The Devil in Silver (40 page)

Dorry
levitated
.

More than a few of the witnesses would remember the moment that way.

The other staff members reached the lounge. They pulled patients aside. Rudy fussed with his keys, trying to find the right one for the door. But he had fallen into a panic, and his fingers wouldn’t work. Even when he found the right key, it didn’t help. Each time Rudy tried to slide the key in the lock, he lost his aim. He was just stabbing at it, grunting with frustration. Clio, try as she might, couldn’t get Rudy to step aside and let her open it.

Dorry scanned the lounge until she found Pepper’s flabbergasted face. She smiled, as tenderly as when she’d given him the tour of New Hyde.

Dorry mouthed one word to him.

Rest
.

She took a step forward, as if she was just walking down the sidewalk. One foot out and she plunged. It wasn’t that far to fall. About eight feet.

Dorry landed on the side of her head. Her neck bent so hard, so fast, that for a moment her ear touched her elbow.

Then her body smacked flat on the concrete. She shivered once.

Rudy finally got the door open.

Three staff members ran out to Dorry’s body while Clio stayed in the lounge and used her cell phone to call the trauma unit.

The patients could not be ushered back to their rooms, no matter what the staff threatened. They wouldn’t stop staring at the old woman’s body. Her head had come to rest in a cluster of old stubbed cigarettes.

Before the crash cart arrived, Doris Walczak bled to death.

“
WHAT
THE FUCK
is
wrong
with you people?”

Pepper and Loochie sat quietly. They didn’t give an answer. And with good reason. This wasn’t meant as a question.

“You look like the rest of us, you were born just like the rest of us, but spend a few hours around you and it becomes obvious.
You are not like the rest of us
.”

Still, Pepper and Loochie stayed silent.

“I’m not even going to play games anymore. Pretend you’re just ‘different.’ We’re all
special
and
wonderful
in our
special wonderful goddamn
way. It’s a
different
ability not a
disability
. You don’t suffer from an
illness
, just an
otherness
. I mean, what does that even mean?! Well, forget it. I’m just going to say this because I need to say this. Out loud. To your faces. There
is
something wrong with you. You people are fucking crazy.”

Pepper and Loochie shifted in their chairs, not sure if they were supposed to laugh.

“I know that seems like a joke, since we’re here in a mental hospital. But it’s not a joke. You are terrible people. And honestly. Truly. Sometimes I want to kill you.”

Now everyone in the room, three bodies sat quietly. The last sentence filled the space like poison gas.

“Yes. Good. Fine. I said it. There are times when I go to bed and pray, please, God, just let me wake up to find out that every mental patient in the world has died. And I don’t even believe in God! Every day I look at your fat, ugly faces and I wish I could slap each one of you. I know it’s supposed to be the medication that makes you obese or slow or dazed or incoherent, but I don’t blame the medication. Look what it has to work with! Brains so warped, so poorly wired, that
nothing
will ever fix you.”

Pepper and Loochie were wondering when this would end. How long were they expected to just sit here and listen.

“People who have never been around you can talk and talk. I can’t think how many times I’ve been at a dinner with my wife and someone will start telling me about the evils of the mental-health profession. And when they’re done lecturing me, I ask them what
the hell
they know about it, and they tell me they read some damn
book
! Or they listened to a story on goddamn
NPR
! Well
fuck
them and
fuck
you!”

And with that, Dr. Anand ran out of breath.

He sat behind his desk, in his office, heaving. His brown face had gone red. (Which made it look sort of chestnut, really.) He’d risen from his chair as he ranted. Now he plopped back down and the cushion of his chair let out a sigh, as if even the furniture was fed up.

It was late morning, April 16. Dorry had killed herself the night before.

Dr. Anand’s “office” was another repurposed room on Northwest 1. The trio sat there, listening to the clock on the wall. The second hand clucked as it spun, and now it was the loudest thing in the room.

Doris Walczak’s body had finally been wheeled out of Northwest only hours ago. Off to the Rose Cottage. Dr. Anand had been called after she was pronounced dead. He’d come to the unit at four a.m. He’d been in this office for the last seven hours, interviewing patients.

The man wore a different pair of glasses than usual. These frames were metal and old and lopsided. The rubber guards on the ends of both arms (called temple tips) were worn down. Dr. Anand had a habit of using the ends to dig into his ears when they itched. Over the
years they’d gone white-ish. These were not Dr. Anand’s professional pair, but he’d been so tired when he was called that he put on the wrong ones. It was as if he’d forgotten to put on his professional face. So he’d shown up as Samuel Anand, husband and father, who owned a two-family house in Rego Park. That’s the man who sat down with Pepper and Loochie in his office. And because he was tired he’d said way too much.

Dr. Anand leaned forward in his knockoff Aeron office chair, until his head touched the desktop. It looked like the man had fallen asleep. Pepper and Loochie looked at each other. Loochie still wore that damn towel on her head, which had been the last straw for Dr. Anand when he saw them walk in.

Pepper raised one hand to jostle the doctor, but then Dr. Anand’s shoulders trembled. They watched him a moment longer and that’s when they realized the man was crying.

Weeping.

Well, now what?

Pepper brought his raised hand back down to his lap and looked behind him at the room door, wishing some other staff member—a trained therapist perhaps—would come in here and take over. But that didn’t happen.

So Loochie reached across the desk. She patted the top of the man’s bushy head.

“Don’t cry, Dr. Sam.”

Pepper was surprised to hear Loochie’s charitable tone. But Loochie’s touch, Loochie’s tenor, only wrecked the man even more.

“Don’t
cry
, Dr. Sam.”

