From his third-floor office Dr Beale could see the checkered barrier at the main gates where a young man in military uniform climbed into the back of the hospital Jeep. Below the window some of the male patients not confined to their cells were tending the lawns and flower beds under the watchful eye of an orderly.
From where he stood Beale was party to both sides of the ten-foot wall that separated the men from the women and he cast his eye across the grounds then looked back at the Jeep once more. At his desk he picked up a fountain pen and scribbled a couple of notes on a fold-over yellow pad, then screwed the top back on the pen and considered the telephone as if he was waiting for it to ring. After a moment he got to his feet and went back to the window. This time he concentrated on the far side of the wall where some of the female patients were gathered.
On his desk the phone rang and for a moment Beale seemed to study the little red light where it flashed at the base.
‘Yes, Alice?’ he said as he picked up. ‘What is it?’
‘Dr Beale, there’s a man downstairs to see you. He’s says his name is Isaac Bowen.’
The doctor seemed to hesitate. ‘All right,’ he said carefully. ‘Have one of the orderlies bring him up.’
He waited now, standing behind the desk with a little perspiration marking his brow and his eyes wrinkled at the corners. A few minutes later there was a knock on the door and orderly Briers came in wearing a short, white housecoat and green T-shirt: a big man, he was balding and heavyset with tufts of gray hair lifting from the neck of his T-shirt.
‘Doctor,’ he said. ‘Isaac Bowen is here to see you.’ He stepped to one side and the young man in uniform came in. Still the orderly hovered, but Beale was intent on his visitor. Blue-gray eyes, his hair slicked back from his forehead, the dress uniform he was wearing looked a little care worn but it was neatly pressed and there was shine to the toes of his shoes. For a moment Beale studied him and the young man looked back with neither of them saying anything, then Beale indicated for Briers to close the door.
When he was gone the young man approached the desk. ‘Thank you for seeing me, sir,’ he said. ‘My name is Isaac Bowen and I’m looking for my brother. I think he might be a patient here.’
Beale indicated an empty chair across the desk. ‘Take a seat, Mr Bowen. You look as if you’ve come a long way.’
‘I have, sir. From Vietnam.’ Wearily Isaac sat down. ‘My final tour. That’s three now and I guess they figure I’m done.’ Spreading a palm he gestured. ‘Did Ishmael tell you about me? My brother, sir, Ishmael Bowen. He doesn’t know I’m back yet. I wanted to surprise him before I go home to my dad.’
‘I see,’ Beale said.
‘Dad doesn’t know how I’m done over there yet. I was going to surprise him but only after I visited with Ish. The fact is our ship docked in San Francisco and the army flew me to Houston. I spoke to my dad on the phone he told me Ish had been moved to a place called Trinity. I never got to see him the last time – he was still in the hospital in Houston – and I didn’t know about this other one, not till I spoke to Dad.’ His eyes were pinched, a puzzled expression on his face. ‘I had no idea there’d been a fire. I went down there and found the hospital in the woods like Dad said, but it was deserted, all burned up. I spoke to the caretaker, an old Mexican guy who told me the whole place went up and everyone had to be evacuated.’
‘Yes, I’m afraid that’s pretty much how it was.’ Beale looked a little tentative. ‘It was six weeks ago now. The fire took hold very quickly though nobody seems to know what set it off.’
‘What happened to the patients?’ Isaac asked. ‘The caretaker said they were moved to other hospitals. He told me some of them came here and I ought to talk to you. He said that if Ish wasn’t here you’d be able to tell me where they sent him.’ He looked up, a hopeful expression on his face. ‘Is he here, sir? I’d really like to see him.’
Beale seemed to think about that. Picking up his pen he made another note then replaced the pen on the desk. ‘Your last tour, you say? You’re home for good now then, are you?’
Isaac nodded. ‘Yes, sir. Home for good, though if truth be told I wasn’t sure I was going to make it.’ He let a little air escape his cheeks. ‘I guess it’s always like that for someone who knows they’re going home. They tell you ahead of time and it’s all you can think about and yet you’re still out on patrol.’ Hunching a little forward in the seat he gestured. ‘Everybody tells it the same. As the time gets close you just get more and more nervous. It’s on your mind, how if you step in the wrong place or duck the wrong way …’ He broke off for a second then he said, ‘That last fire-fight … Just after they said I was coming home we were on the march – six hundred of us on the road about sixty miles north of Saigon. I kept telling myself it would be all right, how my number wasn’t up and I was going to stay lucky. But then we came to this clearing and there they were there, waiting where we couldn’t see them. Hidden in the sawgrass, they let go with everything they had, and all I could think about was avoiding bullets, leave alone firing back.’
‘Sawgrass?’ the doctor said.
Isaac nodded. ‘Thick as a wheat field, reaches right to your waist.’ Again he looked at the floor. ‘I was walking the point, the tree line just ahead, and we could see nothing for all that grass. I guess they let go with heavy machine guns, ripped into us like you wouldn’t believe. Thirty-one dead and a hundred and twenty-three wounded. We killed a hundred and seventy Vietcong, dug in real deep and waiting for back-up, and finally they sent in air support. Anyway,’ he said, looking up, ‘that’s all done with now, thank God. Ishmael, sir, my brother: I really need to see him.’
