The Devil in Silver

She stopped and looked out the lounge’s windows. She tapped the remote against her forehead a little too hard. Instinctively, Pepper reached out and pulled her hand down.

“I feel so bad about it, Pepper, you have to know I do. But I couldn’t see him hurt any more than I could see any one of you hurt.”

Pepper pulled his hand back. His mouth went dry. “But one of us did get hurt, Dorry.”

“I know! I know. You’re all like my children. Doesn’t matter how old or young. My sons and daughters. And I try to be good to all of you. Don’t you know that’s why I’m the first person who comes to the door? The first face a patient sees should be a friendly one. I show each of you around. Get you a little more food if you need it. Dorry does that. For everyone. Even him.”

Pepper strained forward in his seat. Suddenly he wanted to shake her.

“But why do you have to be that way? Can’t you just use a little common fucking sense! Take a look at that thing and figure out it doesn’t deserve to be treated like … one of us?”

Dorry slid the remote control toward him as if she was passing him a baton.

“Should I have done that when you came in?” she asked. “You weren’t one of us. You said it yourself.”

Pepper stood up and pushed his chair back so hard it fell over.

“All your best intentions,” he said. “And we’re still stuck in this hell. So what’s the point?”

Was he scolding Dorry, or himself?

Dorry gave Pepper a tight-lipped smile. “You help,” she said. “That’s the point.”

Pepper crowded over her. From a distance, it must’ve looked like he was about to crush the old woman. And he was. “You haven’t helped anyone. You’ve made every life you’ve touched—me, Loochie, Coffee—worse.”

Dorry’s eyes fluttered. He thought she might actually faint. But he couldn’t stop himself now. The anxiety he’d been feeling for Sue, the grief for Coffee, the pity for himself, it all became rage. He wanted to trample Dorry just then.

“So what good are you really?” he asked. “What good are you to anyone?” Dorry pursed her lips and blew out quietly. She looked down at her hands.

“Yes,” she whispered. “I guess I see what you mean.”

She reached into her bra and took out her “coin purse.” It was really just a length of paper towel folded and wrapped around some change. She put the whole thing on the table.

“I said I’d give this to you if you sat with me,” she told him.

Pepper grabbed it right away. He felt no remorse for what he’d just said to her. He was too busy unwrapping the paper towel and counting the money.

Dorry looked toward the window again but could hardly see anything beyond blurs. She sighed deeply.

“Maybe this is the world. Northwest, I mean. If you think about it, what’s so different? Wake up in the morning, eat some breakfast, take a few pills to start the day. Go to a conference room and waste time. Go to lunch, take a few more pills. Bullshit the afternoon away. Eat dinner while you watch TV. Take a few more pills and go to bed. Isn’t that how most people are living? It’s been awhile since I was outside, but that’s what the news is always saying. Maybe out there is a lot like in here. The United States of New Hyde.”

Pepper felt dejected when he finished counting. Only eighty-five cents. Enough to reach Oakland? Maybe the initial three-minute call. He’d have to pack all the important information into that window. No greetings. No explanations. Just Sue—immigration jail—New Hyde Hospital—extradition.

“One big asylum,” Dorry muttered.

The old woman walked away from Pepper. She pushed a chair up to the windows as Pepper left the lounge. She sat and stared at the broad, cloudless sky, watching afternoon turn to evening.

33

BY DINNERTIME DORRY still remained in that chair.

She didn’t get up to eat dinner. Didn’t notice when other patients filtered back into the lounge. They turned on their shows, ate their meals, enjoyed some conversation, and Dorry hardly noticed any of it. One of the nurses on the night shift appeared with her evening meds. She took them without incident.

Meanwhile Pepper felt terrible.

You know what eighty-five cents got him? A recorded message that still demanded sixty-five cents more to connect the call. And where would he get that? He’d tried all the other patients, and the staff members on the night shift rebuffed him.

Now what? Pepper had been asking himself that question for a few hours by the time Dorry took her evening meds. The only solution he could see was to get behind that nurses’ station again and use their phone. Once again, he’d be mimicking Coffee! (And, of course, he had to wonder if that last step—gunshots—would follow.)

This plan had no chance of success, though. New Hyde’s phone protocol had been changed. The staff’s phone had been removed. Poof. Vamoose.

Son of a bitch!