Delusion
By Joe Sudar
Chapter 1
The siren filled Pullman like wax in a
mold. It surged down the city streets, echoing left and right down alleys. Cars
skidded to shoulders. Walkers hopped onto curbs and watched red and blue lights
blur past.
The
inside of the ambulance clattered with activity. There were four paramedics,
hired for the circumference of their chests and their experience as offensive
linemen. One filled a needle with clear barbiturates. Another prepped a gurney
that jingled with straps and buckles. One untangled a straightjacket. The last
one tucked a Taser into his belt, just in case.
In
the front seat, Doctor Edwin Harrison flipped through a medical file, looking
for some reason to not need the muscleheads in the back of the ambulance. The
papers in his lap dripped with understatement. He had enough experience in
psychiatry to see past the sugar coating and into the file’s subtext. Buddy Stewart, forty-five years old,
Caucasian, male. Patient suffers from extreme grandiose delusions (he
thinks he’s God. Scratch that, he knows he’s God). Low remorse shown for antisocial behavior when decompensated (he
hurt someone once, and didn’t mind). Poor
prognosis from dialectical behavioral therapy, despite high effort rating. Only
pharmaceutical treatments appear effective (he’s fought with his illness
every day of his life. He wants to be normal, but his brain isn’t wired that
way. There’s a good voice and a bad voice in his head. One of them is louder
than the other, and cramming chemicals down his throat is the only way to
change the volume. Without pills, the good voice barely makes a peep).
*
Palouse River Counseling provided
therapy for Pullman and the dozen boroughs surrounding the city. Its team
offered counseling, clinical work, and assessment to people suffering from
mental illness. Nestled in the big tan building’s shadow was a one-floor house.
A sign over the doorjamb read, ‘Harvest House.’ It was a clubhouse, where PRC
clients trained vocational skills by operating a community center with lunches,
business services, and a news publication.
Services had halted. Computers blinked,
waiting for input. Lunch cooled, half-made. The club members evacuated next
door to smiling faces and waiting coffee. They smiled and said thank you as
counselors greeted them, but they’d all noticed the club’s door as they left.
It lay flat on the lawn, hinges bent. The screws that fixed it in the jamb held
chunks of wood in their grooves like a crash victim clinging white-knuckled to
a steering wheel.
In
Harvest House’s basement, Doctor David Port pressed his head against a locked
door. A good voice and a bad voice debated on the other side in a pitch-black
bathroom.
John
Cooper, Dave’s grad student intern, paced behind him, shoes squeaking every
time he turned. Sweat stains ruined the neck and pits of his tailored shirt.
His sharp chin quivered as things to say appeared and died in his mouth.
“This
is bullshit,” Cooper said, “the state pays for his meds and he doesn’t take
them. Waste of time, waste of money, dangerous and stupid…”
“John,”
Dave whispered, turning away from the door, “this house was built in an era
when cost-cutting was more important than quality. Keep that, and the thinness
of this door in mind before you decide to rant.”
Cooper
huffed and continued pacing. Dave turned
back to the door. “Buddy,” he called, “can you hear me, young man?”
Silence,
then a whispered, “yes.”
“You
need to open this door, Buddy. Your medication is overdue. That should be all
that I need to say. Remember what happened last time?”
In
the darkness, Buddy Stewart turned to the crack of light beneath the bathroom
door. He leaned, brushing the painted wood until his fingers touched a cold
brass door handle. Ding ding ding, I
remember what happened last time, the bad voice shouted an inch from his
ear, they robbed you blind, you stupid
sack of shit. Everything your grandpa left you, everything your father scrimped
and saved, all of it gone. Boom. Gone. You blinked, they snatched it up. Know
how much of it vanished when your head was in the sand?
Buddy’s
hand jerked from the door handle to the nape of his neck, squeezing away the
stress. “I don’t care,” he said, “I don’t care, I don’t care, shut up, shut up,
shut up.”
Dave
understood where the outburst was aimed. Coop didn’t.
“Okay
smartass,” Coop pushed up to the door, “third strike. There’s a team coming
from Eastern right now. Open this door and take your pills before they get here
or you’re out.”
Eastern
State Hospital’s sterile white corridors blinded Buddy. Doctors and nurses
loomed over him, eyes sick with pity. He recoiled from the memory, clamping his
hands over his ears, shutting out every outside voice, leaving him alone with
the bad one.
Dave
dragged Cooper away from the door by his collar. “Go find Rebecca,” he said,
“tell her to get down here, pronto.”
