Authors: John Katzenbach
“Too many folks,” Mr. Moses said, as they approached a nursing station. “Got beds for two hundred maybe. But got nearly three hundred peoples crowded in. You’d think they’d figured that part out, but no, not yet.”
Francis didn’t reply.
“Got a bed for you, though,” Mr. Moses added. At the nursing station, Mr. Moses stopped. “You gonna be A-OK. Hello, ladies,” he said. Two whiteclad nurses behind the wire mesh, turned toward him. “You looking ever so sweet and beautiful this fine morning.”
One was old, with graying hair and a well-lined, pinched face, but who still managed a smile. The other was a stocky black woman, far younger than her companion, who snorted her reply like a woman who had heard nice words that amounted to false promises more than once. “You always talking so sweet, but what it be you need this time around?” This was said in a mock-gruff tone, that caused both women to crack smiles.
“Why, ladies, I’m always looking only to bring a little joy and happiness into your lives,” he said. “What more?”
The nurses laughed out loud. “Ain’t no man ever not looking for something,” the black nurse said. The white nurse quickly added, “Sweetheart, that’s the God’s truth.”
Mr. Moses also laughed, while Francis suddenly stood awkwardly, unsure what he was to do. “Ladies, may I be presenting you with Mister Francis Petrel, who be staying with us. Mister C-Bird, this fine young lady be Miss Wright, and her lovely companion, there, be Miss Winchell.” He handed over a clipboard. “The doctor listed out some meds for this boy. Look to be pretty much the usual.”
He turned to Francis and said, “What you think, Mister C-Bird? You think the doc maybe prescribed a cup of hot coffee in the morning and a nice cold beer and a plate filled with fried chicken and cornbread at the end of the day? You think that’s what the doctor ordered?”
Francis must have looked surprised, because the attendant quickly added, “I’m just having some fun with you. Don’t mean nothing.”
The nurses looked over the chart, then placed it along with a stack of others on a corner of their desk. The older one, Miss Winchell, reached below a counter and brought forth a small, cheap plaid cloth suitcase. “Mister Petrel, this was left for you by your family.”
She passed it through an opening in the wire mesh, turning to the attendant, saying, “I’ve already searched it.”
Francis took the suitcase and fought back the urge to burst into tears. He had recognized it instantly. It was a bag he’d been given as a gift one Christmas morning, when he was young, and because he’d never actually traveled anywhere, he’d always used for storage whenever he wanted to keep something special, or something unusual. A sort of portable secret place for the items collected during childhood, because each small item was, in its own way, a sort of journey in itself. A pine cone collected one fall; a set of toy soldiers, a book of children’s verse never returned to the local library. His hands quivered slightly as they ran across the fake leather edging on the satchel, and he touched the handle. The zipper on the bag was open, and he saw that everything that the bag had once held had been removed, replaced with some clothes from his drawers at home. He knew instantly that everything that he’d accumulated in that bag had been emptied out and discarded. It was as if his parents had packed what little they thought of his life into the small luggage, and sent it to him to send him on his way. He could feel his lower lip trembling, and he felt completely and utterly alone.
The nurses passed a second gathering of items through the wire. These included some rough sheets and a pillowcase, a threadbare army surplus olive drab wool blanket, a bathrobe much like the ones he’d already seen on some patients, and some pajamas, again like those he’d already seen. He placed these on top of the suitcase and lifted both in front of him.
Mr. Moses nodded. “All right, I’ll show you your bed. Get your stuff squared away. Then what have we got for Mister C-Bird, ladies?”
Again, one of the nurses checked the chart. “Lunch at noon. Then he’s free until a group session in Room 101 at three with Mister Evans. He comes back here at four thirty for free time. Dinner at six o’clock. Medications at seven. That’s it.”
“You get all that, Mister C-Bird?”
Francis nodded. He didn’t trust his own voice. He could hear, echoing deep within him, orders to comply, keep quiet, and stay alert. He followed Mr. Moses through a door into a large room with some thirty to forty beds lined up in rows. All the beds were made up, except one, not far from the door. There were a half dozen men lying on beds, either asleep, or staring up into the ceiling, who barely looked in his direction as he entered the room.
Mr. Moses helped him to make the bed and stow his few clothes in a footlocker.
