The maximum-security Hatch Forensic Institute, located at the rear of the Three Rivers State Hospital grounds, is a squat concrete-and-steel building surrounded by chain link and razor wire. Hatch houses most of the front-page boys: the vet from Mystic who mistook his family for the Viet Cong, the kid at Wesleyan who brought his .22-caliber semiautomatic to class. But Hatch is also the end of the line for a lot of less sexy psychos: drug fry-outs, shopping mall nuisances, manic-depressive alcoholics—your basic disturbing-the-peace-type wackos with no place else to go. Occasionally, someone actually gets better down at Hatch. Gets released. But that tends to happen in spite of things. For most of the patients there, the door swings only one way, which is just fine with the town of Three Rivers. Most people around here are less interested in rehabilitation than they are in warehousing the spooks and kooks—keeping the Boston Strangler and the Son of Sam off the streets, keeping Norman Bates locked up at the Hatch Hotel.
There’s never been an escape from Hatch. Circular in shape, the place is divided into four independent units, each with its own security station. The outside wall of the building is windowless; the inside windows look onto a small, circular courtyard—the hub of the wheel, so to speak. There are some picnic tables out there and a rusted basketball hoop that pretty much gets ignored because most of the guys are fat and sluggish from Thorazine. Unit by unit, twice a day, patients whose submissiveness has won them the privilege can enter that concrete-floored courtyard for a twenty-minute hit of fresh air and nicotine.
I’ve heard motormouths on the radio and on the barstool next to me complain that the insanity plea is one of the things that’s wrong with this country—that we let rapists and killers get away with murder by letting them hide out at “country clubs” like Hatch. Well, guess again, folks. I’ve been there. Walked out with the stink of the place still on my clothes and my brother’s screaming still in my ears. If there’s a hell worse than Hatch Forensic Institute, then God must be one vengeful motherfucker.
The cruiser’s blue lights winked on and off. The cop who was driving us stopped at Hatch’s front gate and handed a guard some paperwork. “It was a sacrifice!” Thomas kept shouting. “It was a sacrifice!”
I turned around and told him to take it easy—that I’d get the whole thing straightened out and get him back to Settle that night. But I only half-believed that myself. The steel grid between the front and back seats of the cruiser—between my brother and me—was beginning to feel like a preview of coming attractions.
There was a whirring sound. The gate glided open and clunked to a stop, and the cruiser eased past, over a speed bump, and around the building. We came to a halt at a double door marked “Patients Receiving—Unit Two.” A red light above the door flashed. We sat and waited with the motor running.
“What law did I break?” my brother blurted out. “Who did I hurt?”
The answer to the last question was as obvious as the bandaged stump on the end of his arm, but how did that make him a criminal? It had to be a mistake, I told myself. It made no sense. But as I sat there staring ahead at those double doors, that winking light, I felt a yank in my chest—one of those fight-or-flight rushes. “Hey,” I said, turning to the cop next to me. “What’s your name?”
The question surprised him. “My name? Mercado. Sergeant Mercado.”
“All right, look, Mercado. Just do me a favor, will you? Just bring him over to the Settle Building for five minutes. I know the night people there. They can call his doctor and get this sorted out. Because this whole thing is a big mistake.”
“You’re tampering with an agreement between God and me!” Thomas warned. “The Lord God Almighty has commanded me to prevent an unholy war!”
Mercado looked straight ahead. “No can do,” the cop in back answered for him. “They’d have our ass in a sling if we ignored signed orders.”
“No, they won’t,” I said. I turned around to look at the guy. His face and Thomas’s were crisscrossed by that metal screen that divided us. “They’ll be glad that you straightened out the mix-up before any shit hit the fan. They’ll be grateful.”
“I run the news rack at Settle!” Thomas pleaded. “I run the coffee cart!”