Coop
nursed a scowl all the way across the street. In the PRC reception area,
Rebecca Collins hunched over the desk, chin mashed into her open palm. One foot
reached up and itched at a pencil-thin leg. Blue eyes, so bright they were
almost luminescent, glittered as she debated with Cindy, the receptionist.
“There’s
still time,” Rebecca said, “Buddy can get a grip, but not if the hospital is
looming over him. It’ll scare him to death.”
“Rebecca,”
Cindy said, speaking through the hand that her head rested in, “I’m sorry but
we can’t call Eastern back and say, ‘sorry, just kidding!’ Doctor Lawrence
watched him rip off the door and throw it into the lawn, then told me himself
to make the call. Buddy needs the hospital and they’re on their way.”
“Dave
wants you,” Coop interrupted.
Rebecca
jerked up, facing him. Her hands crept to her pants pockets, thumbs tucking in
to mirror Coop. He noticed and snapped his hands to his side.
“Alright,”
Rebecca said, “I was helping Cindy with an incident report. You can take it
from here.” With a pinch of tact, she waited until he was out of sight to smile
at his expression. The sight of Harvest House and its gaping door banished the
smile.
She
arrived at the entrance as Dr. Harrison and his four hunky EMTs pulled up to
the curb. ‘EASTERN’, written on the side of their vehicle, set her stomach
wringing.
“Hello,”
Harrison said, extending his hand, “we’re responding to a 911 from Palouse
River.”
“Okay,
we’re in the basement,” she answered, shoulders pulling back to match
Harrison’s posture. “Real quick, what’s it going to take to keep Buddy from
riding with you today?”
Harrison
fanned the pages of Buddy’s file with his thumb. “Something exceptional. Lead
the way, miss.”
They
threaded through the living area and the kitchen, down the stairs to the
basement. Dave unstuck his head from the door at the sound of footsteps.
“Dr.
Harrison.”
“David.
Any changes?”
Dave
held out his hand to the door. Swears flew through the flimsy wood. “Don’t you
fuckin’… It doesn’t matter… No, God damn it… Piece of shit, don’t tell me…”
The
muscled attendants glanced at one another, scrubs tightening as they flexed
their credentials. The one with the barbiturates uncapped the needle, showing a
waiting bead of drug.
“I’m
hearing significant decompensation in there,” Harrison said, “almost identical
to the language we heard before he snapped in ’98. If that happens again and
someone gets hurt, he’ll be in the hospital for life. If we can get the door
open and take him back with us now, he’ll just be looking at months, until we
can get him normalized and on a schedule.”
Months, Dave thought, the Fourth of July, his birthday, the
start-of-school parade, the clubhouse camping trip, Thanksgiving, Christmas.
Just months. Logic and emotion wobbled on a scale until it tipped to his
clinical side. He nodded in consent.
“He
missed his medication because of a dentist appointment,” Rebecca said, “they
told him it’d react with the anesthetic. It took about a day to wear off and
that was enough for him to lose his footing. This isn’t negligence, it’s just
bad timing.”
“Son
of a bitch, mother fucker,” Buddy snarled through the door.
Harrison
gestured towards the bathroom. “Why doesn’t matter, we’re here addressing that
language and what it means. It isn’t what we want to hear from a client with a
violent history.”
“But
he’s not saying it at us. That’s him arguing with his other voice. He’s still
trying to resist.”
“I’m
sorry. It’s unfortunate, but the fact is he doesn’t have medication in his
system right now and he needs it.”
“What
if he takes it? He carries it on his person in a little red day-by-day carton.
If we get him to take it and he unlocks the door on his own is that enough for
him to stay?”
“That,
miss, would be the exceptional something I mentioned.”
Rebecca
turned to Dave. He peered over his bifocals. “Can you do it, young lady?”
There
was no option, so there was no question. “Yes.” She switched places with Dave,
leaning hard into the door and listening to the debate on the other side. Edwin
and his muscle men raised objections, but Dave’s face said, ‘watch this.’
Rebecca
wiped away everything behind her, leaving only the sounds of Buddy in the black
room. She turned her head, pressing her ear against the door. Sounds leaked
through, sketching in her mind to show what Buddy looked like past the door:
squeaking footsteps (pacing), snickers between every other word (a toothy
smile), breathless speech, endless and rapid (hunched body, hands wringing,
eyes darting in the shadows to things only he could see).
