The Devil in Silver

When Josephine couldn’t hear them anymore, she reached into her pants pocket. They hadn’t thought to pat her down before they locked her in. Josephine pulled out her cell phone.

20

WHEN ALL FOUR patients returned to the oval room, they found themselves stopped up. Like froze up. Shocked. They found a nurses’ station without a staff member behind it. And they didn’t quite know how to react. They weren’t actually free, still stuck inside New Hyde, but even an unattended desk felt like liberation.

And not only for them.

Heatmiser, Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly, Japanese Freddie Mercury and Yuckmouth, Wally Gambino and the Haint, those three women Pepper had seen poring through magazines one night—the redhead and the mousy-looking woman and the Asian (this had to be Loochie’s “Chinese Lady,” right? The one who’d seen Sam’s corpse?)—all these patients surrounded the vacant nurses’ station now, and Pepper’s crew joined them. Wally Gambino leaned over the top of the station and peeked under the desk space as if another nurse or orderly might be hiding there. This was a trick. Had to be.

The patients walked around the station in a circle. All of them, like a game. Inspecting the empty station closely. If only the Trojans had been this methodical! But even after everyone made the circuit, all fourteen patients, they still couldn’t believe it. They kept a prudent distance from the nurses’ station, as if it were a bull that had only been stunned.

Then Coffee broke the spell.

He stepped inside the nurses’ station. A bit of a jolt, just to see that. Then he grabbed one of the wheeled chairs sitting under the desk, pulled it out, and rolled it to the lip of Northwest 5. The others watched him quietly. Then Coffee pushed the chair as hard as he could and it went spinning. It didn’t stop rolling until it reached the television lounge.

“Look at that,” Dorry said quietly.

The patients all turned to Coffee again. As if he should do another act of magic. There was a second chair under the table, but that little trick wouldn’t work twice.

You might expect them to smash the computer next. It was still on, its fan rumbling louder than a dryer in a Laundromat. But these mental patients only gawked at the shoddy equipment, almost like they pitied the staff for having to do their jobs with it. Yes, even this population was well aware of laptops and Smartphones.

Dorry lifted her right hand.

All thirteen other patients looked up at her. What next?

Even Pepper and Loochie and Coffee wondered.

Dorry opened her hand and let the nurse’s keys dangle. They clinked and all the patients looked over their shoulders, around the various bends, so used to having staff members appear seconds after that sound. Heatmiser’s mouth even dripped slightly with saliva. But no one else appeared.

“Does anyone know which of these keys opens the desk drawers?” Dorry asked.

Pepper felt a hot flash of concern. What did that have to do with anything? He’d been choking back his anxieties, but they threatened to spill out now. Coffee with his Internet brain; Loochie whose strength and ferocity only seemed to have increased between the time she’d tangled with him and with Scotch Tape; and now Dorry wanted to do some drawer hopping. It wasn’t just fear that he felt, but guilt. He’d urged Coffee to join him in turning down the meds. And then helped enlist Dorry and Loochie. He’d thought he was doing them a solid, freeing them from the shackles of their sedative servitude, but already it seemed likely he’d been wrong.

Dorry looked at Pepper and whispered, “Have a little faith in me.”

None of the patients knew which key opened which drawers, so they waited as Dorry tried one, then the next. Finally, she found the right key for the right drawer and Dorry peeked inside. She smiled at all the patients who hadn’t joined their Velvet Revolution. (Velvetish, counting Loochie’s punch.) Then Dorry made a big show of stepping back, sweeping her hands over the open drawer. The patients crowded closer. They peeked around and over one another. One voice cried out.

“Cigarettes!”

“This is the staff’s stash.” Dorry smiled. “Take as many as you like.”

Half a dozen hands went into the drawer right away. The staff didn’t stockpile packs, but cartons. (This job was stressful.) There was enough in the drawer for each patient to walk away with a pack of his or her own. Even the ones who weren’t smokers figured, Why not?—and took some for themselves. It was the surprise of the moment, the fact that the stuff belonged to the staff. The idea made all of them a bit giddy. Even if it made them sick, they were going to puff.

Dorry opened her hand again and the keys jangled as they swung. She reached into the drawer and plucked out one cigarette for herself. She didn’t smoke. It was a trophy. A memento. She tucked it into her bra.