There was room for the tiny suitcase, as well, and it disappeared into the empty space. It took less than five minutes to square him away.
“Well, that’s it,” Mr. Moses said.
“What happens to me now?” Francis asked.
The attendant smiled a little wistfully. “Now, C-Bird, what you got to do is get yourself better.”
Francis nodded. “How?”
“That the big question, C-Bird. You gone have to figure that out for yourself.”
“What should I do?” Francis asked.
The attendant leaned down toward him. “Just keep to yourself. This place can get a bit rough, sometimes. You got to figure out everybody else, and give ‘em what space they need. Don’t be trying to make friends too fast, C-Bird. Just keep your mouth shut and follow the rules. You need help, you talk to me or my brother, or one of the nurses, and we’ll try to see you straight.”
“But what are the rules?” Francis said.
The large attendant turned and pointed at a sign posted high on the wall.
NO SMOKING IN SLEEPING ROOM
NO LOUD NOISES
NO TALKING AFTER 9 PM
RESPECT OTHERS
RESPECT OTHER PEOPLE'S PROPERTY
When he finished reading through twice, Francis turned. He wasn’t sure where to go or what to do. He sat down on the edge of his bed.
Across the room, one of the men who had been lying down staring at the ceiling, feigning sleep, abruptly stood up. He was very tall, well over six and one half feet, with a sunken chest, and thin, bony arms that protruded from beneath a tattered sweatshirt with the logo of the New England Patriots on it, and stovepipe legs that jutted from lime green surgical scrubs that were six inches too short. The sweatshirt sleeves had been sliced off just below the shoulders. He was far older than Francis, and wore stringy gray-tinged hair in a matted clump that fell to his shoulders. His eyes were suddenly wide, as if half-frightened and half-furious. The man instantly lifted one cadaverous hand and pointed directly at Francis.
“Stop it!” he shouted out. “Stop it, now!”
Francis shrank back slightly. “Stop what?”
“Just stop! I can tell! You cannot fool me! I knew it as soon as you came in! Stop it!”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Francis replied meekly.
By now the tall man was waving both arms in the air as if trying to clear cobwebs from his path. His voice was rising with each step he took across the room, “Stop it! Stop it! I can see through you! You can’t do it to me!”
Francis looked around for somewhere to run, or to hide, but he was hemmed in by the man lurching toward him and the back wall of the room. The few other men in the dormitory were still asleep, or ignoring what was happening.
The man seemed to have stretched in size, growing in ferocity with every stride. “I know! I could tell! From the moment you walked in! Stop now!”
Francis felt frozen with confusion. Inwardly, his voices were all screaming in a cascade of conflicted advice:
Run! Run! He’s going to hurt us! Hide!
His head pivoted around, trying to see how he could escape the tall man’s onslaught. He tried to will his muscles to work, at least rise up from the bed, but, instead, he shrank backward, almost cowering.
“If you will not stop, then it’s up to me to stop you!” the man shouted. He seemed to be preparing himself for an assault.
Francis lifted his arms to fend off the attack.
The tall man gargled out some sort of gathered war cry, lifted himself up, puffing out his sunken chest and waving his arms above his head. Seemed ready to leap on Francis, when another voice sliced across the room.
“Lanky! Stop there!”
The tall man hesitated, then turned in the direction of the voice.
“Just stop right there!”
Francis was still huddled back against the wall, and he couldn’t see who was speaking until the tall man turned around.
“What are you doing?”
“But it’s him,” the man said to whomever had come into the dormitory. He seemed, in that moment, to have shrunk in size.
“No, it’s not!” came the reply.
And then Francis saw that the man fast approaching was the same man he’d met in his first minutes in the hospital.
“Leave him alone!”
“But it’s him! I could tell as soon as I saw him!”
“That’s what you said to me when I first showed up. That’s what you say to every new person who comes into the hospital.”
This made the tall man hesitate.
“I do?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I still think it’s him,” said the tall man, but oddly, most of the passion had
fled from his voice, replaced by questions and some doubt. “I’m pretty sure,” he added. “He absolutely could be, I’ll say that.” Despite the conviction contained in the words, the tenor of the voice was filled with uncertainty.
“But why?” said the man. “Why are you so sure?”
