Ted remained alone and in silence. Maybe screaming and banging on the glass was just what they wanted him to do. He sat on the bed and fished the horseshoe out of the wrinkled sheets. He waited for an eternity, holding his full bladder and his urge to shout.
A nurse showed up after Ted had fallen back into bed.
“Good morning.”
Ted sat up.
“Who are you?”
“Alex McManus. I’ll be in charge of you during your stay on C wing. Now I have to ask you a question, Ted: Will there be any need for these?”
She held up a set of shackles.
“Where is Dr. Hill?”
“She’ll be by later to talk to you. She asked me to tell you so.”
“When is ‘later’?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Ted went up to the glass. He spoke in a whisper.
“Something’s wrong here, Alex. It’s Alex, right? I don’t know what’s up. They tracked me down and brought me here without my consent. My wife and daughters get back from a trip today. I have to get out of here.”
McManus stooped and set the shackles on the floor. She punched in a code on the panel by the door, and then unlocked the door using a key that was chained to her waist. A voice called out from the other end of the corridor and McManus gestured in that direction. The door opened.
“Dr. Hill will talk to you today, probably this afternoon.”
Ted began saying, “It needs to be before—”
“Hold on,” McManus interrupted. “Don’t try and question anything I tell you. It’ll make things worse, and it won’t do you any good. We’ll go to the baths now. Then I’ll take you to join the others. In a few hours Dr. Hill will come and see you, and you can ask her all the questions you like. Don’t waste your breath on me.”
Ted nodded.
They walked together to the end of the corridor. They came to a locked door, which McManus unlocked, openly turning her back on Ted. They reached the common room. There was a TV, turned off; several tables; and a few shelves with books and labeled boxes. A couple of houseplants and the natural light streaming through four large windows made the place fairly cozy.
“Where is everybody?”
McManus gave him a funny look.
“Having breakfast.”
Ted was looking at one of the bookshelves.
“I forgot something in the room,” he suddenly said, clearly anxious.
“Don’t worry. It’ll still be there when you get back.”
Ted remembered Mike Dawson’s words about how easily things disappeared at Lavender.
They came to the showers. A man in a green uniform met them and handed Ted a towel and a change of clothes. McManus sat on a wooden bench where she could keep an eye on Ted over the low wall of the shower stalls.
“Do you really have to follow me everywhere?”
McManus shrugged.
Ted calmly undressed, neatly folded his clothes, and placed them on a wooden bench next to the pile of clean clothes. He picked a shower stall and turned on the water. The temperature was perfect.
“Does Roger work with you?” Ted asked as the warm water coursed over his face.
“Yeah. He’ll come by later, I guess.”
“He’s been watching me for days.”
McManus said nothing. Ted began soaping up. He talked without looking at the nurse.
“You didn’t know that, did you?”
“Know what?”
“That he’d been trailing me. I caught him doing it twice. I think he’s also been to my house.”
Once more, no answer.
“That alone is due cause for suing him,” Ted went on. “My lawyers would love it. I know my rights, and I know that drugging me and hauling me here in the middle of the night is a flagrant violation. If I agree to wait and talk to Dr. Hill, it’s because I want her to tell me to my face why she’s done what she’s done.” He paused a beat. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, man. All they told me was to watch you for your first few hours here, nothing else. Nothing personal. We do this with all the patients.”
“I’m not a patient.”
“Have it your way. This is what we do with everyone who’s admitted to the wing. Some of them don’t adapt well to change. New faces mean a change in the world they’re used to. Now we’re going to go have breakfast, and you can meet your new wing mates.”
There was a curious shampoo dispenser on the wall. It was a hemisphere embedded in the wall itself, hard to disassemble or hurt anyone with. Ted pressed it and a thin stream of pink shampoo poured out.
“I already had the pleasure of meeting the guy in the room across from mine,” Ted said as he massaged the foam into his hair.
“Who’s that?”
“Dawson.”
“Oh. He’s been here for more than a decade. If you hit it off with Dawson, you shouldn’t have trouble with any of the others.”
“You keep talking as if I were going to stay here.”
Ted turned off the water. He walked quickly to the bench and wrapped himself in the towel.
“You’re convinced they’re going to keep me locked up in here, aren’t you?”
“I told you already: I don’t know anything about you.”
“Good enough.”
Ted dressed in silence. When he was done, he sat on the bench. McManus was twenty feet away, on another bench against the wall.
“You ready?” the nurse said at last.
“What do we do with this?” Ted pointed at the dirty clothes.
McManus, in turn, pointed at an empty laundry basket.
When they came out of the showers, Ted asked McManus to take him by his room to pick up the horseshoe.
29
When he entered the common room, all conversation stopped. People’s faces expressed surprise and also mistrust. The host of an entertainment program was the only one who ignored the tension and continued asking humorous questions on the television.
Robert Scott, head nurse of C wing, introduced Ted to the other patients. He told them all that he didn’t want any problems, and he left. McManus kept watch from an adjoining room, through a window with wire mesh glass. There was another nurse with her.
