Parker's attempts to help his patient continue .... with unintended results and ramifications. Enjoy
If you'd like to follow along with the narration, the script follows below:
Going back to the hospital to treat Joe the next day was, as you might expect, a fairly tense experience. Now that I was beginning to suspect that I was going to have to end up openly defying the Chief of Medicine herself, much of what had been routine suddenly began to take on a sinister character. For every bottle of medication that I logged for my patients, I found myself wondering if those prescriptions could be used against me. As a result, I got far more stingy with pills, to the point where I’m pretty sure my supervisor purposefully assigned me the job of doing clinic work on the junkies who’d periodically come in faking an illness to get their fix.
Satisfying though it usually was to watch a meth addict’s face fall when their paperthin list of symptoms was exposed, to me, this instead made the situation worse. I mean, what if Dr. G----- decided to bribe one of those junkies to sue me? Either way, I felt like I was trapped in a lose/lose situation.
And then there was the small matter of the orderlies. Mind you, while I was used to seeing orderlies everywhere, and before would’ve thought nothing of it, my suspicions had made me hypervigilant. As a result, I noticed every single person around me. Not only that, but I started noticing patterns in which of them were there at any given time.
Once I started looking for these, it became excruciatingly obvious that I was being followed by two orderlies in particular. And these were the biggest, most hulking brutes on the ward. One, Marvin, was a baldheaded, pale behemoth who must’ve been at least 6’5’’, and whose hospital uniform couldn’t quite disguise his fully tattooed arms. The other, Hank, was a dreadlocked black Leviathan who was almost as vast as Marvin was tall, and looked like he could squat twice his weight without breaking a sweat. They would’ve been noticeable even to an unobservant person, but to me, their constant lurking presence practically screamed with malevolence. Not that they obviously followed me. No, they at least had enough wits to seem to be working on something else whenever I tried to catch them observing my movements, whether it was checking a patient’s vitals, or carrying mountains of new supplies into the closets. All the same, it was obviously too coincidental that at least one of them should be around me all the time, and their presence was just one among many that I grew increasingly paranoid over the coming weeks.
It didn’t help that the longer I spent treating Joe, the more convinced I became that he’d been right. I saw him at least once a day for an hour, and over that time, his apparent sanity never wavered for a moment. In other words, even if his doctors had thought he was a terrifying medical mystery at one point, it was obvious to me now that he was being kept at the hospital purely because he brought in money from his wealthy but uncaring parents.
At first, some small part of me entertained the hope that this last bit might not be true, and that Joe’s parents might simply be unaware that their son was being kept for no reason other than to bleed money from them. However, when I broached this prospect to Joe, he only barked a harsh laugh and told me not to be an idiot. When I pressed him on the subject, he grew visibly angry.
“If my parents gave a shit about me, why haven’t they visited me?” he asked, his voice quivering with a combination of grief and rage.
I put my hands up to soothe him. “Everyone’s encouraged to stay away from you, Joe, even the doctors. It’s not a stretch to think they might believe the same things we’re told.”
“It’s not like I’m asking for them to waltz in with a knitted sweater every Christmas,” he spat back. “But who said they couldn’t at least come to look in through the window in my door once in twenty fucking years? Or check to see who’s treating me? None of the doctors I’ve had in this hell hole have ever mentioned them coming to ask about me. Hell, even when I’ve asked people directly, they’ve all said no one comes looking for me. Face it, doc, they left me here to rot. They don’t care where I am, so long as it’s not with them.”
“I think you might be being a bit harsh,” I said, then instantly regretted it when I met his eyes. They felt like they were searing through me.
“A bit harsh?” he croaked softly, though there was poison in every syllable. “A bit harsh? Do yourself a favor, doctor, and don’t talk about what you don’t know. If you knew my parents, you wouldn’t be shooting your mouth off like that.”
“What makes you think—“
“What makes me think they’re heartless shitheels?” he snarled. “Let me tell you a story, doc. You’ll want to sit down, it’s not pleasant.”
I decided to listen, and took a seat next to his bed. He remained glaring at me as he spoke.
