Chapter

56

To most of the doctors, Saturday and Sunday came and went with the speed of solitary confinement. The darkness that some felt themselves thrust into was bearable, but just. Others found their senses returning to the hard-crusted armor they had spent their adult life developing.

To the patients of Milton, this weekend passed without incident as it had for months, years, and for some, their lifetime.

For the occupants of cells 4 and 7 in Ward C, time was as it had been for the thirty- seven days now that they had been under observation and analization.

On Monday morning, the man who was lying on his bed in cell 7, the man who only a short time ago had been so close to redeeming himself in the eyes of his peers, stared at the ceiling and thought. He was thinking with the ceiling now. He wasn’t of the mind these days to indulge in roach watching, even though, he had maintained in his conversations with Dr. Pressman that the key to Charlie/Charles’s identity - “and don’t you forget he’s my patient” - was the place the enigmatic roach took Charlie/Charles to. “Get him to take you there, and you’ll know who Charlie/Charles really is” he had repeated to Dr. Pressman many times. In fact, this statement had interrupted many a mental check being performed. It had only been a few days before, that Dr. Pressman had told him that he wouldn’t be seeing him for a little while as he was going to talk over the situation with some of his colleagues. Dr. Mathews understood that. He knew that “talking over the situation with colleagues” meant it was judgment time. He also knew it was better to stare at the ceiling now and not the imaginary roach his self-hypnosis could create for him. He liked regressing back to the sessions where his patient Charles Randall had first mentioned the curious creature whose safe and protective darkness had offered solace when all else failed. For months now, Dr. Mathews had wondered what answers laid behind the white porcelain bars. Dr. Pressman was equally curious.

“Dr. Mathews,” as he still insisted being called, was under the usual constant camera observation that Monday morning as Dr. Pressman made his routine 8:00 a.m. check with Nurse Bowman in the video room.

“How’s he doing?” asked the doctor as he peered at the monitor labeled “#7.”

Bowman removed her glasses, rubbed her eyes and said, “Same. He sure has held this vigil steady. He breaks away to wash his hands every hour, but otherwise,” she checked her clipboard, “he’s into his sixth day of no variance. Ceiling watching, hand washing every hour, bathroom every twenty minutes...back to scoping the ceiling.”

“No roaches?”

She grinned. “Only the one for real that somehow got in there.” “No. Come on,” said Pressman.

She raised her right hand. “Swear. Last night about 12:30.” She looked at clipboard again. “Yeah. 12:31. He went crackers for a minute, but I had the orderly in there fast.”

Dr. Pressman picked up the board and scanned the notes. “Laughed? He just laughed?”

“Crackers. Laughed his ass off. It’s all there.” She pointed. “Oh, he did repeat, ‘You old fuck...You old fuck...Another lifetime. That’s it...that’s it. Another lifetime’.”

Dr. Pressman re-read the notes and glanced at the monitor screen again. “Where was the roach?”

“On the wall next to his bed.”

“A real roach?”

“Yeah. That’s what I said.”

“The orderly killed it?”

Another chuckle from the nurse. “C’mon, Doctor. Johnny’s fast but he took a few seconds to get in there, and of course it was gone.”

“But you saw it...it’s on the tape?”

“No. A little small to show up on the tape, but he’s got it in his cup.”

Pressman looked again at the monitor. On the bedside table was a paper cup with a piece of tissue lying across the top. He looked to Bowman. “On the table?”

“Yeah. Mathews was fine by the time Johnny got in there. Figured you’d be okay with him keeping it. In fact, I figured you’d be pissed if I let Johnny kill it, so I told him Mathews had chased it back under the door. Told him everything was under control again. I knew he had the little bugger in his hand, but... thirty days of watching him and hearing you talk about an infamous roach, well, figured you’d be... “

“Pissed if Johnny killed it. You’re right.” He leaned down and gave her a hug. “Thanks, Bowman. You did right.”

For Dr. Pressman, stepping into the number 7 “cell” as confinements were still called, was as routine as going to his office. In fact, for these past weeks, his office had far fewer hours logged with his presence than cell 7.

“Good morning, Dr. Mathews. How was your week end?”

Dr. Mathews sat up in his bed.

Mathews’ beard, hair, eyes all looked about the same...sleepy. “Got a comb?”

“Sure.” Pressman took a comb from his pocket and handed it to him. Mathews stepped to the sink, turned on the water and wet his beard and hair, followed by the combing ceremony Pressman was accustomed to by now.

