The Devil in Silver (11 page)

Then he saw a copy of the
New York Post
up there on the nurses’ station. It lay flat, facedown, the back cover showing the lead story of the sports section. Unofficial policy saw staff often leaving their old newspapers out for patients to read. A minor kindness. And at the top of the page, Pepper saw, almost in passing, a mention of March Madness, the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Championship.
March
.

How could the
Post
already be talking about fans bracket picks? In February?

Pepper might’ve been impulsive, a little quick to throw hands, but he wasn’t stupid. And as he came to understand the
real
news the paper was delivering to him—it’s March 17!—Pepper had to clutch at the nurses’ station desktop just to keep from keeling over.

He grabbed at the desktop and leaned forward. He looked like a
man halfway in a lake, trying to climb back into the boat. He flailed out with one hand and sent the newspaper flying from the station like a gray bird.

Scotch Tape rose up and Miss Chris rolled her seat backward, out of the nurses’ station, and around the side to get closer to Pepper, without lifting her butt from the chair. The other nurse already had her keys in hand and was fiddling with the drawer where they kept the tranquilizers.

Pepper looked at Scotch Tape directly and said quietly. “It’s March. Why am I still here?”

Scotch Tape looked into Pepper’s eyes. He realized the big man wasn’t trying to come over the desk, wasn’t attacking the staff, so he spoke as calmly as he could. “That was the doctor’s decision, not mine.”

“I want to see him,” Pepper said.

Miss Chris clapped a hand against her thigh. “You and me both!”

She put one hand on the nurses’ station and pulled herself up from the chair.

“That man makes the rules, but we the ones who enforce them. And we get all your scorn in the bargain.”

Pepper let go of the desktop and stood tall again. “But he can’t just decide to keep me here like that. Without telling me.”

The other nurse, whom Pepper now recognized as the one he had knocked down during his escape attempt weeks before, stopped jimmying the desk drawer and grabbed a three-ring binder. She opened the cover and flipped pages and finally found the one she wanted. She stood up and stepped closer to Scotch Tape, then set the open binder on the desktop so Pepper could see.

A form with four paragraphs of single-spaced legalese. It looked like a warranty.

“So what’s this?” Pepper asked. He barely glanced at it. He didn’t want to
read
, he wanted to be
heard
.

Scotch Tape said, “Consent form, big man. Agreeing to be admitted as a patient. Everyone has to sign one if the seventy-two-hour period ends but the doctor thinks you still need to be with us.”

The nurse reached down and tapped the bottom of the page with
one finger. Her wrist was still sprained from the fall she’d taken thanks to Pepper.

“You signed it. You agreed,” she said with some satisfaction.

Now Pepper actually looked at the page. That scrawl at the bottom was his signature? It looked more like someone had drooled blue ink on the page.

“I’ve been in half a
coma
for the last four weeks.”

Miss Chris moved closer, right next to his left arm. She looked at the consent form. “Looks like your hand was working.”

Pepper understood that this was a joke, but not for him. Not even really on him. It was the gallows humor of people who’ve seen this kind of mess happen before. And will again. What can you do? That was the unspoken phrase at the end of every sentence.
What can you do?
Just go along.

Pepper felt his rage just then like a series of small explosions. In his gut. His chest. His throat. His hands. The rational part of him was howling,
Don’t do anything! Don’t do anything! Calm down!
But it was like holding a conversation right below a rumbling jet engine. Whatever Pepper did next was going to fuck him, long term. But he felt incapable of stopping himself.

Then Pepper felt the small, bony fingers wrap around his wrist. A touch he knew, even in this state. The only person who’d put her hands on him with any tenderness in this wasteland.

Dorry was there, at his right side, pulling at his wrist, looking up at him serenely.

“You’ve been down there, Pepper. You already know that road. You know exactly where it ends.”

Pepper started to pull back, despite himself.

She said, “More punishment. More drugs. That’s what they’ll give you.”

The nurse next to Scotch Tape said, “That’s not
fair
, Dorry.”

Dorry sighed. “But it’s still true.”

Pepper’s hands relaxed and his shoulders did, too. That rage in his gut, his chest, his throat—it left him like a bad spirit being cast out. Dorry still held his wrist.

