by Brian Kirk
Then she glimpsed something on the ground. A path parted between a sea of legs and she saw Eli lying head down, his face turned towards her. His eyes were open, but empty. They looked straight through her. His head was being stomped like a soccer ball as people scrambled over and around him and the police fought to push them back. His body was caught in the middle of the scrum.
Angela shot forward, seeing Eli’s face through tunnel vision. Everything else faded into the distance. She had reached the edge of the scrum when someone grabbed her from behind, wrapping arms around her waist and lifting her up into the air. She kicked her feet and squirmed as she was carried back down the hallway, then thrown into a patient’s room. She landed and spun around.
Crosby was shutting the door. He turned around, leaned back against it and looked down at her. He was breathing heavily. Blood leaked from his nose. She must have hit it with her head as she squirmed to break loose. He wiped a hand across his lip, smearing the blood against his cheek, staining his whiskers red. When he saw the blood on his hand he smiled.
“I see you,” he said. He bounced off the door and stalked towards her. His smile held no humor, his eyes lacked humanity. Crosby was not there. Something else had taken over. “You don’t think I do, but I do.” He pointed at her, accentuating each word with a thrust of his finger. “I. See. You.”
Angela got a knee underneath her and started to rise. She saw Crosby prepare to spring, and froze. She held up her hand. She softened her eyes. “Everyone seems a bit excited right now. Let’s not let our emotions drive our actions, okay? Please, Crosby, take a seat. Let’s talk.” She knew the smile she showed looked more sincere than it felt. It was one of her many skills.
It faltered, though, when he stepped forward and kicked her in the face. She fell backward. Her face felt cold where he had kicked her. She smelled metal and tasted it deep in the back of her throat. She groaned and looked up. He was hovering over her, straddling her with his legs.
“Think I don’t know what’s going on?” he said, peering down from above. His head eclipsed the overhead light, casting his face in shadow. “Think I don’t know what this place is?”
The cold fire of the kick was now a hot throb, a heartbeat inside her head. “Crosby, there’s nothing going on. Please don’t hurt me.”
“Of course that’s what you’d say. But you don’t understand. I see.” He pointed to his eyes with a rigid finger, his lips contorting into a snarl. Spit flew when he screamed, “I see!” He grabbed a fistful of hair and slammed her head against the ground, then brought his foot down in the center of her stomach. “Lock me up in Satan’s lair? Think I don’t know where I am? Think I don’t know why I’m here? But I’m not blind like the others. I see how things really are. I’ve got the divine light to guide me.”
He released her hair and she arched her back, gasping for air. Her throat bulged as it fought for oxygen. Just as she inhaled her first lung-shuddering breath, Crosby hop-stepped and kicked her in the ribs. She rolled into the kick and clutched her side. It didn’t hurt nearly as much as her head, but she wanted to appear beaten, broken. Her hair fell across her face, providing a screen through which to peer. Crosby was still hovering over her, his face a red ball of rage.
He leaned closer. His lips peeled back, revealing clenched rows of bloodstained teeth, and he hissed until his face began to shake. Spittle flew and gnarled veins writhed up the front of his neck. His face looked like it was about to pop from the pressure.
Then he opened his mouth and screamed. An insectile scream beyond the scope of human range that threatened to burst Angela’s ears. It continued, rising in volume, lasting long after he should have run out of air. She was surprised by how loud her whimpering sounded when he finally stopped.
Crosby dropped down on top of her, straddling her with his knees. He put his hands around her throat, curled his fingers and squeezed. He made a sound like hnnnnnnnggghhh as he put all his force behind the choke, biting down on his white-encrusted tongue.
Angela’s eyes bulged open. They felt like they were about to burst. Flecks of black appeared on the edge of her sight and expanded inwards. She began to pray for the first time since she was a little girl. To a God she felt had forsaken her, begging his forgiveness for a life of sin.
The door sprang open. An orderly rushed in. He launched forward and tackled Crosby from behind, ripping his hands from Angela’s throat. They rolled when they hit the ground and Crosby wound up on top. He postured up and began raining punches down from above, striking the orderly on the side of the head and neck.
Angela stumbled to her feet. It felt like a knife was stuck in her side. She shuffled forward, hunched over, and wrapped an arm around Crosby’s neck, allowing the orderly to scoot out from underneath him. Together, they tackled Crosby to the ground and fought to contain him. It took multiple elbows to Crosby’s temple to get him subdued.
“Go get help,” the orderly said, panting. She hesitated, chest heaving. So many thoughts raced through her mind that they canceled each other out.
Crosby stirred, he opened his eyes. They locked on to Angela and he bared his teeth and began struggling again.
“Get the fuck out of here!” the orderly said.
Angela stood and hobbled out the door.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Say that again?” Alex said, crinkling his face as though that would improve his hearing. He had just returned home from the police station. Rachel was upstairs, asleep on their bed. He couldn’t believe it was only 4:30 p.m. The rules of natural law did not seem to apply to time today. He switched the phone to his other ear. “Hold on, I can hardly hear you. Did you say Eli was attacked?”