“Anything unusual happen since I saw you last?” asked Pressman. Mathews casually shrugged. “No.”

“Oh...I thought you had a visitor over the weekend.”

Mathews turned, glanced up at the camera and turned back to his mirror. “Mean the little guy?”

“Who is the little guy?”

“I haven’t named him yet.” He continued grooming himself. “But for conversation sake, how’s Napoleon? Good name for a little guy, don’t you think?”

“Sure. Whatever you say. He’s your little guy.”

“Don’t start the patronizing again, Doctor.” Mathews turned back to Pressman, looking groomed and clear-eyed. “Like it?”

“You’ve changed your part, right?” replied Pressman.

“Not very observant, Doctor. Changed that last Wednesday... ‘day before you took a vacation from me. Eyebrows. Up. They’re better up, don’t you think? Makes me appear more awake, even though I’m dragging my ass. Your colleagues will get a better impression of me when they start watching again.”

He handed the comb back, sat down on his bed, straightened the sheet, fluffed the pillow and looked about the room once again. He nodded approval. “So... how did your vacation go?”

“You know I wasn’t vacationing, Doctor.”

“But you were relaxing. You let them do all the talking and debating, didn’t you?”

“Of course.”

“You had a vacation.”

“Okay. My vacation was wonderful. It’s good to see you so up as well.”

“Well?  Like I said, I’m dragging my ass.”

“Right, but you look up.”

“Thank you. Don’t want to give the wrong impression to the right people.”

“The doctors?”

“Yeah. The ones you’ve got to educate. Bet they thought those tapes were something, right?”

“I’ll let you hear them someday.”

“Only proper. See if they say what I think they say. He is, has been, and will continue to be my patient.”

“Our patient. Remember? We agreed.”

“Right. For the record. But, between us, you know he’s my patient. I’m just sharing him with you.”

Dr. Pressman nodded. “Whichever way gets us the answers, Doctor. Right?”

“Whatever gets me the answers.”

“Well...” Pressman looked at his watch. “Got to get back to the others. I’ll stop back tonight, if it’s not too late. Last Friday, I was going to drop by, but...”

“But it got to be 12:30 when you left your office. I know.”

Dr. Pressman hesitated for just a moment as he moved toward the door, but not long enough for Mathews to detect. He paused at the door, staring through the grillwork of the little window. “Oh,” he said without turning, “Need anything for the little guy?”

“You know better, Dr. Pressman. He doesn’t need food...”

Suddenly, Mathews’ voice was right behind his ear, whispering in the low, quiet, altogether way Charles had described him on the tapes.

“Another lifetime, Doctor. Another lifetime.”

Dr. Pressman nodded and as he pushed open the door, “Of course. Rather unintelligent of me. I apologize.”

“Accepted. See you tonight...oh, and Doctor, the Napoleon thing is only entertainment, so I wouldn’t mention it out of context to the group. They’ll go off on a toot, and, well I don’t have to tell you how crazy people can get with little things like that.”

“No...you don’t”

“Tonight?”

“Tonight.”

As he walked the few paces separating doors 7 and 4, Dr. Pressman avoided the obvious thoughts. He knew Napoleon was more than entertainment, but he also knew it was important that Mathews believed everyone accepted it as nothing more than entertainment.

What bothered him more was that he didn’t know how Mathews had known of the 12:30 departure on Friday. To have given it any more attention in front of him would have played into his hand. As a former psychiatrist, Mathews knew that patient/doctor success was contingent on the doctor maintaining control. After nearly six weeks of observation, Dr. Pressman and Dr. Mathews were still jockeying for position.

Dr. Pressman checked his watch. He had a couple of minutes. A glance through the grated window of cell 4 gave him pause to relax. Charlie/Charles—or Charles as the man sitting at the table peering out his window still preferred to be called—was calm. He alternately read a book and scanned the grounds outside.

The scanning was the only peculiarity he had maintained since the day of arrival.

Videotapes of the monitoring had born out his continual anxiety over the visits from his friends Julian, Max and of course Sara. Because the newspapers had kept the story going for a couple of weeks until the court ordered the evaluation, Peaches and Ivan had read about it and had come to visit as well. Pressman was pleased that people from the outside visited regularly. Memory loss was a complication that seriously hampered his progress, so any possible jogger stimulation was welcomed.

