Cassia, p.3
CASSIA, page 3
“Get Derrick and J.R. to help you,” Bess added. “You can’t handle Lasker alone.”
“Yes, ma’am. Whatever you say ma’am. Happens all the time, ma’am.” He wandered off along the hallway, limping heavily.
“And stay out of that old elevator. It ain’t safe,” she called after him.
Bess, at least, was someone Clifford felt he understood completely.
Bitches like her were all the same.
CHAPTER FIVE
Lillian noticed Jack barely took his eyes off the vial of Kyronane he had brought from the side room of the lab. He held it aloft before them. She felt its tug too as it sloshed gently back and forth. There was a serene beauty to the shimmering drug, in its subtle hues, its purity.
“Dr. Benjamin Libet worked at the University of California, San Francisco,” Jack began. “Back in the seventies, he made a remarkable discovery. Whenever we choose to do something—even something as simple as just twitching our fingers—our nerves start firing before we’ve made the decision to do it.” He waggled his own fingers for emphasis.
“That must have been a mistake,” Lillian replied.
“No mistake.” Jack grinned. “Our nerves already carry impulses before our minds have made the decision to take action, our conscious mind, anyway.”
“The subconscious actually makes the decision?”
“Exactly.” Jack set the vial down and looked at her. “We assume our conscious mind makes our decisions, that we decide, but it’s the subconscious, or what some now call the cognitive unconscious. We claim the decisions as our own. We take the credit, but it’s not really us.”
She mulled this over. “Weird.”
“But what if the subconscious never informs the conscious mind of its decisions?” he asked her.
Lillian recalled the patients tested with the drug, like the elderly woman with schizotypal personality disorder. She had absentmindedly pushed buttons on the touchscreen. Happy face, sad face, angry face. The woman answered all questions correctly, then couldn’t remember doing it.
“So, in our empathy tests, the subconscious actually made the decision of which face to pick,” Lillian said, thinking aloud. “Somehow, Kyronane prevented the subconscious from telling the conscious mind. That’s why the patients didn’t recall pushing those buttons!”
“Precisely. And, remember, with some of those patients, we asked them what they were doing while they were pressing the touchscreen. They claimed it wasn’t them, that they weren’t doing anything at all.”
“Double weird.” Lillian took the vial and eyed the shimmering blue liquid with greater respect.
“So here’s what I think is going on,” Jack began. “The mind is just a set of neural networks, some on the conscious level, others on the subconscious level. There are even networks whose sole purpose is to emulate the thoughts of others. Mirror neuron networks.”
“We emulate other people’s minds within our own?”
“That’s how we often know what others are thinking. Without it, we’d all be lousy poker players.” He grinned. “Now, in patients who lack empathy, the drug helps them tap into subconscious neural networks that mediate empathy, helping them recognize emotions in others. That’s why they scored much better on the empathy tests. Yet, somehow, the drug also prevents the subconscious from informing the conscious mind of the choices it made.”
“It’s as if the two parts of the mind no longer talk to each other?”
“Exactly! You can see why the results are so important. We now have a way of turning off the conscious mind while keeping a person wide- awake. We can tap directly into the subconscious. Test it. Talk to it. Understand it. This may be the key to unraveling dissociative mental disorders. It might be the key to curing the lack of empathy in some, especially sociopaths and psychopaths. To make them more human.”
There was a loud thump.
Lillian spun to look through the two-way mirror. The side door into the observation room had been kicked open. A couple of burly orderlies—Derrick, a stout black man, and J.R., a well-built Latino, muscled a seething man into the room. Edmund Lewis Lasker, killer of young women.
#
Jack eyed Lasker from the safety of the lab as the man, twisting and churning in a straitjacket, was shoved into the observation room by the orderlies. Lasker’s thick hair was greasy and matted, his face snarled by a rough beard. He was fifty or so. Many patients wasted away at St. Vincent’s becoming weak and emaciated. Edmund Lasker had gotten stronger the eight years he’d been on the ward. He wasn’t any bigger than Jack, but he had strength. Mean strength. It was his eyes, though, that always drew attention, eyes with all the humanity of a rattlesnake ready to strike.