There were three well-differentiated groups in the commons. One, the largest, gathered around the TV. The other two sat at the tables, one playing chess, the other playing cards. The only patient keeping to himself was Mike Dawson, who sat in the wide window nook and read his book. When he saw Ted he waved hello, and then directly immersed himself again in his reading, as if Ted weren’t there. Ted went to the center of the room. He was tempted to join the group of chess players, but he was unsure if it was a good idea.
As the others turned their attention away from him, the noise level went back up. The cardplayers chattered nonstop; the TV viewers spoke in bursts, shouting answers to questions or getting into arguments. Ted went to the bookshelves and began examining the books while subtly keeping his attention trained on the chess players and the kibitzers around them. He was about ten feet away and could study the board for a few seconds. The game had just begun. It didn’t follow any standard opening, he was unsurprised to see. As he pretended to read the titles of the novels, he played out the game in his head. Black won.
One of the cardplayers, a tall, jumpy fellow, was the first to notice Ted’s fascination with the books. He pointed a trembling finger at Ted, and the others at the table turned to look, staring at him for several moments, laughing and sneering at him, before going back to their game.
Some twenty minutes later, the little guy Ted had seen from his room, whose name turned out to be Lester, came in from the garden with another inmate. He wasn’t shackled, and when he noticed Ted in the commons, he went crazy.
“He stole my gear!” he yelled at the top of his voice.
When Ted turned around, Lester rushed across the room at him. Mike Dawson jumped up from the window nook to inter
cept him. The nurses in the small adjoining room stirred. Several of the patients laughed and encouraged the impending fight. Lester repeated his accusation over and over again, wriggling frantically but unable to move any closer to Ted. Mike had planted himself between him and Ted, and that was enough to stop him.
“Nobody stole anything from you, Lester,” Mike said calmly. “Get out of here.”
“I’m gonna kill him! He’s got my gear!” Lester’s head was red, the veins stood out on his neck, and he waved his arms and danced his feet like a boxer.
The nurse with McManus turned and left the little room, trudging wearily into the commons. She raised her hands to quiet everyone. She was huge, like a Viking, able to restrain Lester with one hand no matter how frenzied the little guy became. But it was Dawson who kept the situation under control.
“Calm down,” he insisted.
“He came last night,” Lester said, pacing like a caged animal. “I saw him. He stole my gear and now I don’t have any way to communicate.”
Ted remained by the books, aware of all the eyes on him. Perhaps it was the word “stole” that made him unconsciously put his hand in his pocket and touch the horseshoe. Lester noticed it and exploded.
“He’s got it there, in his pocket! Check it out!”
The nurse shook her head no. Mike took a step toward Lester, putting a finger on his chest and chewing him out.
“Nobody’s got your gear,” he said severely. “So let me read now, if you don’t want any problems.”
The intimidation worked. Lester kept wriggling, but only on account of his nerves. His voice broke.
“But, Mike, I can’t send in my reports if I don’t have my gear. They need my report. You know that.”
“I don’t give a shit. Let the Millennium Falcon come and get it if they need it so bad. As for you, back in the garden. I don’t want to see you around here anymore. Is that clear?”
Lester nodded. No trace of his boundless rage remained. He left, dejected.
Mike gestured to the nurse and smiled. You don’t owe me anything for this favor…Then he winked at Ted and went back to his nook to resume reading.
Ted went over to the table where the chess game was almost done and was becoming less interesting. The guy playing white, clearly at a disadvantage, stared at the position of the pieces as if he might be able to move them by telekinesis. His opponent relaxed and awaited his turn, looking from the board to his tiny audience and back. Ted’s presence seemed to put him out, but he didn’t say anything.
“Come on, Sketch. I ain’t got all day! I’ll tell Scott to get us some of them double clocks, so I’ll be able to knock you guys off faster.”
Sketch, still immersed in the game, pretended not to hear. He’d have zero chance against a player with any skill, Ted thought, though he might have some hope if he moved his knight from f5 to h6.
One of the three kibitzers piped up.
“You got him now, right, Lolo?” He hit the palm of his hand with his other fist. “They’re gonna squash you like a fly, Sketch.”
“Shut up,” said another onlooker. “You don’t even know how the pieces move. This is chess, you know?”
Everybody laughed except the butt of the joke and Sketch, who, still concentrating on the board, at last lifted his hand from his lap to make a move. His fingers touched the knight on f5. He had two squares where he might move it: h6, which would give him a sliver of hope, or h4, which would sink him.
He went for h4.
“You’re no match for me, Sketch!” Lolo said as he moved a pawn one space dangerously closer to getting crowned. “Let’s see how you wriggle out of this.”
Sketch sank again into thought.
Ted moved on. It would be forever before Laura came to see him.
He was walking toward the door when he noticed that Dawson had set his book down and was now staring at him. Unsure whether it was a smart thing to do, Ted walked over to his nook, perhaps to thank Dawson for restraining Lester.
“You knew, didn’t you?” Dawson surprised him. “About the knight to h4.”
For a second, Ted didn’t know what he was talking about. When he figured it out, he shrugged.
