Renaissance 2.0: The Entire Series (books 1 thru 5)

by Dean C. Moore

  Coren set down the spritzer, seemed galvanized by the DSM-IV in Robin’s lap. She picked it up and thumbed through it. “However many of these states you find yourself slipping into as part of your own take on PTSD, don’t ever think of it as weakness, you hear me? You’re a superhero: Karma Chameleon. Too bad Culture Club beat you to the moniker. Use the supra-normal vantage points on reality to free yourself, to free all of us.” Looking up from the pages and into Robin’s eyes, she said, “What makes me think you’re two steps ahead of me?” She smiled at him playfully.

  Drew walked in, interrupting Coren’s data dump. Drew kissed Robin on top of his head.

  “I’ll have my chauffeur help you,” Coren said. The chauffeur stepped into the room on cue. His skin was obsidian black, his head shaved smooth. He was tall and handsome and somewhere in his forties, Robin estimated. More to the point, he looked strong as an ox.

  “You have a black chauffeur in politically correct Berkeley?” Drew said.

  Coren laughed. “I guess we all have to get used to some uncomfortable contradictions. If we want the different aspects of our psyches to fit together better, we have to work at it. Psychoanalysis, philosophy, and cultural anthropology alone won’t do it. Integrating some insights from pop culture can’t hurt.” Turning to address Robin, she said, “Come back anytime.”

  Coren hadn’t blinked an eye at Robin and Drew’s transsexual status the entire time. Only half way through their procedures, Robin couldn’t imagine they were fooling anybody. That had definitely earned Coren superhero status in Robin’s eyes.

  As the chauffeur carried Robin to the car, his body as stiff as the chair he’d been pulled from, and shaped accordingly, all he could think of was Manny. If Robin was doing this poorly post-Hartman, and in a loving, supportive environment, how the hell could Manny be holding up from inside austere institutional walls? He may have been the more experienced of the two detectives assigned to the Hartman case, but, his personality didn’t strike Robin as any more malleable.

  EIGHTEEN

  Manny used his time in lockdown at Bane’s Psychiatric Center to learn everything he could, with an eye to one thing: escape. When in line to the med-room for his pills three times a day, he ran his eyes over where each med was kept. He watched how intravenous injections were given out versus intramuscular; the former required a shallow angle so as not to puncture the vein, the other one was plunged in deep and straight.

  “How come you tap the needle and squirt out liquid before you inject me?”

  “If I don’t, I could send a bubble of air through your body straight to your lungs or heart or brain. Whichever path it takes, you’re dead, dead, dead.”

  Good to know, he thought.

  He listened in on the nurses for what each one knew as they fought to reassure their paranoid patients the prescriptions would actually help them, and not push them further over the edge. “You want the little purple men to go away, you take the Resperine.” He noted the side effects and telltale signs to look for. “Rupert, I see your one good foot swelling up. Sign of a weak heart. You need more exercise if you want to keep your one good leg. Let’s check your blood. Maybe you’re getting too many blood thinners.”

  “What are all the salt and magnesium packets for? Planning on opening a delicatessen?” The old codger questioning the nurse at the med station was probably hitting on her in his own way, trying to be funny.

  Clueless, Julianne, the young nurse, answered, “Oh, that’s to help folks with electrolyte imbalances.” Leaning into him to whisper more clandestinely—the gesture struck Manny as flirtatious, so maybe she wasn’t as thick as all that—she added, “A lot of folks around here with kidney failure.” Secondary to all the meds they got loaded down with, Manny thought, seething.

  The patients were often even better for talking points than the staff. “Watch what they’re injecting into you. One shot of potassium and you’re dead. Completely untraceable. Don’t accept any shot unless you see the bottle they’re drawing it out of.” That was Primrose whispering in his ear. He paced the floor, and shared his paranoid delusions with everyone who cared to listen. Nearly as good at riling patients as some of the staff, he, arguably, couldn’t help himself.

  Manny learned how to use the mirrors in the corners high up by the ceilings to see behind his head, and track nurses and orderlies going about their routines without them catching on.

  But most of all, he listened to get a sense of how each one of the staff thought, what each one valued. He needed to know how to push their buttons when the time was right, how best to get around them. Something about locking someone up, he guessed, triggered the escape gene to go into hyper-drive.

  “I’m at a loss over what to do with One Leg—I mean Rupert,” Julianne said, after running up to Saverly before he could get to his office.

  Saverly blushed at her insensitivity, but only lost a half beat on account of it by Manny’s reckoning. “View it as a growth opportunity,” Saverly said, squeezing her shoulder.

  “Any more growth opportunities and I’ll be looking down on the Jolly Green Giant,” Julianne mumbled.

  “Why don’t you try some positive affirmations?” Saverly suggested. “You know, teach him how to say to himself, ‘I’ll walk better than ever with a little practice.’ ‘A leg less means more character for me.’ ‘One less part to worry’ll wear out before its time.’”

  “Yeah, that could work,” Julianne said, relieved. “You turned a bad day around just like that, doc,” she said, slipping back into her beguiling manner.