He checked the clipboard hanging outside the door. Satisfied that the reduction in medication was being maintained with no incidents requiring an increase, he opened the door and stepped in to greet the man representing his most formidable challenge in thirty years.

“Hi, Charles,” he offered in a tone unlike that of the astute doctor everyone knew as the no-nonsense keeper of the gates.

Charles turned from the window, revealing the now serene face of a man whose first few days at Milton had maintained a continual gaze of bewilderment and wide-eyed shock. “Good morning Dr. Pressman. This is good, really good. Thank you.”

“Oh...the book. Glad you like it.” He walked over to the table. “Page 415. You’ve been busy.”

“It’s a page turner. I can understand his following, but weren’t you a little concerned giving it to me? I mean...pretty scary stuff.”

“Stephen King has always been kind of scary to most, but it has to be like kid’s play to you, right?”

Charles got up and nodded. “Yeah. Thanks. I really like him. He must live some kind of life dreaming up all this stuff.”

“We all dream that kind of stuff, Charles. He just put it down on paper over the past 20 years and continues to offer a certain kind of identity for a lot of readers… and makes a fortune from it.”

“Are yu telling me everybody walks around with this weird a take on everything?”

“A lot. Most keep it locked up tight in the subconscious, that’s all.”

“And me?”

“You?”

“Yeah. I keep it out front, don’t I?”

“Why do you ask?”

Charles smiled with the confidence of a saint, “Why did you give me the book? So I could feel at home being crazy?”

Dr. Pressman turned and stepped to the back wall where several pencil sketches were taped. He pointed to the one on the end. “This your weekend work?”

“That’s seven questions for today with only one answered.”

Dr. Pressman turned back to him, grinning. “Still keeping score, I see.  But we’re getting better at it, aren’t we? Used to run into the teens.”

“Today, I just want the ‘crazy’ question answered.”

Dr. Pressman shook his index finger back and forth. “Against the rules. You agreed to play by the rules.”

“Okay. I don’t feel at home being crazy.”

“Good, ‘cause … well...”

Charles paused a moment, then turned back toward the window. ”Do they agree with you?”

“The doctors? That’s a room full of unique vibrations after this many days of listening to you. We finished a lot of the tapes Friday night.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Not bad, just provoking.”

“That’s a good word. Better than stimulating. Stimulating must be impossible for doctors like you with all the things you hear.”

“Charles,” he checked his watch again. “You have pushed twenty-three doctors to some kind of brink or breakthrough.  We’ll see.”

Charles turned around, he expression wanting more…

“Don’t ask me anymore about our process, Charles. But some kind of new or resurrected space has been opened up in their heads. They may never get back to you, they’re so caught up in their own… concerns now.”

“Oh...that’s funny.” He gestured a “headline” in the air. “Charlie/Charles flips out a whole team of shrinks...story at eleven.”

“Well, it’s not that bad. Yet. Who knows if they listen to the continuation from here on.”

“My Milton stuff?”

“Only if you want me to. I won’t violate my promise. Your tapes became evidence the courts can’t use in the trial, but nonetheless subject to the "right to seize" law in a criminal case. Here at Milton...your journal is subject to a “nondisclosure” law that protects psychiatrists and their patient’s exchange. As of now, except for the tape describing the night of Sobel’s death you said I could play, the recordings I promised not to share without your consent are your private property. They’re just thoughts you’ve not even shared with me. Remember that it was your idea to keep the journal going in here. I gave the permission. The only part of you that I am expected to deal with is your ability to stand trial for the alleged crime. The rest of your life, you still have the right to keep to yourself...like I promised.”

“You make a lot of promises, don’t you?”

“Yes...and that reminds me. I promised to be back with the group at nine this morning. I’m fifteen minutes late. Think about it. If you decide to share the tapes with me...us, let me know. Otherwise... “

“Otherwise...you’ll come to a decision soon?”

“How soon is soon? Depends on how much you really shook them up.” He walked toward the door. “A weekend around their pools may have mellowed them out.” He took another look at the sketches. “I Like the new one. Kind of like The Cove in your tapes.”

“A little. More like the cove in my dream on Friday.”

Dr. Pressman paused, leaned in for a closer look. The cove had a different, more detailed look compared to the tape description he’d listened to.

“Want to talk about it later?”

“I don’t think so. Cove’s in my journal. That was enough.”

A promise is a promise, Dr. Pressman thought. Still, he wanted to know more. “Think about it. See ya.”