Detour from Normal (13 page)

Chapter 10

MY CHANGED WORLD

When I awoke early in the morning on May 20, I didn't know what to make of the dream or much else from the night. After a time, my mind drifted back to concern over the mentally ill patients. Somehow it seemed that my loss of negative emotions, Utopia, and the fate of the patients were related, but I was unable to make the connection. The vision of Utopia quickly faded, and I was left only with thoughts of the patients. It dawned on me that perhaps I
could
make a difference in their lives. From that moment forward, I decided that that's what I was going to do. I didn't know exactly how I could help, I'd just have to learn as I went, but it filled me with purpose and made me feel alive.

That morning I again joined Carlos and Ray for breakfast. While waiting in our little herd by the security doors, I joked with Carlos about huevos rancheros again.
Someday, somehow, I'll have to get Carlos some huevos rancheros.
When we entered the cafeteria, Carlos shuffled toward the fruit. The people in line parted like the Red Sea around him, some of them holding their noses to fend off his stench. He picked out his apple and headed back onto his habitual trail, sweeping the cafeteria floor clean with his oversized hospital gown.

I made it through the line and noticed that for the first time ever, I hadn't forgotten my utensils and milk. It was such a momentous revelation that I felt like jumping for joy. While in line, I couldn't help but notice how fantastic I felt: fresh, rebuilt—I nearly started hugging everyone.
What happened to me? Why do I feel so wonderful? Why do I have so much energy?
I asked myself.

Once I had filled my tray, I walked over and sat by Ray. The food even tasted better. I pounded down my breakfast and then hungrily went back for seconds. I was so overwhelmed with all the wonderful changes that I felt breathless. It was like being a teenager with no cares or responsibilities in the world, except that I wanted to help people. That had become my driving desire. So I finished my breakfast and started by listening intently to Ray's stories.

I don't know if that helped Ray, but I wanted to help him. I wanted him to face his demons and be rid of his alcoholism. I wanted to will it out of him. It was then that I realized that perhaps I could give him a piece of what was in me. Perhaps I could help him by just being with him. I liked that idea: the good in me contagious to people like a common cold. I wished it to be true. I wished I could heal all sick people, and if someone wasn't sick, I wished I could take away their fears and worries and give them a better life—a life of passion instead of drudgery, a life of anticipating the future with joy instead of rehashing the past with sorrow.

Maybe that's it,
I thought.
If I can somehow shut off those things in others as they've been shut off in me, Utopia is what can be achieved. People will live together in harmony, with no threat of war. People of similar passions will unite to eradicate starvation, disease, and poverty, and make our lives better and longer.
As soon as the idea formed, I
knew that it was true. Utopia wasn't a place or a destination; it was a journey—a journey to a better human race.

After breakfast I promptly discovered that my memory was better than ever. I immediately took advantage of that to memorize all the staff's names that I interacted with. It was an amazing ability that I'd never had before. Even though none of them responded in kind, I cheerfully greeted them by name every chance I got.

Shortly after breakfast was over, Dr. Alverez literally ran into me while staring at his papers and walking down my side of the H. I hadn't seen him at all since the eighteenth when he woke me.

"Excuse me," he said, almost dropping his stack of papers. "Oh, hi," he continued as he gradually recognized me. "I've been meaning to talk to you. Come over here and sit down." He directed me with his hand to the chairs facing the staff counter where I had sat on my first night there.

"How are you doing?"

"Not bad. I could use more sleep."

"I wanted to tell you that I've decided to double your medication. Then I'd like to keep you for another week and see how you progress."

That ended my great mood in a single heartbeat. There was no way I was staying there another week or more, and I wasn't going to take any more medication than I already was. I didn't need to be a zombie—I just needed sleep.
A better bed and some peace and quiet is what I need, thank you.
I didn't respond to Dr. Alverez. My mind was too busy trying to determine a way to avoid his plans for me.

Chapter 11

ON THE RUN

After my conversation with Dr. Alverez, I had a small taste of freedom. I was allowed to go to a little courtyard on the western side of the building. I didn't know what you had to do to qualify to go out there, but it must have been a special privilege—there were only a handful of people there with me. It was not at all what I had expected; it was literally a cage. Around the perimeter were brown, ten-foot-high bars spaced about four inches apart. I casually walked over and gently shook them to test their strength. "Sir, get away from the bars, please" was the immediate response from a glaring PA. The bars were solid steel and sturdy. I strolled around the concrete pad, taking in the roughly sixty feet of bars. There were benches and picnic tables placed on the concrete, all made from steel tubing and expanded steel mesh, protected by a dark green epoxy powder coating. Everything was bolted to the concrete. In the center of each table was a bowl filled with ash-discolored sand and hundreds of suffocated cigarette butts standing filter up at random angles.

Being outside was different than I'd expected. It wasn't refreshing; it was stuffy with hardly a breeze or nice smell. If I got upwind of the few smokers, I could sometimes get a whiff of wet grass as the last moisture evaporated from the lawn, which was watered every morning
and evening. In Phoenix, the sky is nearly always blue with upward of 320 days of sunshine per year. I sat on the end of one of the benches and looked to the southwest. Sure enough, the sky was blue, without a cloud to be seen anywhere. Blue sky was synonymous with freedom in my book. I breathed in the smell of damp grass and this vision of freedom. At that instant I made a decision: I was breaking out.