This time, Loochie
mushed
the doctor’s scalp. And her voice lost some of its kindness. The first time, it was like Loochie wanted to make him feel a little better but by the second, it was like she couldn’t believe that he, of all people in this building, was the one most in need of support. Dorry and Coffee (and Sam) were
dead
. Glenn’s larynx had been crushed. Loochie’s hair had been torn out. Pepper had spent weeks in manacles, with Dr. Anand’s tacit approval. So who ought to be in tears right then? Dr. Sam? Really?

While Loochie might’ve had a reason for her righteous indignation,
Pepper’s perspective differed. He was forty-two to Loochie’s nineteen. At nineteen, the world seems so simple. This is because nineteen-year-olds have it almost completely wrong. Pepper knew differently. Who had a right to a few tears just then? How about every single one of them? Dr. Sam, too.

Dr. Anand pulled his head up. His eyes were wide and wild.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t believe I just said all that.”

Dr. Anand took off his glasses, almost slipped one temple tip into his itchy ear. But he stopped and laughed at himself when he realized which glasses he’d worn to work. He spoke to Pepper and Loochie more evenly now.

“You know how many of us started out together at New Hyde?” he asked. “I’m a forensic psychiatrist. There were three of us when I first arrived. I’m the only one left. I had friends who worked in other departments, not just the psychiatric unit, and do you know where ninety-five percent of them are now? They’re in private practice, or they work for a private hospital, or they went into research. They’re almost all gone, and I stayed. I don’t want to be applauded for that, but I don’t want to be punished, either.”

Pepper cleared his throat. “We’re not …”

Dr. Anand had regained his professional authority. He raised his hand to quiet Pepper.

“I’ve spent years lobbying my superiors for more funds. More staff. Better oversight. I’ve spoken with politicians. I’ve tried the press. I’ve gone to the community-board meetings. No one could ever tell me why the funding never materialized. I mean never. Do you know what Govenor Pataki did to our services when he was governor? The man butchered us.”

Dr. Anand sat back in his chair. He looked at the ceiling.

“One day the truth came to me. A wise man once said that every system is designed to give you the results you actually get. If you understand that, you’ll see that this system is
working
.”

“For some people,” Pepper said.

Dr. Anand shook his head emphatically. “No. Wrong. The system is working
exactly
right for those it was
intended
for. That’s why it hasn’t been fixed. Because it isn’t broken!

“Can you imagine anything more terrible? Doesn’t it
hurt
? I love being an American and I know it hurts me. I mean, New Hyde’s board knows we’ve got trouble with patients in Northwest. People hurting themselves, even dying. And what’s their solution?
Equator Zero!
Do you know what that program actually does?!”

Dr. Anand clapped his hands and glared at them, but they didn’t have any idea what Equator Zero was. Dr. Anand said, “The system is working and it hates us.” He shook his head and looked at his empty, open hands. “Sometimes I can see why people believe in the Devil.”

Dr. Anand’s cheeks drooped, his mustache sagged.

“But it can’t just be terrible and that’s that,” Pepper said. “Even on a sinking ship people still want to try to get out, to survive.”

“And you’ll be the one to save them, is that right?” Dr. Anand asked sarcastically. “You want to know your diagnosis? I finally figured it out.”

“I don’t want to hear that.”

Dr. Anand jabbed his finger in the air after each word. “Narcissistic. Personality. Disorder.”

He grinned at Pepper, but it wasn’t pleasant. “You’re going to get a lot of people hurt with your delusions of grandeur, Pepper.” He dropped his hand onto the table. “Maybe you already have.”

Behind them, the office door opened. Scotch Tape peeked in. “Dr. Anand?”

“What is it, Clarence?”

Scotch Tape jerked his head backward. “Cops is here.”

Dr. Anand pushed his glasses up with the knuckle of his pointer finger. “Okay,” he said. “Tell them to give me two minutes. I’m not done here.”

Behind Scotch Tape, the
squawk
of a police radio made everyone in the room jump. Scotch Tape’s head pulled back and the door opened wider. A cop stood there now, bulky and short. If he’d been out of uniform, you might’ve taken him for a funny guy; he had the build of a neighborhood comedian. The kind who taunts people and causes fights. In uniform, the same dimensions made the man seem petty and easily offended.

“Why don’t you talk to me right now?” the cop said. He had his hand on his police radio as if that were the handle of his gun.

Dr. Anand stood right up. Much to the surprise of Loochie and Pepper.

Dr. Anand walked over to the officer, and the officer said, “We can talk in the hall. I don’t care.”

The doctor looked back at Pepper and Loochie, narrowing his eyes. He tried to guess which would result in greater humiliation: ushering Pepper and Loochie out of the room, perhaps having to fuss with them about it (in front of this bossy cop), or just stepping into the hall as if following a command, here on his own unit. Which promised to wound his pride more? Dr. Anand stepped out into the hall and pulled the door three-quarters closed behind him, but held on to the doorknob. The doctor and cop had their conversation out there. Pepper heard their voices but couldn’t make out their words.

He looked at Loochie.

“Narcissist,” she teased.

He looked away from her. Could already imagine the time (how much time?) on the unit and all the days and weeks and years (decades?) when she’d whisper that word to him and it would be part of their secret language, a joke between lifers, and he despaired.

He scanned Dr. Anand’s desk. He heard the officer raise his voice, shouting to another cop there in the hall. Dr. Anand had been speaking with patients for hours, saving Pepper and Loochie for last. Was he trying to get the others to pin the blame for Dorry on them? On him? (
Narcissist
.) Pepper might’ve continued thinking this way if his eye hadn’t spied one particular device there on Dr. Anand’s desk.

Dr. Anand’s office phone.

They’d removed the device from the nurses’ station because patients regularly gathered there. But who would’ve thought to do the same in here, the doctor’s inner sanctum? Pepper didn’t hesitate.