He exhaled. He felt like a lost child who has wandered into the wrong house.

“What should I do instead?” he asked her weakly.

“For now?” Dorry grinned. “Let’s go to Group.”

Then Dorry quietly led Pepper to one of the conference rooms on Northwest 1.

There were already a few people inside the meeting room, on their feet, and when Pepper entered the room, an older man called out to him.

“Grab the end of that table, please.”

But Pepper couldn’t follow the order. Had he even heard it? No. He was repeating the date in his head.

March 17. March 17. March 17. March 17. March 17. March 17
.

The older man clapped his hands loudly and Pepper finally snapped back. The guy looked to be in his fifties, red-faced, bald. The way he grit his teeth, he looked like Bob Hope; the chin like a shovel, the broad forehead and high cheekbones.

He looked at Pepper and said, “The others already know me. I’m Dr. Barger.”

Dr. Barger was broad and short. He seemed unlike any doctor Pepper had ever seen. He wore a sport coat, but the top two buttons of his shirt were undone, the reddish flesh of his chest visible. Thick gray chest hairs ran all the way up to his Adam’s apple. And he wore a thin gold chain that lay in the hair like an extension cord in a shag carpet. Dr. Barger looked like a swinger.

“Let’s go,” he said sternly, pointing at one end of the conference table again.

What did Pepper know better than this? Moving furniture. It was almost comforting to do the work. He grabbed one end. He’d lifted it a foot off the ground before he even asked where he was supposed to take it.

Dr. Barger couldn’t heft the other end. He gave it two tugs and a vein on his forehead throbbed perilously. He stopped trying and
looked around the room, at the other patients. “A little help,” the doctor said.

And who came to the rescue? The teenage girl who’d chopped Pepper down. Loochie. The kid didn’t get her end as high as Pepper’s—how could she, she stood a foot shorter—but the weight of the table didn’t seem to bother her any more than it did Pepper. She still wore that light blue knit cap. The pom-poms sat on either side of her head like mouse’s ears.

Pepper and Loochie frowned at each other.

This little thing took me out?
Pepper thought. He felt a dose of grudging respect.

Dr. Barger, oblivious to any tension, waved toward the far end of the room. “Put the table over there. Line it up against the back wall.”

As Pepper and Loochie moved the table to the back of the room, the four other patients rearranged chairs. There were only seven people in the room, including the doctor, so they’d only need one table for their group session.

Pepper recognized a few of the patients. Dorry, of course. And Loochie. Coffee, too. A pair of white women who looked like each other—identical short haircuts, similar light blue mom jeans and Old Navy T-shirts showing the American flag. Even their bodies looked alike, bottom-heavy like butternut squash. Not twins, not siblings, but
alike
.

As everyone sat at the conference table, Dr. Barger smiled. “And now I’d like to welcome you all to our weekly Book Group.”

One of the two short-haired women said, “How can you call it a weekly
Book
Group when we never have any
books
?”

The other said, “Don’t be too hard on the doc. Have you looked at this bunch? I’m not too sure all of us can read!”

The first woman pointed across the table at Pepper, and said, “Hey, Frankenstein. You hate books as much as you hate fire?”

“Sammy!” Dr. Barger barked.

Both women laughed together. It didn’t matter to them if anyone else enjoyed the joke.

But Pepper felt too angry about the four weeks he’d lost to be insulted.
Instead he pointed at the doctor. “I was supposed to be here for a seventy-two-hour observation, but now …”

Dr. Barger wagged one short red finger.

“I’m at New Hyde as your therapist. Dr. Anand is the staff psychiatrist.”

“So?”

Dorry said, “Dr. Barger doesn’t have the
power
to release you.”

Dr. Barger’s mouth narrowed into a frown. “I wouldn’t put it that way, Dorry.”

“Well, what would you say then?” Dorry smiled pleasantly.

“Dr. Anand’s authority
supersedes
my own.”

Loochie crossed her arms and leaned forward in her seat aggressively. “How’s that different from what she said?”

Dr. Barger looked at the teenager, his red face reddening even more. “I have authority here. It’s just not the kind that can …”

Then the doctor stopped himself. He shut his eyes and rested a hand on the top of his head. He breathed quietly for a moment, and when he opened his eyes, all the patients were watching him in silence.

