The Devil in Silver: A Novel

by Victor Lavalle

  13

  NO WAY AROUND it, a doctor had to be called in.

  Maybe Pepper’s sternum hadn’t actually splintered (since he had pulled himself, painfully, back into bed), but even if his chest plate hadn’t cracked, the man’s pain sure wasn’t a delusion. The morning after his attack, Josephine came with morning meds. When she stood over Pepper, she saw the blood that had seeped through the front of his shirt. A hundred little red dots in the fabric, all bunched around his chest. Pepper opened his eyes and looked at her, but just opening his eyes was an exertion. He spat out a dozen shallow breaths but couldn’t say a word.

  Josephine sat on the side of his mattress. There wasn’t much space, but she wasn’t very big. One of the reasons people treated her like a kid, even though she was twenty-four, was because of how her body hid the years.

  She set the small white cup with Pepper’s meds down on the floor, and leaned over Pepper. His eyes shut, then opened again. She wasn’t sure he could see her. His eyes wouldn’t focus on her face. She wondered at the pain he was in, and if she wanted to keep doing this job, but then told herself to stop. Even if she quit tomorrow, she was here now.

  “I’m going to open your shirt,” she said.

  She undid the buttons gingerly. The fabric had stuck to his skin, blood like an adhesive. Finally she got the top two buttons loose and peeked inside and smelled the stale punch of Pepper’s dried blood.

  Now she noticed one of the torn restraints, dangling from the side of the bed. She pulled at it and let it swing loose again. She looked at Pepper.

  “What did you do to yourself?”

  He shook his head so faintly that it looked like a tremor.

  “I guess you’ll need to see a doctor,” she said.

  When Josephine padded out of the room, Pepper figured that might be the end of it. She might say he needed to see a doctor, but that didn’t mean she’d actually call one. It was just a way to get out of the room. Like last night’s nurse. When he breathed too deeply, his ribs hurt; he was surviving on shallow breaths.

  The morning meds remained in their cup, on the floor. Josephine had left without making him take them. He felt grateful for this. His throat felt so tight he couldn’t even imagine ingesting something as small as a pill.

  Ten minutes later, Dr. Anand walked in.

  The man appeared at the doorway, just as slightly comical as he had been on that first night. Jacket and tie and ID on a plastic cord around his neck. Bushy mustache; cheeks as healthy and round as a brown Santa Claus. But he seemed a bit more rushed this time, maybe the intake meeting was the only time a patient earned the doctor’s complete attention. Now he offered a new performance: the overtaxed physician.

  Dr. Anand walked in quickly. Eyes down in concentration, not meekness. He wiggled a clipboard in his left hand. He reached into his pants pocket with the other and jiggled his set of keys. Dr. Anand pulled his hand out of his pocket and scratched his scalp. He patted his chin then the pocket of his coat, looking for a pen. Pantomiming harriedness.

  He hadn’t looked at Pepper yet.

  “Okay, Mr.…”

  When the doctor finally looked up, he grinned genuinely.

  “Pepper! Right?” He moved toward Pepper’s bed, reading the chart on the clipboard. When he reached the bed, he kicked the little white cup carrying Pepper’s morning meds. They rolled under the bed but Dr. Anand didn’t notice.

  “Sounds like you hurt yourself.”

  “It wasn’t me,” Pepper said.

  Dr. Anand giggled. “My daughter loved that song. I don’t think she understood what it meant.”

  Pepper looked at the doctor directly. “The Devil did this.”

  Dr. Anand didn’t respond to that. (Would you?) He finally sat next to Pepper on the bed and undid the rest of the buttons on Pepper’s shirt. He moved more quickly than Josephine. Dr. Anand opened the shirt and looked at Pepper’s bruises. The skin was reddish and purple all over. There were small cuts across Pepper’s chest where the foot (hoof?) had crushed down on him.

  Dr. Anand leaned back, his eyebrows raised. “Jiminy …”

  The doctor set the clipboard on the floor and used both hands to press against Pepper’s rib cage. He started light and then a little harder. It didn’t take much force to make Pepper wince.

  “Can you roll on your side?” the doctor asked. “Your back to me?”

