by Dan Wells
“I don’t know,” I say. “If I knew all the pieces of the Plan, do you think I’d be strapped to this hospital bed?” I tug again on the restraints for emphasis. “I have been running from these people for months. What do I have to do to convince you?”
“Why are they observing you: a jobless, homeless nobody?”
“I have a job,” I shoot back. “And a home, and a girlfriend, and everything. I have an entire life, and they are trying to take it away.”
“You haven’t done anything important,” says Vanek. “You don’t know anything important. You’re nothing.”
“I have something they want.”
“You have nothing.”
“But I do,” I say, “I know it. I think I’d found something, right when I disappeared—a thing or a place or maybe a person. Something they didn’t want anyone to ever find, and I found it. But now…”
Vanek leans forward. “Where is it?”
“Look, I don’t know why I can’t remember anything, and I don’t know what I have, but I know that they want it, which means that they want me. They want me more than anything in the world.”
Vanek smiles. “Narcissism is the other best way to spot a delusion.” I try to talk, but he stops me with his hand. “Paranoid schizophrenia involves, inherently, a heightened belief in your own importance—that all of these vast, hyperintelligent superorganizations have nothing better to do than watch your TV and poison your water heater.”
“Dr. Vanek, you’ve got to believe me. They want me because they’re scared of me. I’m the key to their whole Plan, or I found the key to their Plan, and they don’t dare let me loose because they think I’m going to stop them, but I don’t care anymore. I don’t need to stop them, I just want to get away.” I pause. “Lucy and I were going to go to a farm.”
“It’s a reflection of the fact that your reality exists solely in your mind,” says Vanek, brushing past my comments as if they weren’t even there. “The Faceless Men don’t have anyone better to spy on because, to them, no one else exists. You’re both the center and the circumference of their entire, imaginary world.”
“Stop saying that!” My face is hot, and I feel rage boiling inside me. I take a deep breath, and realize my fists are clenched. “If you’re not going to help me, just get out of here.” If Vanek doesn’t believe me, and something horrible’s happened to Lucy, who’s left?
Vanek stares at me for a long time, watching silently. Finally he nods. “You’re right,” he says. “I can’t convince you your reality is false any more than I could convince anyone else in the world. That’s what’s going to make this so difficult to treat.”
“So let me go.”
“I already told you, Michael, that’s not my call. Once you’re at Powell they’re going to do some more tests—not physical tests, don’t worry—and if they agree with Sardinha’s diagnosis, they’ll start you on antipsychotic medication.”
“I don’t want drugs.”
“Then don’t be schizophrenic,” he says. “Those are really your only two options right now.”
“We could do therapy.”
“Oh, you’ll get therapy,” he says, “but not until after the drugs make some headway. Psychotherapy is designed to cure unhealthy thought processes, and unfortunately for you your thought processes are completely healthy—they’re just reacting to false thoughts.”
“So I’m sane and insane at the same time?”
“Welcome to schizophrenia,” says Vanek. “Your brain’s ability to talk to itself—which is how it does its job—is dependent on the substances dopamine and serotonin. No amount of psychotherapy can change the way those substances interact with your brain, but drugs can. Once they find the right drug, at the right dose, the corruption in your thought patterns will disappear, and the hallucinations and delusions will disappear with them. Then they can start some social therapy and life skills and that sort of thing; teach you how to live in the real world again.”
“So they’re just going to drug me until I stop telling them I see things.”
“You can look at it that way if you want,” says Vanek, holding up his hands. “What you think about it doesn’t really matter, does it? Your brain’s broken.”
“Are you the worst therapist ever?”
Vanek frowns. “I’m not your mother,” he says.
“No one is.”
“Tragic but irrelevant. You’re twenty years old, Michael, and I’m not here to coddle you. I’m here to smile at the staff and sign some papers and check you into Powell.”
“You’re coming with me?”
“Not to stay. They have their own doctors.”
“But I’m your patient, right? You’re my personal therapist.”
“I’m a therapist you haven’t visited in six months; I’ve had my shot and failed. If you want to get better, you need to pay better attention to Dr. Little than you did to me.” He stands up. “I’ll go tell them you’re ready.” He steps toward the door, and it feels like part of me—my life, my freedom—is being ripped away. I can’t let them lock me up in a psych hospital; I have to think of something.
“Wait!” I shout. He stops and turns to look at me. “Tell them … tell them I can’t leave yet! That there’s something wrong.” I rack my brain. “The memory loss! Go with that; my memory’s been screwed up and you think I should stay in a regular medical hospital until they figure out why.”
“Two minutes ago you were begging to get out of here, and now you want to stay?”
“It’s better than a psych hospital.”
“There’s nothing I can do.”
“Does schizophrenia explain the memory loss?”
“No…”
“Then tell them I can’t leave until we find something that does. Maybe I got brain damage in the fall.”
“They’ve gone over the MRI scans a hundred times, Michael, there’s no sign of trauma—”
My pulse thunders into overdrive, and I feel my head going light. “I had an MRI?” My voice is louder than I expect; almost a screech.
