Brian Hodge - Prototype

She dropped to sit on the couch. That was the great thing about her chosen career — always a place to sleep. Adrienne shut her eyes and did some slow, deep breathing, let the day and tonight’s shift ease out of her one lungful at a time. Directly across the office, centered between packed bookshelves, she kept hung a large square print of a landscape from early American impressionism, Willard Metcalf’s The White Veil . She regarded it as mildly hypnotic, so serene she could nearly hear the whisper of its falling snow. It was easy to lose herself in the painting every time, wander down its blanketed hillsides to the valley below, and even the bleakness of its bare trees seemed softened beneath a milky gray sky. Such a glaring contrast to the stark desert landscape that surrounded her waking world, and she supposed that was a large part of its appeal. Perhaps she was being quietly obstinate.

Adrienne reached over the couch and took down a Navajo blanket from the wall clips that held it in place. Off with the light, and she curled herself on the couch. Reached behind her head to unbind the straight blond hair she kept pulled back while on duty, and let it fall to just above her shoulders.

Beneath the blanket, she held her gaze across the office to the painting, pale luminescence in the office gloom. Let it sink in, be the last thing she saw before sleep, and perhaps she would dream of snow. The virgin autumn of late September was still plenty warm here, but winter was on its way, and still she would miss the winters of the north. Desert winters were never satisfying, in the schema of the birth-growth-death-rebirth cycle of the seasons.

She slept, and dreamed instead of ice, and factories where straggling drones stoked desperate, feeble fires until the last embers died, and then the drones fell, until they too lay frozen.

Buzzing, persistent and harsh enough to pierce sleep: her phone. Adrienne pushed aside the blanket and took several reeling steps to her desk and answered, barely coherent.

“Doctor Rand?”

“Mm. Yes.” Blinking, widening her eyes, alternately; focus had to be somewhere.

“This is Beth Weatherford, down on five. You wanted to be notified as soon as your John Doe from last night came around?”

“Right, right, right…” Adrienne cleared her throat; could not yet make sense of her clock. “What time is it?”

“It’s about seven-fifteen.”

“What kind of emotional state is he in this morning?”

“Well, he’s… quite calm, really. He’s very lucid and aware.”

Interesting. Adrienne thanked her, said she’d be down in a few minutes, asked to have an orderly make sure there was a chair in the room. Even before the phone was cradled she was reaching for the small curved combs she used to hold her hair back. She kicked into her shoes, and while she never much liked the white coat, better that than it being so obvious she had slept in her clothes.

Down on five, Adrienne smiled briefly at the nurse who had buzzed her from the duty station, clicked a brisk walk down the hall. While some found Ward Five a nightmare zone, rarely did it bother her. It took a special breed to work here, amid the crises and breathing cautionary tales of lives in implosion. The schedule of the outside world and the pulse of circadian rhythms meant nothing here. Rooms might rebound with despairing moans and nonsensical conversations at any hour of the day.

Room 532. She knocked, entered. Wished, for a moment, that she’d thought to hunt for the breath spray somewhere in her desk drawer. Her mouth tasted stale.

Room 532, and its sole occupant… she found them both eerily calm, as if they belonged on another floor entirely. Certainly, the man’s behavior and countenance were polar opposites of what they had been last night.

“Another new face,” he said.

She smiled, hoped it came across as disarming. “That’s odd. It looked like the same old thing to me this morning.”

A bit lame, as wit went, but at least he didn’t roll his eyes. Adrienne contended that, just as the first crucial five years of a child’s life could set the tone for the remainder, the first several minutes of exchange between patient and therapist could determine everything to follow. Even minor missteps could blaze trails along terribly wrong paths.

She pulled the chair over from the wall, near the bed. Best to get to the same eye-level as soon as possible. Nobody liked dealing with someone towering over him the entire time. A tape recorder might be intimidating this soon, as well, and anyway, she didn’t plan on covering ground any more complicated than what could be served later by memory and quick jottings in the notebook she slipped from her pocket.

“How are you feeling this morning?”

He shrugged with a tilt of his head and a constricted twitch of his shoulder. Beneath the restraints criss-crossing the bed, it was about all the body language he could manage.

“My name’s Adrienne Rand,” she said. “I’m a psychologist on staff here. I was on duty last night when you were brought in.”

He nodded, almost matter-of-factly, gave a small sigh. Rolled his head away for a moment, to stare with flat eyes toward the window. Beyond the chain-link window guard and spots on the glass, there was nothing to see, nothing but brightening sky.

Lying there, calm, he looked smaller than he had when first brought in last night. Certainly too small to have inflicted the kind of damage he had on three assailants, and then require two police officers to subdue him. Average height and build, skinny hipped; she wondered how well he’d been eating lately. Black hair of moderate length, wildly unkempt now, with days’ worth of beard stubble. His head and bruised, sunburned face were characterized by a curiously sleek appearance, with both contoured cheekbones and jawline that swept around to either side of his skull. It seemed a face engineered to lean into the wind, to cut resistance, to slice ahead. Adrienne found a strange beauty in it. As faces went, this one was fascinating. Last night’s figurative assessment as she watched him sleep still held: His could be the seductive face of an angel or a devil. A single stroke by the artist — or a vandal — could tilt it in favor of one or the other.

“Do you know where you are?”

“If it’s Friday, then this must be Tempe. Or didn’t you have geography in mind?” His voice was low and even. Not inviting, but neither was it hostile. He tilted his head toward the meshed windows. “If those are any indication, I’d say I’m in a psycho ward. How’m I doing so far?”

Day, city, and facility. She nodded. “Three for three.” She took a deep breath, tried to minimize the swell in her chest on the inhale. The spotlight was definitely on; without being too obvious about it, this man was sizing her up… her every move, every word. And if he’d had a way of picking through her every thought, no doubt he would be exercising that option, too.

“How much do you remember about last night, about why you were brought here? Do you have any recollection at all?”

Hooded gray eyes, lids drifting shut. For a moment they clenched as fiercely and tightly as fists. “I didn’t finally kill someone, did I?”

Finally? He remembers something, definitely. “No, you didn’t kill anyone.”

He relaxed. “Well that’s good news.”

“How much do you remember about last night?”

“I remember losing my temper, but I’d say I was provoked. And I still never got to eat my tacos.” He laughed, weakly. “Once the police got me here, hauled me out of the car… gets kind of fuzzy. I don’t remember you.” Suddenly those watchful gray eyes flashed upon the door. “Have I been charged with anything?”