Beale’s expression was fixed. ‘I’m afraid you can’t. He’s not here. The fact is not all the patients at Trinity were accounted for, and I’m sorry, but one of those was Ishmael.’ He watched as Isaac’s features stiffened. ‘We’re missing seven patients in all right now and until we have the final report we won’t know how many bodies were actually recovered. It’s not an easy identification process because with the way that fire took hold, the intensity of the heat, there wasn’t much left.’ He was staring intently across the desk. ‘I’m sorry, but your father will know more. I imagine the investigators have been touch.’
He watched from the window as the Jeep took Isaac back to the gates. Brow a little sweaty, he plucked a key from the top drawer of his desk. On the far wall a picture of Sigmund Freud dominated the office. Taking it down Beale revealed an inset safe. Two shelves holding various reels of tape in cardboard boxes, they were labelled carefully and on top of them was an address book.
Back at his desk Beale flattened a page with the heel of his hand then picked up the phone. He hesitated a moment before dialling. Sitting back in the chair he waited for the phone to be answered. It rang and rang but nobody picked up and no answer machine cut in. Beale hung up, sought another page in the address book and dialled another number.
Once more he waited; three rings, four, five. Then the call was answered and he hunched a little closer to his desk.
‘Hello,’ he said. ‘This is Dr Beale. I’m sorry to call you again so soon and I know you asked me not to. I thought you should know that he just showed up here at the hospital.’ Listening for a moment he nodded. ‘Bellevue in Shreveport, yes. He told me he’d been to Trinity and he’s on his way to his father’s house. Look, there’s no need to worry. I’m going to go up there myself.’ Again he listened and again he nodded. ‘Yes, she is. One of the ones we brought here. Look, I know I said I wouldn’t call, but I figured you ought to be aware. It will be fine though, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m telling you just in case.’
For a while after he’d put the phone down he sat with his hand on the receiver where it rested back in the cradle. He looked long and hard at the notes he had made, then collected the pad of paper and his pen and placed them in his briefcase. Replacing the address book back in the safe he locked it and re-hung the photo.
From the bottom drawer of a file cabinet he retrieved a twin-reel tape recorder together with a hand-held microphone. Locating another set of keys, he left the office and locked the door. He told his secretary that something had come up and he would be away for a few days and she should cancel his appointments. Then he rode the elevator down to the ground floor.
In the lobby he left the tape recorder behind the desk, then used his keys to open the first of the adjoining doors. Cast from metal, the window was laced with wire mesh. Closing that door he locked it again, then walked the short corridor to another door with a similar pane of reinforced glass.
Now he was in the women’s wing and he passed beyond a set of double doors into a common room where some of the patients played checkers while others stared at the TV. Women of all ages: pale in the face, lank-haired; wearing robes and baggy pajamas. Beale made his way through the common room and unlocked the far door. Opening and closing two more locked doors, he was in a corridor with linoleum on the floor and heavy oak doors with unbreakable panels were staggered on either side. He walked almost as far as the nurse’s desk at the end before he paused outside a door on the right.
He could see the patient through the glass. Around fifty, she was bone-thin and bug-eyed, her hair weak and sparse with her waxen-colored scalp visible in places. A single bed, the walls covered in pencilled drawings of stick children. The woman was sitting on the bed cradling a baby in her arms, only the baby was a porcelain doll, and its hair was as thin as hers. On the other side of the room a narrow bureau was laid with a vinyl changing mat, next to it a Moses basket supported by wooden legs. Rocking back and forth, the woman suckled the doll at her breast.
Turning from the door Beale called to the nurse who was seated behind the desk at the end of the corridor.
‘Nancy,’ he said, ‘can you let me into Miss Annie’s room?’
A grim expression twisting her lips, the nurse got up from the desk and walked the corridor carrying a set of keys. Selecting one, she fit it in the lock but before she opened the door she paused.
‘Dr Beale,’ she said, ‘don’t you think I should fetch an orderly?’
He shook his head. ‘No, that’s all right. I’m not going to be very long.’
‘Even so. She’s not been herself just lately.’
He gave a hollow laugh. ‘Nancy, when has Miss Annie ever been herself?’
‘You know what I mean.’ The nurse was peering through the panel to where the wizened-looking woman stared back. ‘Are you sure you want to go in there? You know how she’s been. Look at her. Look at her eyes; she’s got that look in her eyes, and if you’re going in there she really ought to be strapped.’
Beale too now looked through the window. ‘In a jacket you mean? I don’t think so. She trusts me, Nancy. She won’t try anything. She never does.’
‘She used to trust you,’ the nurse said. ‘She doesn’t trust you anymore. She doesn’t trust any of us anymore, and she remembers, Doctor. There’s nothing Miss Annie forgets.’
Finally she unlocked the door and Beale went in. Nancy closed the door behind him but she did not lock it and she did not move away. The doctor leaned with his back to the panel of glass while Miss Annie remained where she was. She held the baby doll in her arms, its chill features pressed to a tired nipple where it poked through her pajama top.
‘I’m feeding,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be in here, not when I’m feeding my baby.’
‘I know that and I’m sorry. How is he, Miss Annie?’ Beale asked. ‘How’s your baby?’
She did not reply. She just looked at him. ‘If you touch him, if you try and take him away from me, I’ll kill you.’