Esperanza (24 page)

Jesus God. How’s it going there in the shock therapy room? Who’re you torturing today? Got any more happy pills for me?

“Very good, Professor. Be happy.” Nurse Ratched gave a quick little wink, laughed, and wheeled her cart of happy pills on to the next patient.

Fuck you.
As soon as her back was to him, he brought his hand to his mouth, spat out the pills, and stuffed them down in the crack between the cushion and the back of the chair. He resumed his paragon of vacancy.
Professor Ritter, dullard. Lights off. No one home.
After a few minutes, he went over to the window. Winter had fled.
How long? How long have I been here?
He nearly wept with frustration, with sorrow for the time he had lost.

The naked trees on the grounds just below showed early signs of spring, sprigs of green crawling out across the barren branches like a promise. The people out there wore sweaters or just shirts. Gone were the heavy jackets and coats, boots, scarves, knit caps. He choked back a sob.

Ian shuffled back to his room and stopped when he saw the number on the door: 13. Something about that number. What? Two images floated into his head—of a bus with a 13 on it and of another door bearing the same number. A door where? A second memory surfaced, of an elderly black man walking through a solid door, like some special effect in a horror
movie. This image troubled him deeply. He sensed it might be connected to why he was here.

Ian went into the room to look for a pen, paper. Twin beds, identical wooden dressers, identical closets. He had a vague recollection of his roommate, a burned-out musician whose name escaped him. Ian’s bed was under the window, clothes piled neatly on top it. He couldn’t find a pen and the only available paper came from pages in the Bible in the nightstand drawer. He tore out one of them, ripped off a strip, went into the bathroom. He crouched to hide the strip behind the sink but found seventeen other strips there already.
Seventeen.
Had it been that long since he’d begun burying his meds? Seventeen pill cycles? Seventeen days? Weeks? Months?
What
?

Luke, where are you?
Had his son been here at all? Had Casey? Now a clear memory surfaced, from when he had been in a regular hospital. He had freaked when he had seen a
brujo,
orderlies had wrestled him to the floor. He didn’t have any recollection of what had happened immediately after that, of how he had ended up in Nurse Ratched’s ward. Who had committed him? Louise? Luke? Some invisible authority? Had they fucked with his brain, given him electroshock treatments? He didn’t know. His immediate past in this place was a tundra of nothingness.

He rubbed his hands over his face and returned to the large room, shuffling like the other patients did, eyes fixed on his moccasins. He sat in one of the chairs in front of the TV, his mind racing. What floor was he on? Where was this place located? In Minneapolis? Some other city?
Is it possible to escape?

On the TV screen, a black dog barked. He suddenly remembered a black Lab—Nomad—who befriended him and . . . who?
Tess.
Memories flickered through him, but were they actual memories or fantasies his unconscious had weaved while he was in a coma? More importantly, how much time had he lost in this place?

He endured lunch, the crazies around him shoveling food into their mouths with their fingers or simply staring at their paper plates. Others turned their plastic spoons, the only utensil they were allowed, over and over again in their hands, studying them like alien artifacts. He finished eating, stood, picked up his paper plate and carried it over to the trash can. Nurse Ratched and her minions watched vigilantly, making sure the rules were followed. If a patient didn’t pick up his dirty dishes, he was called back to the table to do so. If a patient spoke too loudly, if he resisted the rules or
rebelled against them, he was reprimanded or given stronger drugs, isolation, more electroshock treatments.

Ian wandered back to the rec area and sat down again, facing the door. Where did it lead? Into a hall? A stairwell? He felt a powerful desire to step outside, to breathe the tenuous spring air, to stand alone beneath a sweeping blue sky, to see his shadow against concrete, grass, a field of flowers. If he made a break for it, how long would it take for Nurse Ratched or one of the orderlies to tackle him?
Seconds.

He needed to get out of here, to Ecuador. He needed to know if what he remembered had actually happened, if any of it was real. At the very least, he should get back to work. What had happened to his column? Who was writing it in his absence? Who was teaching his classes? Was he officially on leave? Had he been fired from both jobs?

