The Devil in Silver

“You get dressed and you come back to me, hear?”

Sue dropped her head and nodded.

Miss Chris now ran into Glenn’s room. She kneeled, she looked into his eyes, and grabbed his wrist. Pepper didn’t keep watching. He went back into his room with Sue. He pushed the door shut.

“You think he’ll live?” Pepper asked as they dressed. His eyes were bright and wide. He still felt charged.

“I guess he’s got a chance,” Sue said. She almost sounded jealous.

Pepper held her. He slouched so his chin rested on the top of her head. She pressed her face into his chest so she could smell him.

Miss Chris walked into the room without knocking.

“Let’s go now. Let’s go.” She had one hand on her hip but her voice hardly sounded angry. Just tired, like an aunt who’s been put in charge of her fast little niece.

“I have an idea about your sister,” Pepper said. “It’s kind of wild, but Coffee—”

Sue kissed Pepper. Even while Miss Chris watched. Pepper laughed and returned the kiss. He squeezed her with the kind of hug that nearly every human being loves. An embrace.

When she pulled away, he said, “Coffee had this number. It was in Oakland.”

Miss Chris grabbed Sue’s wrist and led her away.

He said, “Wouldn’t it be crazy if …”

But now Pepper spoke to an empty room.

It didn’t matter. He figured he’d get in some trouble for sneaking her in—maybe they’d throw him in irons for a bit—but they’d probably let him up for dinner. And he’d have Coffee’s binder with him, the one Coffee left behind. He’d pull Sue into the phone alcove and show her the last phone number Coffee had scrawled on a sheet of paper: 5102821833. It would be Sue’s sister. Pepper believed it. And Pepper would help Sue with the conversation, just in case she got confused. He’d put the two sisters back in touch and the older sister would come through. How would that save Sue? He couldn’t guess yet. Not exactly. But he’d listened to Sue. Heard what she needed. She needed her sister. Good enough. He’d get her that much. And let the sister do something he couldn’t manage from in here.

Pepper didn’t realize he would never see Sue again.

Actually, that wasn’t quite true.

He would see her one more time.

In an article, clipped from a newspaper.

32

PEPPER WAS WRONG about his punishment, too. They didn’t snap him into restraints, lash him to the bed. Miss Chris had enough to do with inputting her notes about Glenn’s “episode” into the computer. The inappropriate program, Equator, had been swapped out for the proper record-keeping program, Equator Zero. Instead of “charting,” the staff would now spend much of their shifts “logging.” Even Miss Chris, the stalwart, had been trained well enough that she could log in, find “Incident Report” on the main menu, and type out, however slowly, the facts about Glenn. She left out the part about Pepper and Sue. As for the Devil’s role in this, she made no mention. She hadn’t seen it, after all.

The staff put all the patients on lockdown. Keeping them in their rooms for as long as it took to move Glenn to the ICU. Pepper spent the time clutching Coffee’s binder as if it contained ICBM launch codes. Inside he found the pages and pages of meticulously kept records. Coffee had done some formidable charting of his own. He’d reached out to government representatives at every level: neighborhood council members, community reps, borough presidents, city-wide officeholders, state and federal representatives. No success with any of them.

Coffee had reached members of the press as well. And had better luck teasing them with the catnip of exposé and scandal. Since New Hyde was a New York City hospital, he’d had particular interest from a reporter from The New York Times. A woman who, even from Coffee’s notes, clearly worked hard to use Coffee as a source. But inevitably, the ties were severed. Relationships with reporters lost. In his notes Coffee entertained the paranoid fear that all these journalists had been visited by thugs from “Coffin Industries.” Told to button up or, even worse, killed. What were the chances he’d come up with that company’s name randomly? Dorry probably spun the same tales to every new admit. The tour, the stampeding buffalo, the cliff, and Coffin Industries. Like a speech given to incoming freshman by a college president. The ward’s common myths.

But all that really mattered now was scrawled on the last page in the binder. Ten digits in blue ink. The last number Coffee ever dialed. Pepper could even hear Coffee just now.

Washington, D.C.! The nation’s capital. No that’s not where I am. That’s where you are! What do you mean “Oakland”? The President doesn’t live in Oakland.