by Brian Kirk
Chapter Thirty-Four
It took four days for the antipsychotics to clear Crosby’s system. Alex didn’t prescribe any other medications to moderate the withdrawals. He wanted Crosby free from all pharmaceuticals as quickly as possible in order to begin testing the new formula.
He had instructed the orderlies overseeing the solitary wing to minimize their contact with Crosby while the drugs were leaving his system. They didn’t need much incentive to comply. Crosby had become hostile by the end of the second day when the sedative effects of his antipsychotics had stopped working. He had to be confined to a restraining chair by the dawn of day three.
It had taken six strong men to pin Crosby to the chair and clamp down the restraining straps. Fueled by extreme paranoid delusions, Crosby’s strength was superhuman. He was convinced that he was being imprisoned by a cabal of demonic entities disguised in human form and that his survival depended on escaping. Due to his state of heightened aggression, the orderlies had issued a request to sedate Crosby before restraining him, which Alex had denied. Now one of the orderlies had required stitches to sew an ear back to his head and another was at risk of losing an eye.
The guard on duty glowered at Alex as he signed the entry form. “Damn creep can stay in that chair the rest of his life, for all I care. I ain’t getting him out.”
“Don’t worry. You won’t have to.” Alex shifted the medicine kit back to his right hand. It looked heavier than it was, its contents consisting of sanitizing liquid, gauze, several vials of his experimental formula and a stainless-steel needle seven inches long. “Crosby won’t be harming anyone again. I can assure you of that.”
“Too late for Kelvin and Jessie, I guess.”
The thin smile Alex offered lacked any semblance of sincerity. “I’ll have Crosby apologize in person as soon as he gets well.” He turned and started down the hall towards the row of solitary cells.
The scanning equipment was already waiting for him outside Crosby’s cell. Given the board’s endorsement, he no longer needed to operate under complete secrecy. And Eli had all but walled himself up in his office since their confrontation a few days before. It seemed he’d gotten the not-so-subtle hint after all.
The hallway housing solitary row was silent. It was eerie to be among such disturbed people and not hear a sound. It’s like a dungeon down here, Alex thought, rubbing his arms to ward off the cold. It felt twenty degrees cooler surrounded by these dark concrete walls.
He checked the equipment, testing the straps and turning on the scanner. It beeped with a steady, rhythmic consistency like a metronome, in contrast to the stampeding beat of his racing heart.
There was a strong sense of expectation associated with the moment. Like his life had all been in preparation for this. Like every decision he had ever made had served to pave the path leading to this place and time. And any slight deviation, any alternate decision, no matter how small, would have shifted his trajectory in a different direction. But it had not. It had led him here. And in this moment, Alex felt a disorienting sense of predestination, a superstitious premonition which he quickly cast aside.
Fortune favors the bold, he thought, smiling, then inserted the key into the lock and opened Crosby’s door.
The chair was facing the doorway. In it, Crosby sat upright, strapped to the chair with thick restraining bands wrapped around his legs, torso, arms, chin, mouth and forehead. His head and body were completely immobilized, but his face contorted into a baleful rage when Alex entered the room. He began to buck against the seat with what little force he could muster.
“Relax,” Alex said.
A single step brought him to the cot against the far wall, where he placed his medical kit. Calmly, he walked back to the hallway and returned with the scanning equipment, rolling it next to Crosby’s chair. He turned and shut the door. It clanged when it closed. After the echo faded, the room fell quiet, save for the muted snuffling of Crosby’s futile struggle against his restraints.
“I know what you think,” Alex said, watching Crosby dispassionately. “I know what you see, rather. Instead of seeing me as I really am, a doctor who is here to help you, you see a demon who is here to harm you.” Alex eased open the medical kit and withdrew his supplies, laying each of them on a piece of cloth that he placed atop the cot. “I know there is nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. That is the nature of your illness.” He moved over to the monitoring equipment and began to connect the scanning sensors to Crosby’s head.
Crosby watched his movements through eyes that were wide and glistening.
“All I can do is administer medicine designed to alleviate your symptoms so that you can see the truth for yourself.”
He walked back to the cot and began to prep the needle, filling it with his refined formula. The one that had set Jerry free.
One cc. Two ccs. Three ccs. This was as large a dose as Philax would allow.
He began to withdraw the needle from the vial, then stopped, thinking. There was no executive looking over his shoulder now. He paused then pushed the needle back in until it clicked against the bottom of the glass vial and pulled the plunger once again.
Four ccs. Five ccs. The liquid kept climbing up the lines.
He watched as the last bit of solution was sucked up into the syringe, and then flicked it with a finger and pressed the plunger slightly to dispel any air bubbles. With the chamber filled, the plunger was so long he almost had to operate it with two hands.
He approached Crosby, angling the beveled end of the needle towards the inside of his right eye.
Beads of sweat burst to the surface of Crosby’s skin. His face began to tremble, his jittery eyes opened wide. The electronic beep tracking his pulse produced a frenetic beat.