  It took a moment, but Pepper pulled it off. Pepper felt the doctor’s hand pressing against his skin.

  “Breathe as deeply as you can,” the doctor said. Pepper felt the chilly rim of a stethoscope just below one of his shoulder blades. He always liked that feeling, and he liked it now. When Pepper inhaled, it hurt, and when he exhaled, it hurt more. He concentrated on the comfort of the stethoscope just to keep from crying.

  Dr. Anand rolled Pepper onto his back again and pressed the stethoscope to his chest now. Pepper breathed in and out. Dr. Anand looked at his watch. He pulled the stethoscope off and stuffed it back into a pocket of his jacket. He reached down, grunting slightly, and grabbed the clipboard off the floor, wrote on Pepper’s chart.

  “Did your roommate do this to you?” Dr. Anand asked.

  Pepper shook his head.

  “One of the other patients, then?”

  Pepper breathed in and spoke as he exhaled. “I already told you who.”

  Dr. Anand frowned. “No jokes here, Pepper. I want you to tell me the truth. Did a member of the staff do this to you?”

  Right away, Pepper wanted to say yes just because that would be a manageable, rational, realistic problem. The staff had abused him. It wasn’t untrue, was it? Maybe Dr. Anand would transfer him?

  “Can you just get me off this unit?” Pepper asked quietly. He imagined being taken to the ICU, or for surgery—who cared what?—and being kept there. Away from whoever, whatever, had nearly killed him.

  Dr. Anand held the bottom of the clipboard and tapped the top lightly against his own knees. “Transfer. Well, that’s a problem, Pepper.”

  “Why?” Pepper’s voice cracked.

  “Because you were admitted here by the police, and you’re being held here pending criminal charges. You understand? So, technically, this unit is your detention center. If you weren’t in here, you’d probably be at Rikers awaiting a hearing. And believe me, this is a lot better place to be.”

  Pepper almost laughed, but that would’ve caused too much pain.

  Dr. Anand looked down at Pepper’s chest and sighed.

  “Generally, this is a lot better place to be.”

  “You told me I’d be released in seventy-two hours,” Pepper said. “That was over a month ago.”

  Dr. Anand nodded and winced, as if he was a salesman about to explain the unfair return policy of his store. “We did keep you for a seventy-two-hour observation. But what we observed is that you needed more time with us. So we readmitted you, as an involuntary admit.”

  “What does that mean?” Pepper asked.

  Dr. Anand touched Pepper’s arm lightly, consoling. “It means you stay with us until we feel you’re ready to go. In your case, we might not feel comfortable releasing you until your arraignment date.”

  Pepper stared out the windows. “The only way I get out of the hospital is if I’m going to jail.”

  Dr. Anand stood up. “Let me be completely honest with you, Pepper. You came to us under a bit of a technicality, that’s true. But while you’ve been here, you’ve been impulsive, quick to anger, in a potentially manic state at least three times according to the records my staff have made. Have you ever been diagnosed with a mental illness before?”

  Pepper tried to sit up, but he could only raise his head. “I know I get heated up, okay? But there’s got to be a line, right? I mean everything can’t be a sign of mental illness.”

  “No. Of course not. And despite what you might think, I don’t want to diagnose you with an illness. But you’re here, however it happened, and I wouldn’t be any kind of doctor if I didn’t take
a little time to try and see if you need help. And if you do, then I want to help you. That’s the truth.”

  Pepper marveled at Dr. Anand’s sincere tone. He knew Dr. Anand meant what he’d said, and yet it didn’t comfort him.

  Dr. Anand got up. Pepper watched him leave the room.

  “I’ll send one of the nurses to bandage you up. I’ll prescribe a painkiller, too. Did you get your morning meds?”

  Pepper rolled, with some difficulty, onto his right side, so he faced Dr. Anand. “I already took them,” Pepper said. “Josephine gave them to me.”

  Dr. Anand watched Pepper a moment. Pepper wondered if the doctor would see the white cup, the two pills, under the bed. But finally Dr. Anand nodded. He said, “You’ll meet your demons everywhere, Pepper. Let us help you face them here.”

