Each patient reacted differently to being given the shot. Anthony Station clenched both hands into fists and held onto the curls of his bushy hair.
“What’s this for, doc?” he asked, not yet giving Bradburn permission to administer the shot.
What the first patient didn’t realize but that Bradburn knew was that Cooper was observing this round of questioning from the other side of a reverse window. The agent could see Bradburn and the patients, but they would only see what looked like a mirror. What the patient also didn’t realize was that he didn’t have a choice in whether or not he received a shot. If he or either of the other two patients refused, Cooper would either order Bradburn’s staff to restrain them so it could be administered, or else he would claim a possible Thinker had become belligerent, pull out his blaster, and end it all right there.
“It’ll help you relax during the next round of questions,” Bradburn said.
“Sure, doc, whatever you say.”
While Station’s fists didn’t unclench, the man seemed resigned to his fate, as if he had been drugged and questioned many times before. If Bradburn had to guess, the patient would say similar needles had injected various drugs aboard alien spaceships right before they started probing him.
Logan Ford, the second patient, fidgeted so much after being told he would be given a shot that the doctor thought there might be violence. With some manics it was difficult to tell if they were just annoyed by something that was going on or if they meant to do harm. With the knuckles of each hand, Ford scraped at his eyes and moaned.
“Are we going to be okay, Logan?” Bradburn said in his calmest, most soothing voice.
“What do you mean?”
“Are you going to try and hurt me?”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
But even as he said it, he began to scream and growl. A pair of muscular male nurses appeared on either side of Bradburn before Ford could do anything else. Bradburn glanced at the mirror, knowing Agent Cooper was probably enjoying the show. A minute after the shot was given, Ford was quiet.
With the exception of his jaw twitching one time, Dewey Leonard, the third patient, had previously only moved his eyes. When Bradburn told him he would need to give the patient an injection, Leonard gripped the arms of the chair he was sitting in.
Bradburn watched how perfectly still the patient was. “You can move, you know that, right?” he said.
“Yes.”
“You just choose to remain motionless?”
Leonard’s eyes moved toward the doctor, focusing on Bradburn’s nametag, then on his face, then to the wall-sized mirror.
“Yes.”
“You’ll be still when I give you this shot?”
“What does the shot do?”
“It helps you remain calm.”
“I’m already calm.”
Bradburn frowned. He wished he could have formed relationships with all three men prior to having to do something like this.
“It’ll help you...” he tried to think of another reason.
Leonard saw the way Bradburn glanced quickly at the mirror, then said, “What’s it really do?”
“Helps you be more forthcoming,” the doctor said.
“Do I have a choice if I get it?”
Bradburn’s first instinct was to turn back toward the mirror and the invisible Agent Cooper standing on the other side of it.
“I’m sorry, you don’t,” he said. “Rules are rules.”
Leonard’s mouth closed, and Bradburn could tell from the way the patient didn’t move anymore, not even his eyes, that he would remain perfectly still until the drugs took over.
9
The Theta Patient Page 8
