54

As I fell forward, something hooked my throat.

A force tugged me back, and upward. The pressure increased. Something had my arm, a warm, bruising grip. Then something had my other arm, grasping, squeezing.

“I have him!” I recognized Barry’s gasp.

I was dragged back. Gravel scraped the heels of my shoes. Arms held me.

There were voices, commands. These were people—nothing supernatural. People! I wanted to laugh. Human strength was nothing. The grasp of three men was not enough to keep me there. I climbed to my feet encumbered by their weight, but barely slowed by it.

They could not stop me.

Barry fell away, the exertion having spent him, sending him sprawling over the stones at my feet. Two more orderlies joined the men who held me, and they tried to wrest me off my feet, back to the roof’s surface where they could pin me. I could escape them easily, I was certain, but Barry’s eyes made me hesitate.

His eyes beseeched me, and his hands clenched my pantlegs. “For God’s sake, Stratton, please!”

His voice switched off a current in me.

I relaxed, and with something like instinctive understanding, the men released me. I backed away. I fell to my knees.

More figures joined us, and they played the nervous beams of flashlights into my face, around the metal vents on the lunar wilderness of the roof.

I saw what Barry was, at that moment. Not simply the harried, work-wasted man. Not simply the man who could play a capable game of tennis. He believed in saving lives. Medicine was not a moneymaking career for him. He was a friend.

I gazed through the twitching pools of light cast by the flashlights. There was Rick, beside a vent that resembled the great head of a robot. Rick was watching, and I did not recognize the expression in his eyes.

All I could think was: Nona.

Had to help Nona.

The two men were talking. I sat in a chair, gazing at the floor. I was trapped. Outside the door was a very large orderly who kept looking in as though to make sure all was well. Barry had given me a shot, a syringe of what I imagined was Thorazine, in the muscle of my thigh. I could feel no effect from it, but perhaps that in itself was a result of the chemical. If the patient wonders if the drug is taking effect he is already calmer than he was.

Trapped. Can’t help Nona.

Gradually the drug made me feel thick-tongued, mildly concussed. I stood, and both men froze.

The best scheme was to try to seem completely peaceful. I would express regret at having caused such a fuss. I spoke as calmly as I could. I took a deep breath and managed to clear my head. “Don’t you see how ridiculous this is?”

“Sit down,” said Barry, “or I’ll have you put into restraints.”

This formal way of putting it made “restraints” sound old-fashioned and grim, something out of Bedlam and the most remote gulag.

There was a flash of anger inside me. I did my best to disguise it. “You’d be overreacting,” I said.

“Hardly.”

“There’s no reason for me to be here.”

Even now there was a measure of caution in the way Barry treated me. I was, after all, Stratton Fields. “Please sit down,” said Barry. “You make me very nervous.”

“I’m not even trembling. Look at my hands. Steady.” I looked over at Rick. “Have you ever seen steadier hands?”

“Maybe you should sit down, Strater,” said Rick, with iron in his voice. “You’re giving Barry a nervous breakdown.”

I sat once again, and knitted my fingers together. “Penning me up here will do no good. It’s not necessary. I suffered a fit of anguish.” I deliberately used a phrase I thought Barry would respond to.

It almost worked. I could see Barry revolving “anguish” in his mind. “A fit of suicidal anguish,” he corrected me. “And now you’re entirely recovered—is that what you want me to think?”

I lifted my eyebrows: Why not?

Barry made a tight little smile: We both knew “why not.”

We sat in an examination room. A long table was against one wall, and rumpled white paper covered it. There was a small desk, with a writing tablet taped into place, a spray of paper-wrapped thermometers and a tablet of prescription forms.

For a moment I could think only: I’ve lost Nona.

Barry looked very tired. It was an hour after our struggle on the roof. It occurred to me that Barry had been virtually living at the hospital. “I’m not just a physician in this case. We’re friends. Maybe that blurred my judgment.”

“This wasn’t hard to understand,” said Rick. “Stratton thought Nona was …” He fumbled for a word and couldn’t find one. “He couldn’t go on.”

