A Better World, page 29
What Josie’d said was not nice. Linda knew that. When you love someone, you support the people they choose to love. But maybe that’s what siblings were for, breaking those rules, because damn, it was a bull’s-eye.
Hip lost his mind. “How can you say that? You’re so selfish! You think you’re a good person but you only ever care about yourself. You’re all sad lately and we’re supposed to feel sorry for you, but why? You don’t ask how anybody else is doing. You don’t care. You don’t clean up. You don’t ever say thank you to Mom. You’re a freak. Nobody likes you. At least I have a girlfriend. At least people want me around.”
“Whoa,” Linda said. “Stop talking. Too far, Hip.”
The rest of the car ride was tense. Hip fumed. Josie tried to hide her tears by staring straight ahead and not wiping them. Linda didn’t wade in. She knew from fifteen years of peace-brokering that they were both too raw.
When Linda pulled up to the designated drop-off area, Hip busted out and didn’t look back. Left his door wide open, which was how Linda knew he wasn’t just angry, but distressed. Josie got out, shut her door, then leaned into shotgun.
“He didn’t mean it, Josie,” Linda said.
“No?” Josie asked.
“Okay. Maybe he did mean it. But that doesn’t make it true.”
* * *
After her shift at the hospital, Linda checked the kiosk for Katie and Sebbie Parker’s files. True to Chernin’s word, they’d been marked as discharged back in September. After that, she checked every pediatric patient registered at the hospital. None resembled the Parker kids.
In the absence of any leads, she decided on a physical search. She took the stairs to the fourth floor, which was divided into maternity and mental health. She found two sleeping babies in the nursery, their milk-fed mouths open in satisfied little Os. A sole attendant read her device at the front desk. Linda passed from the east wing to psychiatric in the west wing. She hesitated only briefly—wasn’t sure she was allowed there—then palm-accessed her way inside.
It was shocking.
The sound-tight door opened to bedlam: ambient beeps and whines, screeching wheels on rushing gurneys, yelps and shouts from patients and professionals alike. Everything whizzed, a fast-paced contrast to the rest of the hospital—the rest of Plymouth Valley. There were two whiteboards, both full. On the floor, a maintenance person was cleaning a quart-sized pool of blood, his mop’s yarn strings saturated with red. She skirted around that, kept her eyes wide for two small children.
The air had a fissure to it—a crackle. She passed one open door after the next, all occupied. Some were young people in their teens and twenties. More were middle-aged. Through the open door on her left, she saw a drooling, heavily sedated brick of a man. Spittle gathered along his lower lip and ribboned down to the shining floor. She froze. It was Keith Parson. The Beltane King.
He smiled slowly, a wide, ugly grin that showed too much gums and too many teeth. “Hello to you,” he said, patrician and arrogant, like that first day she’d met him, in Anouk’s cottage.
Linda walked faster, away from him. “It’s okay, honey. Don’t you know everything’s okay?” she heard a nurse ask a woman in the next room, who was weeping. Linda recognized her, too.
“It came to me on New Year’s Eve through the eyes of a goat,” goalie soccer mom Ruth Epstein answered. “It said I’m the new prophet. I’m God now.”
Afraid she’d be recognized—caught—Linda kept walking. She passed more rooms, didn’t see any kids. Someone at the end of the hall was howling to be let alone. It was a scarecrow-skinny man in his late thirties, his arms and legs strapped down. Percy Khoury. Red Rorschached through the white gauze of his freshly bandaged wrists. Like fairy-tale breadcrumbs, it streaked a smeared, hastily mopped trail leading out and down the hall.
“Mr. Khoury, this is too much. You know very well that you’re not allowed to do any maintenance on the reactor until you’re medically cleared to go back to work. You have to stop going there. Do you want expulsion? Because that’s where you’re headed.”
“I have friends. They’re bigger than you think. They’re coming for you.”
“Do I have to adjust your olanzapine, too?”