“It was just, when he came in, it seemed so obvious, I was watching, and then …” The tall man’s voice tailed off, fading. “Maybe I’m wrong.”
“I think you’re genuinely mistaken.”
“You do?”
“I do.”
The other man came forward. He was grinning now. He stepped past the tall man.
“Well, C-Bird, I see you’re all settled in.”
Francis nodded.
The man turned to the tall man. “Lanky, this is C-Bird. I met him the other day in the administration building. He’s not the person you think he is any more than I was the other day when you first spotted me. I can assure you of that.”
“How can you be so certain?” the tall man asked.
“Well, I saw him come in, and I saw his chart, and I promise you, if he was the son of Satan sent here to do evil inside the hospital, there would have been a notation on it, because it had all the other particulars. Hometown. Family. Address. Age. You name it, it was there. Nothing about being the Antichrist.”
“Satan is the great deceiver. His son would be equally clever. Probably be able to hide himself. Even from Gulp-a-pill.”
“Ah, possibly. But there were policemen with me, and they would have been trained to spot the son of Satan. They would have had flyers and handouts, and those pictures like they have on the walls at the post office, you know what I’m saying? I doubt even the son of Satan could have hidden from a pair of state troopers.”
The tall man listened intently to this explanation. The he turned to Francis.
“I’m sorry. I was apparently mistaken. I can see now that you are not the person I have been on the lookout for. Please accept my sincerest apologies. Vigilance is really our only defense against evil. You have to be so careful, you know, day in, day out, hour after hour. It’s exhausting, but utterly necessary …”
Francis finally managed to crawl off the bed and stand up. “Yes. Of course,” he said. “It’s perfectly okay.”
The tall man reached out and shook Francis’s hand, pumping it enthusiastically.
“I’m delighted to make your acquaintance, C-Bird. You are generous. And clearly well mannered. I’m sincerely sorry if I scared you.”
To Francis the tall man suddenly seemed far less frightening. He simply
seemed old, tattered, a little like an out-of-date magazine that has been left on a table for far too long.
The tall man shrugged. “They call me Lanky,” he said. “I’m here most of the time.”
Francis nodded. “I’m …”
The other man interrupted. “C-Bird. No one seems to use their real name in here.”
Lanky moved his head up and down rapidly. “The Fireman’s right, C-Bird. Nicknames and abbreviations and the such.”
Then he pivoted, and quickly marched back across the room, and tossed himself down on his bed, staring back up at the ceiling.
“He doesn’t seem to be a bad fellow, and I think in reality, which is a poor word to use in this fine place, I believe he’s actually pretty harmless,” the Fireman said. “He did exactly the same to me the other day, shouting and pointing and acting like he was going to take me on single-handedly, thus protecting society from the arrival of the Antichrist, or the Son of Satan or whomever. Any odd demon that might accidentally land here. He does that to everyone who enters whom he doesn’t recognize. And it’s not altogether crazy, too, if you think about it. There seems to be a significant amount of evil around in this world, and it has to be coming from somewhere, I’m guessing. Might as well stay vigilant, like he says, even here.”
“Thank you, anyway,” Francis said. He was calming down, a little like a child who thought he was lost, but somehow spots a landmark, that gives him a sense of location. “But I don’t know your name …”
“I don’t have a name any longer,” the man said. This was spoken with just the slightest touch of sadness around the edge, replaced swiftly by a wry half smile that was tinged with some sort of regret.
“How can you not have a name?” Francis asked.
“I’ve had to give it up. It’s what landed me here.”
This made little sense to Francis. The man shook his head, amused. “I’m sorry. People have started calling me the Fireman, because that is what I was before I arrived at the hospital. Put out fires.”
“But …”
“Well, once my friends called me Peter. So, Peter the Fireman, that will have to do for you Francis C-Bird.”
“All right,” Francis replied.
“I think you’ll discover that the naming system here, makes it a little easier. Now you’ve met Lanky, which is as obvious a nickname for someone who looks like he does as one could possibly have. And you’ve been introduced to the Moses brothers, except everyone calls them Big Black and Little Black, which, again, seems like appropriate casting. And Gulp-a-pill, which is easier
to say and far more accurate given his approach to treatment than the doctor’s real name. And who else have you run into?”