The Devil in Silver

But the more Pepper told them the less he seemed to matter. He might’ve been relating the inventory of the truck from yesterday’s job. Dr. Anand and his staff weren’t listening, only gathering the necessary information to refine his classification. After forty-five minutes he was a case history; a new admit awaiting diagnosis; a subject.

After an hour Pepper was, officially at least, a mental patient.

2

WITH PEPPER’S INTAKE meeting finished, Dr. Anand walked him out of the conference room and back into the hall. Pepper expected some ceremonious next step, but the doctor just pressed him back against the hallway wall, as if he was about to use a pencil to mark Pepper’s height.

“Stay here,” Dr. Anand said, already turning away. “A nurse will be by quickly. She’ll take you to your room.”

And just like that, the doctor returned to the conference room and shut the door. Pepper felt like a fridge left out on the sidewalk.

The walls in this hallway were eggshell white like those in the conference room. The floors were cheap beige linoleum tiles. On the wall, right beside him, at shoulder level, hung a framed landscape painting. There was another across the hall. An empty beach by his shoulder; a path through empty woods across the way. Soothing images, by reputation. In truth, Pepper felt more comfortable around apartment buildings and even on subway platforms—maybe not beautiful, but his natural habitat. Not just his, but likely that of nearly every damn person associated with this hospital, from the staff to the patients to the cops who’d brought him in. So why decorate the walls with someone else’s dream of peace? Maybe they were just feeding that most natural human appetite, the hunger for somewhere else. A yearning Pepper could relate to just then.

No nurse appeared, and for fifteen minutes Pepper just repeated the same words to himself: seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours. You can stand anything for seventy-two hours.

The loud voices playing from a TV somewhere down the hall, deeper inside the unit, had changed to loud explosions. Maybe someone had switched the channel, or the show had come to a moment when the world starts blowing up. Pepper knew it was just a television show, but the sounds seemed to grow as they traveled from wherever the TV sat to where Pepper still stood in the long, empty hall of closed doors. The howl of human beings, the victims of those crashing sounds, played louder and louder. Like the people themselves were about to come flooding into view. Maybe not even people, but people’s parts. A wave of blood. Dismembered limbs breaking the surface of that wave like sharks’ fins.

Pepper knew this couldn’t happen, but his chest felt tight.

He looked to his right and focused on that secure ward door. What if Dr. Anand hadn’t locked it behind the cops? What if all Pepper had to do was give a little push?

Seventy-two hours. Seventy-two hours.

He couldn’t stand this for that long. He couldn’t even make it twenty minutes before he tried to escape. Pepper lurched toward the big door.

He grabbed the handle and pushed lightly. But of course the door didn’t open. He pushed harder. He tried to turn the knob. It didn’t shimmy. He let go of the handle now and pressed both his meaty hands against the door and leaned into it. He set his broad, laceless boots down flatly, repositioned his large hands, and now he powered against that door, straining like a bull. But the damn door stayed secure.

Finally he pressed his face to the shatterproof window. There were little lines embedded in the plastic, like chicken wire. He’d been on the other side less than two hours ago. Two hours before that, he’d been on the other side of Queens! He’d been trying to help Mari by having words with her ex-husband, a man who wouldn’t leave Mari be. And yet here Pepper was, locked away. He pressed his face to the window, fucking confused. There was nobody on the other side. He closed his eyes.

“Better not let them see you doing that.”

Pepper opened his eyes, expecting—not hoping, but expecting—to find himself on the E train, having fallen asleep and only now waking to learn he’d dreamed up New Hyde Hospital. Instead he found himself still staring through the plastic window.

“If you understand English, then step away from the door,” the voice continued.

But Pepper didn’t move fast enough. Before he could stand up, stand back, and turn around, he felt fingers grip his wrist.