He noticed Linda. Locked eyes with her as the nurse depressed the plunger on a hypodermic into his blood-smeared arm.
“You’re liars,” he said, his voice fading as he nodded off.
The nurse noticed Linda and launched: “Where’s your access pass?”
Linda shrugged, like: Oh, was I supposed to have a pass?
“Get out,” the nurse said.
* * *
She didn’t leave the hospital. She found the stairs and walked the length of the third floor, through surgical and recovery. Then the second floor, mostly offices. Halfway down the east wing, she was at Chernin’s office. Her hands shaking from all she’d seen, she forgot to knock. She needed to see him. To talk to him. He’d wanted to confide in her the other morning. Maybe he would do it, now.
She opened. There was Chernin, lying on his office couch, his eyes closed. His chest rose and fell in deep sleep. It wasn’t unusual for doctors to nap during work breaks. It was a habit she’d developed back as an intern, when she’d been working long hours. She was about to back up and let him rest when she noticed the tank on the floor beside him. Rubber tubing ran out of it, ending in a mask that Chernin clutched in his left fist.
NITROUS OXIDE, the label read.
He wasn’t sleeping; he was high.
How had she not guessed this? It was so obvious. Every sign: the big pupils, the spaciness, the general wishy-washy lack of accountability that characterized every junkie she’d ever known—she’d seen all of it before, back in Poughkeepsie.
She shook him by the frail, thin shoulders. Maybe he’d be so high he’d think he was dreaming, and she’d get a straight answer. He grunted. It was a pain sound, though she wasn’t shaking him hard. “Where are the Parker children?”
His dilated pupils didn’t adjust. Squinting through the bleariness, he sat up, still holding the mask, as if believing that if he did not let it go, she wouldn’t notice it. She saw that his wrists were bruised with pinprick centers. He’d been injecting something, too.
Like my dad, she thought, who’d given up snorting Glamp and by the end had been shooting it.
“Where are they?”
“It’s not time for them yet, you maniacs,” he muttered.
“Time for what?”
His eyes regulated, the black shrinking. He reached for his glasses and pushed them over the bridge of his nose with a shaking hand. “No, no. You’re not permitted here.” His voice was slow, confused.
“You’re not permitted to practice medicine while high,” she said.
With great effort, he stood. His voice was clearer than the rest of him. “This is none of your business, Dr. Farmer.”
“What are you doing?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
He eased toward the device on his desk, like he thought she was going to jump him. He picked it up, clumsily dialed. “I’m being attacked. Help,” he said, his voice flat.
She made no move to stop him. They stood there, waiting. Chernin’s eyes stayed lowered. Linda’s stayed pointed.
“She’s threatening me,” he told security when they arrived. “She’s not well.”
Linda indicated the nitrous.
They were both taken to the police station, Linda in cuffs, Chernin freely. He gave his statement first. Linda watched him leave. He glanced at her, the skin around his mouth dry and red for reasons she now understood, his expression so calm as to seem dead.
Linda was ushered into a back office to meet with the police chief, a guy named Pratt. “I did not attack that man,” she said.
Pratt gave her a side-eye, which she took to mean, Obviously.
“He won’t press charges if the hospital agrees to put you on leave, which they’ve done,” Pratt said.
“I’m fired? That guy’s a junkie!” she said, louder than she’d intended.
“He’s a diabetic. He was treating himself,” Pratt said.
“You don’t treat blood sugar with nitrous oxide.”
Pratt stood. “I’ve spoken to the higher-ups and this is their decision. Their patience is thin on you and your family. The public drunkenness, the stop sign your daughter broke, sneaking into the mental ward… We’d typically push for expulsion today. Right now. But your husband spoke in your favor. He agreed that if you cause any more problems, he’ll commit you to a minimum of three months at our psychiatric facility—the fourth floor.”
Pratt walked out, leaving her there on the comfy couch, where she picked up the letter Russell had e-signed, agreeing to the recommendations of the board, which had convened in the time she’d spent in the waiting room. Then she heard his wheedling voice: “Linnie?”