“No, I was,” Angela said, her voice a raspy whisper. “By Crosby. Eli’s in the hospital, though.”
There were still five unheard messages awaiting Alex on his iPhone. He couldn’t imagine what other blissful news they would bring.
“Look, I’ve got a bit of a situation here myself. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
He canceled the call and closed his eyes. His phone began ringing again and he sent it directly to voice mail. Message number six.
He felt complicit in dramas beyond his comprehension, like he was on the tip of some winding gyroscope that was starting to wobble. He didn’t know how to hold it together or why the responsibility should fall to him. He hadn’t done anything wrong. All he’d tried to do was help. And just when things were starting to get better, some psycho had come along and brought it all to an end. Had killed Jerry. Had murdered his brother.
Why? Alex thought. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and twin images bloomed behind the lids. His brother’s pale-blue face lying against the gurney. His ragged throat split wide. Jerry had never hurt another person in his life. Who would want him dead?
He realized that his father didn’t know. And that he would soon find out. Find out that Jerry had died while under his care.
But he was murdered. It wouldn’t matter. In his father’s eyes, he would somehow be to blame.
Alex opened his eyes and checked the rest of his messages. One was from Angela, another was from the morgue. The hospital where Eli was staying had called. So had a member of Sugar Hill’s executive board—Steve Price, the grandson of one of the founding board members. Steve fancied himself an enterprising entrepreneur, although all he had managed to do up to this point in his life was squander half his trust fund on misguided ventures.
He was also the only other person affiliated with Sugar Hill who knew about his test trials. In fact, he had introduced Alex to an executive with Philax Pharmaceuticals, seeing the potential payout should the medicine ever make it to market. Alex hadn’t spoken with him since his most recent experiment, but he was certain Philax had. Steve’s message was brusque.
Great, Alex thought. Might as well get it over with.
“Hi, Alex,” Stev
e answered right away, sounding serious.
“Steve.”
“Christ, buddy, what a day.”
Alex snorted air through the speaker. “No shit,” he said.
“So, have you seen him yet?”
“Seen who?”
“Eli. Who else?”
“No, not yet.” Alex walked to the wet bar and began fingering bottles. “Actually, I’ve been pretty tied up today with a family emergency. I haven’t heard exactly what happened.”
Steve’s laughter was hesitant at first; then it took on the warm delight of a professional gossip about to pop a virgin ear. “Full-scale riot. Patients and police fighting one another. Eli either fainted or was knocked out. He’s being treated at the hospital for a concussion. One of the social-worker chicks was attacked, almost killed. It’s a full-blown fucking mess, my friend.”
Alex couldn’t understand why Steve was smiling. He could hear it in his voice through the phone.
“What were the police doing there?”
“Arresting one of the orderlies for murder. That’s the icing on the cake.”
Murder? Then it hit him. “Devon,” he said.
“Who?”
“The orderly who was arrested. Was his name Devon?”
“Fuck if I know. Some big-ass black guy is what I heard. Put up some kind of fight.”
Alex shook his head. He was certain that he’d run into Devon on his way over to Jerry’s. While Jerry was still alive. It didn’t make sense.
“You know what this means, don’t you?” Steve said.
Alex didn’t, but he kept quiet.
“Alex?”
“I’m here.”
“Buddy, Eli’s out. He’s completely lost control over the hospital. We’re going to be recommending you as his replacement. It’ll be announced at the board meeting. There will be a bit of transition period, but the job’s basically yours. Congratulations.”
There wasn’t much about the situation that felt celebratory. Perhaps it was time for Eli to move aside, but still. Not under these circumstances. “That’s great,” Alex said, forcing himself to sound enthusiastic.
“Damn right it is. I told you we would make this happen. Now we can finally bring the hospital into the twenty-first century. Speaking of which, how are we coming along with our clinical trials? When will the meds be ready for market?”
Perhaps he hadn’t spoken with the folks at Philax. “Still working through some kinks,” Alex said.
“Shit, Alex,” Steve said. “Damn it, that’s not so good, buddy.”
Alex crunched the phone against his shoulder. Eli has been hospitalized, Angela assaulted, Devon arrested for murder, and this was the bad news? Alex felt the increasing weight of some responsibility he couldn’t quite see.
Steve broke the silence with a sigh. “Look, here’s the deal. It would greatly help your position here if you could hurry things along. Sugar Hill is going to take a major PR hit for this fiasco. We need to respond with a strong statement. Changing medical directors is one thing. Having a medical director who has pioneered one of the greatest therapeutic breakthroughs in the field of psychiatric medicine is quite another. Get the difference?”
“Sure,” Alex said. And if my brother hadn’t just been murdered you’d have the breakthrough you need. Still, the refined formula had worked. At least for a while. “Philax is out, though. I’ve fixed the formula. It’s ready. I just need funding.”
“Philax is out?”
Alex recalled the image of Mr. Connelly’s panic-stricken face. “Ah yes. They’re done.”
“That was my last contact, Alex.” Silence returned.
