Over the Edge (12 page)

'How are they different from the ones on the inpatient ward?'

'Officially they're supposed to be less disturbed, but it's really arbitrary.'

The deputy spoke up. He was short and stocky with a tobacco-coloured military moustache and a seamed face.

'If they're really motivated, we punt 'em over to inpatient, right, Patrick?'

Montez responded to his laughter with a faint smile.

'What he means,' the social worker explained, 'is they have to do something outrageous - bite off a finger, eat a pound of their own excrement - to get off block.'

As if on cue, one of the prisoners on the upper tier stripped off his pyjamas and began masturbating.

'No dice, Rufus,' muttered the guard, 'we are not impressed.' He turned to Montez and chatted for a few minutes about movies. The naked prisoner reached orgasm

and ejaculated through the bars. Nobody paid attention, and he slumped to the floor, panting.

'Anyway,' said Montez, moving toward the door, 'check it out, Dave, it's not Truffaut, but it's a good piece of cinema.'

'Will do, Patrick. Where you headed?'

'Taking the doctor over to High Power.'

The deputy looked at me with renewed interest.

'Gonna try to dim cap one of those clowns?' he asked.

'I don't know yet.'

'Cadmus,' said Montez.

The deputy snorted.

'Fat chance,' he said, and pushed a button that released a pnuematic lock.

'This,' said Montez, 'is the top of the line as far as bad guys go-'

We were standing in front of an unmarked locked door monitored by two closed-circuit TV cameras. To the left was the attorney interview room. Lawyers and clients sat opposite one another at a series of partitioned tables. To their rear were several private glass-walled rooms.

'High Power is reserved for highly publicised cases, high-risk-for-escape types, and real monsters. Shoot the president, blow up a bank with the people in it, or dismember a dozen babies, and you'll end up here. There are a hundred and fifty cells, and there's a waiting list. Surveillance is constant, and the prisoner-guard ratio is high. Security is airtight; we're talking meals slid under the doors, steel doors and entry codes mat change randomly. You can't go in, but I'll have him brought out.'

He pressed a buzzer, and the TV cameras rotated with a low whine. Several minutes later a giant red-haired deputy opened the door and squinted at us suspiciously. Montez talked to him in a near whisper. The redhead listened and disappeared behind the door without comment.

'We'll wait in there,' said the social worker, pointing to the interview room. He guided me past hushed, furtive conferences, which stopped as we walked by, resumed

when we'd passed. The lawyers looked as shifty-eyed as their clients. One of them, a washed-out-looking man in a polyester suit, sat stoically as the prisoner across from him, a small, balding mulatto with thick glasses, called him a motherfucker and railed on about habeas corpus.

'Court-appointed,' said Montez. 'A joyful assignment.'

Several deputies carrying walkie-talkies patrolled the room. Montez waved one over. He was dark, rosy-cheeked, soft-looking, and prematurely bald. The social worker explained the situation to him, and he stared at me, nodded, and unlocked one of the glass rooms before stepping back out of earshot.

'Any questions?' asked Montez.

'Just one, but it's a bit personal.'

'No sweat.'

'How do you cope with working here full-time?'

'There's nothing to cope with,' he said evenly. 'I love my work. The paper work gets to be a bit much, but it'd be that way anywhere else and a damned sight more boring. In this place no two days are ever the same. I'm a movie freak, and I get to live pure Fellini. That answer it?'

'Eloquently. Thanks for the education.'

'Anytime,'

We shook hands.

'Wait here; it'll take awhile,' he said, glancing at the balding deputy. 'Deputy Sonnenschein will take care of you from this point.'

I stood outside the glass room for several minutes as Sonnenschein strolled the interview area. Finally he approached in an awkward, rolling gait, as if his body were segmented and only loosely connected at the waist. His thumbs were hooked in his belt loops, and his holster flapped against his flank. Under the thinning hair was a curiously childlike moon face, and up close I saw that he was very young.

'Your patient should be here any minute,' he said. 'It takes time to get through High Power.' He threw a backward glance at the glass room. 'I've gotta search you, so let's go inside.'