“Hey, I can sympathize with you,” Mercado told me. “I got brothers myself. But the thing is, we can’t just—”
“No, don’t!” I said, interrupting him. I was wired, pumped on sheer desperation. “Just think about it for a second before you let some knee-jerk police response come out of your mouth. All I’m asking you to do is be a human being instead of a cop for five minutes, okay? All I’m asking is that you throw this thing in reverse and drive—what?—one-sixteenth of a mile over to Settle. You don’t even have to leave the hospital grounds, Mercado. One-sixteenth of a mile, man. Five minutes, tops. That’s all I’m asking.”
Mercado looked in the rearview mirror. “What do you think, Al? We could just—”
“Uh-uh,” from the backseat. “No way, José. No can do.”
“Then you get up tomorrow morning at five-thirty and start the coffee!” Thomas shouted. “You make sure there’s enough change in the change box and that nobody buys Mrs. Semel’s Drake’s cakes. You make sure none of the other doctors get Dr. Ahamed’s Wall Street Journal !”
Mercado and I looked at each other. “You got brothers?” I said. “How many?”
“Four.”
“Come on, man,” I whispered. “Follow your gut. Five minutes.”
Reflected in the flashing light over the “Patients Receiving” door, Mercado’s face turned red, not red, red. I saw the hesitation in his eyes, the struggle. That’s when I blew it. I reached over to touch his arm—make some human contact with the guy—and he freaked. Batted my hand away so hard that it hit the windshield.
“Keep your hands to yourself!” he said. “Understand?” His own hand was down at his holster, a shield over the butt of his gun. “That’s the last thing you want to do is grab an armed officer. Understand? You could end up real sorry next time you did that.”
I looked out the side window. Took a deep breath. Gave it up.
A uniformed guard unlocked the double doors and motioned us inside. Mercado got out and opened the back door, easing my brother out of the cruiser. “Watch your head now,” he said. “Watch your head.”
A part of me wanted to stay right there inside that cruiser: to secure my status as the uncrazy twin, the one who wasn’t going into that place. I’m not talking about major abandonment, just five seconds’ worth of hesitation. But I admit it. I hesitated.
“Here,” the older cop said when I got out of the cruiser. He handed me Thomas’s duffel bag. I was already holding his Bible.
Thomas stood, hunched over a little from his restraints. He told the older cop he had to go to the bathroom. Was there a bathroom inside that he could use? He’d had to go most of the way there.
His leg chains rattled with each small step he took toward the building. I had a bitter taste in my mouth and a dull, thudding feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was like I’d swallowed those chains or something. What was going on? Why were they doing this?
The guard let my brother and the two escorts through but stopped me at the door. “Who are you?” he said. He was one of those short, gung-ho types. Late twenties, early thirties, maybe. Robocop.
“I’m his brother,” I said. As if he couldn’t tell. As if he couldn’t see that by looking at our faces.
He and Mercado exchanged a look. “Mr. Birdsey was visiting the patient when we arrived for the escort,” Mercado said. “The patient requested that he accompany us.”
“We thought it might make him less combative,” the other cop added.
“He’s not combative,” I said. “He’s never hurt anyone in his whole life.”
Robocop looked down at my brother’s stump, then back at me.
“Look, this is just a screwup by some secretary or something,” I said. “He should be over at Settle. He’s in the outpatient program over there. He always checks in at Settle after an episode. One call to his doctor and we can get this whole thing straightened out. But he’s not combative. God, he’s about as combative as Bambi.”
“I run the coffee cart at Settle,” Thomas added. “They need me there first thing in the morning.”
Robocop told me I could enter the building and accompany my brother during the initial part of the admitting process, but that I couldn’t go with him into the ward itself—couldn’t go any further than the security station. Any calls to the doctor would have to be made in the morning.
Whatever you say, asshole, I thought to myself. A foot in the door was some kind of progress. Once I got inside, I could talk to somebody on the medical staff.
Robocop led us down a short corridor: halogen lighting, yellow cinder-block walls. Hatch has a singular smell to it—nothing like the stink over at Settle. Something else. Something sweet and putrid: bad food at the back of the refrigerator. Human rot, I guess. Human decay.