Jack wondered whether his victims had been transfixed by those eyes too, unable to move in the last instant when they might still have had a chance. To scream, to kick, to fight back, to do something. Lasker was bellowing, his words muffled by the two-way mirror’s reinforced glass.
Jack flipped a switch in the lab, and the intercom crackled to life.
“Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen … ,” Lasker frantically sputtered, as if fighting the word and embracing it, all at the same time, as if the word were a locomotive barreling down its track, unstoppable.
Once the orderlies got Lasker in the room, Bess followed them in, keeping a safe distance. Clifford Smolik entered last, limping heavily, and stayed by the door, the only exit.
Jack spoke into the intercom. “Clifford. I need Lasker’s file. Stat! It’s downstairs.” No doubt relieved to get away from Edmund Lasker, Clifford nodded and slipped from the observation room.
Alongside Jack, Lillian started the tripod videocamera in the lab. A large TV monitor flickered to life. It showed images captured by the camera of the orderlies struggling with Lasker. The time was superimposed on the display: 9:24 a.m.
Lasker now managed to get his shoulder into Derrick’s chest and slammed the big man against the two-way mirror. It resonated with a deep cavernous howl. As Derrick careened off the glass, the other orderly, J.R., drove Lasker hard into the window. Derrick dove in again, their combined weight crushing Lasker against the two-way mirror, his face smeared into it, spittle draining along the glass. His hot breath fogged the mirror, distorting his face into a grotesque mask, his outer image seemingly matching his inner tormented mind.
From inside the lab, Jack took a long look at Lasker, his face crushed against the window, his eyes wild with rage. Jack grabbed a syringe and drew a whole vial’s worth of Kyronane into it. Too often, when trying to inject a drug into an unruly patient, much was spilled, so he wanted plenty in reserve. He hurried from the lab and hustled along the main corridor to the observation room entrance, brandishing the syringe, its blue liquid sloshing inside. He passed Clifford who was headed in the opposite direction toward the main elevators.
“I’ll fetch that file for you straight away, Captain,” Clifford muttered.
Jack figured as soon as he was out of sight, Clifford would wander off for a smoke. Jack didn’t have time to hector him. “Stat, Clifford. Stat!”
Jack pushed his way into the observation room and took in the chaotic scene. Derrick now had Lasker pinned in a bear hug, but Lasker’s feet were free and flailing. J.R. was kicked hard in the face. Blood splattered from his nose. The two-way mirror reflected the melee.
Through it all, Lasker continued to sputter, faster and faster—“Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen.”—like a freight train gathering speed.
Derrick managed to get Lasker under control. Bess grabbed the collar of Lasker’s straitjacket. She tugged it down enough to expose the man’s thick neck veins. Jack hustled forward with the full syringe.
“Doctor, isn’t that way too much?” Bess asked.
“I’m not injecting all of it,” Jack hissed.
Jack injected just a couple CCs, then began to withdraw the needle.
Lasker lurched sideways, catching the plunger between the two of them. Jack watched, helpless, as the whole syringe was pumped into Lasker, four times the maximum safe dose. The fire left his eyes. His legs buckled. The orderlies muscled Lasker’s now limp body onto the restraint table. Bess untied the straitjacket to allow him to breathe better.
Jack stared at the syringe, its needle rust red from Lasker’s blood, its chamber empty.
#
Clifford lit a smoke and hopped on the old service elevator.
It hung a few feet above its landing, twitching slightly. He knew Jack Temple was expecting him to fetch the file from downstairs. Let the man wait. Seated, Clifford’s legs dangled above the elevator landing. He enjoyed the way the elevator bounced gently, like a mother bobbing a child on her knee. He made it bounce higher and higher. As he did, he took a deep drag of his cigarette and let the smoke probe his insides, letting it seek out the innocence deep within him, the child within. He bounced still higher.
