by Brian Kirk
Alex closed the door and locked it, flinching at the sound. It was hard to think of the man inside as human, someone who needed to be kept in a cage. This was the ugly secret that mankind kept from society. And this was the person he was supposed to cure.
“Well?” Alex prompted.
“It’s impossible to say, with how sedated he is. He’s still exhibiting paranoid delusions. He seemed to remember me, but I don’t know what he was referring to about my hands. He’s a lot calmer, that’s for sure.”
“I’ll have him taken off his medication. It should take a few days to completely clear his system. Then we’ll begin the new treatment. Remember—”
“I know. Trust me. I won’t say a word.”
“Good.” Alex pocketed the keys and began to walk past her. She halted him with a hand on his arm.
“So this new medicine. I mean, what kind of results can we expect?”
Alex frowned while he considered the question. “It’ll return him to his former self. The million dollar question is, what kind of man will emerge?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
They say time speeds up as we grow older. For Alex, that statement had never felt more true. It felt like he was operating on fast forward—the events of each day whizzing by in a blur. It seemed like just yesterday that he was prepping his test kit for the final Philax trial, and digging a grave for Rachel’s dog.
And now, with the news of his sudden ascent to Chief Medical Director, and the new responsibilities resulting from the pending promotion, he hadn’t had a moment to reflect back on his brother’s death. In fact, it felt like it hadn’t even happened. Like time was spinning so fast it had blown right past the event and left it behind in a plume of dust.
What the hell had happened to Jerry? He hadn’t heard anything from the police. Rachel was absolutely convinced that it was the orderly Devon who had murdered him. And the fact that Devon and Jerry had had an altercation seemed to provide credence to her claim. But still. Alex had seen Devon on his way out of the hospital. Had run into him while the attack was taking place. It didn’t make any sense.
And it left him undecided about what he should do. Should he come forward with this information? Should he contradict his wife’s testimony? In essence, call her a liar, or simply confused?
Somebody had killed Jerry, that much was clear. And Rachel had witnessed the event. It must have been someone who looked like Devon, but…
And what about her claim that Popeye was there? Not a dog that resembled Popeye, but the actual dog itself. She had since backed away from her belief that the dog at the apartment had been her former pet. She understood how impossible that would be. But it showed how confused she had been at the time. Alex knew how the mind played tricks during extreme moments of stress. Many personality disorders were a direct result of some traumatic event. It was the mind’s defense mechanism. It created delusions to protect itself from the horrors of reality.
He also hadn’t had a chance to reconcile his thoughts on his interactions with his parents. His father, in particular. They hadn’t exchanged more than five words to each other at the funeral, which Alex had splurged on to avoid further criticism. Money he could hardly afford to spend. But his promotion to Chief Medical Director would fix all that. And the development of his drug, which had been all but green-lighted, would bring about the kind of wealth that would make his recent woes a distant memory.
Not that any of that would matter much to his father. Alex wasn’t sure what would. It was like the man had never given him a chance. Like he had a limited amount of love and had spent it all on Jerry, exhausting his supply. If only he could make his father see how much he had loved Jerry as well. That, alone, could provide a bond on which to build. If only he could have seen Jerry while he was on the medicine. Perhaps if Alex could have given his father his favorite son back, then he could have finally found acceptance. Now, he didn’t see what he could possibly do to achieve the acceptance he so desired. It was best to just move on.
He was passing by the recreation room on his way back to his office when he heard music playing. It sounded like a guitar. He stopped and cocked his head, listening. Yes, he could distinctly hear the strumming of guitar strings. He hadn’t heard anything about anyone hiring a performer. He followed his ears to the source of the sound.
There were half a dozen patients forming a semicircle around someone sitting. They were hooting and clapping their hands, twirling and dancing erratically. And they were smiling, smiling and singing the wrong words to a song that none of them knew.
Alex stormed forward to see who was playing the guitar. It was a bipolar patient, Randall. He had been in and out of the facility since late adolescence. Like Crosby, demons were his downfall. When in a severely depressed state, he saw them in otherwise ordinary people. When he was manic, though, he claimed to see angels. So Alex figured it all balanced out. It was curious how evil archetypes were such consistent memes for the mentally ill. Why did schizophrenics so rarely believe in a conspiracy to make the world a better place?
Alex had never heard the song before. He figured it was an original. The tune was a discordant combination of chords that seemed out of sequence. But there was some offbeat energy to the melody that he had never quite heard before, and it was sending the patients into an ecstatic frenzy. This is why patients aren’t allowed to own instruments, Alex thought.
“Hey, hey, what’s going on here?” Alex said, circumventing the semicircle of patients and stepping in between Randall and them. They kept dancing as though they hadn’t heard him. Randall kept playing, singing in a melodic voice, with his head tilted back and his eyes squeezed shut. Alex reached out and grabbed the neck of the guitar, silencing the strings.
“Hey!” Alex yelled to get their attention.
They stopped, startled. One of the women, a patient named Carla who had attempted suicide nearly ten times, began to shake and start crying. “Don’t do that,” she said, sobbing. “Ohhhhh no no no no no! Don’t doooo that!” She clenched her fists and stomped up and down.