Another guard joined us when we got to the metal detector. He had a gut hanging off the front of him, a puffy pink alcoholic face. He reeked of cologne.
The police escorts unlocked Thomas’s restraints and took them off. Thomas mentioned again that he had to go to the toilet. Mercado frisked him and walked him through the metal detector.
“Did you hear him?” I said. “He has to take a leak.”
“What’s this?” the fat guard asked me. His chin pointed down at the stuff I was carrying: Thomas’s duffel bag, his Bible.
“His personal stuff,” I said.
“Like what?”
“Like personal stuff: wallet, toothpaste, comb.”
Fatso took the bag and the Bible away from me. Unzipped the bag and poked around. He was one of those guys who breathes through his nose so that you can hear what work every single breath is for him. He dumped everything out onto a conveyor belt: foot powder, a Bic pen, a tin button that said “Jesus Is the Reason for the Season,” a pair of wingtip shoes with a clip-on necktie coiled inside one of them. It was pathetic: Thomas’s shitty life laid out there like a bunch of groceries at Stop & Shop. Fatso flipped a switch and the belt rolled. Everything passed through one of those X-ray machines like they have at the airport. Big surprise: no hidden daggers, no pipe bomb sewn into the duffel bag lining.
“You’re going to have to be padded, too,” Robocop told me.
“Padded? What’s padded?” I was thinking padded cell.
“Frisked,” Mercado said.
“Frisk me then,” I told Mercado, leaning myself against the wall the way they’d made my brother do it. “Go ahead. Be my guest.”
But it was Robocop who did it: a little rougher, a little more thorough in the privacy zones than he needed to be—just in case I didn’t get who was the big man around there. I would have said something to him—asked him while he was feeling me up if he enjoyed his work—but I was in no position to throw darts. Not yet. Not if I was going to get Thomas out of there that night.
Just when I thought he was done humiliating me, Robocop had me walk through the metal detector. The thing beeped and whistled and he had me fork over my key ring. I passed the second time, but Robocop told me I’d have to pick up my keys on my way out of there because of the little jackknife I keep on the ring. Like I was going to sneak in there and jackknife all the inmates free. What bullshit.
Robocop told the escorts to put the cuffs back on my brother.
“Why’s that necessary?” I said. “I’m telling you, you’re wasting your time. He’s taking a U-turn out of here as soon as we get ahold of his doctor. Why does he have to be restrained?”
He looked at me without answering, his face as blank as the cinder block. Fatso told Thomas his personal items would be cataloged and stored at the security station. That he’d get state issue for his toiletries. That all reading material would have to be approved first by his doctor or the unit lead.
“Where’s my Bible!” Thomas said. “I want my Bible.”
“All reading material has to be approved first by his doctor or the unit lead,” Fatso repeated.
“He can’t have a Bible?” I said. “You guys even have to approve the goddamned word of God?”
Robocop came forward, close enough so that I could see a chicken pox scar, smell the Juicy Fruit in his mouth. “This is a maximum-security facility, sir,” he said. “There are regulations and procedures. If you have a problem with that, then let us know so you can wait outside instead of accompanying your brother through the rest of the preliminary admit.”
We glared at each other for a couple of seconds. “I’m not saying I have a problem with it,” I said. “All I’m saying is that it’s a waste of time admitting him. Because as soon as you talk to his doctor, he’s going to tell you this is a mistake.”
“This way, sir,” he said.
The security station was around the next corner. Behind the tinted window glass were two more guards, a bank of black-and-white security TVs, an open cabinet with rows of keys and cuffs and Texas belts. Next to the station on one side was a conference room and a couple of offices. On the other side was a john, a utility closet, more offices. The hallway on both sides was blocked off by double-locked steel doors.
“You got a phone in there?” I asked, nodding toward the security station. “Just tell one of those guys to call Dr. Willis Ehlers and see if Thomas Birdsey is supposed to be here. Call him at home. You guys must have a directory for the doctors, right? Go ahead. He won’t mind.”