I didn't plan my escape; I just ad-libbed it from the moment I got back inside from the courtyard. First I plowed my shoulder into an emergency exit door at the bottom of the H. If I had somehow made it through that locked door, I was hoping that it would take some effort to track down the source of the alarm, giving me time to formulate the next step of my escape. I knew it wasn't much of a plan, but in my mental state, the quantity of opportunities was more important than the quality. When I charged the door and slammed my body into it, all I succeeded in doing was making a loud noise. The latch on the door didn't budge a hair. No one bothered to come see what the commotion was all about.

Rubbing my aching shoulder, I noticed a map of the building on a wall literally a few feet from me.
A gift from God,
I thought.
Anyone planning an escape should be so lucky to be presented with a map of his or her prison.
Excited, I walked over to it and then stood there looking blankly at it. I knew what a map was and its purpose, but at that moment I had no clue how to use one. That knowledge was gone from my mind. I was to find that a lot of things were different about my mind after the night before. Apparently I'd lost more than just my negative emotions, but I didn't let that detail derail my mission.

A new opportunity came when I thought to slip away from being herded to the 9:00 a.m. group meeting. At that point I was through at least one level of security. As the counselor opened the door to the group meeting room
and began to let people in, I slipped away unnoticed.
This is already going better than my last plan,
I thought. I walked briskly, vigilant for my next opportunity. After passing a few hallways, I found one with automatic sliding glass doors at the end. A black man in dark green scrubs, who I assumed was a janitor, was busy mopping an area of the floor about halfway to the doors. I hesitated for a moment, sizing up the situation, but the automatic doors proved too big an enticement. Saying "excuse me" as I walked by him, I casually made my way to the automatic doors at the end of a hall.

As I approached the doors, nothing happened. They didn't automatically open as the Automatic Doors sign promised they would. I stood there for a moment with my hands in my pockets looking longingly at the green lawn and blue sky just a thickness of glass away.

"The keypad is on the wall behind you," the man said.

I turned and looked at the useless keypad. I had no idea what the combination might be.

"Oh, I didn't see it. I thought the doors would just open," I said, thinking at lightning speed. "I'm here for a new hire orientation, and I must have taken a wrong turn. Can you get me back to the front entrance?" I had been wearing some pretty decent clothes when I'd ended up at Pinecrest. Perhaps that helped lend credence to my weak story, for he replied without hesitation.

"Right this way. I'll take you there." He escorted me up to the main entrance and through the last set of security doors, and then had me take a seat in the lobby. From where I sat, I could see freedom. I looked past the landscaped entrance, down the sidewalk, past the asphalt parking lot to the green grass surrounding the parking areas and beyond. Just like that I was again only one set of doors from freedom, only these really would open automatically for me.

I should have gotten up and walked right then, but I hesitated. Just as I was about to make my move, a lady at the reception desk called for me to follow her into a side room where I assumed I would meet a human resources person. As she opened the door and started to walk into the room, I calmly turned and walked to the entrance. The door opened. Unfortunately, the janitor had not gone back to mopping as I had assumed. I was beginning to suspect that he was not a janitor after all.

"Sir?" he called out from the lobby.

I turned my head slightly and yelled back, "I left some paperwork in my car. I'll be right back."
I missed something,
I thought. Then I remembered that he'd had something black hanging from his belt—a radio. Perhaps he was a security person who had just happened to be cleaning up a spill when I stumbled across him.
Of all the dumb luck,
I thought. Without hesitating, I continued through the door.

I might as well have been on an alien planet then—I had no clue where I was or where I should go. I had, after all, been having a seizure during my trip there or perhaps I would have taken better notes. I just knew that I had to keep moving and that I'd figure things out as I went. I walked several yards, and instead of crossing the parking lot in front of me, I turned left and followed the sidewalk to the end of the building. I then cut across some grass to a large parking lot just behind the building. Halfway across the parking lot, I glanced back to see if the janitor had followed me. He was standing a ways behind me, just past the end of the building at the edge of the parking lot.

"Is your car parked in this lot?" he asked.

"Yes, it's right over here, the red Jeep Cherokee," I said. I walked up to the vehicle, reached in my pocket for the nonexistent keys and
pretended to be trying to open the door. I glanced back again, hoping that perhaps he was satisfied and had gone back in. He was still standing in the same spot. Time was running out and so were my ideas.
Crap,
I thought. There was only one thing left to do. I was as far from him as I was ever going to get—less than fifty yards. It was time to make a run for it. Moments later I bolted.

At first I sprinted as fast as possible, but having only a few sutures holding the month-old, twelve-inch incision closed on my belly (my staples had already been removed), I knew I was putting my life at risk. Placing one hand on my belly to keep my insides from spilling out, I slowed to a jog. My new plan was to try to outlast the janitor. I'd spent a lot of years of my life as a runner, so it was easy for me to find a manageable pace, even in my present condition. Having recently survived emergency surgery and having had almost no sleep, I wouldn't have believed it was possible. In addition, I felt no pain whatsoever and my muscles cooperated fully. It was a true testament to the resilience of my body, and it inspired me enough that I believed I might actually pull off my escape.