The Devil in Silver

The patients gathered at the door and Scotch Tape waited. He kept peeking out the plastic windowpane as if he were expecting company to appear on the other side, an armed escort maybe. That’s how some of the patients read his gesture, but of course some of them were clinically paranoid. Really Scotch Tape kept looking out the front door as an excuse to avoid the patients’ gazes, their conversations. The ones who got there first looked to him like dogs do to their masters. Let us out! Open up! He was already exhausted by their undisguised need. But finally they had all arrived. “Ready?” he asked.

“We’ve been ready!” Doris Roberts shouted playfully. She had even done her hair after borrowing Sandra Day O’Connor’s brush.

The other patients stared at the door. Let us out. Open up! Pepper and Loochie were the last patients on line. Loochie had decided against wearing the towel wrapped around her noggin. Instead she’d returned to the blue knit cap. She’d removed the strings that once held the pom-poms. Nurse Washburn and a second nurse were behind them. The patients stood in pairs, like schoolchildren.

Scotch Tape unlocked the secure door. That click barely audible over the twelve patients’ heartbeats. He held the door open.

“Come on now,” he said to Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly, the first two in line. Their old sport coats were so crisp they looked steamed. (An easy trick if you run a hot shower and hang the coat inside the bathroom.)

“Don’t rush me,” Mr. Mack told him.

Scotch Tape nodded and waited, exasperated and respectful. Mr. Mack reached up and tried to close the buttons of his coat before moving. But his fingers were trembling so fast they damn near blurred. He had trouble getting the first button through its hole so Frank Waverly tried to help by reaching for Mr. Mack’s coat. But the littler man slapped Frank Waverly’s help away. Leaving Mr. Mack to wrestle with the fabric a little more. Frank Waverly got bored and walked out of the unit without him. The rest filed around him, too.

Mr. Mack was the last patient to go. His sport coat still unbuttoned.

The group passed through the secure ward door and into the hallway. The fluorescent lights above them cast the same old sickly yellow glow, but the lavender walls were a welcome change.

They walked through the empty lobby with its cheap chairs and sofas. These didn’t look any better just because they were on this side.

But then the group reached the double doors that led to the parking lot. Scotch Tape opened one door and the sunlight came in. Somehow this sunlight seemed different from the stuff that reached the smokers’ court. There, the light looked like melted margarine. But out here? You know.

Like butter.

Twelve patients stepped outside and proceeded to act the fool. They squinted up at the sun and covered their eyes with their hands. They sniffed the air theatrically. Some hummed. One yipped at such a high pitch it sounded like a birdcall. They wiped their hands over their faces as if they’d just lifted their heads out of a pool. It was the middle of April, and a wonderfully pleasant day. A strong wind played among the trees and some folks shut their eyes, just listening to the quivering leaves.

Shhhhhhh

Shhhhhhh

Shhhhhhh

“That’s nice,” Loochie said.

Pepper gazed at her and wondered if he looked as happy as she did. He hoped so.

Loochie opened one eye. “I thought someone was watching me.”

“You’re just being paranoid,” Pepper said.

She shut her eye, breathed deep once more. “That’s what the doctors tell me.”

“They have pills for that,” Pepper said.

Loochie laughed with him. The other patients seemed to be having their own reveries. Even Mr. Mack was feeling better out here. With his eyes shut, he found the top button of his sport coat. With steady hands he slipped it through the corresponding hole in one try.

“Everybody ready to walk?” Nurse Washburn asked.

Scotch Tape raised one hand at the front of the group. “Let’s go.”