“Dr. Ehlers doesn’t treat patients at Hatch,” Fatso said. “He’s not on staff here.”
“Fine! That’s my point!” I said. “His patients are over at Settle. Which is exactly where my brother belongs.”
Robocop leafed through some paperwork clipped to a clipboard. “According to this, he’s been reassigned,” he said.
“What do you mean, ‘reassigned’? Reassigned by who?”
“I’m not free to give you that information, sir,” he said. “Either his new doctor will notify you or you can make an appointment and talk to the social worker assigned to his case.”
“Excuse me,” Thomas said, addressing Robocop. “Do you happen to know a Dr. Ahamed, the assistant superintendent of this entire hospital complex?”
“Thomas,” I said, “just keep your shirt on. Let me handle this. All right?”
“Dr. Ahamed?” Robocop said. “Yeah, I know who he is. Why?”
Thomas’s chin was thrust forward. His whole body was shaking. “Because you’re going to be in big trouble tomorrow morning if Dr. Ahamed goes to his office and doesn’t find his Wall Street Journal and his corn muffin!” He was shouting now, shuddering. “I wouldn’t want to be you when he finds out who’s holding me here against my will!”
Fatso waved “come here” fingers at one of the guards behind the glass.
“Take it easy, take it easy,” I told Thomas. I reminded him that he’d lost track of time—that he’d been away from the coffee cart for five days already while he was recuperating at Shanley. “And anyway, I’m sure those two helpers of yours are holding down the fort,” I said. “What are their names again? I forget.”
“Bruce and Barbara!” he shouted. “You think they can handle things without me there! That’s a laugh!” Only he wasn’t laughing; he was sobbing.
“Everything copacetic out here?” the third guard asked, approaching us.
“Jesus! Jesus!” my brother cried. Fear flashed on his face, and then there was a splattering sound on the concrete floor. Thomas was pissing himself.
Fatso went to call maintenance.
“I’m sorry, Dominick,” Thomas said. “I couldn’t help it.” A dark, wet stain covered the front of his pants.
I told him it was okay. That it happens. That it was no big deal. Then I turned to Robocop. “Here’s the bottom line,” I said. “I’m not leaving until I get him out of here and he’s getting out tonight, understand? So someone had better call the goddamned doctor.”
Behind the window, Fatso spoke into a phone. “Call my brother’s doctor!” I shouted in at him. “Dr. Willis Ehlers! Please!”
Robocop told me to keep my voice down. “The doctors are only called in after hours when there’s an emergency,” he told me.
“This is an emergency,” I said, waving my thumb in the direction of my brother. “This is an emergency in the making. The poor guy isn’t even allowed to take a leak and you think I’m leaving him here with you fucking Nazis?”
I saw the muscles in his jaw tighten. Saw him look at the other guard. “Sir,” the new guard said, “the patients’ relatives don’t determine what constitutes an emergency. The medical staff does.”
I told myself to calm down—that busting Robocop’s jaw was a luxury my brother couldn’t afford. I’d probably already sabotaged things with that Nazi comment. “All right,” I said. “Let me just speak to a nurse then. There’s got to be a head nurse on duty, right?”
“The nurses at Hatch have no contact with family members, sir,” the other guard said. “It’s policy. If you have questions or concerns, you should call tomorrow and make an appointment with the social worker assigned to your brother’s case.”
“They just called from the unit,” Fatso said. “We ready to rock ‘n’ roll?”
Robocop nodded. “Tell them to come and get him. We can finish admittance down in the ward. I’ve about had it with the Doublemint Twin here.”
Fatso talked into his radio. Thomas started mumbling scripture.
“Mr. Birdsey, he’s going to be admitted to the unit now,” Mercado said. “Come on. We have to go.”
“But nobody’s listening!” I said. “This whole thing is just some administrative screwup or something. He belongs at Settle.”