With a scream of shredding gears, the metal cage plummeted. The lift mechanism’s sprocket teeth must have sheared away, Clifford realized. For a moment, he was in freefall, twisting in the air. Deliciously weightless. The elevator’s metal ceiling then slammed into his back, crushing him against the elevator landing. His head, arms and chest floundered inside the heavy cage. The ceiling dug hard into the small of his back, pinning him. He kicked wildly but was stuck. Fighting panic, he realized the only thing keeping the massive elevator from plummeting down the shaft was his own body, caught now between the elevator ceiling and the elevator landing, his body half in and half out of the elevator itself, the pain excruciating. The elevator jerked again, valiantly trying to ascend, then dropped heavily once more onto his back, digging deeper into him. Pain splintered his mind. His screams were joined by another. A nurse must have heard him and come running. Her shrill wail now drowned out his own.
#
Jack heard piercing cries. He tossed the empty syringe aside and sprinted from the observation room with Bess and the two orderlies close behind. They nearly ran into Lillian emerging from the adjacent lab. Jack reached the alcove as the old service elevator lurched up a half foot. It jerked rhythmically, its gears trying to catch, trying to hold the massive weight of the old lift, trying feebly to defy all that gravity.
The elevator dropped, pinning an injured man who was stuck there.
The man’s legs flailed on the tile floor, blood spurting from his back. It took Jack a moment to realize it was Clifford Smolik who was pinned by the elevator, his boots scraping wildly against the alcove tile, a cigarette calmly smoldering to one side. The elevator lurched upward again, this time higher, giving them a chance. Jack charged in, the orderlies at his side. They grabbed Clifford’s legs and tried to pull him away from the elevator.
A shrill scream of metal came from above. The last teeth of the elevator gears must have torn away, the massive elevator now in free fall. In that last horrifying instant, Jack saw that Clifford’s neck was even with the edge of the elevator landing, his head still inside the lift.
The hulking elevator, a thousand pounds of useless metal, thundered down the shaft, taking Clifford Smolik’s head and his life with it.
CHAPTER SIX
Gloom hunkered around the massive stone edifice of St. Vincent’s.
Jack eyed the late morning gray clouds and the few flicks of snow they offered. Only the lazily spinning blue lights of the ambulance parked amid the icy slush of the parking lot offered any color. The coroner, a humorless man who looked to Jack as if he were too frail for the job, jotted terse notes on his clipboard. The coroner’s assistants, two pale men, loaded the body in the ambulance. The Chief of Staff of St. Vincent’s—Dr. Victoria Fielding—waited nearby along with Lillian, Bess and a few of the orderlies. Fielding, in her sixties, was ginger-haired and British. She was often quite cheery and chatty, but she, like the others, had been shocked to hear of Clifford’s gruesome death in the old service elevator.
Jack tried to keep his mind on Clifford Smolik, to pay appropriate sympathy to the dead man. He hadn’t much liked Clifford. He figured no one had, not at St. Vincent’s anyway. The Admin office was having trouble finding next of kin to notify. Still, Jack couldn’t help but feel sorry for the man. He pitied him. Pity benefited no one. Yet he did pity Mr. Clifford Smolik. A brutal accident was no way for a man to go, friendless or not, to have life ripped away so violently, so unexpectedly.
A man ought to have a chance, at least a few minutes, if not days or months, to reckon with his life, to come to terms with it, good or bad. No one should die without time for reflection, Jack thought, and he was surprised he was waxing philosophical. He realized he was just trying to avoid thinking about Edmund Lasker and the mistake Jack had made. He hadn’t meant to inject anywhere near that much of the drug into the man. Lasker had lurched at just the wrong time. Still, why draw so much into the syringe to begin with? Four times the maximum safe dose. The decision now seemed as though it was not his own. His subconscious must have made the decision for him, Jack figured. Now, his conscious mind was trying to disavow it, trying to avoid responsibility for it. That was not me.
“One last thing, Dr. Temple,” the coroner called to him. “You said the accident was around nine-thirty this morning, right?”
“Nine twenty-eight. And twenty-five seconds,” one of the assistants called from the back of the ambulance. He had pulled Clifford’s arm from the body bag, revealing a crushed watch, stained with blood.