“I had no choice,” Russell explained on the ride home. “You put me in the worst position, Linda. You promised a low profile and you did the opposite.”
She listened to his logical arguments, heard out his indignant frustration. In the midst of it, she interrupted. “Are you saying that if I fuck up one more time, you’re going to commit me to the PV mental ward? Do I have this right, Russell?”
“Of course not! But I had to promise them something or we’d be out on our asses—no deposit, no car, no nothing. We’d literally be on the street.”
When they got into the house, he seemed to think that she’d follow him to his office, where they’d talk more and in private, figure out how Linda would make her many apologies, keep this shit show going one more day.
He stood in the doorway, waiting.
She saw that grin again, scratched with sand or dirt. Imagined it bleeding through lace in the land of nightmares. “Naw,” she said. Then she was up the stairs, locking the door to her bedroom.
Russell didn’t come to bed that night. Perhaps he used the guest room or the fold-out in his study. Would his back hurt? She hoped so.
Tuesday
The next morning, she didn’t get up to take the kids to school. What the hell did school matter? But at seven fifteen a.m., Josie knocked.
“Come on in,” Linda said.
“Are you okay?” Josie asked.
“I’m still thinking on the things we talked about,” Linda said. “I’m working on them.”
Josie seemed relieved.
“I’ll figure it out,” Linda promised.
Just then, Russell poked his head in. Linda had the feeling he’d been listening. “I’ll take them.”
* * *
That afternoon, Linda drove through falling snow to the PV Hospital’s back lot. Foggy laundry steam poured from a vent in the basement.
She tried to palm her way inside the employee entrance, but her access was denied. So she went around front to the emergency room entrance, where she flashed her badge at the dayworker attending at the front desk. “I’m having an ocular migraine—I can’t see the palm access in back, so I thought I’d come through here?” she lied.
He let her through.
She went fast, passing regular staff like Greg Hamstead. If he saw her, he didn’t say anything. She found the stairs. Went to the last place she hadn’t searched: the basement. The door was locked. No access. She tiptoed to the rectangle of glass just above eye height, saw two PV-uniformed cops in their country club green uniforms. Cyrus Galani was one of them.
She retreated, sitting on the stairs as she tried to figure out how to get in. She could lift Chernin’s palm print from his car handle or head back to his house and peel it from his front door. Make a mold and use that to gain entrance. But this seemed complicated, and likely to go wrong, and she had no idea how she’d competently execute any of those things. She could also just wait and see what happened.
After about a half hour, a nurse emerged from the basement elevator. She wheeled a cart with two trays into the guarded room, then came back out empty handed.
Hours passed before anything else happened. No one came down the stairwell. Her worries of getting caught subsided into boredom and, after that, doubt. This endeavor was, incontrovertibly, absurd.
But then, the elevator opened again and there came Dr. Chernin and Pratt, the chief of police. Pratt was holding two teddy bears and a brunette baby doll. Cyrus opened the door for them and suddenly the hall was empty. They were all inside.
A jolt ran through her, bursting and zinging with electricity.
Fifteen minutes later, Chernin and Pratt left the way they’d come, without the doll and teddys. It was the end of the day. Cyrus and his partner had to be leaving soon. They’d take this back exit where the staff cars were all parked. She placed a pen with a wide cap on the ground, within the arc the open door would make. Then she hid in the nook under the stairs.
No movement.
Around dinnertime, she texted Russell and the kids to figure out dinner on their own. Ninety minutes later, her door opened. Cyrus and his partner headed straight for the exit. She rushed around the corner. But the pen glided out of the way. No time to grab the handle.
It shut with a hard click!
She waited another hour. The relief guards in the hall now were older and seemed like good friends. “Dumb thing bit Jessie so he kicked it,” the one said. “Now it limps. Don’t tell any of these Hollow fanatics.”