Rebecca
wilted in front of the clinicians. She hunched over, head hanging low. Her
hands ran over one another like a fly landed on its meal. Over her shoulder,
they saw the corner of her mouth creep up into a smile. Harrison’s experience
rang a bell, telling him that he should pay attention to what he was seeing.
Buckles
jingled behind Rebecca. She turned and saw one of the attendants prepping a
straight jacket, coiling the fabric around his hands. The fibers strained as he
pulled tight. Little squeaking sounds, like a rope taking load, twanged through
the air towards her.
Rebecca…
The
sleeves ended in leather straps. At the back they locked in place, a design
perfected over a hundred years of restraining people.
Rebecca…
She
imagined it around her. Warm, sweaty, filling with the smell of a stressed
body. Pulling, straining, nothing in response but squeaking sounds and jingling
buckles. Smothering, like a pillow pressed over her face as she begged for
enough air to scream…
“Rebecca,”
Dave’s voice cut through to her like a searchlight, “Buddy’s running out of
time. Concentrate, you can do it.”
She
swallowed hard and turned back to the door. She bent and shriveled and wringed
again. The workers from Eastern looked to Dave for an explanation. He ignored
them.
Snorts,
snickers, excited groans from inside the bathroom. Buddy’s eyes glimmered at
what the bad voice described to him (Rebecca’s eyes twinkled in time). The
debate inside his head had shifted. The bad voice was winning.
“Alright…
Yeah I understand…” Rebecca’s ears perked like a watchdog’s to his rambling.
Details swirled inside her head. All she needed was one familiar phrase,
something for them to crystallize on. “Okay… I know, I’m sorry… I’m sorry, no
don’t give it away… I’ll listen… Yes… Yes I want it… I want my house of gold…”
House of gold. The crystals spread and
the lies froze into a solid block. She watched him paced through gleaming
pillars. His two hundred dollar shoes echoing down the polished floors.
Diamonds glittered in piles to his left and right, spotted with wrinkled cash,
stocks and bearer bonds, the legacy of the Stewart family. Enough money to
change the world. Enough to rule it.
“Two
million gems ripped from the bones of Africa…” she shouted through the door.
Rights to all the oil in Arabia,
insisted the voice.
“Rights
to all the oil in Arabia. Silks of the Orient…”
Silks of the Orient, ivory from titan’s
mouth…
“Ivory
from titan’s mouth, buffalo land in heathen’s hands, beaches made of polished
sand…”
Beaches made of polished sand… Buddy
stopped pacing. He’d heard the beaches mentioned twice. They were secret. No
one but his mentor knew about them. Who was talking?
“History
and literature, all of it yours, if you just take it.” The new voice said from
somewhere dark behind him.
History and literature, all of it yours,
his mentor insisted… if you just take it…
Buddy knew the new voice. “Rebecca?” he called down the corridor of his golden
house. “Is that you?”
“It’s
me, Buddy.”
“Rebecca,
how do you know about my assets?”
“Because
you’ve told me them all before, Buddy. Do you remember?”
Six
months ago he’d asked her to step outside. He’d wanted to talk about his
mentor. He’d heard he had money, assets, everything he needed to be a made man.
Bad people were keeping it all from him. They took from him and gave him pills
to make him stupid so they could rob him blind. His mentor could help. He could
get him everything he deserved, and he’d never wants again.
She’d
listened to his story and asked if he really believed it. He’d tried, but none
of it had been true. His mentor had lied.
“Buddy,”
Rebecca said, “do you have your medication with you?”
He
felt in his pocket. Seven containers, one for each day, rattling with little
capsules. “Yes,” he answered.
“This
is very important, Buddy, how many days of medication do you have?”
He
took it out of his pocket, but despite all the light in the golden house, he
couldn’t see the pills. When he looked at his hands he saw darkness. His other
hand groped the bathroom wall until it found the light switch. The golden house
burned away in a flood of electric light. He counted the pills in his one-a-day
container. Sunday was gone, Monday had half a dose left. Everything from
Tuesday onwards was full.
“Rebecca,
what day is it?”
“It’s
Thursday, Buddy.”
Panic
stabbed at his chest. He rushed to the sink, filled his mouth with water and
swallowed Thursday’s dose. The bad voice screamed in protest. It swore that
he’d lose it all again, that his money would disappear. It promised that the
woman outside was next in line to inherit. She’d take it if he didn’t. It
screamed that he was falling for a trap. It screamed until it went hoarse, and
then it faded down to silence.
