate with disappointment. A story came to him, an explanation.
“In 1969,” he told them, “the Doors performed at the Dinner Key Auditorium in Miami. About twelve thousand fans showed up to hear them play. Jim Morrison was drunk.”
“You were there?” Loochie asked. “You been to Miami?” She sounded jealous.
“No,” Pepper admitted. “I was born in ’69. I read about this. In an interview with Ray Manzarek, their keyboardist.”
Pepper looked to Coffee and Dorry and Loochie, but none of them seemed to recognize the name. Pepper decided not to be disappointed in them for this.
“Morrison performed, but he didn’t sing much. Mostly he yelled at the crowd. And at a certain point he told the crowd he knew why they’d really come to the show that night. ‘You want to see my cock, don’t you?!’ ”
Dorry snorted, a little laugh.
“That’s what he said,” Pepper continued. “Then Morrison waved his shirt in front of his crotch and pulled it away and said, ‘See it? Did you see it?’ ”
Coffee looked confused.
Loochie said, “This doesn’t sound like a very good band.”
“Listen to me. Four days later, the city of Miami issued a warrant for Morrison’s arrest. After a trial, Morrison was convicted of two misdemeanors. Open profanity, I think. And indecent exposure. And yet, Ray Manzarek swears Morrison never exposed himself. No pictures were ever developed, from a crowd of twelve thousand. And no one ever showed real evidence that the … exposure ever happened. Manzarek called it a mass delusion.”
Pepper stopp
ed for a moment, to let the phrase sink in.
“But even years later, there were hundreds, thousands, who swore they’d seen Morrison’s penis. It didn’t happen, but to them it was still real.”
Loochie and Coffee and Dorry backed away from Pepper. Pepper looked at his feet.
“You understand what I’m saying?”
Dorry nodded and shrugged.
“You’re not one of us,” she said. “Sure. We understand.”
Loochie said, “If I had paid to see that concert, I would’ve got my money back.”
Just that fast, they departed. Coffee slipped into the phone alcove. Dorry returned to her room on Northwest 3, where she slipped those cookies into a plastic bag, a kind of care package she was putting together for another patient, one of the many she took care of at New Hyde. And Loochie wandered back down Northwest 5. Her half hour of TV control would be coming soon and she wanted to watch something stupid and fun, music videos maybe; something to make her forget the story about Jim Morrison’s penis. And how Pepper meant it to say she was seeing something that wasn’t really there. Fuck you, Frankenstein. That’s what Loochie wanted to tell him.
And Pepper? He returned to his room alone.
10
THAT NIGHT, THE big man couldn’t fall asleep. He had the room to himself. Coffee stayed away, in the phone alcove trying the number for Comptroller John Liu. Dorry and Loochie ignored Pepper on line for nighttime meds, and at dinner in the lounge. The other patients seemed to be avoiding him, too. So he went to bed early. Pepper lay in bed for hours, but he couldn’t sleep.
When Dorry, Loochie, and Coffee offered him membership in their conspiracy, he’d looked at those three mental patients and recoiled. The shame made it impossible to doze off. He finally rolled out of bed at one a.m. Didn’t know where he was headed, but he couldn’t lie there anymore.
Pepper reached the nurses’ station and found two staff members behind the desk. A man and a woman, neither he recognized. He walked around the station. He didn’t look down Northwest 4, but as he passed that hallway he felt a pinch in his side, as if he’d been grabbed, but kept walking and slipped free from the phantom touch.
Four patients sat in the television lounge. Even at this late hour the room wasn’t empty. The flat screen was on but with the sound set surprisingly low. One young guy had his chair pulled right up under the screen. He had a pockmarked face and stringy brown hair that almost looked like a toupee. The television’s closed-captioning had been turned on, white letters on a black background filled the bottom half of the screen. The guy in the chair scanned the text. Every fourth word was misspelled or mistaken. Protesters around the Middle East were apparently causing Arab governments to “triple.”
The guy in the chair said, “Topple.”
The other three patients in the lounge were women. Three women at three different tables, leafing through stacks of magazines and newspapers. Their lips moved as they scanned the pages.
“Study hall?” Pepper asked.
One of the women, with long reddish hair pulled up into a bun, looked at Pepper, then back down at her copy of Outside magazine.
Pepper swayed there a moment. The vibe of the lounge, of New Hyde, seemed so much more peaceful at night. Not just lower volume, but also more thoughtful. Look at all these people reading. The lounge seemed like a library now.
Pepper hovered another minute before the redhead looked at him and said, “You don’t belong here.”
Pepper looked over his shoulder, as if she must’ve been addressing someone else.
The women at the other tables—one Chinese, the other Jewish—finally looked at Pepper. The guy sitting under the television even turned around in his chair.
The redhead said, “We hear you’re not like us.”
Pepper felt completely exposed and he crossed his arms.
“I didn’t say that,” he pleaded.
But just as quickly they ignored him again. The point had been made. Pepper shuffled out of the television lounge as quickly as he could, wondering if he looked as red as his face felt. He was a pariah on a psych unit. He couldn’t imagine a lower state.
He reached the nurses’ station again, staff members working inside. He heard one of them yawn in there. They were tired and preoccupied. Without another thought, Pepper turned right. He crossed the threshold of Northwest 4 without losing a step.
