The Devil in Silver

She smiled at Pepper, and Pepper did feel relieved by the seeming sanity of this step. Distract the others. Dorry spoke to the patients still milling about. She said, “Now, how about a long smoke break outside?”

All this negotiation took only ten minutes.

Back in conference room 2, Josephine Washburn couldn’t get her phone call through. She hadn’t dialed the police directly because that wasn’t hospital protocol. Instead, she was to first call the head of security on the grounds of New Hyde Hospital. That’s the system that had been put in place, and no one making twelve dollars per hour was encouraged to improvise. The head of security’s phone rang and rang and rang until finally the guy’s voice mail picked up. But even then, Josephine recognized there was a problem. Namely, the voice on the hospital’s security-greeting message was someone she didn’t recognize. It was actually a guy who’d been fired almost a year before. The former head of hospital security. Eugene Klutch. A man who’d been caught stealing food from the hospital kitchens. Not a turkey sandwich, but one hundred frozen turkeys. He’d been behind a series of pantry thefts that had been going on for three years at New Hyde Hospital. At their most brazen, the Klutch crew had stolen two ovens (industrial ovens) from one of the kitchens over in the main building on the campus. Klutch hadn’t gone to jail, just been forced to retire. And now, nearly a year later, that man’s voice still hadn’t been changed on the security center’s answering machine. Josephine knew another man had been hired because he was the one who’d given the new employees the lecture about the hospital-security protocols. He’d growled at the new hires, but hadn’t been savvy enough to record a new message? How much faith could Josephine have in hospital security? But she left a message because she was smart enough to know there needed to be evidence that she’d followed protocol.

Next, she called the head of hospital administration. Also as per guidelines. The one rule at New Hyde, above all others, was to avoid embarrassment. (Embarrass, meaning “leave vulnerable to lawsuits.”)

While it was nearly ten p.m., the head of hospital administration could be reached. Or, if not him, then his answering service. (Yes, they do still exist.) So Josephine called those offices (all numbers she’d programmed into her phone at Orientation) and left a message with the woman who answered the line. Josephine explained what had happened, that she was a nurse over in Northwest, that the patients had overpowered her and the orderly (who still hadn’t woken up), and now those patients were roaming the ward freely. “Doing what?” the woman on the line asked, though she sounded magnificently disinterested. Setting fires? Taking drugs? Who knew? The fact that Josephine was locked in a room made it impossible to say. At the end of all this, the woman only sighed, and said, “Please hold the line while I connect you directly.”

Josephine said, “What was the point of asking me those questions if you’re just—”

Then instead of connecting the call the lady hung up on her.

Quite a system.

At that moment, Josephine should’ve called the cops. She’d done all she could to protect New Hyde Hospital. She’d tried to follow protocol, but the protocol was ass.

But for a few seconds she could only stare at the cell phone. Going through all this nonsense to reach someone in charge, this was the first time she’d ever been treated like, well, a patient. With rules that defied all common logic; people employed to help you who are unable, really, to even hear you; the sense that the system’s goal is only to keep trouble contained. It’s not like Josephine had been so all-fired powerful when she was a nurse, but supervising the patients had at least allowed the illusion of some difference between her and them. But now it felt damn hard to pretend. In many ways, at this moment of crisis, she was just as powerless as they were. Josephine didn’t make this connection consciously, but it tickled at her in a way that made her mind freeze. She looked at the phone and knew what she should do, but she couldn’t make her hand act the way her mind wanted. (And even this was quite like the average patient’s day.) Josephine wondered how anyone was supposed to live under such conditions and remain sane.

This is what was happening to Josephine while Dorry handed out cigarettes, walked to the television lounge, and unlocked the door to the basketball court. Pepper propped the door open with a heavy chair, which allowed a fresh breeze to blow into the unit. First time in a long while for that. You could almost see the walls inhaling.

Josephine stared at the keypad of her cell phone and willed herself to dial 911. Dorry and Loochie and Coffee and Pepper left the television lounge, marching down Northwest 5. The police hadn’t been called yet. Whatever they were going to do could still get done.

They still had time.