Another call beeped in and Alex checked Caller ID. It was Angela again. Silence persisted until the phone indicated that she had left a message.
“Well, you’re just going to have to get creative,” Steve said.
“What does that mean?”
“That’s for you to figure out. Here’s the deal. I need you to prove to me that the formula works. You do that and I can get you funding. I can’t get someone to front the research. Not again.”
“But how am I supposed to prove that it works, without someone to fund the research?”
“You’ll have to figure it out. Listen to me. I pushed for you to get this position based on the understanding that you would be introducing this medicine. If that’s not the case, we may have to reconsider our decision. Is that clear?”
The other line beeped again. Alex didn’t even check it. “I’m with you,” he said to Steve and ended the call. Then he grabbed an unopened bottle of rye whiskey from the back of the wet bar and filled a glass to the brim.
“Here’s to me,” he said to the empty room and took a fiery sip.
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was hard to tell who looked more hungover, Alex or his dad. Both of their eyes were bloodshot and swollen, which was fitting for the occasion, although neither had been crying.
Don Drexler hesitated when he entered the viewing room and saw Alex standing in the corner. He scowled and shuffled in. Alex’s mother followed meekly behind.
It had been nearly four years since Alex had been in the same room with his father. He looked shorter than he remembered. His hair had thinned and turned entirely grey. Still, the room took on a charge when he entered, like the formation of a storm cloud.
He walked up to Jerry’s casket, took a brief look inside—Jerry’s burial shirt concealed his sutured neck—then shook his head and turned his back. He walked to the sofa against the far wall and sat. His shoulders slouched and his heavy hands hung loose between his thighs.
Mrs. Drexler approached the casket and placed a kerchief against her nose and began making a series of hitching, high-pitched squeaks.
Alex felt unwanted in their presence. Like an intruder.
“Where’s Rachel?” his father said.
“Home.”
His father smirked as though this were some expected insult. “She was there, wasn’t she?”
“She was.”
He made a sound that resembled a laugh. “And where were you?”
“I got there as fast as I could.”
“But you were too late.”
Alex’s mother continued to stare into her dead son’s face and squeak.
“I don’t get it,” his father said. He turned and looked Alex in the eyes.
Alex felt a stab of heat sear the center of his chest. It travelled up his neck and burned his face. “Isn’t this what you do? Aren’t you supposed to fix these people?”
“What people?”
“You know, crazy people.”
Alex didn’t respond.
“And you couldn’t even fix your own brother? I don’t get it. I really don’t.”
“Jerry was murdered, Dad. How was I supposed to fix that?”
Mr. Drexler dismissed the comment with a wave. He scratched his head, causing random strands of hair to stick up. He exhaled and frowned, and his face folded in on itself. “I don’t know, Alex. You’re the doctor, not me. But if I were a doctor, I would have worked harder to help my own family. I know that.” He looked over towards the casket. From his angle all he could have seen was Jerry’s nose. “Jerry could have been anything he wanted. He was special, that kid. Just sick, is all. And with a doctor for a brother who never could get him well. I wonder about that. I really do.”
His father stood. He walked over to his wife and grabbed her by the arm.
She turned and buried her face against his neck.
He looked back at Alex. “You made all the arrangements?”
“I did.”
His father knocked on the casket door. “And this rickety piece of shit is the best you could do? I thought you could afford better. Guess your brother’s only worth so much.”
Alex started for
ward and then stopped. He jammed his hands into his pockets and squeezed them shut with a force that threatened to crush his fingers. He had saved Jerry. He had made Jerry well. There was no way for him to explain this to his father, however. For his father, the successful son would always remain the failure. Only now, he had failed in the most unforgivable way. And there would never be another chance for redemption. Future successes would only accentuate the fact that he had failed where it mattered most. He had failed to heal the favorite son.
His father and mother left the room without looking back.
Alex waited a minute and then approached the casket. He peered down onto Jerry’s face.
He looked like a mannequin. His face appeared plastic, his lips like pale wax. Only his neck showed any signs of imperfection. The skin was pulled unnaturally taut as it fed into Jerry’s shirt collar. Beneath which, Alex knew, was a ragged line of sutured skin that would never mend.
The studies using Dimethyltryptamine had unexpectedly led to a series of questions regarding death. Regarding the possibility of an eternal soul. A significant percentage of the test patients were convinced that they had ventured beyond the veil of our material world while under the influence of the hallucinogen, to view what lies beyond. They spoke of a timeless place of ineffable wonder, filled with an overwhelming sense of unconditional love.
In all such cases, these experiences produced profound changes in the subject’s outlook on the nature of reality. Atheists found God. People with depression found joy. The terminally ill found peace. Death, to these voyagers, lost its frightful allure.
Alex had always considered these experiences to be nothing more than hallucinations, mental phenomena dredged up from the pits of the subconscious. Now, for his brother’s sake, he hoped that there was some glint of truth in these otherworldly reports.
But science told him otherwise. Death was darkness. Death was decomposition. If we live on, it’s in the stomachs of earthworms or the weeds that arise from our rotten corpse.