He held the door open and entered after me. Inside were a blue metal table and two matching chairs, bolted to the floor. He asked me to remove my jacket, checked the pockets, ran his hands lightly over my body, returned the garment, inspected my briefcase, and had me sign a logbook. I noticed that Souza had visited at eight that morning. Mainwaring an hour earlier.

'You can sit down now,' he said.

I did, and he took the other chair.

'You're here to try to dim cap him, right?' he asked.

'I'm going to talk to him and see.'

'Good luck,' he said.

I looked at him sharply, searched for sarcasm but found none.

'What I meant was - ' His walkie-talkie spit and cut him off. He listened to it, then put it to his lips, rattled off a few numbers, and said everything was ready. Rising, he walked to the door, put his hands on his hips, and stood watch.

'You started to say something,' I reminded him.

He shook his head.

'See for yourself. They're bringing him in now.'

AT FIRST I couldn't see him. He was submerged in a phalanx of deputies, all of them huge. The red-haired giant who'd stuck his head out the door to the High Power unit led the way, checking me out and scanning the room. When he gave the okay, the rest of them entered, moving in concert like some massive tan arachnid that parted slowly to reveal the shackled boy in its grasp.

I wouldn't have recognised him had he passed me on the street. He'd grown to six feet but didn't weigh more than 130 pounds. The yellow pyjamas hung loosely on his spindly frame. Puberty had stretched his face from sphere to oval. The features were regular but ascetic, the bones peaking sharply under a thin tent of flesh. His black hair was still long; it hung down over his forehead and fell in greasy clumps upon bony shoulders. His skin was the colour of parchment, shadowed with unearthly overtones of grey-green. Black stubble lightly dotted his chin and upper lip. A large, florid pimple blossomed from one hollow cheek. Both eyes were closed. He gave off a sour smell.

The deputies moved with silent precision. Meaty hands remained clasped around sticklike arms. One pair propelled him to the table. Another sat him down. Wrist and ankle cuffs were secured to the stationary chair. It left him in an awkward position, but he allowed himself to be manipulated with the limp passivity of a marionette.

When they were through, the redhead came over and introduced himself as Sergeant Koocher.

'How long will this take, Doctor?' he asked.

'It's hard to tell before I talk to him.'

'We'd prefer that you keep it to one hour maximum, and we'll be back to pick him up in sixty minutes. If you need more time, let Deputy Sonnenschein know beforehand. He'll be right outside.'

Sonnenschein frowned and nodded assent.

'Any questions?' asked Koocher.

'No.'

He signalled to the others, and they left. Sonnenschein was the last to exit. He remained on the other side of the glass, arms folded across his chest, positioned at an angle that allowed him a clear view of both the glass room and the interview area. I turned from him to the boy on the other side of the table.

'Hello, Jamey. It's Dr. Delaware.'

I searched the pallid face for signs of response, found none.

'I'm here to help you,' I said. 'Is there anything you need?'

When he didn't answer I let the silence simmer. Nothing. I started to talk, softly, soothingly - about how frightened he must be, how glad I was that he'd reached out to me, how much I wanted to help.

After twenty minutes he opened his eyes. For an instant 1 was hopeful that I'd broken through. Then 1 looked at him closely, and hope scurried back into its burrow.

His eyes were filmed over and unfocused, the whites a soiled-linen grey shot through with red. He was looking at me without seeing.

A trickle of drool seeped from the corner of his mouth

and flowed down his chin. I took out a handkerchief and wiped it away, held his chin, and tried to snag eye contact. It was futile; his stare remained vacant and lifeless.

Lowering my hand, I placed it on his shoulder. The movement caught the corner of Sonnenschein's eye. He wheeled around and stared sharply through the glass. I gave him an everything's okay look, and after a few seconds he relaxed his stance but didn't avert his gaze.

Jamey remained motionless. His pyjamas were sweat-soaked. Through the moist fabric he felt stiff and cold; I might have been touching a corpse. Then abruptly he sucked in his cheeks and pursed his lips, blowing out rancid air. His head lolled, and he shuddered. The tremor coursed its way from his core to my fingertips, faded, and repeated itself. So abrupt was the surge of energy that I had to restrain myself from pulling away. But I'd made that mistake once before and wouldn't let it happen again.

