Victor Lavalle - The Devil in Silver

The staff members didn’t see it that way.

The nurse needed three tries to hit the vein in his forearm. The first two times she was just stabbing him. When she finally injected a big dose of Diazepam into Pepper’s bloodstream, the doorway of his room was crowded with male patients, watching.

As Pepper faded, he scanned the faces in the doorway. Was Dorry really there? Had she snuck down Northwest 2 so she could see?

The nurse and orderly watched Pepper. Both were huffing from the scuffle. They scowled at him. Pepper pulled at the restraints, but they held.

Now the nurse and orderly shooed the patients from the doorway. They flicked off the lights, left the room, and locked the door behind them.

“ Please ,” Pepper whimpered in the empty room.

PEPPER WOKE UP the next day. His ankles and wrists still bound. This was illegal. According to official guidelines, this should never be allowed. Restraints were acceptable for up to four consecutive hours, then the staff must release the patient. That’s the law. Absolutely. But where were the regulators? A question worth asking in so many fields.

When Pepper had to go to the bathroom he called out for a nurse until Miss Chris heard him and appeared with a bedpan; a plastic bowl with a top shaped like a toilet seat. In her other hand she had a hard plastic pillow the shape and color of a wedge of cheddar cheese. She entered the room and undid one of Pepper’s wrist straps then slid the wedge pillow behind Pepper’s back so he could sit upright. Then she pointed at his butt and said, “Lift.”

He raised his butt as high as it would go and Miss Chris slid his wrinkled pants down. She slipped the bedpan underneath him. She pulled the top sheet over him and as she left the room she said, “I’ll give you some time.”

The back of the bedpan rose higher than the front so it aimed his pelvis at an angle. This allowed all waste to remain in the bowl. Pepper had to shit so that’s what he did. Miss Chris didn’t return to the room for half an hour.

Pepper balanced on the bedpan while one wrist and both ankles were still attached to the bed frame. His body wracked into a bit of a corkscrew. The bedpan dug into his skin and the small of his back closed like a fist. The smell of his own shit rose to his nose. He breathed through his mouth.

Miss Chris wasn’t even the first one back in the room. It was Coffee, blue three-ring binder in hand. He walked in and saw Pepper’s forehead beading with sweat. Pepper waved Coffee closer with his free hand. For a moment Coffee looked stricken, concerned, but then his face dropped all expression. He entered the room and pulled a fresh pen from the plastic cup on his dresser. Then Coffee left.

“That’s cold, Joe!” Pepper shouted.

But a minute after that, Miss Chris returned to the room. “I hear you’re ready for me.”

Pepper said, “I was ready for you twenty minutes ago.”

Miss Chris said nothing, only reached into her pocket and brought out a packet of wet naps. She wiped Pepper’s privates clean and did it thoroughly.

When she was done, she slipped the bedpan from beneath him and set it on the floor. She pulled his pants back up, slipped the pillow from behind his back and, without asking permission, grabbed his free wrist and slipped it back into its restraint. He didn’t even try to stop her. She slid the wedge pillow under Pepper’s bed. This is when Pepper realized they meant to keep him tied up for a while longer. Why leave the pillow in the room, otherwise? He didn’t have any reaction to this. The stiff pain in his back took his attention.

At lunchtime Miss Chris returned with his food. She undid the strap on his wrist, slipped the pillow behind his back, held out his two pills and watched him swallow them. Then she set the tray down on his thighs, and from this position, Pepper had his meal. He ate everything. Even the cookie. It took a while because he only had one free hand.

Miss Chris returned and set his tray on the floor. Slipped the pillow from behind his back and under the bed. Without asking, she grabbed his wrist and pulled it back into its restraint. Pepper knew this step was coming this time, but that didn’t seem to help him. His arm was attached to his body, but it no longer seemed like his property.

Pepper remained in restraints for a second night and learned how to sleep in this position. The meds could still knock him out quickly, if he let them. If he didn’t fight the effects by being active. He complied with the general will of the psychiatric hospital: Shut up and don’t cause trouble.

Only once did he wake up. Around two in the morning.

A woman screamed on Northwest 3. Two women, actually.

Pepper looked to Coffee, to corroborate that the sound was real, but Coffee’s messy bed remained empty.

The women on Northwest 3 screamed until the staff huffed down their hallway, burst into their room. That must’ve been what Pepper and Coffee sounded like, weeks ago, when they were visited.

Better them than me , Pepper thought.

He was too demoralized to even feel ashamed of the sentiment.

BY THE THIRD morning, the restraints no longer seemed like a punishment. Pepper had just been forgotten. When a shift ended, the staff were supposed to chart any changes in the patients’ health or behavior, but no one was going to note that they’d kept Pepper tied to his bed for the whole eight-hour stint. (And they sure as hell weren’t going to note that he’d been pinned down for over forty-eight hours by now.) To avoid making notes about Pepper, the staff avoided him. They brought his meds and meals, and if he called for a bedpan, they obliged. But the rest of the time it was as if Pepper had disappeared. Lost in a fog. When staff members passed room 5, they averted their eyes. None of this was conscious. The staff didn’t know they were doing it. Besides, there was so much else to handle at New Hyde every day. Every hour. Like charting. Plus fifteen other patients with needs. Pepper didn’t slip through the cracks; he was stuffed behind a couch cushion.

And for the third night, Coffee seemed to be sleeping elsewhere, too. Where had Pepper’s roommate gone? Were patients allowed to change rooms? Or was Coffee so stubborn, he’d rather sleep in the television lounge than bunk with Pepper anymore? Pepper tilted his head backward and peeked at Coffee’s messy bed. He really missed that malt ball — headed bastard. Forget giving the guy a quarter; if Coffee had come in and just talked with Pepper for a while, Pepper would’ve given Coffee the credit card in his wallet. Coffee could even burn out the card’s five-hundred-dollar limit (secured) if he wanted! Just come in here. Pepper watched the room’s door and willed it to open.

His body had stopped communicating with him in the usual ways. Sometimes it sent an angry throb from the middle of the shoulders or the hips or the ankles. These felt like bursts of static. The small of his back had stopped feeling like a curled fist a day ago and now was just a pocket of cold fire burning through his waist.

He ignored all this and willed the room’s door to open.

Just come in. Just come in. Come in and talk with me .

Pepper was so preoccupied with this silent petition that he didn’t notice the ceiling tile in the far corner of the room when it buckled. The same tile that had fallen so many weeks ago. Pepper didn’t notice when it bent. When it cracked.

Only when the two halves of the tile smacked on the floor did Pepper look from the doorway to the corner. From the ceiling, a pair of feet dangled out. They were long and wide. They kicked faintly and slid down.