The door to the rec room opened and his son entered.
Luke.
Ian forced himself to remain seated, to stare vacantly. Luke was with a tall, thin man in a suit who stuck close to him, like a bodyguard. Ian vaguely recalled seeing this man before, but couldn’t remember who he was. Doctor? Lawyer? Indian chief? They strode toward him and Ian sensed Nurse Ratched watching. If he didn’t play this right, he might end up in this hellhole for another six weeks or six months or six years.

Luke strode over to him with the tall man. “Dad, good to see you.” He spoke too loudly, as though he believed that Ian was hard of hearing. When Ian didn’t react, didn’t speak or blink, just kept staring vapidly ahead, Luke turned to his companion. “I’d like to take him outside for a walk, Dr. Parcell.”

“I recommend doing it in a wheelchair initially, Luke.”

“A wheelchair’s fine. Could you get one for me?”

Parcell’s expression said he didn’t want to, that he usually left such tasks to the underlings, but he moved quickly away from them, long simian arms swinging at his sides.

“Dad, we’re going for a walk.” Luke kept speaking loudly. “Would you like that? The temperature outside is just perfect, in the high fifties.” Then he leaned forward, whispering, “Our attorney had to file papers so that I could even get in here to see you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Get me the fuck outta here, Luke. Please. Fast.”

Luke drew back, eyes wide, apparently shocked to discover that his father wasn’t a drooling idiot. “Let’s get your sweater buttoned up . . .”

“Excuse me, sir.”

Nurse Ratched had sneaked up behind Luke like some sort of secret agent, hands folded demurely in front of her, her implacable demeanor enough to intimidate heads of state.
Despot,
Ian thought. But Luke drew himself to his full height, towering over her by more than half a foot, and said, “And you are . . . ?”

“The head nurse. Frieda Bancroft.”

“I’m his son. Luke Ritter. You any relation to Anne?”

“To who?”

Ian nearly burst out laughing.

“Anne Bancroft, the actress.”

“Uh, no, Mr. Ritter, I’m not. And our visiting hours aren’t until—”

“I’m with Dr. Parcell. I’m taking my father for a walk. With the permission of Dr. Parcell and on the advice of my attorney.”

“I, uh, see. Well, I’m obligated to inform you that your father is heavily medicated, Mr. Ritter. I don’t recommend taking him out of the building.”

“With all due respect, ma’am, I really don’t give a shit what you recommend.”

Eyes widening, she fussed with stray hairs that had escaped the bun at the back of her head. “I’m afraid I’ll have to speak to Dr. Parcell—”

“Good afternoon, Miss Bancroft,” Parcell said, pushing a wheelchair over to them.

“Sir, may I speak to you privately for a moment?” she asked.

He nodded and parked the wheelchair in front of Luke. “Here you go. You may have to help him into it, Mr. Ritter.”

You prick, I’m perfectly capable of getting into this goddamn chair by myself. I can tap-dance around you.
But Ian stayed quiet and pretended he needed help standing, acting as though he were ninety-five years old and crippled from the inside out.

Parcell and Bancroft moved away and spoke in tense, urgent whispers, glancing frequently at Luke and Ian. Luke turned the wheelchair toward the door, so their backs were to the other two. “This is Mom’s doing. She had you committed. Our attorney claims the divorce nullified her power of attorney and is threatening to sue the facility. You’ve got about fifteen grand left in your bank account and it’s going to get you out of here and hidden. You understand?”

“I am—”

“My dad,” Luke said quickly. “And I am—”

“My son,” Ian whispered, and swallowed a sob of relief.

Luke pressed his hand against Ian’s shoulder. “I’m here, Dad.”

“I’ve been spitting out my meds, burying them.”

“Good. Fuck them. Casey is driving the getaway car.”