“I played a little chess when I was younger.”
“Me too. Nothing professional,” Dawson admitted. “Maybe you and I should play a game someday.”
He was testing him.
“Sure.” Ted started to walk on.
“Hold up.”
Dawson studied him.
“Let me go with you. Lester’s still out there.”
Just then Ted became aware of the silence that had once more fallen on the common room. Everyone but the TV host seemed to be eavesdropping on his exchange with Mike Dawson. He remembered McManus’s words earlier this morning in the showers. If you hit it off with Dawson, you shouldn’t have trouble with any of the others.
The garden was extensive, with flower beds, leafy trees, and paths running through it, which at this time of day only a few solitary patients were enjoying. Lester had joined a small group on a corner of the basketball court, some sitting on a bench and others standing. They immediately turned to look at the two men.
“So you don’t know why you’re here?” Mike asked.
Ted looked at him in disbelief. In the morning sunlight he still seemed the sanest person in the world. If he hadn’t seen Dawson glaring at him with that deranged look the night before, he would have had a hard time understanding what he was doing at Lavender.
Just like you, and here you are.
They walked over to one of the more isolated benches, under a huge pine tree.
“Well?” Mike insisted after they sat down.
“It’s not that I don’t know,” Ted said with a certain resignation. “Dr. Hill has been treating me for the past few weeks. I’ve got…an inoperable tumor, and my doctor thought the therapy would help me cope with it. To be fair, he was right. I thought talking to Dr. Hill wouldn’t do me any good—but it did. Some good. Now she’s taken it too far.”
Lester and the others were playing on the basketball court now. The ball hammered against the cement with each bounce.
“Dr. Hill had you committed against your will?”
“Yeah.”
Mike reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to Ted, who turned it down.
“I didn’t use to smoke, either,” Mike said, flicking a gilded lighter. He took a long drag. Then, studying the cigarette in his fingers, he added something cryptic: “Sometimes I think I do it just to set myself apart from the guy I used to be, out there.”
Ted was still looking at the lighter. Mike noticed and said, “Things get better the more you can get them to trust you. My days are pretty peaceful here now. It’s the nights that torture me.”
“Why are you here?”
“They didn’t tell you?”
Ted shook his head.
Mike looked down, visibly moved even before he opened his mouth.
“I killed my best friend’s family.”
The ball continued to pound in the distance.
“I was very sick,” Mike went on. Now he was slumping, shrunken, forearms resting on his knees, staring at the ground. “If there were some sort of mass jailbreak here, or if they let me go for some crazy reason, I’d refuse to leave.” He bitterly added, “My friend’s daughter survived. Hanging myself from that tree wouldn’t be fair to her. Too easy.”
Ted kept silent.
“You know what? Being crazy doesn’t change things all that much,” Mike went on. “It doesn’t let you off the hook, I mean. Instead of going to prison, they lock you up somewhere like this. But a part of you is always responsible—responsible for not stopping the other part. Because part of you knows. Knows it all.”
Now it was Wendell Ted remembered, in the closet at the abandoned factory…
You have some information here, in your head, that could get you into trouble.
Mike paused thoughtfu
lly, now staring up at the sky, apparently recalling the details of a past that wouldn’t leave him in peace. He touched his temple and turned his wide-eyed, eerie stare on Ted.
“The mind is a magic box. Full of tricks. It always figures out a way to warn you. To give you a way out, too. A door…”
Open the door. It’s your only way out.
Ted thought of the pine tree shading their view and pictured Mike Dawson’s body hanging from a branch, swinging to the rhythm of a gentle breeze.
“I guess you’re right.”
Mike smiled. Again the friendly, supportive expression.
“Maybe it’s like you say, and tomorrow you won’t be here. Or maybe you will be, and we’ll be sitting on this bench again then. We all have to open that door sooner or later.”
30
Laura was waiting for him in an assessment room. Ted stood outside the room, his hands in restraints, until McManus found the right key to let him in.
“It’s open,” said a voice from inside the room. Ted recognized it immediately.
Laura Hill smiled faintly. Roger, sitting next to her, was by contrast the very image of seriousness, his eyes wide and cold.
“Dr. Hill. At last,” Ted said.
“You can still call me Laura.”
“Laura—of course. Thanks for putting me up here in the Hilton last night. Very generous of you.”
McManus led him to the table where Dr. Hill sat, but before he took a seat Ted displayed the chain that bound his wrists.
“Please have a seat, Ted,” said Laura. She made no mention of the restraints.
He examined the room, not that there was much to see: depressing drab-green wall tiles, the Formica-topped table where they sat, six fluorescent tubes that erased every shadow, and a window of darkened glass behind which no doubt a video camera was running. While seeing the reflection in this window, Ted noticed McManus signal something with a shake of her head and then leave.
“How do you feel, Ted?”
“No, no, no. None of this ‘How do you feel, Ted?’ business. I feel like an ass. I want to know what I’m doing here. And I want to hear it now.”
Laura looked down for a few seconds, straightened out the file folder that lay before her, and cleared her throat.
Kill the Next One Page 13