“When I was five, just a year before they decided to get rid of me, I met a stray cat out in the woods on my family’s estate,” he said. “But she wasn’t like just any stray cat. She was friendly and tame and would let me pet her and even hold her. I called her Fiberwood Flower, or Fiber for short, because my dad had made his fortune in textiles, so I used to hear him use the phrase ‘fiberwood,’ and she was pretty, so calling her a flower seemed appropriate. I was a kid, y’know, so just mixing words together seemed fine. Well, eventually she stopped hiding in the woods, and started coming onto my family’s estate to visit me. I’d leave out scraps from my food that I didn’t eat for her, and we sort of got close. That is, until my parents found out.”
His fist clenched. “My mother was violently allergic to cats,” he said. “And as soon as my dad found out I’d been sneaking one onto the estate, he was furious. I tried to tell them I’d be good and wouldn’t let her upset mother, and that she was a nice cat, and my friend, but my dad didn’t listen. He marched right out of the house over to where Fiber was sitting. Well, she was used to people being friendly, so of course she didn’t run. I wish she had, though. Because when he got to her, he picked her up, and dropkicked her into the fucking woods before telling me if I ever got near her again, he’d do the same to me. Then he took the belt to me and locked me in my room. I never saw her again.”
Having dealt with my own loss of a childhood pet, I felt sick hearing the story. Needless to say, I never mentioned his parents again, as I was thoroughly convinced of their cruelty by that point.
However, the story did at least give me a sense that, even if I couldn’t treat Joe for the fantastic disorders attributed to him in his file, I could probably treat him for at least a couple of issues. He was obviously suffering from depression, for example, and with good reason, and the abuse from his parents had clearly made it difficult for him to trust people, not to mention whatever else had happened. So over the course of the next month, I decided I would start seeing if I could at least make his situation more bearable by lessening whatever parts of it were in his head.
This obviously necessitated going back to look at his file, albeit with a much more skeptical eye. While most of it seemed to be an obvious fabrication now, I did notice a couple of details that whoever had written it obviously never bothered to disguise. Perhaps most important of these tidbits of information was the fact that Joe had been voluntarily committed by his guardians, which meant that theoretically, since he was eighteen now, he should have been able to check himself out. I resolved to broach this at the next meeting we had.
To say I regretted it is a gross understatement, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Here’s how the conversation went.
“Why not just walk out?” I asked. “If they really don’t care where you go, why not leave? You were voluntarily committed. You can leave against medical advice.”
I instantly send that it was the wrong question. The look Joe was giving me made the room’s temperature feel like it had plunged to arctic levels.
“Did you even read my file?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” I said. “All of it. Why—“
“Then why are you asking me a question you know the answer to?”
“I…I’m not,” I said slowly. “Joe, if there’s something keeping you here, I don’t know anything about it.”
He sighed expansively. “I’ve been trying to leave since I turned eighteen. But who’d let me out if they saw what was in my file? Used to be they’d send in a new doctor every couple of years just to keep the trick going, and when the doctors got too scared, they started making shit up. Fuck. Cigarette.”
I had taken to carrying these with me, since he invariably wanted one whenever we met. I pulled one out and lit it while he puffed. Seeming a bit pacified, he went on.
“I almost thought I might get out back when Nessie was giving me my meds every night.”
I stared. “Nessie?” I asked, my mouth dry. “What did Nessie have to do with it?”
The look he gave me was laced with pity.
“So you knew Nessie,” he said sorrowfully. “Well, then tell me something, doc. Does Nessie seem the type to be a good jailer?”
I didn’t have to think about it. I shook my head. He smiled mournfully.
“Well, you’re right. She wasn’t,” he said. “She knew what they were doing, and it was killing her inside. At the same time, even I knew they couldn’t fire her, and she didn’t want to leave. It’s only because she was so attached to this place that I couldn’t get her to agree to spill the beans. That is, until the last night I saw her. You know, the one when she ‘committed suicide?’”
My blood felt like it had turned to liquid nitrogen. “You don’t mean to say…”
“That they killed her over it? No, I don’t,” he said. “Because I couldn’t prove it even if I did mean to say it. All the same, if I had any illusions about getting out, they died right before you showed up.”