An orderly came from across the room and consoled her. The other patients stood petrified in place.
Alex turned back to Randall. He was staring, as though horrified, at the hand holding the neck of the guitar. Alex began pulling the guitar, but Randall wrapped both arms around its body and clamped down.
“No!” he yelled. “It’s not yours! It’s mine!”
“Where did you get this?” Alex said, grabbing the neck of the guitar with both hands and pulling harder.
“I gave it to him,” Alex heard a voice from behind him say. He turned to look. It was Eli. He let go of the guitar.
Eli walked forward. “What’s the problem?”
“I wasn’t aware that we had authorized personal possession of musical instruments,” Alex said, fighting to control his voice.
“Well, I’ve decided to make an exception in Randall’s case. He’s a talented musician, and it would be detrimental to deprive him of this outlet. The other patients appear to enjoy his playing as well.”
All eyes turned to Alex. He felt put on the spot. He hadn’t made the rules, why should he feel guilty for enforcing them? He attempted a disarming smile. His lips began to squirm. “I’m not questioning his ability, Dr. Alpert. It’s simply a matter of hospital policy.” He emphasized the point through his eyes, but Eli ignored it.
“Alex,” Eli said, smiling and shaking his head. There was a curious sheen to his eyes. He came a few steps closer. “You know that we never put policy before our patients’ well-being. That guitar is a greater form of therapy in Randall’s case than anything else we have to offer. He’s an artist; that’s his purpose, his ethos. There is no pharmaceutical substitute for that, I’m afraid.”
Randall began to strum the guitar again, playing a slow ballad as a backdrop to the doctors’ back-and-forth.
Alex fe
lt a strong urge to grab the guitar and smash it against the floor. He snapped his head in Randall’s direction. “Stop playing that fucking thing right fucking now,” he hissed through clenched teeth.
Randall stopped immediately. His eyes flashed wide and his knees began to quake. “Sorry, d-d-d-doctor,” he stuttered. Tears welled up in his eyes. “Here.” He held the guitar out for Alex to take.
“Why? Why? Why?” Carla began crying again. “That’s good music. Good music!”
Alex felt like the attention falling on him carried a physical weight, something that needed to be resisted. He noticed Randall nudging his hand with the head of the guitar, and ignored it, taking a deep breath. It failed to calm him.
“I’m not trying to deprive a patient of their purpose in life, Eli.” The words were bypassing an emotional filter that was temporarily out of order, causing his voice to rise. “But policies are in place for a reason, and I think we’re setting a dangerous precedent by making an exception.”
“I-I-I didn’t m-m-mean to do nothing w-wrong,” Randall said. His whole body was now shaking. He had begun to sweat. “I’m not l-l-looking to c-cause any problems. I just won’t p-p-play anymore.” He dropped the guitar to the ground where it produced a hollow gong. He hid his face in his hands and leaned forward.
“No, it’s okay, Randall. I said you could have it. This is a misunderstanding. You’ve done nothing wrong,” Eli said. He stepped forward and was bending down to pick up the guitar when Alex stepped in front of him.
“Perhaps we should talk about this in private,” Alex said in a low voice.
“No, this situation needs to be diffused now,” Eli said. “The guitar was meant as a form of therapy, not to incite trauma. These situations should be handled more delicately, Alex.”
Alex stood his ground. “Okay, sure. Why doesn’t everyone get a musical instrument, then? Let’s start a goddamn band, why don’t we!”
The sarcasm was lost on the patients. They began to stomp their feet and cheer as if starting a do-si-do. One of them, a middle-age man wearing a coffee-stained undershirt and a pair of baby-blue slippers, reached down and grabbed the guitar off the ground.
“Well, since my baby left me!” he wailed, strumming the guitar discordantly and gyrating his hips. “I’ve found a new living hell! Down at the door of Insanity Street, in Sugar Hill Hotel!”
The patients began to dance and shout, flinging their arms and kicking their feet. Alex was knocked off balance when a patient backed into him after an overly exuberant pelvic thrust.
Alex placed two fingers in his mouth and issued a piercing whistle. He caught the attention of a group of orderlies and waved them over.
The patients had formed a mini mosh pit. They were colliding into each other in an ecstatic frenzy to the world’s worst parody of “Heartbreak Hotel”.
Alex grabbed Eli by the arm and pulled him free from the mayhem as the orderlies moved in to establish order. “What do you think you’re doing?” Alex said, digging his fingers into Eli’s arm.
Eli didn’t react to his arm being squeezed. He seemed detached as he watched the patients being detained. He barely blinked as a few were forced to the ground and began to howl in frustration and pain. He turned and looked at Alex with a face devoid of emotion. “I’m trying to help.” His eyes were distant and glazed. “That’s all. I’m just trying to help.”
“This is why we have policies! To avoid situations like this! You know better, Eli. This is why…” You’re getting fired, you idealistic fuck! “…we can’t make exceptions to the rules.”
Alex could feel his hand cramping as it gripped Eli’s arm. He was shaking it to emphasize each point. Eli hardly seemed to notice. His attention was elsewhere. Alex released his arm and followed Eli’s eyes until they reached Randall, still hiding his face, still hunched over in his chair.