Ian talked fast. “Luke, when I died, I went to Esperanza and fell in love with a woman who is forty years in our future. I mean, I think that’s what happened. I need to go to Ecuador, find out if any of it is true. If I told you this already, I apologize. I can’t seem to remember a whole hell of a lot. But—”

“I believe you.” Luke leaned forward, as if to adjust the collar of Ian’s sweater, and kept whispering. “I believe that you experienced something, Dad. There’s a doc doing research on what happens to people when they clinically die. I spoke to him, Raymond Moody. He hopes to publish his findings on these . . . these near-death experiences.”

Near-death experiences:
it was the same phrase that Tess had used.

“He’s interested in your case, Dad. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

Ian didn’t need to
get to the bottom
of anything. He only had to prove to himself whether it was real or he was deranged. At the moment, he was just grateful that Luke had shown up and he wasn’t still in his pajamas like most of the patients. He looked presentable enough to go outside—jeans, a pullover sweater, a pair of comfortable moccasins.

Parcell fell into step alongside Luke, accompanying them into the hall, to the elevators. “If you could stay on the grounds, Mr. Ritter, I would appreciate it. Nurse Bancroft apparently has some concerns about your father that—”

“She’s a nurse. You’re the doctor. And our attorney says—”

“Yes, well, I’m just looking at the bigger picture, Mr. Ritter. Your father has been here for seventeen days, on antipsychotic drugs, and he—”

“Needs to get some fresh air,” Luke said.

Luke punched the elevator button, Parcell waited with them. “We encourage outings, visits from family members, anything that makes the patient more comfortable and secure.”

Parcell sounded as though he were reciting from the facility’s brochure, Ian thought, and wished he could slap duct tape across the man’s mouth. When the elevator doors opened, Luke said, “I can take it from here, Doctor. Thank you so much for your time.”

“Uh, right. Very good. If you could have him back in a couple of hours, for tea. We have afternoon tea and snacks. He’s accustomed to that routine now.”

“Not a problem,” Luke said, and pushed the wheelchair into the elevator.

As the doors began to shut, Ian noticed that Parcell nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other, scratched his chin, and seemed flummoxed about all of it. But he kept smiling. Then the doors clattered shut, the elevator lurched downward. “Where’s Casey parked, Luke?”

“At the far end of the lot, where they can’t see the van. She’ll take us to my car.”

“What’s the date?”

“March twenty-seventh.”

He had died in January. More than two months, gone. “Jesus. I’ve lost so much time.”

“Can you walk?”

“Walk, talk, fart, joke, run fast.” Ian felt a hard, painful throbbing at his temple, heard the muscles in his legs screaming. They were now outside, beneath the dome of a magnificent blue sky, and he sucked in the spring air. “What hospital is this?”

“The Minneapolis Mental Health Care Center. Daddy Warbucks is on the board here and also on the hospital board, so Mom was able to convince the hospital shrink that you should be placed under observation, then she pulled strings here to get you in. What do you remember?”

“Raving about
brujos,
two big guys slamming me to the floor, jabbing something into my neck, then there was a point where I came to and found myself in a straitjacket and nearly lost my mind. I think that was when it was easy for your mother to convince the hospital I should be put under observation.”

“Casey called me and told me what had happened. By the time I got to the hospital, they’d committed you. A comatose nurse was discovered on the floor next to your bed, with a syringe sticking out of her neck that held traces of phenobarbital. They know you didn’t do it because you were in a straitjacket. She recovered and the hospital fired her and filed charges against her for theft of the drug.”

Alarm tore through Ian. Had the
bruja
he’d seen in his room followed him back to kill him? Were his memories real? If so, then the
bruja
couldn’t kill him in her
bruja
form, and she’d taken the nurse, who resisted at the end and injected herself. “I need to speak to that nurse.”

“Casey already did, Dad. The story’s pretty weird. She claims she was possessed by a demon who wanted her to ease your suffering. That’s an exact quote. She claims she fought back and injected herself.”

So maybe he wasn’t nuts, after all. And if he wasn’t, his conclusions were real. “These
brujo
fucks intend to kill me. I need to get out of the country, Luke.”