Buddy
Stewart opened the bathroom door an hour later. His shoulders filled the
doorway so fully that he had to come through at an angle. He saw Dave, who
smiled that the debate had closed. The four brawny paramedics had excused
themselves earlier. Regardless of their skill set as hired muscle, they
understood that their job was to help comfort the chronically uncomfortable,
and hovering around would only stress Buddy out.
Edwin
Harrison assessed Buddy’s symptoms as he exited the bathroom. Buddy met his
gaze with watery green eyes. When he held the eye contact, Harrison knew that
the medication was running its course.
Buddy
looked around the basement. “Where’s Rebecca?”
“She
had something to take care of,” Dave answered.
Through
the PRC reception window, Cooper watched Rebecca emerge from Harvest House. She
walked stiff and jerky, a tin soldier wound up and marching. She charged past
the ambulance and grabbed her bike from a rack. She rode down the hill towards
the city limits. He recognized the look on her face, the way she was walking,
and what it implied. He noted the date and time in a Moleskine notebook, and
smiled that he’d gotten as least one thing out of the mess.
*
Lighthouse
University, Pullman’s bread and butter, sat one mile uphill from Harvest House.
Two miles into campus was the Student Recreation Center, the largest in the
school’s conference. Inside, clanking weights mixed with the drumbeat of
punching bags, topped by the drone of treadmills. The air was perfumed by sweat
and rubber. In the farthest corner of the gym sat a pair of rowing ergometers.
The ergs were designed to mimic the
movement and resistance of rowing on the water. Athletes sat on a seat that
slid back and forth on a metal rail, their feet strapped in at one end. They
held a handle, connected by a chain to an air flywheel that roared with every
stroke, feeding data into a digital screen that told how fast they were going.
Pulling harder meant the wheel spun faster and resisted more. It was the only
workout machine that rewarded hard work by making it harder.
Two best friends sat next to each
other on the ergs. Muscles capable of lifting four hundred pounds straight off
the ground flexed against the footpads of the machines. The flywheels roared in
approval with every stroke.
As their warm up ended, the friends
caught their breath. Sweat dripped in rivulets off their faces. Here and there,
their eyes met, sharing looks reserved for archenemies. The stakes were known,
the competition was fierce, the rowers were ready.
One was a heavyweight, built like a
Greek statue with horse legs. The other was a lightweight, thin but trimmed
down to a fatless body rippling with muscle. They wore matching navy blue tank
tops, blazoned with a golden C for Cal Berkley.
On
the water, physics would even out the race, but the erg only paid attention
only to power, determined by the wheel and its little computer. The lightweight
took fewer meters on his machine to compensate, but the race was the same: two
thousand meters, dead sprint to the finish.
They froze at attention, bodies upright
and set, arms stretched out and ready to pull, legs coiled, primed to cannon at
the drop of an imaginary flag.
Attention.
Row.
Adrenaline coursed and told them both a
familiar lie: ‘you feel no pain, you have no limits. Harder, faster, stronger.
You can beat him easily.’ For a hundred meters, each rower generated enough
wattage to power half a bank of stadium lights. Then tingles on the tops of
their legs reminded them of an unwelcome truth: ‘you have nineteen hundred
meters to go. It’s going to hurt, badly. You are mortal.’
Five hundred meters in, they settled
into race strategies. The heavyweight coiled up the slide after every stroke.
At the catch, he floated weightless for a moment then fired in the opposite
direction. His boat took another leap forward. The lightweight moved less
weight, he pulled less power, but he did it faster. With almost two strokes for
every one of the heavyweight’s, he was losing ground but demanded a price for
it.
Heart rates climbed past two hundred
beats per minute. Muscles drank nutrition from their own cells as demand
climbed higher and higher. Each rower’s brain screamed their body’s demands as
they rounded the thousand-meter mark. They begged to know why they were
self-destructing. Each athlete belayed explanation, using every trick they knew
for mental distraction.
The heavyweight turned the race into
math. Nine hundred meters left. Ten meters per stroke. Ninety strokes left,
just ninety. Eighty-nine. Eighty-eight.
The lightweight felt the chemicals
that made him hurt. Lactic acid, burning to signal that his body was working.
Endorphins shouting back at the smoke signals that they don’t give a fuck,
they’re too damn high. Light headedness, probably from good old-fashioned lack
of blood. All the moving parts explained why he felt like he was dying.
