Bleeding in the Eye of a Brainstorm

was starting to look a bit more at ease. 'But Theo's going to be mad at me if I don't get back soon and start playing. He'll say I'm mooching off him and costing him money. Without Theo, I don't have a place to stay, or any way to support myself.'

'You let me worry about Theo. Like I said, in order to help you and my friend, I need to know everything so that I can begin to understand what's going on. I think it may be easier if I just ask questions and you answer them-but if you think of anything to add to an answer, don't hesitate to do so. Don't worry yourself about Theo, or playing chess, or anything else except the conversation that's taking place right now. Okay?'

'Okay.'

'Let's start with Rivercliff. Were all of the patients there schizophrenics like you and my friend, or were there also patients there who had been diagnosed with other types of mental illness?'

'I don't know. You'd have to ask Dr. Sharon.'

'Where can I find her?'

'I don't know. She just told us to meet her by the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve. How did you know about me, Mongo?'

'I was at the Manhattan Chess Club the night you were playing in the tournament. When I saw my friend's capsules, I realized they were just like the one I saw you take. You say this Dr. Sharon helped you escape from Rivercliff after a patient named Raymond started running amok and killing people. Is that right?'

'Yes.'

'Raymond was a patient?'

'Yes.'

'What's Raymond's last name?'

'Rogers.'

'Michael, why was it necessary to have someone help you to escape in the first place?'

'Because Raymond was-'

'No, I'm asking why you were still there before this Raymond started killing people. Whatever else it may do, the medication in these capsules you're taking seems incredibly effective in relieving your symptoms. Both you and my friend seem to be functioning perfectly normally-in your case, better than normally. How long have you been able to do this-think, speak, and act like you do now?'

'Oh, I don't know. . years. Except for the chess, of course.'

'Tears?'

'Uh-huh.'

I felt a chill. 'Michael, if your symptoms were being controlled by medication, why didn't they just release you and treat you on an outpatient basis? There are thousands of mentally ill people wandering around New York City, some taking medication as outpatients, and they're in nowhere as good shape mentally as you seem to be. Did you do something wrong to get you put there? Were you judged to be criminally insane?'

'I don't think so. I don't remember doing anything wrong.'

'What about this Raymond Rogers? Was he diagnosed as criminally insane?'

'I don't know. Nobody was ever released from Rivercliff. Sometimes the doctors would say somebody was going to be released, but they lied. I was there for more than twelve years. I saw new patients brought in, but I never saw anybody released. When a patient died, they just buried him in the cemetery on the grounds. When that happened, they'd bring in a new patient.'

I felt another chill, and this time I actually shuddered. 'How many patients were there at Rivercliff?'

'I guess maybe forty.'

'What about your family? Why didn't they press for your release?

And what about the families of the other patients who died? Didn't anybody want to claim the bodies?'

'None of us had families-in fact, I think that's one of the reasons we were selected to go to Rivercliff. I'd been transferred from a state hospital in Oklahoma. Everyone I ever talked to had been transferred to Rivercliff from some state hospital. And nobody there had families-at least not families that cared about what happened to them. I'd been abandoned when I was a child, but a lot of the patients there had been orphaned.'

'Jesus Christ,' I mumbled to myself. I'd stumbled into a nightmare. What I'd witnessed the night before with Mama Spit was horrible enough, but the nightmare was just growing darker and deeper. And I was merely hearing about it; the man sitting across the table from me had lived it. It all made me very sad, and very, very angry.

'Mongo, you all right? You look funny.'

'Yes, Michael, I'm all right,' I replied, looking up at him and forcing a smile. 'Just a touch of indigestion. Look, let's assume you're right: one criterion for selecting a patient for transfer to Rivercliff was that the person had nobody on the outside who would be asking questions about him. Why? None of you was ever released, even after your symptoms had been brought under control. Why?'

The questions had been rhetorical, but Michael answered them anyway. 'I don't know, Mongo.'

'I assume Rivercliff was the only place you were ever given that medication?'

'Yes.'

'Well, they had to be up to more than just the testing of a new drug they could never hope to market; they wouldn't even be able to publish papers or data, because they'd end up in prison for illegal and dangerous human experimentation. I think it's safe to assume they weren't acting out of humanitarian impulses. So what did the doctors at Rivercliff want with you? What could they hope to accomplish when they'd broken every canon of medical ethics in the book and could never hope to see the drug they'd developed used in any patient population outside the hospital?'

'I don't know, Mongo.'

'All of the patients there took these capsules?'

He nodded.

'Were you or anybody else there ever given any other kind of medication?'

'No. We didn't need any other medication. I remember when I first went there I was on all sorts of different medications, and I was a mess. I was making these uncontrollable movements-'

'Dyskinesia.'

'Yeah, I guess that's what they call it. Anyway, the first thing the doctors did when I got there was take away all my other meds and give me one of those capsules. When I woke up the next morning, I felt. . like I feel now. The voices in my head had stopped, and I could think clearly. And there weren't any of the lousy side effects I used to suffer from with the old meds.'

'And they never talked about releasing you?'

'They talked about it, but I knew they wouldn't do it. They never released anybody.'

I pointed to the capsule in the center of the table. 'What do they call this stuff?'

'They never called it anything; it was just our meds.'

'All right, Michael, describe your daily routine for me, if you will. Did you have individual therapy sessions, group counseling, what?'

He shook his head. 'Mostly, we could do whatever we wanted all day-there were game rooms, a gym, and a swimming pool. They always had videotapes of the latest movies, and there was a good library. The doctors only seemed interested in asking us questions, and they'd do that, oh, maybe two or three times a week. If they were interested in what you had to say, they'd take you to another part of the hospital and give you some tests. That never happened to me, but I heard about it from others.'

'What kinds of questions did the doctors ask?'

'They wanted to know how we were feeling.'

'You mean whether you were feeling disoriented, hearing voices, feeling paranoid, that sort of thing?'

'No. They wanted to know if we felt anything, or could do anything, we hadn't felt or done before. You see, people had different reactions to the meds. We all got better mentally, and for the most part we stayed that way. But some people started to change in different ways; sometimes they'd get really good at things. I think this is what the doctors were interested in. And I know they made changes in the meds from time to time.'

'How could you tell that if the meds always came in the same black-and-yellow capsules?'

'Aftertaste-sometimes it would change. Also, my stomach could tell; sometimes the meds made me sick,