The Devil in Silver

The woman was generous enough to let him sit, to offer the reading material, but she didn’t make conversation. She wasn’t interested. She scanned a copy of The Washington Post. When she found some article that snagged her interest, she pulled out a pen and underlined the text. Finally, she folded the page with great precision, until there were deeply creased lines around the piece. Carefully she tore it free. Didn’t even need scissors. (She wasn’t going to be given any in here.)

“What’s that for?” Pepper asked. He spoke quietly.

“For the files,” she answered, as she turned the page, scanning new articles.

Ah, yes, the files. Pepper kept making the mistake of confusing the appearance of sanity with the real thing. Did she mean The X-Files? The Rockford Files? The Wackadoo Files? Who knew? But Pepper wouldn’t push. It didn’t matter if she was saving these articles to use as toilet paper in her room. She’d let him sit for a while, right? Being quiet in her company was kind of nice, wasn’t it? Just be happy with that.

Pepper looked out the windows of the lounge. He saw the disused basketball court. At the edge of the court stood the not-so-tall fence with barbed-wire curlicues at the top. He saw the empty parking lot of New Hyde Hospital. He decided, just now, to find peace in even this view. To sit quietly and let the sound of turning pages become like white noise. A lullaby. In a little while, he might want to move again.

But not yet.

24

ESMIN GREEN DIED at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, New York; she was only forty-nine. A patient on the hospital’s psych unit, she’d been brought to the psychiatric emergency room for “agitation.” After waiting to be seen for twenty-four hours, she collapsed on the dirty waiting-room floor. She lay there like salmon on a skillet, the heat rising below the pan and making the flesh jump. Her head slipped under one of the waiting-room chairs. Her legs splayed out straight. She lay there and two security guards looked into the room on two separate occasions. A doctor did, too. All three men watched her lying there on the floor. They didn’t even step into the waiting room. At last, a nurse arrived to check on Esmin Green, who’d been on her back for an hour. To see if the woman was conscious, the nurse kicked Esmin Green’s leg.

But the woman was already dead.

And the only thing that made the case against that doctor (fired), the nurse (suspended), and the two security guards (both suspended) was the hospital’s surveillance tape. Someone on staff had doctored the medical records so they read that at 6:20 a.m. Ms. Green was “sitting quietly in waiting room.” If not for the video footage, and its time stamp, Esmin would’ve been passed off as an unforeseeable accident, the kind of thing, as is said “that no one could’ve prevented.”

Who would’ve challenged the official version? One cosigned by four staff members. Would anyone give credence to the other two patients, clearly seen in the video, also stuck in that waiting room—the ones who saw Ms. Green’s death happen? How would they be treated as witnesses? How easy would it be to make wackos seem nuts? Were the good people of the jury supposed to take their word over a nurse’s? Over a doctor’s? It was just too horrible to believe that such a thing could happen. People don’t get treated that way. A nurse wouldn’t do that. A doctor takes an oath. Security guards … well, okay, maybe no one would be too surprised that some security guards fucked up.

The jury’s verdict (at best) might’ve been: We really feel terrible for these people. (And here’s the hard part, they really would.) We feel terrible, but we have doubts. We doubt the world works this way, because it has never worked this way against us.

Luckily for Esmin Green’s family, cameras are considered legally sane. Their testimony above reproach. Kings County Hospital reached a settlement with the Green family. Turns out Esmin had blood clots in her leg; her complaints of pain were legitimate. The clots caused her heart to stop, and because she was left unaided, she expired.

This happened in 2008.

25

THE NEXT NIGHT, Pepper returned to the television lounge just before midnight. He found Heatmiser under the television screen, Redhead Kingpin at her table, and Still Waters sitting at the next. Pepper grabbed the back of a free chair at the third table, but before he pulled it out he asked, “May I join you?”

She shrugged. Good enough! Pepper sat across from her.

The Chinese woman flipped through a copy of the New York Post, the pages slightly spotty because she’d had to fish it out of the trash.

“Anything interesting?” he asked.

“Not yet.” She looked up from the page. “You don’t have anything to read?”

“I left my book in my room.” Pepper pointed at her piles of newsprint and periodicals. “Maybe I could borrow one of yours?”