Alex stared into Crosby’s manic eyes, observing the mixture of hatred and fear. “Take one last look at your demons,” he said, placing the needle tip against Crosby’s tear duct. “And tell them goodbye.” He pushed the needle through.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Crosby had no idea where he was. He hardly knew who he was, for that matter. There was a slight itching sensation in the corner of his eye and when he went to rub it he realized that he couldn’t lift his arm. He tried to look down but was unable to lower his head. He cast his eyes downward and saw that he was restrained. Strange.
Then he noticed a man standing before him, scrutinizing him with extreme interest. The man looked vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t identify from where. He was clearly a doctor of some kind, but this looked nothing like a hospital room. It looked more like a prison cell. He opened his mouth to speak, but it was obstructed in some way. What the fuck is going on?
The man before him smiled. He began to nod his head. He appeared immensely satisfied with something. Was this some kind of sadistic killer? Had he been abducted and brought to some sort of torture chamber?
An image shot into his mind, as clear as any photograph. The image was that of the man standing before him, but he was bent over and looking at himself in the reflective surface of what appeared to be a puddle of blood. While he watched, the man’s countenance went from severe to sympathetic, as if he’d realized he was being spied on.
Then the image changed and the man was staring into another face with similar features, although not quite the same. The other face was bluish grey, as though drained of blood, with a raw gash running across its gaping neck. A dead man’s face. Someone freshly slaughtered. He blinked and the image disappeared.
“Welcome back,” the man said. “You’re doing great so far. Everything looks perfect. How do you feel?”
Crosby mumbled. He was confused. The man seemed sincerely concerned with his well-being, but was clearly some deranged killer. What was going on?
“Sorry.” The man chuckled. “Don’t suppose you can say much with that strap around your mouth. Here…” The man reached down and removed it. �
��How’s that?”
Crosby didn’t know what to say. He racked his brain for its most recent memory and came up blank. What had he been doing before this? How had he gotten here?
Another sequence of still frames shot across his mind’s eye. Long needles stabbing into eyeballs, a large black man wielding a bloodstained knife, a bleary-eyed father figure crying over a glass of whiskey. He knew he should feel fear, but he didn’t. Instead, he felt a deep sense of confusion, inadequacy and shame. He felt guilt, but for what he could not say.
“Where am I?”
The doctor/killer leaned forward and checked his eyes, lifting each lid to get a better look. He squinted and frowned. “Are you feeling any pain?”
Aside from the slight itch in the corner of his eye, he wasn’t. He tried to shake his head, but couldn’t.
“That’s good. You’ve got a bit of dilation occurring in your eyes, but that’s normal. Just take it easy and you should start to feel better soon.”
He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. The air smelled of urine and mildew. It smelled like…
Mother, he wanted to say. But that didn’t make sense. Why would he associate such a smell with his mom?
Hands began to choke him, thin, bony hands hard as stone, cutting off his air. He gurgled as the hands shifted to the back of his neck and thrust his face forward, pressing it into thick shag carpeting reeking of neglect as something thick and rigid entered him from behind, tearing his rectum wide.
He shuddered and opened his mouth to cry out, but the sensation disappeared. He gasped for breath. “What the fuck?” he said.
He was still in the room. He was fine.
“Settle down. You may be experiencing some initial discomfort from the onset of the medication, but it will dissipate shortly.”
“Where am I?” he said again.
“You’re in the forensics ward of Sugar Hill hospital.”
The name meant nothing to him so he scrunched his face in confusion.
“It’s a mental health facility,” the man continued. “You’re being treated for schizophrenia. Can you recall your name for me?”
Schizophrenic? No. That meant he was crazy, and that couldn’t be. My name? “My name is…”
“Crosby, you worthless piece of shit! You filthy little come dumpster! You crazy freak! When are you going to start pulling your own weight?”
He scanned the room for the source of the voice. It sounded like it was coming from directly behind him. It was the voice of…
The memories began to seep back into his brain, slowly at first, then with explosive force. The streets, the dirty motel rooms, the men, her hands clawing at his sensitive skin. The men. The men.
“You’ve got to pull your own weight, you worthless little shit! I don’t care how much they come in you! We need to eat!”
Crosby felt a great pressure building in his chest, a burning in the center of his face, a buzzing in the middle of his brain. It felt like his insides had been set on fire, that they were boiling towards some volcanic release, and he began to cry—great wallowing wails—as realization set in and he remembered who he was, why he was here, what he had done, where he had come from.
“My name’s Crosby,” he blubbered between hyperbolic breaths, snot streaming over the ridge of his upper lip. “And I remember. Oh God. I remember who I am.”
The man began to pack up his medical kit, giving Crosby space to cry. He returned and squatted down in front of him so that they were at eye level. He placed a hand on Crosby’s knee and squeezed.