Vanek’s eyes widen at my outburst. “You fell,” he says, keeping his voice calm. “An MRI is the best way to test for cranial and spinal injuries—”
“An MRI is like a—” I don’t even know how to talk; my heart’s pounding in terror, my head’s going cold and light. “They’re trying to control me through electronic devices, and you shove me inside the biggest device you can find? An MRI is designed to bombard your body with an electric field; that’s what it’s for. Who knows what they did to me while I was in there!”
“An MRI is completely harmless, Michael.”
“Why can you not understand this! They could have read my mind, or put something in it, or—or just cut chunks of it right out! That’s why I can’t remember anything! That’s why I’m going crazy!” Dr. Vanek opens the door and walks into the hall, calling for Dr. Sardinha, and I shout after him desperately. “You’ve got to get me into surgery, right now! Find whatever they put in my head and cut it out! That’s why I have a false reality—I can only think what they want me to think!”
Dr. Vanek doesn’t come back. About thirty minutes later Frank and another orderly prop open my door and start wheeling me out.
“Listen, Frank,” I say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do it, so no hard feelings, right?” He ignores me. “Frank, you’ve gotta help me, you’ve gotta get me out of here—don’t let me go to Powell, don’t … just take me somewhere else, just wheel me into a closet and untie me and you’ll never see me again, I promise.”
Nothing.
“Come on Frank, no hard feelings, right? You can bite me back if you want, if it makes you feel better, or you can punch me in the face or whatever you want to do—I’m serious, man, just help me out here. Help me—” We push through the outer door, and they wheel me toward an ambulance.
I’m crying now. “Come on Frank, we’re friends; you know I didn’t mean to bite you, I was just scared is all, and you know I’d le
t you go if it was me, right?” They bump me up into the back of the ambulance, medical equipment whirring and blinking around me. “Please, please, please don’t let them take me. Please. You don’t know what they’re going to do to me in there.”
Frank clamps the gurney into place. “They’re going to make you better.” He steps out. “Good luck.”
He shuts the door, and we drive away.
FOUR
“HELLO, MICHAEL,” SAYS DR. LITTLE. I’m in the commons room at Powell, untied and standing up, flanked by a nurse named Devon and a burly security guard who didn’t bother to introduce himself.
“I’m Dr. Little,” says the doctor. “We met before, do you remember?”
“Yes,” I say. He was my doctor the last time the state threw me in here. In many ways Dr. Little is the exact opposite of Dr. Vanek—he’s a small man, with a kind smile and a pair of thick glasses that make his eyes look huge. He’s also nicer, or at least better at pretending to be nice.
“Good, good!” He talks a little too slowly, his facial expressions a little too broad, like he’s talking to a child. I remember disliking him, and now I remember why. “You were here a year or so ago, as I recall; we determined that you had generalized anxiety disorder, and I prescribed Klonopin. Have you been taking your Klonopin?”
“I stopped six months ago,” I say quickly, hoping to persuade him to try it again. Klonopin annoyed me, but at least it didn’t mess with my head; if he tries something stronger, who knows what it will do to me? “I kept picking it up, but I wasn’t taking it. I’m sorry, I really am. I’ll do better this time.”
“Very good,” he says, grinning like a doll. “That’s excellent news, Michael, excellent news. You’re really going to like this new medication. I’m really looking forward to it—”
“Wait,” I say, “new medication? Seriously? I thought we were going to have some more tests and therapy and talk about this some more.” I inch away from him—not even an inch, maybe a half inch. The restraints are gone, but I don’t want to give him any reason to bring them back. “We don’t have to go straight to the drugs.”
“I assure you, Michael, you have nothing to be afraid of. In some ways Loxitane is just a different kind of Klonopin. Did the hospital explain to you about dopamine and serotonin?”
“Yeah,” I say, swallowing hard. I can see the pill now, a green blob in a small plastic cup. He holds it casually, but I shy back like it’s a snake.
“Excellent,” says Dr. Little. “The Klonopin you used to take stops your brain from overusing serotonin, and that worked more or less okay while you were taking it—though not, apparently, well enough to keep up with the progress of your condition. Loxitane,” he holds up the plastic cup and shakes it, rattling the pill inside, “reduces your brain’s use of dopamine, and we anticipate that it will work much better. Your medical history shows a very strong susceptibility to drug effects, so we’ll start you small with ten milligrams and see where we go from there. Are you ready?”
“Wait,” I say, pulling back farther. “Can’t we start with something else first? Can’t we talk about this and decide if I even need drugs at all?”
“Your diagnosis already recommends drugs,” he says, smiling, “and the fact that the Klonopin had a positive effect, however minor, suggests that drugs will continue to be beneficial. On top of that, your repeated outbursts at the hospital suggest rather strongly that your condition, whether schizophrenia or something else, has become urgent. We will talk, just like you suggest, but there’s no reason to delay the medication.”
“But are you sure it’s safe?” I think about the MRI and shudder involuntarily. “You’re sure there’s nothing in it, or that it won’t, I don’t know, like…” I close my eyes. What am I trying to say?
“Every drug has side effects,” says Dr. Little, stepping toward me. He has a glass of water in his other hand. “But we will be monitoring you constantly, and we’ll make sure nothing happens. Say ‘ah.’”