Dr. Barger spoke with overdone civility. “I want to welcome you all to our weekly Book Group. I’m happy to see so many of you back.” He nodded at Pepper. “And to welcome our newest member.”

Pepper and Dorry sat on one long end of the conference table. Loochie, Coffee, and the two jokers sat opposite them. Dr. Barger sat at the head. As they settled, the nurse from Pepper’s escape attempt entered the room, pushing a three-tiered cart full of books. She wheeled it around the table and stopped behind Dr. Barger. Pepper could see that the nurse was young. Probably not much older than Loochie. She stood next to the book cart and smiled. Her cheeks were as plump and smooth as the Gerber baby’s.

Dr. Barger sat back in his chair. He rested his hands on his belly proudly.

“So you see, Sammy? This time we
do
have books,” he gloated, looking around the table as if awaiting applause.

But only Coffee reacted, raising one hand like a pupil with a question for the teacher.

Dr. Barger ignored him. “As you can see, I’ve been able to acquire these.”

Coffee continued chopping the air with his raised hand. He huffed now, too, and looked even more like that kid in the front row.

Finally, Dr. Barger acknowledged him. “Okay, Coffee, do you have something to say? About
Book Group
?”

Coffee revealed a thin blue binder. He set it on the table and opened it and flourished a pen. Everyone but Pepper and the new nurse sighed loudly.

“The phone number of New York City Comptroller John Liu,” Coffee said. “Can you please provide it for me?”

Dr. Barger dropped his voice an octave. “What does that have to do with Book Group?”

Coffee ignored that. He said, “Attempts to reach the mayor have failed. I was recently visited by a representative of his office who threatened to have me arrested and to sue me if I don’t stop calling. So I accept that. Mr. Liu seems like a serious alternative. I believe he will help.”

Sammy leaned forward and said, “What does a comptroller do, anyway?” She turned to her best friend, her doubles partner, setting the woman up for a match point. “Sam?”

Sam said, “I don’t know, but if you hum a few bars I can fake it!”

This made the two of them crash backward with laughter. Their chairs buckling. They laughed so loudly that Loochie, right beside them, pulled her knit cap down over her ears. That only made the two women laugh more.

“You’re giving that poor girl
brain
damage,” said Sammy.

“Well, we’re in the right place for it!” shouted Sam.

Coffee tapped his pen against the table. “Dr. Barger,” he said. “The number?”

Now the doctor knocked on the table with force and the women’s laughter quieted. Even Coffee stopped tapping the pen.

Then the nurse spoke up. “These books won’t be useful anyway.”

Dr. Barger looked over his shoulder. “Excuse me,
nurse
?”

“Have you looked at the collection lately?”

Everyone in the room scanned the shelves. This Bookmobile
was hardly a fine library. It looked like the dumping grounds for vocational-training manuals. (
ISP—Industrial Security Professional Exam Manual; Automotive Technician Certification: Test Preparation Manual; Medium/Heavy Duty Truck Technician Certification: Test Preparation Manual
, and so on.) There were a few spy novels, a few mysteries, the Book of Common Prayer (it had curse words written in the margins of many pages). Not great reading material maybe, but also only one or two copies of each. Not enough for everyone. The nurse was right. Not only poor quality, but also poor quantity.

Dr. Barger couldn’t pretend to miss the problem. But he could refuse to admit the fault was his. He looked up at the nurse and said, “I told
you
to bring all the books from the trunk of my car.”

Before the nurse could argue, explain, or apologize, Dorry proposed, “Why don’t we vote on one book we want to read together. Then maybe New Hyde could get us all copies of that.”

Pepper pointed at the book cart. Why did it bring him a childish pleasure to see the choices were so bad?

“What do you mean?” he joked. “Don’t we all want to read the
Medium/Heavy Duty Truck Technician Certification: Test Preparation Manual
?”

Dorry tapped Pepper’s forearm, another subtle but effective correction. “I can speak to Dr. Anand. I’ll get him to buy us the books.”

Dr. Barger strained forward at the table. “
You’ll
talk to Dr. Anand?”