The Devil in Silver

And she might. But not just then. Order must be restored and she was still on duty. The three staff members had to corral those upstairs, see to Mr. Visserplein’s bloody face injuries, and call Dr. Anand to report all this wildness. Eventually they would discover the bodies of Frank Waverly and Mr. Mack, both men dead from brutal injuries. Both, somehow, would be written up as suicides.

Because of all this, no one paid attention to the enormous smile on Pepper’s face for the rest of the morning. He did his best to hide it while helping the others down once Scotch Tape retrieved a service ladder. Pepper kept his face near his armpit as he reached up to steady patients on the ladder. He looked out the window, at the sunlight crossing the tops of the trees, rather than at anyone in particular. But he couldn’t stop grinning.

It had taken a while, he’d certainly failed and fumbled along the way, but right now Loochie at least might have escaped, Mr. Visserplein—that malevolent nut—was going to live, and the other eight patients had all survived this terrible ordeal. He’d done more right than wrong tonight. He’d helped as much as he could and many had come through.

42

EVERYBODY FELT WELL rested.

This was mostly because Dr. Anand had the staff replace every patient’s blood with an equal amount of tranquilizer. Or nearly that much. What else was he going to do? The fallout of the rebellion was a storm cloud of scrutiny. You’re not going to lose two patients (Frank Waverly and Mr. Mack), have another five suffer serious injuries, and experience property damage that totaled $82,000 and not draw some attention.

The harm done to the building caused the most uproar. The board of New Hyde Hospital wasn’t pleased to see such trouble coming out of a department that, frankly, didn’t generate enough in profits. The slapdash security room for Mr. Visserplein was of particular concern. Who had allowed such a thing? It was time to appear concerned. Someone would have to be punished. That person was the legal rep who’d sat in on Pepper’s meeting with Dr. Anand. Mr. iPad. He became a martyr to the cause. The cause being protecting New Hyde Hospital from myriad lawsuits. The man was, metaphorically, burned and buried in an unmarked grave. Only a day after he’d left New Hyde, no one at the hospital could remember the dude’s name. (His name is Robert Paulson. His name is Robert Paulson.)

Dr. Anand quickly figured out that if that guy could be let go so easily, then maybe he could, too. The doctor figured he needed to prove he could get the unit back to full compliance, not running but coasting. Release the sedatives! With the patients sufficiently stupefied, he shuffled them. He turned the conference rooms in Northwest 1 into the women’s bedrooms. And the long-unused rooms of Northwest 4 were aired out and turned into the men’s hall. Repurposing like a motherfucker. He transferred Mr. Visserplein to New Hyde’s geriatric unit, far off in the main building; pawning his troubles off on those staff members (and patients!) without a word of warning. He even oversaw the construction crews who were brought in to permanently seal off the painted-over doors and patch up the ceiling in Pepper’s old room.

There was still the question of how Mr. Visserplein had been able to climb up to the second-story door. An old man doing something like that, how had he managed this? It wasn’t magic. The stairs in the stairwell had been removed, yes, but not the handrails. (You son-of-a-bitch you left the bodies and you only moved the headstones! You only moved the headstones! That kind of thing.) (Anyway, why would they have taken the handrails out? Who, in all sanity, would imagine a patient having the determination—and the Crazy Strength—to pull himself up to the second floor that way? Nobody, that’s who.) In the aftermath they finally removed the railing from the former stairwell, too. They cleared out the thousands of cookie wrappers. They scrubbed out lines from a song the old man had scrawled on the wall beside his bed (Welcome to where time stands still, no one leaves and no one will). In other words, Dr. Anand did some heroic reshuffling at Northwest, and he hoped this would let him keep his job. (For all his despondency earlier, he needed the salary.)

When the patients finally awoke from their medicinal slumber, became truly aware again, they didn’t realize how much had happened while they were out.

Pepper lay in his new bed in his new room. He missed his old room. The view from this window offered little but the single tower of New Hyde Hospital’s off-white main building in the distance. It looked like a giant vanilla wafer. Pepper missed seeing the tops of the trees.