The psychiatrist part of my brain screamed at me that this must be a product of Joe’s isolation, which might well have made him paranoid, even delusional about the prospect of escape. If it had been any other patient, that’s exactly what I would have told myself, and not lost any sleep over it. But this case was already so strange that this explanation seemed almost laughably insufficient. Joe seemed so utterly lucid about everything else that it was very difficult to imagine a delusion like this being buried beneath that façade. Besides, if it was a delusion, how to explain Nessie’s death? I’d seen her very shortly before her death. There was nothing in her behavior that suggested suicidal thoughts, or even depression. And anyway, on the off chance that Joe wasn’t paranoid, this had gone well beyond the realm of medical malpractice into serious criminal conspiracy. I was frightened of what might happen if I tried to interfere, but I was even more determined that I wouldn’t be an accomplice. My time treating Joe had made me care about his well-being just as much as I would care about any other patient’s, if not moreso, and besides, what if someone else blew the whistle? I’d be considered an accomplice.
All the same, it seemed utterly hopeless to think that I could do anything without breaking the law. If I went to the authorities, I’d probably end up committed myself for claiming that a twenty year long history of mental illness was the product of such an elaborate conspiracy, and all on the word of a mental patient. If I resigned my post in protest, it’d just leave Joe at the mercy of someone with fewer scruples than me. There was only one thing for it. I’d have to find a way to break him out in secret. If it failed, I told myself, at least I wasn’t unfireable like Nessie, which meant they probably wouldn’t feel the need to kill me to get rid of me. Sure, I could be banned from practicing medicine again if they pressed charges, but if Dr. G----- was vindictive enough to try that, at least I could make a stab at trying to expose the whole thing before she got her way, seeing as I wouldn’t have anything else to lose.
And if I succeeded? Well, at worst I would’ve let a somewhat paranoid but essentially stable patient out into society, and could continue working at the hospital with a clean conscience, knowing the conspiracy was that much less likely to exist.
Not that breaking a patient out of any mental hospital, let alone this one, would be easy. Security cameras were fairly ubiquitous on the premises, and the staff kept a close eye on who had the key to which patient’s room. If I wanted to do this, it’d have to look like an accident that Joe got loose.
Nevertheless, I was smart and resourceful, and soon worked out a plan. Since the hospital would need to be operating with a skeleton crew for my plan to work, I decided to take a few extra night shifts in the weeks before I did anything, just so I’d be able to get a sense of who was around during the hospital’s off-hours, and more importantly, so they wouldn’t think anything of seeing me around during those off-hours. My fiancé complained of my absence at first, but when I explained that it was vital to the treatment of one of my patients, she seemed to understand, at least for the time being.
As to the plan itself, I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice to say it involved leaving my lab coat (and keys) in Joe’s room, supposedly by accident, then setting off an equally “accidental” fire alarm, which would cause most of the staff to evacuate the hospital, clearing the way for Joe’s escape. I’d also made sure Joe knew the way out in advance by giving him a pack of cigarettes that was secretly wrapped with a floor plan of the hospital on the inside, where I’d marked all the less-used fire exits.
In retrospect, it was a terribly easy plan to botch, and Joe himself called me out on that fact when I told him the plan.
“Doc, you’re crazier than I am,” he said with his characteristic crooked smile. “If that plan works, I’m Mickey Mouse.”
“It will work,” I told him, fiercely. “Even if they treat you like a criminally insane case, this hospital doesn’t treat any other criminally insane patients, so our security is pretty fucking lax. Besides, the staff are lazy, and no one will expect anyone to try to break you out. Not after what happened with Nessie.”
He gave his head a fatalistic shake, but there was a gleam in his eye that said I might have given him the first ounce of hope he’d had since being committed.
“Well, I won’t start planning any trips just in case,” he said wryly. “But if they catch me and throw me back in here, I won’t tell them it was your idea. Oh, and Doc? God love ya for trying. If this works, I won’t forget that I owe you a life’s worth of freedom.”
And that was it. All that was left to do was to carry the plan out. So it was that one week from the month I’d given myself to see if Joe really was nuts, I found myself walking to his room and offering what I’d thought would be my ticket to psychological history his most promising means of escape in years.
The walk to his room was one of the tensest experiences of my life, and I felt my palms sweat uncontrollably as I walked down hallway after hallway, the faint muttering and gibbering from the patients I knew to be insane seeming almost a demented mirror of my own scattered thoughts.
If I was caught, or he was, would they only fire me?
Or would they want to make an example of me to anyone else who knew the secret, or who pried too deeply into Joe’s history?
Perhaps Nessie’s death hadn’t been clear enough.