Instead, I intensified the pressure of my fingers. A sobbing sound rose from deep within his abdomen; his shoulders heaved, then slumped. He closed his eyes again, and his head swung pendulously before dropping to the table. He lay there, cheek to the metal, mouth gaping, breathing nasally and heavily. Nothing I said or did roused him.

He slept stuporously. I watched him and felt my spirits sink with each heave of his scrawny chest. I'd been prepared for psychosis, but for nothing this regressed. The standard battery of mental status questions - orientation to time and place, inquiries about distorted thought processes and scrambled perceptions - was irrelevant. On the phone he'd responded, if only minimally. He'd told Milo he'd called me; that meant some degree of consciousness. Now he was a zombie. I wondered if it was a transitory phase -the severe depression that sometimes follows a schizophrenic outburst - or something more insidious: the beginning of the end.

Schizophrenia is a baffling collection of disorders. Psychiatry's come a long way since the days when psychotics were burned as witches, but the roots of madness

remain a locked box. Psychiatrists control schizophrenic symptoms with drugs without really understanding why they work. It's palliative treatment that has little to do with cure. A third of all patients recover by themselves. Another third responds favourably to medication and supportive psychotherapy. And there exists a group of unfortunates who are resistant to any form of treatment; no matter what is attempted, they slide inexorably toward total mental deterioration.

I looked at the limp body splayed across the table and wondered which group would claim Jamey.

There was a third possibility, but it was a remote one. His symptoms - the tremors, the drooling, the sucking and blowing - bore the earmarks of tardive dyskinesia, nerve damage brought on by heavy doses of anti-psychotic medication. The disorder usually appears in older patients treated over a period of several years, but in rare cases acute dyskinesia has been noted after only minimal drug ingestion. Souza had told me that Mainwaring was continuing to medicate Jamey in the jail, and I made a note to learn more about the drugs he was getting and the dosage levels.

He started to snore loudly. As he sank deeper into sleep, his body seemed to retreat from my touch, going limp, almost liquid, as if his bones had melted. His breathing slowed. I kept my hand on his shoulder and talked to him, hoping some small bit of comfort would find its way through the stupor.

We stayed that way for the rest of the hour. I let go only when the cadre of deputies arrived and carried him back to his cell.

Sergeant Koocher told Sonnenschein to escort me out of the jail.

'I see what you meant by good luck,' I said as we walked. 'Getting him to respond.'

'Yup.'

'How often is he like that?'

'Most
 
of
 
the
  
time.
  
Sometimes
 
he
 
starts
 
crying
 
or

screaming. Usually he just sits and stares until he falls asleep.'

'Has it been that way since he got here?'

'He was pretty hyped up when they brought him in a couple of days ago. Like a duster. We had to keep him in restraints. But it didn't take long before he started to fade away.'

'Does he talk to anyone?'

'Not that I've seen.'

' How about his attorney?'

'Souza? Nah. He does the whole fatherly thing - puts his arm around him, feeds him juice and cookies. Cadmus shines him on. Totally out of it.'

We turned a corner and nearly collided with a group of inmates. At the sight of Sonnenschein's uniform they veered away sharply.

'I guess it's good for his case,' he said.

'What is?'

'His being so - decompensated.'

He noted my surprise at his use of the technical term and grinned.

'Psych major,' he explained. 'Got one more year for a B.A. Working here got me interested in it.'

'You're saying he's faking psychosis in order to be judged incompetent.'

He shrugged.

'You're the doctor.'

'What about your opinion? Off the record.'

He didn't answer right away.

'Off the record I don't know. With some clowns it's obvious what they're up to. The minute they get here they start putting on the Looney Tunes act. Only they usually overdo it because they're uneducated; everything they know about psychosis comes from TV and splatter flicks. Know what I mean?'

'Sure. Draft dodger mania.'

'You got it. Cadmus doesn't pull that kind of crap, but I heard he used to be some kind of genius, so maybe he's just playing the game a little smarter.'