The Devil in Silver

Coffee and Pepper couldn’t respond. They only breathed quietly, focused on the feeling of air in their tracheas. Each one imagining the feeling of a bedsheet clogging the pathway.

Loochie said, “The Chinese lady said one of the nurses pulled the sheet out of Sam’s throat and the end of it was bright yellow. It was yellow because it was down in Sam’s stomach.”

“Who kills themselves like that?” Pepper said.

Coffee huffed. “Nobody does.”

Then the trio reached the nurses’ station. The nurse read off Loochie’s name—Lucretia Gardner—it was the first time Pepper had ever heard it. He felt compelled to share his real name with her, right then, to be fair. But the nurse handed over Loochie’s meds and moved on to Pepper quickly, and that feeling passed. The orderly placed Pepper’s little white cup on the desktop like a bartender setting down a shot. Before the nurse could read his name out, Pepper placed his hands behind his back and said, “I refuse.”

The orderly laughed. “You refuse? You sound real dumb right now.”

Then Pepper looked directly at the orderly and said, “I’m not taking that shit.” He gestured at the white cup with his chin. “Smart enough?”

These two took the news with a lot less shock than the staff from the night before. The nurse just wrote something on the clipboard and began to say Coffee’s name.

But before she could finish, Coffee said, “I refuse.”

When they reached the lounge, most of the tables were full. Pepper hadn’t seen a turnout like this, outside of visitors’ hours, in all his weeks on Northwest. There were some patients who woke up only long enough to snack on their morning pills, then slept through the breakfast hours; others who snuck their food back to their rooms and ate alone, or with their roommates. (Sam and Sammy had been like that.) And others who were usually up all night and only went to bed when dawn light crept through the grand windows of the television lounge.

But this morning, all the patients were up and out of their rooms. Maybe it was a reaction to having been locked in overnight. Maybe none of them wanted to feel isolated, all by themselves, alone in their rooms. Whatever the reason, the lounge stayed packed.

“That was real stupid,” Loochie said as they moved toward the orderly handing out breakfast trays.

Before they reached him, his cell phone rang.

Pepper said, “They can’t make you take those pills. If you say no, they have to respect that.”

Loochie snorted. “Think you have to tell me? I’ve been on psych units since I was thirteen. I know the laws.”

Pepper stopped short and reached out for Loochie’s arm. “You’ve been at Northwest for six years?”

Loochie laughed with genuine glee. “Not here. They have juvenile psychiatric units, and adult ones. I was in the juvenile ones, on and off, since I was—”

Pepper cut her off. “Thirteen.”

He looked at Coffee, who seemed just as stunned. Both men were struck by the idea of being in a place like this—whether juvenile or adult—since that age. How could anyone stand it? Right then, Loochie looked like some battle-hardened centurion to both men.

But Loochie didn’t linger in their surprise. She knew what usually came soon after. Pity. And she sure wasn’t interested in something like that. Especially not from Pepper and Coffee; she would’ve called them Abbott and Costello, but she was decades too young for a reference like that.

“You accept the pills so they don’t punish you,” Loochie said. “Simple.”

They reached the orderly and he gave Loochie her breakfast. The other two he waved off and they knew why.

Pepper said, “But then you end up taking the medicine and getting all …” Pepper rolled his eyes back in his head and let his mouth go slack.

Loochie slipped her tongue into the pouch of her cheek and dug out all three of her meds, still intact. She had her back to the orderly so he wouldn’t see this. Then she slipped the pills back into the side of her mouth with an expert’s ease.

She said, “You think I could’ve brought you down so hard if I took all the pills they give me? I skip at least one round a day.”

Pepper muttered, “I didn’t go down that bad.”

Loochie ignored him, still focused on the trick of tucking away her pills. “Didn’t you ever hide your vegetables as a kid?”

Pepper shook his head, almost proudly. “My parents never made me eat them.”

“The all-American diet,” Coffee said disdainfully.

Only one table had three seats free. It was the table closest to the garbage bin. Also, Dorry sat in the fourth chair. She caught Pepper’s eye, but this time she didn’t have to wave him over. Pepper came to her right away. Coffee and Loochie in tow.

When they sat, Dorry handed out portions from her tray. The apple for Coffee, the dry toast for Pepper. She liked giving it out when she wasn’t being manipulated. Loochie looked down at her own tray and, not to be outdone, gave her dry toast to Pepper. Coffee got her small box of Froot Loops. The four of them broke bread.