  “There are no bad days, Julianne. Just growth opportunities,” Saverly said, and smiled warmly.

  Manny shifted his attention to another hotspot, growing philosophical in the process.

  It was an age when no amount of genius seemed enough to keep one ahead of the global competition, no amount of time, energy, effort, and time-management schemes, evidenced by the broken people all around him—many of whom were geniuses extraordinaire. There was Matt, the stocks guy who could turn pennies into millions inside an afternoon working stock options, who, upon losing millions in seconds, had joined the ranks of the broken. “Hey, Matt. Got any advice for me?” Manny asked.

  “Yeah. Don’t bet what you can’t lose,” Matt said with a mad laugh, and then fired his toy dart gun with a plunger at the tip of the dart. He used the dart to squish a fly with the plunger. Manny didn’t realize what he was up to until he pulled it off the wall with a sucking sound, and left a trail of blood. Were it not for his sorry state, and his New York accent, he’d be a great Wild West cowboy cliché. Down to the Randolph Scott mug and matching physique.

  There was Dave, ex-shipping magnate. He was doing fine until one of his cruise ships capsized. It got him sued by five thousand people all at once with rather compelling cases. If only his shipping line had been bigger. If only he was in the right position to be bought out. If only he hadn’t leveraged himself for the next big wave of expansion only to get caught with his pants down. Each day, he had a different excuse for failure.

  Manny figured Dave was about twenty or so excuses past any post-medication rebound. Except maybe as a risk-assessment manager. His mindset had been unwittingly reworked to see everything that could go wrong, and nothing that could go right. Not exactly the m.o. of an entrepreneur. “No ship without a collision avoidance system that can override the captain’s orders,” Dave said, running down the list in his head, evidently pleased he could add a new item. He had evidently decided to include Manny in his orbit, pacing a large loop around the floor.

  And then there was… Manny had lost count. Most of the geniuses extraordinaire were kept one floor up. Saverly figured birds of a feather… He was hoping they’d counsel one another, minimize on his workload. They definitely spoke their own language. So Manny couldn’t argue the logic.

  Manny turned his attention back to the staff.

  Atterman, currently making such a show of checking which patients were cheeking their meds and which
weren’t, used thoroughness as a control mechanism. Jim, who had befriended him, used amiability; Mr. Popularity. He slipped a domino into place across the table from Manny with a wicked smile.

  Julianne was the willing co-conspirator—whispering to her confidants on the sly, sneaking patients special favors—all too ready to show she stood with them against all the other staff, felt their pain in ways the other insensitive white suits couldn’t hope to. So, come time for an uprising, she would be spared, and the patients would channel their rage at the others. Manny overheard her whisper clandestinely to Rudy, one of the patients with the strength of ten men, “You’re my favorite. Don’t tell anyone.” A few more ego boosts like that and he’d be everything she wanted him to be, the perfect insurmountable wall shielding her during the next patient riot.

  Jim, playing dominoes opposite him, took a call on his cell, cupped the phone in his giant hand so no one could tell he was talking to someone other than Manny. Cell phones weren’t allowed on the floor. He talked just softly and sporadically enough that Manny could afford to ignore him. With Jim preoccupied, he let his eyes roam over the staff more freely. Every once in a while he’d look back to find Jim’s eyes on him, but he dismissed the idea that the call might be a ruse to give Manny an excuse to drop his guard.

  Manny’s attention drifted to Margie. Her modus operandi was straightforward: Just tell them what they want to hear and make sure she lies convincingly enough that no one notices they’re being played. “The drugs keep you safe,” she told Fenton, one of their many resident schizophrenics. “They poison the demons within, and boost the energy in that defensive aura around your body you can’t see, but I can, against the external demons.” To Manny, whose demons both within and without were more of the paranoid variety, she would say, “Are the pills helping you to tell who’s who, whether they’re friend or foe? I told you they would. They sharpen your senses so you can read people’s body language better. You’ll be the king of subtext in no time.” Christ, you could get seriously turned around just listening to her, the way insane people start to sound sane if you listen to them long enough.

  Margie was currently waiting for mom to depart, having dropped off her gift for her son, a monster if unmedicated—the kind that ate people. Mom departed after giving her son a sullen look, and Margie pulled the toy labeled Camouflage Tank out of the box. It was armored with reflective plastic. Margie made sure to get her fingerprints on it so Grately could focus his obsessive compulsive disorder on wiping off the smudges. He seemed very much at peace now that he had something on which to focus his attention.

  Margie celebrated the moment for him, taking the remote in her hands. “Isn’t it wonderful?” She sent the tank scurrying about, which helped to mark it up, and goaded Grately to reach for it to remove the smears when he just couldn’t take it anymore. “What a great team we make, don’t we?” Since there was no real talking to Grately, Margie relied more on give-him-what-he-needs gestures than tell-him-what-he-wants-to-hear. Manny had to admire her adapt-or-die approach.