Perhaps they really needed to send a message to anyone else who might have second thoughts.
I’d met Dr. G-----, after all, and she hadn’t seemed the type who might leave a loose end lying around.
I didn’t really have to do this, did I?
I could just turn around and walk out now.
I should just turn around and walk out now. I had a fiancé. A life ahead of me. This wasn’t any of my business. I didn’t have to do this, did I?
But no, I knew I had to. It was the right thing to do, and I was not going to make myself an accessory to what amounted to kidnapping and murder just because I was too afraid for my own skin. Besides, there was barely anyone on staff, and by the time my fire alarm had gone off, there’d be almost no one around to stop Joe leaving. My plan was close to foolproof. It would be fine.
As I reached the door to Joe’s room, the sound of heavy footfalls caught my ears, and I turned to see Hank the orderly pushing a mop down the hall slowly.
Shit. What if he knew what I was doing? No, that was impossible. There was no way anyone would know. I’d kept it so quiet even my fiancé didn’t know. I would be safe. I would be fine. I just needed to stay in Joe’s room until Hank moved on past this hallway. It wouldn’t be hard. His footfalls were loud enough that I could probably hear them even though Joe’s door. It would be fine. It would all be fine.
I sucked in my breath slowly and let it out even moreso. Then, I turned the key to Joe’s room, stepped inside, shut it gingerly behind me, and turned to face him. He was standing with his back to me, looking out the window, and I barely paid much attention to him as I frantically pulled off my lab coat and laid it on his bed, then sat down to listen for Hank’s footfalls.
As I suspected, Hank passed the door after about ten minutes, and then slowly, his steps died away after about five more. I let out a sigh of relief and turned to open the door.
“Doc?”
I turned to see Joe looking at me. There was a hungry, longing look in his eye, as of a starving man who knows he’s about to get a feast and can’t wait. I raised my eyebrows at him.
“Yeah, Joe?”
“Thanks,” Joe said, his voice a husky whisper. “This is exactly what I need.”
His phrasing was a bit odd, but I didn’t think much of it. I smiled quickly at him.
“You’re welcome.”
And with that, I opened the door and stepped out into the hall. I was about to turn and shut it again, when suddenly, a pair of hands like baseball mitts clamped around my shoulders.
“Ain’t you forgetting something, Parker?” boomed Hank’s basso voice from just beside the door. I went still as a statue, my mind racing. Hank chuckled in my ear.
“For such a smart kid, you sure can’t hear so good if you think a man walking soft and walking away are the same thing.”
He’d been hiding beside the door the whole time. But why? Did that mean—
“Now, I’m gonna send someone to get your lab coat out of that room, but you and me? We’re going to go talk to Dr. G-----, and you’re gonna tell her all about what you was planning to do with that motherfucker in there tonight,” he boomed.
At those words, all of a sudden movement seemed possible again, and I began to struggle against his grip, even though it was like trying to bend iron bars. Then, a thought struck me. Hank might not have been one of the orderlies assigned to Joe. He might not know what was going on, after all.
“Let me go!” I hissed. “I don’t know what she’s told you, but you don’t understand, Hank. She’s keeping a sane man in there! And he brings in so much money to this hospital that no one cares if he’s sane! She might’ve killed Nessie to keep it secret, Hank. Let me go, and talk to him, and you’ll see. I swear, you’ll see.”
“She said you’d say something like that,” Hank said placidly, still holding me as if I were a particularly belligerent ragdoll. “I ain’t buying it, Parker, no offense to you.”
I was about to cry with frustration and nerves at this point, but before a single tear could drop down my cheek, I heard something that suddenly wiped all thought of my rescue mission from my mind. Rather, it made me wonder if I myself had suffered a psychotic break.
From inside Joe’s cell, someone was laughing. But it wasn’t Joe. It couldn’t have been. It didn’t sound human at all. Instead, what came from that cell was a sepulchral, moist, hacking chuckle that sounded like it came from a rotting throat. It was a voice I’d heard before: the voice I’d heard from the river as it dragged Marty under in my dreams.
I had gone limp from shock, but Hank didn’t react at all. He seemed like he hadn’t even heard it, though I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask. All I could do was stare at Joe’s door as Hank started to pull me away, that hoarse sound of nightmare echoing in the hall and in my brain.
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Otis Jiry