“Pooping hate these pooping birds,” the other answered, and then, scandalized, both laughed.
It was time to go home.
She was distracted enough that she almost missed the turn for her house. As she headed inside, lumbering Sunny crossed her path and hissed.
Inspired by the old security guard’s confession, she came closer, felt extra weight in her right foot. It was itching to swing in a low arc. Send Sunny flying like a football, make her limp, or die mysteriously from internal bleeding.
Most animals can feel violence before it happens. But Sunny wasn’t scared. She was bold. She hissed louder: SSSSSSSSS!
Linda swung, knowing even before her foot landed that she wouldn’t be able to carry through and hurt a living creature. She kicked air near the bird and the bird hissed harder. She kicked closer, grazing her fat, feathered side. Sunny got scared and backed up. Linda followed, kicking and stomping, until Sunny retreated into her shelter. Her temerity gone, she hid in the very back.
“You’re a lying piece of shit. You lie to me, you lie to the kids, you lie to yourself. All you ever do is lie,” Linda told the bird.
* * *
Inside, Russell was waiting. He wore an Omnium robe, cinched, and it didn’t seem like he had pajamas on underneath. There was something urgent and wild in his eyes. “Late night?”
“Yeah. Where are the kids?”
He pointed above, meaning upstairs, in bed.
“I thought we were going out tonight,” he said. “Daniella and Lloyd had that prefestival get-together. Everyone missed you.”
“You didn’t get my text?”
“It didn’t explain where you were.”
She caught something in his expression. “But you turned on the locator. You know where I was.”
After so many years, she knew that his lack of response was an admission. He started for his office, where their voices were less likely to carry. She followed. Inside, he sat behind the desk with his hands in fists against the classic chestnut wood. The mugs were all still there. The papers and tea bags and mayhem, too.
“Those kids aren’t with the ex-wife in Palo Alto,” she said. “They’ve been keeping them locked up in the basement of that hospital. If they were in a clinical trial on the outside, they’d be getting marrow transplants. I doubt that’s happening here, where they’re trapped behind a locked door. It’s like the residents want to keep them alive, but not cure them. They’re keeping them for the festival.”
“How can you know this?” he asked. On his desk, he seemed to notice the mess for the first time. He stacked and realigned in a kind of panic, but the mess was overwhelming. “Did you see them?”
“No. But security’s guarding the door. Chernin brought toys. Who else could it be?”
“But you didn’t see them.”
“I’ve never seen gravity, either.”
Russell’s neck and jaw—his whole body—went tight, as if he were pulling a tug-of-war rope. “So you don’t know.”
“I do know. What I want to understand is why they’re hiding them. What goes on at this Winter Fest?”
Russell’s fingers ticked the scattered items on his desk, as if they might provide an answer. “Linda, these people you’re talking about, this they—they’re your friends. Gal gave you alcohol poisoning. She set her house on fire. Would you rather those kids went home to her? Isn’t it better they’re kept away and safe? I’m not saying it’s true, but if it is, there’s a reason no one told you. It’s not your business. Maybe they don’t like the ex-wife, either. Maybe you’re right, and they plan to involve the kids in the festival. But for all we know, it’s a healing ritual. The myth of the caladrius is that it eats sickness. These people don’t have cold-blooded murder in them. Why would anyone trust you with the truth when you act like this?”
“Russell, they lied!”
Russell opened his device and turned the screen to face her. Their bank app was opened, and the balance was laughably low. “What drives me wild is that you don’t know anything. But you’re taking it upon yourself to blow up our lives.”
His words hit, but they made her angry, too. “What’s the deal with Omnium?”
He paled.
“Josie and I went to the PV Dump. The sludge—this Omnium sludge—has an awful smell. Does it cause make people sick? If I accessed the cancer or aplastic anemia or birth defect incidence in Hami, China, would the numbers be through the roof? Is that why they moved production out of PV? Is that why they hired you, because you can cover it up?”