“Look, bud,” the older escort said. “He may belong at Settle, but he sure in hell isn’t going there tonight. Maybe that’s where he’s going first thing tomorrow, but I can guarantee you that tonight he’s staying here.”
“Come on, Mr. Birdsey,” Mercado said to me. “You can’t do anything until tomorrow. We’ll give you a ride back to Shanley. You parked in the big lot or the one in back?”
“I’m not going anywhere until we get this thing straightened out!” I said. When he grabbed me by the arm, I yanked it back.
“They’re nailing me to the cross!” Thomas shouted.
I ran over to Robocop. “How about that social worker? Is that social worker here?” My heart was pumping like a jackhammer.
“No, sir, she is not here. Only the unit nurses and the FTSs are here after regular hours.”
“What are they? What are the FTSs?”
“Forensic Treatment Specialists,” Fatso answered. He winked at the older of the two escorts. “When I started working here, we called ’em ‘bughouse aides.’ Nowadays everybody’s got a fancy title. Looky here, for instance.”
He pointed to a guy approaching with a bucket and mop. I knew him: Ralph Drinkwater. “Ralphie here used to be a janitor. Now we call him an ‘operations engineer.’ Right, Ralphie?” Ignoring him, as impassive as ever, Ralph began to mop up my brother’s urine.
The escort’s chuckle put Fatso in a good mood. “She is here tonight, though, Steve,” he told Robocop. “She came in to catch up on some of her paperwork. I checked her in when you were on dinner break.”
“Who?” I said. “Who’s here?”
“Ms. Sheffer.”
“Who’s that? Who’s Ms. Sheffer?”
“The social worker for Unit Two.”
“The social worker’s here? Let me speak to her then!”
“You can’t,” Robocop said. “It’s after hours. You’ll have to make an appointment like everyone else.”
The steel doors opened. Two aides approached. This was getting more and more surreal. “Hey, how you doing, Ralph?” I said. “Listen, talk some sense into . . .” He looked right through me.
“Come on, Mr. Birdsey,” Mercado said. “We’ve got to get going.”
“Then go then!” I told him. “I’m not going anywhere until I see the social worker!” I turned toward the aides. “Don’t touch him! You just . . . just don’t even touch him!”
An office door opened; a head poked out from behind it. “Does somebody need to see me?”
“Not tonight!” Robocop shouted. “He can make an appointment. It can wait.”
“Is that the social worker? Are you the social worker who—”
“Tomorrow!” Robocop shouted at her. “Close your door! We got a situation here!”
“Dominick!” Thomas screamed. The aides had taken hold of him, one guy on each side.
“Get your hands off of him!” I shouted. Robocop and Mercado and his partner held me back. Fatso and the other guard came running. “Get your fucking hands off of me, you fucking Nazi goons!” I bucked and struggled to get free.
“Close that door!” Robocop yelled.
In the middle of the scuffle, I saw the social worker’s door close. Saw the aides unlock the steel doors and hustle my brother into the ward. “They’re nailing me to the cross, Dominick!” Thomas screamed. “They’re nailing me to the cross!”
The doors slammed shut behind them.
Robocop wrenched my arm back, slammed me up against the wall. “This one’s crazier than the other one, for Christ’s sake,” he said.
“Take your motherfucking hands off me!” I screamed, spitting and straining and trying to pull away. Mercado and Fatso and the other escort held me back. The third guard came running out from behind the glass office. Robocop leaned his knee in toward my groin—no pain, just the promise of it. Just the pressure.
“You get off on this or something?” I said. “Feeling guys up while you’re frisking them? Give you a cheap thrill, does it?”
He kneed me.
One hard, quick jerk that dropped me to the floor. I think I blacked out for a minute, and when I came back, it took me a while to realize that the moaning and heaving I heard was coming from me, not my brother. The pain is something I can’t even try to describe.
That’s when I knew what Thomas was up against. That’s when I felt it for myself: the spike against flesh, the hammer’s piercing thud.