  Josephine did return with a painkiller (Vicodin) and she dressed the cuts on his chest. She wrapped him with bandages. The whole time he kept on with that tight, shallow breathing, seeming impossibly weak. Josephine maintained a professional air but she felt bad for him. Hard to believe this was the same man who’d knocked down three people, herself included, with such ease. When she attached the clips to hold the bandage, Josephine patted him tenderly and, silently, said a prayer.

  “I left your meds,” she said, looking down at the floor. “I just realized.”

  Pepper reacted quickly. “Dr. Anand saw them. He gave them to me.”

  She nodded. Still new enough at the job that she accepted a patient’s word.

  “I brought you some clothes,” Josephine said. She had the blue hospital-issue top and bottom, the blue no-skid socks, and set them on his mattress. She left because, sympathetic or not, she wasn’t going to undress him.

  Pepper got himself up and peeled off his shirt, but hesitated before slipping on the pajama top. Even if he was trapped, did that mean he had to wear the prisoner’s uniform? But wearing a torn and bloody shirt would only look madder. What choice? No choice. He put the pajama top on. Then he slid off his wrinkled pants, and his whiffy Smartwool socks. Pepper folded the slacks and balled up his socks and left them in the top drawer of his dresser. It had taken a month, but now he even looked like he belonged.

  He wanted to throw some cold water on his face, but that would mean standing in front of the makeshift bathroom mirror. Seeing some version of himself looking this way. He wanted to avoid that for a while longer.

  Northwest 2 sounded livelier today. A room’s door opened and shut and out walked that mumbly kid who’d been up in the lounge late at night, mouthing the close-captioned words at the bottom of the flat screen. The kid had the kind of pockmarked face that made him look fifty. He walked with his eyes focused on the tops of his feet. He wore faded jeans and a T-shirt with a cartoon figure on it. One word in big beige letters: HEATMISER.

  Heatmiser passed Pepper in the hallway. He weaved around the big man without even looking. He hummed to himself and his voice wasn’t half bad. Faint and mournful. Pepper watched Heatmiser until Heatmiser stopped walking and looked back.

  Heatmiser said, “Heard you last night.”

  He watched Pepper quietly, wore no expression Pepper could read. Pepper touched his bruised ribs instinctively, but before he might say anything, Heatmiser spoke again.

  “Better hurry if you want breakfast.”

  Then the guy walked on. He didn’t slow down and Pepper couldn’t catch up, with his wounded gait. He shuffled down Northwest 2.

  Pepper stopped at the nurses’ station because he needed to rest. His ribs seemed like they wanted to tear through his skin. He burned on the inside, and the heat ran up into his jawline. He might not have wanted the meds, but the painkiller would be nice just then. Pepper dropped one meaty forearm on the nurses’ station and looked down to the desktop. There he could see what had captured the attention of three nurses and two orderlies: a computer.

  A desktop device that looked forty years old. It had a big gray monitor with a screen that emitted faint green light. That thing had been out of date in 1982. The rest of the desk space back there showed stacks of paperwork, each a foot high.

  The staff had been tasked with digitizing all the information in all those charts. The computer had been installed that morning. The files on the desk space surrounding the machine, files that would total eleven feet three inches if placed in a single stack, was just the paperwork that had been filled out in the last three months. The nurses and orderlies looked at the computer as if it had betrayed them. They looked at one another to see which of them might volunteer for the task of inputting the information. Frankly, you’d have a better chance of getting a Korean to marry a black person.

  In an act of bravery or stupidity (both), Josephine parted her colleagues so she could sit at the chair in front of the computer. She opened the software the hospital had purchased to sync up record keeping throughout their system. As soon as she did this, the other nurses patted her gently with approval. The orderlies looked up at Pepper.

  One said, “Go eat.”

  A pleasant morning to you, too!

  Dorry said, “So you understand now?”

  She sat across from Pepper. He’d come to join her and thanked her for helping him the night before.