He marched toward the stainless-steel door.
The window in the silver door remained as dark as it had been that afternoon. He wanted to what? Touch it? Open it? He didn’t know yet. As Pepper moved closer to it, the air itself felt warmer.
Pepper moved even closer. In lieu of a plan, he focused on the tangible details ahead. The silver door had a handle. The silver door had two locks. Now his face felt as if he’d walked through a cloud of steam. Moist. Sweaty. He smelled something new. Like the dirt of a freshly dug grave. At this point Pepper couldn’t stop himself. He felt that pinch again, a grip closed around him. Was he walking toward the silver door, or being pulled?
“What the fuck!”
Pepper only registered those words after he’d been grabbed. The orderly on duty yoked Pepper from behind. Pepper reached out and, because his arms were so long, his fingertips grasped the door handle, just for a moment. The metal was so hot it burned his fingers.
The orderly, a big man, too, dragged Pepper backward down Northwest 4. Away from the stainless-steel door. “We got rules!” the orderly shouted in Pepper’s ear. “You got no business in this hallway! You leave that door be!”
The farther they moved from the silver door, the less heat Pepper felt against his skin. The scent of fresh dirt dissipated and was replaced by that stale, hospitalized anti-smell again.
And the farther Pepper moved backward down Northwest 4, the greater his relief. His heart thrummed in his rib cage. Deep breaths expanded his lungs. He felt like he’d just missed being hit by a car, like the orderly had saved him. Without quite meaning to, Pepper laughed with gratitude.
The nurse appeared and she had the needle.
She remained silent, assessing Pepper, the wild affect on his face. His laughter didn’t help his case. She watched him with displeasure.
The nurse, the orderly, and Pepper moved past the nurses’ station and down Northwest 2. The doors of other patients’ rooms creaked open. The trio of nurse, orderly, and unruly patient blasted into Pepper’s room.
The orderly shook Pepper as if they were fighting, but Pepper wasn’t resisting. Au contraire, mon minimum-wage frère. Pepper felt a relief that he didn’t fully understand, and gratitude. He’d been about to do something very stupid. He felt sure of that now. And this orderly had saved him. Thank you! That’s what he was trying to say. But Pepper couldn’t explain. The only sounds coming out of his mouth were laughter and deep gulping coughs as he tried to take in air and talk. He seemed like a maniac.
But it was all still salvageable. Pepper would accept the needle. He’d been through that once before. He’d lose more time, but if that was the worst, he could bounce back. After this, he could avoid, all together, the games patients played on the unit. Whatever was on the other side of that door had nothing to do with Pepper and the world he planned on returning to as soon as he could. Let the patients tell all the spooky stories they liked, he would snub them just like they’d snubbed him tonight. Who gave a shit? He could weather it. He could ride out this time at New Hyde if he’d stop getting overwhelmed, emotional, and stick to the larger point. He’d tried and failed before, but he’d really do it now. All systems had their glitches, and Pepper’s mistaken commitment to New Hyde was just one of them. It would work itself out, and he’d be released. He believed this. He knew this. He just had to keep the bigger picture in mind. Like now, stop fighting. Step one in getting on the staff’s good side. Accept the needle—that was step two. After all, things couldn’t get any worse than that.
But then Pepper noticed the orderly had straps with him.
Who were t
hose for?
The orderly pushed Pepper onto his bed and pulled Pepper’s arms down to his sides. He tied Pepper’s wrists to the bed frame with the straps. First the right. Then the left.
The orderly tied up each of Pepper’s ankles next.
Wait.
Wait.
They didn’t need to do this. He was going to be compliant from now on. Didn’t they understand?
The orderly shouted, “We been nice to you, my man! But you ain’t been nice to us.”
“No,” Pepper muttered. “Please.”
His arms and legs pulled at the straps. He wasn’t resisting. It was a reaction beyond his control. These people were tying him down. What else were his limbs going to do but buckle?
The staff members didn’t see it that way.
The nurse needed three tries to hit the vein in his forearm. The first two times she was just stabbing him. When she finally injected a big dose of Diazepam into Pepper’s bloodstream, the doorway of his room was crowded with male patients, watching.
As Pepper faded, he scanned the faces in the doorway. Was Dorry really there? Had she snuck down Northwest 2 so she could see?
The nurse and orderly watched Pepper. Both were huffing from the scuffle. They scowled at him. Pepper pulled at the restraints, but they held.
Now the nurse and orderly shooed the patients from the doorway. They flicked off the lights, left the room, and locked the door behind them.
“Please,” Pepper whimpered in the empty room.
11
PEPPER WOKE UP the next day. His ankles and wrists still bound. This was illegal. According to official guidelines, this should never be allowed. Restraints were acceptable for up to four consecutive hours, then the staff must release the patient. That’s the law. Absolutely. But where were the regulators? A question worth asking in so many fields.
When Pepper had to go to the bathroom he called out for a nurse until Miss Chris heard him and appeared with a bedpan; a plastic bowl with a top shaped like a toilet seat. In her other hand she had a hard plastic pillow the shape and color of a wedge of cheddar cheese. She entered the room and undid one of Pepper’s wrist straps then slid the wedge pillow behind Pepper’s back so he could sit upright. Then she pointed at his butt and said, “Lift.”
The Devil in Silver Page 10