Five hundred meters to go. Numbers
ticked down, motivation shot up. In the imaginary water, the bows of their
boats pulsed next to each other, vying for the final inch of the race. The
heavyweight pulled, ripping the machinery with every stroke. The lightweight
upped the rate, climbing into a sprint. He kept the microns he needed and
passed the finish line victorious.
They paddled until the pain subsided
long enough for their bodies and minds to angrily demand to know why they
enjoyed rowing. The lightweight’s pain ignited, sparked by victory. He rested
in the warm knowledge of his spoils.
The night’s drinks were on the
heavyweight.
*
The
Terrell Coal Plant marked the city limits of Pullman. Lighthouse owned the
property, which had once powered the entire school. Green energy had shut the
operation down. Now it was a teaching tool, used once a semester by engineering
students. Bleached candy wrappers and shattered beer bottles promised Rebecca
some privacy. She curled against the base of the towering smokestack, her bike
collapsed nearby and the road out of town beckoning.
Rebecca struggled to keep her cool like a
carsick child. She gulped down air to drown the nausea that bubbled in her
stomach. Voices battled inside her head. They cycled through one another like
frequencies of a HAM radio. Snarls turned to moans, then to smacking lips, then
lengthening out into a breathless scream. Words echoed out of the maelstrom
every few seconds.
You
cunt.
Her ringing cell phone pierced the
din. She inched it from her pocket as more words thundered through the storm in
her head. You think you’re fucking better
than me? Dave was calling her.
“Hi,” she croaked.
“Where are you, young lady?”
“I’m sorry, it’s bad.”
“You don’t need to apologize. Are
you okay?”
“No, it’s really, really bad.”
“Okay, please listen, Rebecca: you
just need to hold on. You can make it through this and you know it. How many
attacks this month?”
“None.”
“Exactly. You’re doing much, much
better. There were some close calls but you beat them. You’re going to be okay,
do you hear me?”
Where
the fuck would you be without me?
“Dave, it’s worse than that. It
hurts, I’m scared.”
“Rebecca Collins, you are stronger
than this.”
“No, I need to go.” She hung up
before he could lob another earful of support through the phone. An image
flashed in her mind: orange and black light, like a smoky fire, framing a giant
silhouette.
Worthless
little bitch.
She wasn’t safe. The feeling came
from somewhere she couldn’t explain, couldn’t rationalize, but it was there.
She was in danger. Rebecca leapt onto her bike and pedaled towards safety.
Palouse County rose and fell in
dollops of farmland. It spread for miles in every direction, an agriculture
country quilt stitched together by winding highways. She pedaled until her
lungs felt like crumpled paper bags.
You’re
going to kill him.
The
land cracked ahead of her into a stony fissure where the road plummeted down a
suicide grade. She tucked her body and leaned into the curving path, racing up
to forty miles per hour.
And
suck dicks for money.
Her left hand stretched out. A bubble of
air filled her palm.
And
when you die you’ll go to Hell.
She ripped the voices by their roots out
and forced them down her neck. As they passed her ear a final thorn pricked at
her.
I
love my little girl.
The voices drained down her
shoulder, running the length of her arm like dirty water in a gutter. At her
hand they leaked out, mixing into the air bubble. She opened her palm and threw
them onto the ground. They smeared on the asphalt with an oily splat.
The grade leveled and turned into
Snake River Road. It meandered, running parallel to the Snake River’s broad
surface. Calm water stretched a thousand feet across to a canyon wall that shot
straight up, back to farm country. Lines in the rock traced the paths of the
superfloods that had shaped the region at the end of the last ice age. The
scenery begged to be on a post card or a tourist brochure, but she ignored the
sights. Less than a mile to safety.
Granite Point knuckled up out of the
water as her energy waned. The sunset painted it three different colors of red.
She tossed her bike at its base, racing up the beaten-bare trail to its top.
She was basted in sweat by the time
she crested. The rock’s tabletop peak waited for her. Summer sun had heated it
all day. Wispy tendrils of warmth seeped up through her clothes, wrapping and
threading together into a blanket around her.
No jaws could reach her up there. No
voices could find her.
The sun vanished slowly over the far
hill of the canyon. Pinks and blues on the skyline faded to gray, then to
black. Stars appeared over the horizon, reflected by the flat, still water
below. They mirrored one another. She stared until she couldn’t tell where land
ended and sky began. Granite Point floated through space, isolated from the
world, surrounded by stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment