designer drugs, plus the fact that the public couldn’t pay admission to derive some cheap entertainment.
Forsyth signed in with an armed guard while Redfern blathered airily about the “pathophysiology and psychosocial precipitants of mental illness,” getting an extra lift when she started in on “comprehensive community-based intervention modules.”
The first patient they passed, a shuffling young man in paper slippers with a strand of drool dangling down to his chest, looked like he could care less what the community thought.
Forsyth nodded at him out of rote politeness but the man simply took another sliding step away from reality and toward whatever mercy God granted the deranged.
The patients in open confinement were largely clean and passive. A bald black man sat playing checkers with himself, although there was no board on the coffee table. A woman in street clothes stood looking out the barred window as if waiting for a bus that would never come. Another woman with palsy muttered to herself over and over, and it took Forsyth a moment to realize she was faithfully reciting the Gospel According to Luke.
Then they entered the ward with the private rooms. These resembled regular hospital rooms, although through the doors of the unoccupied ones, Forsyth saw padding on the walls and restraint devices made of steel and leather. An occasional wail reverberated from a distant hellhole, a sound as lonely of that of a barn owl in the October night.
“What’s your interest in Mr. Underwood?” Dr. Redfern asked.
“One of those researchers I spoke of asked me to look in on him,” Forsyth said. “A cousin. Just between you and me, I suspect he’s afraid that sort of thing runs in the family.”
A few howls stitched themselves together into a caterwauling melody. It wasn’t until the sounds repeated that Forsyth made it out. The old western folk song “Home on the Range.”
“Mr. Underwood is one of our more…interesting…cases,” Dr. Redfern said. “He’s clinging to a persistent delusion that he’s the subject of a secret government experiment. He was connected with a clinical trial during his college years, and one of the subjects died. Apparently the guilt and trauma lingered, triggering a latent schizophrenia.”
Forsyth probed her a little in case David Underwood’s psychotic ramblings had aroused any suspicion. “I thought schizophrenia was genetic.”
“There are certainly links,” she said. “But current research is focusing on neurobiology. Drug use could worsen such a condition.”
“What kind of drugs?”
“Anything mind-altering or mood-altering.”
Then they were outside the room from which the wailing came. Forsyth wondered if Underwood would remember him. But the great thing about a nutcase, nobody believed anything they said.
They peered through a glass observational window. Underwood sat on a cot, hunched forward and staring at the floor. His hair was clipped close and his ill-fitting gown was draped over his gaunt frame.
Forsyth noted that Underwood’s present circumstances were not that different from when he’d been held captive in Sebastian Briggs’s lab and used as a test monkey. The only thing that had changed since then was the name of the zookeeper.
“Is he responding to medication?” Forsyth asked, making conversation.
“He’s on several new antipsychotic drugs,” Dr. Redfern said. “He’s also presenting anxiety and depression, and because he’s such a risk, I’m afraid he doesn’t have much hope for release. He’s got the major first-rank symptom of schizophrenia.”
“What’s that?”
“The belief that his thoughts are controlled by an external force. In his case, he believes he’s been brainwashed by the government.”
“I could make a grand joke of that, but it doesn’t look like a laughing matter,” Forsyth said.
“Still, he deserves the same compassionate care that Central Regional aspires to administer to all its patients,” Dr. Redfern said, once again lapsing into a robo-cheerleader for her facility.
“Of that, I’ve no doubt,” Forsyth said. He took one more glance at David Underwood and was surprised he didn’t feel a twinge of sympathy for the man.
Too goddamned long in politics. Your heart is the first thing to go, and then you lose your soul. God help me. God help us all.
“Did you want to see him personally?” Dr. Redfern asked, eager to please.
“No,” he said, making a show of glancing at his wristwatch. “Is Darrell Silver available?”
Redfern’s mood darkened a little. “Of course. Federal inmates under treatment place a particularly heavy burden on a facility like ours, as you can imagine.”
Add another million to that funding request, Doctor. Maybe we should put you on Daniel’s staff. You would make a mighty fine health secretary and I’d bet you’d say whatever it took to make the administration look good.
And being pretty don’t hurt a bit.
“I understand Silver’s been charged with drug manufacturing and conspiracy,” he said.
“This way.” Redfern led him down the hall and around a bend, passing rooms in which involuntary patients spent their time until the next dose, meal, or change of underwear.
Alone with nothing but their thoughts. Satan has truly been loosed for a season and his millennium is coming up.
Forsyth’s Pentecostal upbringing had softened a little in the face of political realities, melding into a more palatable fundamentalism as he became entrenched in Congress. Extremes of every kind tended to get blunted by the forge and hammer of the corporations, lobbyists, and party leaders.
Still, he felt Armageddon was near-not in the literal sense of a climactic battle in the Middle East, but in a general erosion of the human spirit. Where others saw Satan’s armies attacking from the field, Forsyth believed Satan delivered destruction from the inside out.
Just like those drugs, Seethe and Halcyon, did.
Forsyth wondered if that was more than a coincidence.
Redfern was blithely enumerating all the funding challenges in the face of rising costs and the threat that national health care posed. Forsyth mumbled assurances that one of Burchfield’s top priorities was to revise the landmark legislation, although they all knew that entitlements were nearly impossible to take away once people got used to them.
Soon they came to a thicker door with a security camera and keypad. After Redfern logged in and was identified, they were buzzed into an antechamber where an armed and uniformed guard staffed a desk, surrounded by security monitors and alarm systems. Both of them had to sign another log, and then they entered a second door.
The rooms on this floor were a cross between prison cells and hospital rooms. Another armed guard patrolled the hallway, a tall, sunburnt man who greeted Redfern by name and gave Forsyth a sideways grin.
“Tell Senator Burchfield I’m voting for him,” the guard said. “I’ve voted for him in every election since he ran for the State House, and I’m not about to stop now.”
“I’ll do that,” Forsyth said. “And thank you for your vital service here. Is Mr. Silver ready?”
“In interrogation like you requested.”
Redfern beamed in satisfaction at the show of efficiency. The guard led the way to the room as Redfern explained, “Usually lawyers meet their clients here, and if the inmates are deemed competent, they are sometimes asked questions by investigators.”
Forsyth didn’t want to ask who did the “deeming,” but he was sure the taxpayers were footing the bill for some egghead to write big words that added up to either “Nuts” or “Probably guilty.”
Darrell Silver was seated at a table, shackled to a steel bar that was welded to the table’s edge. He appeared calm and was relatively clean, although Forsyth was surprised the man was allowed to keep his beard and unhealthy-looking dreadlocks. He could have passed for a street musician if not for the orange scrubs and his spasmodically twitching right eyelid.
“Where’s my lawyer?” Silver asked.
“It’s okay, Mr. Silver,” Redfern said. “We’re not interrogating you. Mr. Forsyth is touring our facilities. He’s a member of the president’s bioethics council.”