“He was so happy before,” Eli said. “They all were.” He looked at the other patients, now lying face down on the floor.
He faced Alex again. “No.” His eyes regained focus, narrowing. His expression hardened. “No, this has nothing to do with the rules. It has to do with the proper treatment of patients. This is not a prison, it’s a hospital. These are people, not inmates. There is no reason why they should not be allowed to pursue things that bring them joy.
“This was not brought on by the guitar; it was brought on by a need to establish power and control. These are not your children, Alex. They are adults with the same inalienable rights to pursue happiness as anyone else.”
Alex rose up onto his toes and leaned forward. “Sure, except that when these particular adults don’t get their way or become overly excited, Eli, people end up in the hospital. Or worse. Your desire to treat with compassion has passed over into reckless naivety.” He looked over Eli’s shoulder and saw Angela striding forward. He motioned towards her with his chin. “Not without consequences, either.”
Eli turned and watched Angela approach. He winced at the purple knuckle prints that blemished her beautiful face. Her throat mottled with angry streaks of red.
“What happened?” Angela said as she drew closer.
Alex looked to Eli, staring expectantly. The sounds of struggle had died down to a combination of tittering laughter and Carla’s sniffling sobs. The patient who had impersonated Elvis Presley had a nosebleed and was catching the blood with his tongue while an orderly restrained his arms.
“What happened?” Eli repeated Angela’s question, almost as though asking himself.
Eli watched as Randall was pulled up from the chair. Frightened, Randall resisted, a fifty-year-old face with the eyes of a child. Two orderlies wrestled him to the ground. The impact knocked his dentures loose; they hung crookedly from his mouth, like some costume prop. He was crying and struggling to breath with a knee digging into his back.
“Randall was playing his guitar,” Eli said, still watching the struggle unfold. His voice was monotone. “That’s all. Just playing a guitar. I gave it to him. It soothes him. It’s the one thing he understands.”
The orderly grabbed Randall by his elbows and hauled him to his feet. He looked up and saw Eli staring at him. He opened his mouth to speak and his dentures fell out and clattered to the ground, the right-front tooth popped loose when it landed.
“No!” Randall yelled through his rubbery lips. “My neeet!”
The orderly allowed him to pick them up from the floor. He cradled them in his hands, crying as he was ushered back to his room.
“I didn’t think instruments were allowed,” Angela said.
“They’re not. This is why,” Alex said.
“That’s not true,” Eli said.
“Excuse me?” Alex squinted his eyes and cocked his head.
“The patients were behaving peacefully before you intervened in an aggressive manner. That’s what ignited the situation.”
“There wouldn’t have been a situation had you not ignored hospital policy!”
“Policy,” Eli said with a hint of disdain. “We are not here to enforce policies established by people who don’t know the first thing about mental care. We are here to create the most conducive environment for the restoration of mental well-being. Policy is nothing more than an excuse to establish power and control. Power and control breed abuse. They trample compassion. They wilt the spirit. They imprison the soul. What policy lacks is nuance. It’s painting Mona Lisa’s smile with a spray gun.”
“What the fuck does that have to do with a goddamn guitar, Eli?” Alex said, looking to Angela for support.
She shook her head and shrugged.
Eli sighed. “If you came upon a man peacefully playing a guitar for a group of people who all appeared to be enjoying it, would you step in and break it up?”
“What? That’s not a fair comparison.”
“Why not?”
Alex chuffed. “Because outside
these walls it’s allowed; inside it’s not.”
“They’re just walls, Alex. Inside, outside, it’s all the same. These are not a different breed of people. They just have different problems.”
Alex lowered his head and waved his hand. “I’m sorry, Eli, but you’ve taken this too far. I don’t have time to explain to you the problems with ignoring the rules of a psychiatric ward. I would have thought you would have had some sense knocked into you the other week, but apparently not. Perhaps the board will be able to make you see your mistakes more clearly.”
There was a pause within which an electrical current formed.
Angela studied her feet.
“You’re out of line,” Eli said.
“We’ll see who’s out of line,” Alex said.
The expression of shock and confusion on Eli’s face was hard to behold, but Alex held firm. Eli had created this mess; it was why he was being replaced. And Alex had more on his mind than worrying about another grown man’s feelings. Even if it was the man he had always looked up to as a mentor.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t make me spell it out for you, Eli. Open your eyes, already. You think you can keep causing hospital riots without some repercussions?”
Alex didn’t wait for a response. He turned and stormed away.
Angela remained in place, tapping her foot. She wished she hadn’t intruded. She flicked her hair back and offered Eli a sympathetic expression. It quickly turned to concern.
His face had paled. He looked lost and confused. In a matter of minutes he had aged thirty years and no longer projected the authoritative image of his profession. He now more closely resembled a patient.
“I don’t get it,” Eli said, turning his sunken eyes towards Angela, frowning at the sight of her damaged face. “All I want to do is help people. But everyone just winds up getting hurt.”
Angela stared back in silence. While she was hurt, she wasn’t in pain. The Percocets had taken that away, and left her with nothing to say.