  Heatmiser sat with two other men at another table. All three looked up at the screen and didn’t speak with one another. Pepper hadn’t seen the other two men before, maybe he just hadn’t been looking. One Japanese, one East Indian. But the two men seemed, somehow, like family. It took a moment for Pepper to realize it was because they both had some of the most awful teeth he’d seen on this side of the nineteenth century. Wow. Crowded, off-color, some bent in and others bent out. No wonder they’d found each other, brothers of the busted grills. He nicknamed them quick, in his own mind, Japanese Freddie Mercury and Yuckmouth. (It might seem to make more sense to nickname the Indian guy Freddie Mercury, since Freddie Mercury was an Indian—birth name Farrokh Bulsara—but that’s kind of racist. Sorry. The Japanese guy actually looked like Freddie Mercury. The Indian guy just had a yuckmouth.)

  Dorry sat with her back to the raggedy basketball court outside. It was the kind of day where you can see the sun behind a thin fog of clouds, like a lightbulb glowing inside a pillowcase. Dorry leaned forward in her chair so Pepper would stop gazing at the skies and pay attention.

  “Do you understand now?” she asked.

  It was PB&J for breakfast today. He separated the two halves of the sandwich and set them back down. The vein of dry brown peanut butter, the artery of gummy blueish jam. The sandwich looked as appetizing as an autopsy.

  “I understand this meal is criminal,” he said.

  He was a bit surprised he’d been able to come up with the line, weak joke that it was. He felt surprised by the way his hands moved, too. They lifted and lowered quickly. When he thought of opening his hands and wiggling his fingers that’s exactly what they did. Why?

  He hadn’t taken his medicine.

  Dorry said, “You’ve heard of drug trials, right? They test out some new pharmaceutical on a set of people. Some get the real thing, others get a placebo. If the trial is a success, they sell the drug to the intended market. You understand?”

  Pepper poked at the top of his sandwich. “What happened to me last night?”

  Dorry said, “I’m trying to tell you.” She picked up the pint of milk on her tray. Pepper had one, too. She lifted it and shook it and the milk inside sloshed. Somehow even the PB&J on his tray appeared more appetizing when he imagined washing it down with a nice swallow of milk.

  Dorry said, “I can see you smacking your lips already.”

  Dorry brought the carton to her face, like right up against the left lens of her big glasses. She tore open the carton at one end. She pulled until she made a little spout. She sniffed it. Then she leaned even farther across the table so Pepper could do the same. He inhaled. He frowned.

  “I think that milk is off,” he said.

  Dorry nodded, then lifted the carton to her
lips and drank. Forget drank, she chugged that pint of questionable milk. The sight made Pepper’s own throat close up. Little beads of milk trickled out the sides of the spout and ran along her cheeks. The stuff looked more yellow than white. When she finished, she set the carton back down and looked at Pepper with high seriousness.

  “The milk was bad,” she said. “But you can get used to it.”

  Pepper looked at the carton of milk on his tray now and couldn’t imagine doing what she’d just done. Now the sandwich looked even worse than it had. He wondered if everything on this tray was past its sell-by date. Hard to keep from getting paranoid in a place like this. Bad food, constant doses of medication, human beings penned in and observed. He began to understand what Dorry might be telling him.

  “You’re saying the staff is experimenting on us?” Pepper asked.

  Dorry pointed at him, frowning with disappointment. “You think this is about patients versus the staff. I understand why, but you have to think bigger. This isn’t us.” She pointed at the other patients. “Versus them.” She pointed toward the nurses’ station.

  “They aren’t even here,” she said. “Everyone in New Hyde is trapped, in some way. Patients and staff. You think they ever set foot in a place like this unit? No, no. Our lives are a clinical trial, Pepper. We’re all being tested.”

  Pepper leaned across the table, as far as he could. “By who?”

  “The biggest corporation of all,” she said. “Coffin Industries. They don’t stop exploiting you until you’re dead.”

  But what did all this have to with what happened to him last night? What he’d seen wasn’t a man. He felt sure of that, at least. He wanted to grab Dorry’s shoulders and shake her until she understood it, too. Then maybe they could actually talk about the damn thing clearly and not this nonsense about Coffin Industries.

  Dorry reached across the table and snatched his carton of quite possibly putrid milk. She lifted it and said, “May I?”

  You won’t be too surprised that Pepper left the table before Dorry got to glugging. He hadn’t wanted to watch it once, so why would he want to see it a second time?