The Devil in Silver

“Do you know where I am now? Your ex-husband … who the hell is named Griff anyway? Your ex-husband was the one who tried to get tough with me when I asked him nicely to stop threatening the mother of his child! He threatened to sue me. For menacing. Is that a crime? Okay, I admit, I lost my temper at that point. I smacked him one. So then we both got into it. Then three guys drive up in a Dodge Charger and I’m supposed to know they’re cops? In a Dodge Charger? I assumed they were meatheads. But they were fucking cops. Patrolling a school zone. Now I’m in a hospital behind this shit. And last night I was attacked! I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, so I’m sorry but I called thinking that if anyone might give me a little understanding it would be the woman I was trying to look out for!”

“I’m sorry about all that, Pepper. I really am. But I don’t know what you want me to do. You wanted to help me, but you never asked me what kind of help I needed. All I wanted was to talk about it. It was nice to do that with you down in the laundry room all those times. You were already helping. I don’t think that mess with Griff was about me at all. It was about you.”

“Marisol.”

“You have a brother, right? Your family is who you should be calling if you’re in a hospital.”

“You mean Ralph? I haven’t spoken to him in six years. Maybe more.”

“But he’s your brother.”

“It’s not going to happen, Mari. I’m not calling him. And he’d probably hang up as soon as he heard it was me.”

Mari sighed into the phone. Pepper was going to make even coming to his aid into a hassle. She said, “Hold on and I’ll find a pen.…”

Well that was depressing.

But also just confusing. How could she and Pepper see the same actions so differently? It made him wonder if the cops, or that dick-head Griff, had spoken to Mari and explained the fight in a way that made him seem as terrible as possible. Speaking to her about it forced him to see the same afternoon from a new angle. A big guy stomps into a parking lot and beats up a teacher. Then he beats up three cops. Good God. He’d begun seeing this version of himself—a thug, a marauder, a monster—when Mari mentioned calling his brother, when she asked him to hold on while she found a pen.

He had no choice. He told her Ralph’s name. And that he lived in Maryland now. But when she asked him for the actual number, he couldn’t give it to her. His cell phone knew the digits, not him. She said she’d go online and find Ralph’s number and give him this one and explain as much as she could. She wished him sincere good luck.

And that was it.

Pepper left the phone alcove, despondent. In part because he knew, even if Mari actually did track down his brother, Ralph wouldn’t call. He probably wouldn’t even tell their mother Pepper was in the hospital. Pepper had entered the alcove thinking he had at least one ally. He left knowing he had none.

He left the alcove and looked toward Northwest 2 and the room waiting there. Another day and a half. How many more chances would that give last night’s visitor to drop in?

He looked to his right and saw that unclassifiable trio—woman in her fifties, man in his thirties, teenage girl—walking from the television lounge and down Northwest 5. He watched as they entered the room at the hub of Northwest and circled around the nurses’ station. They barely spoke to one another but didn’t look angry, really. Maybe just a little worn out. The time spent getting ready for the visit, traveling to the hospital, sitting around with your loved one inside a sealed (if sunny) room. That’s going to get you tired. Now they spoke to one of the staff. A nurse led the family to Northwest 1, toward the secure ward door. She moved ahead of the family, already picking through her ring of keys for the right one. The one that would let them leave. Pepper watched all this carefully.

He felt so low just then, at a complete loss. Dogged out. Abandoned. Without the willpower to be prudent, to check himself. A feeling known, generally, as fuck it.

Pepper trailed behind the family who trailed the nurse. No alarms went off as Pepper moved closer. No one even noticed him.

The nurse had her back to the hallway and the proper key in hand. She pulled it forward, moving it toward the lock, and the red plastic cord squeaked faintly with the stretch.

It was then that Pepper realized he was really going to try to escape. He worried about the dude in his thirties, but not that much. The guy was doughy, not very tall; the kind of man who made a living but rarely worked. And, for all Pepper knew, heavily medicated. Pepper could get past him. His slow walk turned into a trot.