Jack spotted a lump the size of a football that lay beside the torso inside the bag. He figured it must be Clifford’s head and shuddered.
The coroner jotted the time of death. “I’ll be in touch if there’s anything else we need.”
Jack and the others waited as the coroner climbed into his sedan and pulled away. The ambulance followed as the coroner departed slowly through the wrought iron exit gate onto the rural road leading into town.
There were a few awkward moments of silence now among Jack and the others.
“Rounds at eleven o’clock,” Dr. Fielding finally announced, loud enough for all to hear, but to no one in particular.
As the others headed up the stone entry steps to the lobby, Fielding turned to Jack. “We have a new patient. A young Jane Doe brought in this morning. She’s in Receiving now, but she’ll be moved to your ward shortly.”
“Any details?” Jack asked.
“Suicide attempt. I don’t know anything more than that.”
Jack nodded curtly. “I’ll take a look at her.”
He hoped Fielding hadn’t seen his annoyance, nor Lillian, who waited nearby. The Jane Doe might be just another addict. There were too many patients like that. They were his responsibility for a day or two, kept in seclusion on the max security ward as a precaution, then shipped out. It bothered him that space on the ward was wasted on addicts and, worse, his time was wasted. There were too many real patients, like Edmund Lasker, with deep psychological disorders to research and, he hoped, cure. He had no time for another trust fund prima donna whose problems might be self-inflicted. He had no pity for them. He knew he should, but he didn’t.
Jack started up the steps to the lobby when Lillian spoke.
“People never truly die, do they?” she asked, her voice soft, barely above the rustling breeze. She tugged her thick wool coat close around her.
Jack sensed she wasn’t talking about Clifford Smolik. He knew Lillian once had a sister, one she never spoke of, but he didn’t want to pry.
“Lillian, I’m not the best person to talk with about spiritual matters. Maybe Dr. Fielding can arrange a counselor.” Jack turned again to head up the stone steps.
“That’s not what I meant,” Lillian said, blocking his path. “Those neural networks you spoke of. The mirror neuron networks? They emulate other people’s minds inside our own, right?”
He nodded, not understanding what she was getting at.
“Can you somehow make them just go away?” she asked but didn’t wait for an answer. She sprinted the last of the stone steps to the lobby.
She was an odd girl, Jack thought. Maybe he’d ask Wendy to chat with her. The two had met at the St. Vincent’s Year End Holiday party last month and seemed to hit it off. Perhaps Wendy could gently explore whatever troubled Lillian, the darkness that too often clouded her young eyes, that sometimes stole their sparkle away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A half hour later, Jack joined Dr. Fielding and other staff members on the top floor of the max security ward for rounds. The group included the usual reps from various treatment teams: a couple of staff psychiatrists, a psychologist, one or two social workers, and a couple of registered nurses. Lillian was the only staff assistant there. It disappointed Jack that the other young assistants employed by the hospital didn’t attend the rounds in the “penthouse.” They would come along once, then beg off. The ward’s sights, sounds and smells got to them quickly.
The group visited Edmund Lasker first. He was still strapped down in the observation room, unconscious. Jack took full responsibility for the mistake in Kyronane dosage and described the steps he would take to monitor the man, including a full chem panel taken every day for the next week. Nothing about the drug’s molecular chemistry suggested a large dose might cause liver damage, but he needed to know for sure.
None of the staff, though, seemed concerned. Not surprising, as most people had wanted Lasker executed years ago for the young women he’d tortured and killed, for the way he carved prayers in their flesh, or tried to, as they begged for their lives. Fielding, though, was concerned about the dosage “incident.” Jack promised he’d send a full report to her and to Ryker Pharmaceuticals.
Over the next hour, they visited each patient on the floor. Jack was responsible for many, so he did most of the presenting, reciting from memory the details of their conditions, their histories, the precise dosages of their meds. A few patients belonged to other psychiatrists, who presented those cases, often fumbling to recall the most basic details.