“Welcome back, Crosby,” the man said. His face became gaunt and flickered pale blue for a second—a jagged line was slashed across his throat—then it faded and he was smiling like he had just won a prize at the county fair. “Now your real therapy can begin.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Alex had sweated through his second shirt, but not from the humid summer heat. He had been in his air-conditioned office most of the morning, preparing for the arrival of Bob Bearman and the rest of the board members for their biannual review meeting. In less than an hour he would be forced to face Eli, whom he had hardly spoken with since their confrontation over Randall’s guitar. He knew that Eli had already been informed of his pending dismissal, and that Alex was to assume the role of Chief Medical Director in his place. Apparently, it hadn’t gone over well. Alex hadn’t expected that it would. And now that it had already happened, he saw all the things he wished he could have done differently.
Eli deserved better. Especially from him.
There was nothing to do now, however, but press forward. He had wanted to talk with Eli one-on-one before the board meeting, before the change was officially announced, but he had been too busy overseeing Crosby’s recovery, which by all accounts was phenomenal.
He knew that his career may well have hinged on how Crosby reacted to his formula, and he couldn’t have asked for a better outcome. All the delusional symptoms of schizophrenia had dissipated. What remained was a man with a history of major trauma who was now coherent and able to confront the psychological damage inflicted upon him during childhood. The schizophrenia had been a defense mechanism to dissociate himself from the child being traumatized—a way for him to deflect the pain by externalizing it and assigning responsibility to others. It was no wonder he saw shadow demons in regular people. It was a way for him to excuse the actions of his mother.
Now, however, he saw through the illusions created by his psychosis and accepted his situation for what it was. Without his mental defense mechanism, he could begin the healing process. It was sure to be a major breakthrough in the field of psychiatry. It was everything Bearman had hoped for. And it had all been conducted behind Eli’s back. But the board meeting would be more like a direct slap across his face.
Alex reached over his shoulder and tried to peel the soaked shirt away from his sweaty back, but it was plastered down. He sighed, wishing he had brought a spare.
Bearman had met with Crosby personally a couple of days before and had deemed him fit for release from solitary confinement, not that it was his call to make. He had then instructed Alex to have him brought into the board meeting. Alex had discouraged the idea. Crosby’s condition, while drastically improved, was precarious. It was not the nearly overnight transformation that had taken place with Jerry. Crosby had more extreme emotional scars that he was just beginning to work through. It was not the time to begin parading him in front of others as an example of psychiatric success. Bearman had reluctantly agreed, but Alex was skeptical.
Someone knocked on his door.
Alex lifted his arm and scowled at the large sweat stain under his armpit, then clamped his arms down next to his sides. “Come in,” he said.
The door opened and Angela stuck her head through. “You got a sec?”
Alex began to raise his arm to wave her in, then caught himself and nodded his head.
“Okay, so I’m completely freaking out,” Angela said, although her beaming smile suggested otherwise. She sat down on the opposite side of Alex’s desk. “What do you think he’s going to do?”
For a second, Alex thought she was referring to Crosby and his heart began to stutter. “Who? Eli?”
“Right…like you’re not thinking the same thing. Have you talked to him yet?”
Alex looked at his lap and shook his head. “Haven’t had time. Been too tied up with Crosby.”
“God, this is going to be so weird.” Angela’s sparkling eyes suggested that she meant exciting.
Alex bent forward. Her phony tone had touched a nerve. “Give me a break. Don’t act like you couldn’t see this coming. He refuses to embrace the precepts of contemporary psychiatry, he refutes modern medicine, he was hospitalized for a riot that happened while on his watch. As were you, by the way. And one of the orderlies has been arrested for murder. For fucking murder. Of my fucking brother
.” He somehow refrained from screaming. But his face was on fire, and his heart was fighting to burst free from his chest. “Let’s not act like it’s beyond comprehension that the board felt it necessary to make a move. If Eli’s upset, that’s fine, but it shouldn’t be with me. The man did it to himself.”
Angela raised her hands in surrender, but she still couldn’t wipe the smirk from her face. “Hey, I totally agree. I’m just saying, it’s going to be weird. I don’t understand why it has to be made into some spectacle during the meeting. He should just be allowed to leave with his dignity. Especially after all he’s done for this place.”
“Jesus, Angela. You think I have anything to do with this? I don’t. I don’t agree with how it’s being handled, any more than you do, but what do you want me to do about it? Turn down the promotion? Say that they’re being unfair? That a man who seems to be slipping in the twilight of his career should be given another chance while I wait patiently in the wings?” He clasped his hands together and squeezed to quell the tremor that was threatening to take hold. “Besides, what does this have to do with you? All you have to do is sit on the sidelines and enjoy the show.”
Finally, Angela forced herself to appear sufficiently cowed. “Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to set you off like this. I’m just full of nerves. You’re right. You haven’t done anything wrong.”
Alex felt like he was close to breaking his fingers, so he relaxed his hands. He glanced at Angela and noticed that her face still bore light-brown bruise marks from Crosby’s fists.
“It’s fine. I’m just ready to get it over with.” He gave her a sheepish grin. “And I must admit I’ve got a case of the nerves too.”
“Yeah, right.”
Alex lifted his arms. They were drenched underneath.
Angela cupped her hands over her mouth to stifle a laugh. It muffled her voice. “That looks like me after hot yoga.”