The Devil in Silver

“Oh, my good Jesus,” Clio muttered.

“Code two! Northwest Five!” Rudy shouted seeing Dorry. Loud enough that Dr. Anand almost heard him, and Dr. Anand was four miles away, at home. “Code two! Northwest Five!”

The rest of the night staff, an orderly and another nurse, scrambled from the station. Clio pushed her way through the crowd of patients, trying to reach the door that would get her outside. But the patients? They didn’t part for her. Their loyalties were split. They’d been trained, and medicated, for maximum docility, but despite all this, they remained willful human beings. If Dorry wanted out and had the fire to make the climb, then let her go.

But when Dorry reached the top of the fence, she didn’t hop over. Instead, she perched herself up there, in a crouch, like a gargoyle at the top of a building. Despite the nightdress the barbed wire was digging into her soles, but her face showed no pain. No exhaustion. No worry. Dorry had balanced herself in that crouched position and then, even more remarkable, she stood.

Because it was night, the dull silver fence was practically invisible, so the old woman seemed to be floating eight feet above the concrete court.

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.

34

“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.