I start to protest but he dumps the pill in my mouth, pouring a quick shot of water in after it. I splutter, soaking my front, but the pill’s already gone down. It’s inside me; I feel it like a hole in my gut.
“Excellent,” says Dr. Little, smiling broadly. “Now, you get some rest, and I’ll see about scheduling you for some of our group sessions.”
I nod, and the doctor walks away. The security guard goes with him.
“Well,” says the nurse, clapping a hand on my shoulder, “welcome to Powell. What do you want to do first?”
I almost say “escape,” but I stop myself, think for a minute, and smile. If this hospital is part of the Plan, and the Faceless Men really are watching me here, this might be my best chance to learn what the Plan actually is. It won’t do me any good to escape until I know how they’re tracking me, but if I stick around and keep my eyes open, I might learn something important.
“Show me around,” I say. “Show me everything.”
* * *
THE THING ABOUT POWELL, or any psych hospital, is that nobody believes anything you say. This is maddening, but it is also predictable, and if you can predict it you can use it for your own advantage. They’ve done nothing to protect themselves from the Faceless Men, because they think I’m crazy, and that lack of precaution means there are holes in their security. If I can find those holes I can use them, and the best way to find them is to think backward: how are the Faceless Men getting in? If I can retrace their steps in reverse, I can get out the same hole and disappear forever.
Devon walks me through the large commons room, dominating the center of Powell’s secured wing. The longest wall is marked with windows, just slightly taller than I am, framed with old, painted metal and covered with a grate of woven steel. The only view is another building, another wing of the hospital I think. From the way the shadows track left to right across the floor I assume that the sun is moving right to left, which means the windows face north. This information is not useful, but I feel better for knowing it.
Most of the commons room is full of tables, long cafeteria-style tables with simple metal chairs. This is where the patients eat their meals and put together puzzles and shuffle mindlessly through the aisles, tiny, scrubbing steps in worn-out slippers. I stay away from these patients. The west end of the room is carpeted, with sofas and cushioned chairs and a large TV bolted onto the wall. I stay away from those patients too.
The south wall of the commons room has doors for patient rooms, and hallways running east and west. The east hallway leads past more patient rooms, then branches again to even more rooms, including the restroom and a large, communal shower. The west hallway is much shorter: a few feet down there’s a nurse’s station, with an open door and a window cut into the south wall at chest height, and then a wide metal gate to block us off from the rest of the world. I peer at the gate from a distance, eyeing the electronic keypad that opens the lock, but I don’t dare get too close. The window to the nurse’s station has a computer monitor, and I need to keep my distance.
Devon leads me toward my room, but one of the patients walks over quickly to intercept us.
“Hello, Steve,” says Devon.
“This the new guy?” asks Steve. He’s tallish, and very skinny, with a black scraggly beard and a bright red ball cap turned backward on his head. “What’s your name?”
“Michael,” I say.
“Just got in? Just got out?” He knocks his wrists together a couple of times, signing handcuffs. I nod. “Where you gonna put him, Devon? You can’t put him in Jerry’s room.”
“Jerry doesn’t have a room anymore,” says Devon, still walking calmly. “Remember? Jerry went home.”
“But he still has a room,” says Steve. “He won’t like it if you give it away. Right? He won’t like it.”
Devon smiles. “We already gave his room to Gordon,” he says, and Steve frowns.
“Gordon? Which one’s Gordon?”
“You know Gordon, Steve,” says Devon. “We hav
e this conversation every week.”
“You gave him Jerry’s room?”
“A couple of months ago.”
“Gordon!” shouts Steve, spinning around. He pauses a moment, scanning the room, then storms off. “Gordon, come here!”
Devon chuckles. “Jerry left in February; guy can’t get it through his head.”
“He’s been here that long?”
“Five months,” says Devon. “Don’t worry, though, most people are in and out of here a lot quicker than that.”
I nod. “Anything else I should know?”
Devon looks around the room. “It’s pretty mellow in here, all things considered. That bald guy is Dwight; if he starts talking about ammonia, he’s about to get violent, so keep your ears open.”
“I will.”
“Here’s your room.” He opens a door and shows me in; it’s a pretty standard hospital room, with a raised bed and a wheeled table and a small dresser in the corner. There’s no TV, but there is a small clock radio bolted to the dresser. I don’t say anything about it.
“Everything look good?” asks Devon.
“Great,” I say, nodding. I need to get rid of that radio, but other than that it looks great.
“You’re a little late for dinner, but I could probably rustle up a snack if you want one.”
“No thanks,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m fine. I’ll see you later.”
“I’m taking off soon,” says Devon, “but if you change your mind the night nurse can take care of you. Sorry you don’t get a window, but there’s only—”
Suddenly I’m on the floor, gritting my teeth and clutching my head in agony. Devon buzzes, a low electronic hum, and he drops to his knee next to me.
“Mike, are you okay, man?” He buzzes again.
“Get away!” The pain is blinding—I feel like my head is swelling and compressing all at once, kneading my brain like bruised dough. Devon buzzes again and I shove him away, pushing myself back into the corner. “Don’t touch me!”