“I can understand it.” Barry’s voice was breathy, torn. “But I can’t let it pass.”

“Release him to me. I’ll take care of him,” said Rick.

Barry shook his head. Someone happening upon us would have thought that Barry was the distraught mental patient, and that Rick and I were soothing counselors. “I’ve sent for someone who knows your family. I wouldn’t do it unless I thought Stratton was an emergency case. I admire your family. I admire you, Stratton. I’m scared, Rick. I think he’s really got problems.”

“He’s upset,” said Rick.

“There’s family history we have to consider.”

Rick made a snort. “What do you know about our family?”

“You have to face facts. The time has come.”

Rick laughed, a jeer. “Christ, Barry. Listen to yourself. Do you realize how stupid you sound? ‘Face facts.’ You sound like a small mind, a little greeting-card intellect. We’ve suffered year after year in the public eye. I have too much champagne or scrape a fender on Taylor Street it’s in the paper. In the gossip column, Barry.” His voice had hardened, and Rick was on his feet. “People like us are expected to live like public monuments. Elegant, civilized. We can’t have careers, like your kind of person. We have to say the right thing, stand in the right places, like famous, boring public buildings.”

His voice was gaining power. “‘Face facts.’ Your sort of person can go around uttering trite phrases like that while my brother—my brother, a man I love—is suffering from years of having to be a gentleman in a world of people made of plastic and stapled together with wise little phrases like ‘the time has come.’”

I had never heard my brother speak with such feeling, not since boyhood. “And you think that this hospital, which my family helped build with its own money, is going to be a prison for Stratton Fields? Do you think I’m going to stand around while you put my brother in ‘restraints’?” He said the last word with something of Barry’s nervous manner.

“How will you stop me?” said Barry.

“You ordinary people,” said Rick quietly.

“Are you going to get your family attorney on the phone? What’s he going to say? Do you think he’s going to talk me into letting Stratton go? I’m right, Rick. You’re wrong. Stratton’s my patient.”

“I won’t let it happen.” Rick’s voice was quiet and fierce. “I won’t let your kind of ordinary person abuse one of us. We’ve never allowed that. We never will.”

Barry was blanched, and Rick glanced at me and laughed unsteadily. “I’ve let my feelings show at last. That’s not our usual habit. I’ve given a little speech, haven’t I? Barry will think the two of us ought to stay here together. I wonder, do they actually have rubber mats on the walls, like in a gym. We can wrestle. You were always pretty good at wrestling.”

The frankness with which Rick had spoken could not be withdrawn, and I saw that Barry was struck by Rick’s manner. I recognized Rick’s anger. It was an anger we shared, but I had never realized how furious Rick was.

“It won’t work,” said Barry quietly. “I have a legal responsibility.” There was a weakness in his voice, however. He was not certain he could wage a battle against the forces of law and public opinion Rick and I could muster.

I could see Rick readying a response.

“I’ll stay,” I said.

Both men looked at me.

“I’ll stay—if that’s what Barry advises. He’s my doctor. Not that I agree with you, Barry. I agree with Rick, my eloquent brother. However—under protest—I will submit myself to whatever you have in mind. For a day or two.”

This bit of diplomacy quieted the two men, and I could sense Barry’s gratitude. Rick, however, met my eye with something like a merry glance of his own. And winked.

We would pretend to cooperate. We would placate Barry. After all, why damage an old friendship beyond repair? But in our own way, in a convenient moment, we would do exactly what we wanted to do.

It was hardly a surprise to see a nurse in the doorway. Rick’s voice must have carried through the door. “There’s someone here to see you, Dr. Montague.”

Barry opened his hand as if to say: We’re in the middle of a crisis here. He looked at me with a touch of weary humor, as if to say: I can’t get a moment’s peace.

But the nurse stepped inside and whispered into Barry’s ear.

“Good heavens!” said Barry. “Here?”

The nurse whispered something else, and Barry stood.