  Stephanie’s approach was no less unique: Scare them to death. Overwhelm their puny brains already prone to fear-mongering so they’re too incapacitated to do much, and they allow authorities to manage their lives for them. “You’re going to get a pot belly sitting on your ass playing dominoes day and night,” she said sauntering past Manny. “That’ll do your detective work a hell of a lot of good.” Manny braced himself with a deep breath. Passing Fenton next, Stephanie explained, “Blue demons are no defense against green demons, I hope you realize that. They’ll tear right through them. You want to throw up real barriers, you come see me.”

  Ronald’s strategy was as follows: confuse them with inconsistent messages and behaviors so they couldn’t trust him or know what he’d do next, and so stayed away. Ronald, Manny suspected, suffered from antisocial disorder; one of just many terms he’d picked up listening in on the med-staff lingo.

  Manny had watched Ronald rearrange the furniture in the rec room, starting with the chairs, every hour on the hour. Each time the patients complained he had a different reason for it. “Breaks up the flow patterns, so you can’t walk around on autopilot so much. Forces you to stay in the moment.” “Some of the patients were skinning their knees on the edges of the This End Up crate couches.” “I think you’ll find this arrangement affords superior TV watching angles and more ready access to the ping pong and pool tables.” “Saverly has me do it. Like I know what the hell anything that goes on in here means.”

  Reggie walked up to Ronald, asked for help with his untied shoes. “Could you do these for me?” His hands shook too much, Manny thought, to do it for himself. As Ronald bent over in a mock show of helpfulness, he said, looking up at Reggie, “What’s that I see? I think the aphid armies are advancing on your ear canals, Reggie.”

  Reggie frantically batted his ears in an effort to brush them off. He slapped himself on the side of the head in an effort to shake them loose from the tunnels in his ears. Finally he put his head under water in the sink to wash them out. Ronald chuckled clandestinely, all the while pretending to keep a helpful eye on the patients.

  Manny’s attention shifted to Conrad as he entered the floor.

  Conrad had a thing for the boys. He clung to Manny as aggressively as acne on a teen. The fact he was supposed to keep his eye on the patients just gave him license to leer and added to the creepiness factor. The fact Conrad worked night shift didn’t exactly set Manny’s mind at rest. With the skeleton staff and the patients asleep, many restrained, he could get away with murder and claim the patients were just “making it up.”

  Conrad’s favorite part of the job was frisking the new admissions. Anyone coming onto the unit had to have their belongings gone through for contraband. That could range from razors with which the patients could slit their own throats to drugs wedged snugly up their rectal cavities. Conrad’s thoroughness in the rectal area matched Atterman with her penchant for oral cavities. He’d give you the going over, all right. Most of the patients were too far gone to know he was copping a feel at their expense. Manny knew what he was up to, because, while these searches were supposed to go on in the privacy of the patient’s room behind closed doors, Conrad was not opposed to an audience, and rather enjoyed the fact Manny was checking him out.

  Soap operas, in short, had nothing on a psych ward.

  “You’re awfully quite today,” Jim said, playing a domino. “I was hoping to learn more about you.”

  Manny figured he’d hung up the cell phone a while ago, and Manny had missed his cue. “Me? Just your garden variety paranoid. Everyone out to get me.”

  “Why do you think that?” Jim made a play in response to Manny’s latest piece.

  “I guess it follows from hating authority figures as much as I do and imagining their downfall by any number of means.”

  “Who did that to you?”

  “Who does it to anyone?” Manny played a piece. “Dear old dad. At a ripe old age when he stood like a giant relative to me. Making all the big and burly staff around here an invitation to PTSD.”

  Jim laughed, slid a piece into place. “Funny how things play out.” He looked up at Manny. “Do you remember anything more specific about your childhood?”

  “Just that it was scary.”

  Jim slid another piece into place. “I guess when there’s a violation of a sacred trust, things can never play out well,” he said ominously.

  Manny’s mind drifted away from the game again, taking in Conrad. He had an ordinary-guy façade that wore on him like lipstick on a whore. Manny expected to see his face bubbling and his head spinning around for his corporeal home’s inability to fully imprison the demons within. Not that Manny had anything against gays. Just this one in particular.

  Manny regarded Conrad as he led his latest unsuspecting admission back to his room, feeling like shit for not following him and bludgeoning Conrad to death. But, in the cosmic scheme of things, the patients had to endure a lot wor
se in here. If they couldn’t find their way around Conrad, no doubt they couldn’t find their way out the front door either.

  Fontanegro and Carmichael were visible through the meshed, steel-reinforced glass. They were the nursing staff’s brain trust: the plotters and schemers; they put their heads together to anticipate their adversaries’ moves, and stay one step ahead of them, figuring two heads were better than one for critiquing the shortcomings in one another’s strategies. Neither of them was terribly bright on their own, but together, they were fairly formidable. Manny had done some creative furniture arranging of his own in order to get within earshot of their nurse’s station, where they stayed forever ensconced.

  They spoke in code which was too high functioning for most of the patients to see past, but Manny’s police work thrived on acronyms, police codes being no less impenetrable.

  Fontanegro: “Thirty-Five is sixty-four. We better forty-nine him.” That meant Rudy was acting up. They were going to hit him with a booster shot of Thorazine.