Chapter Two [[DRAFT]]
Certainty Betrayed
Chapter 2
[[DRAFT]]
Escape
James woke to the Voices. They had come back in the middle of the first night at the hospital. He had woken from a sound sleep to the sound of a distant voice that he couldn’t quite make out. At first he thought it was coming from somewhere in the hospital, but eventually the Voices became clearer. He realized it was Them.
Watch out for the poison needles, they reminded him. He knew they were still angry with him for the shot of Zyprexa he had received in the ER. The drug had silenced Them for a while.
You can’t stay here Jimmy. They will hurt you. They will lock you up until you die. Don’t trust them. We will help you. You have to get out.
James was already forming a plan. But he was afraid. He might need to hurt someone to get away. The security at the state-run facility was good. He wouldn’t be able to bypass it alone. He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He had to find another way.
He looked out the window for the hundredth time, looking for alternatives.
“You can’t get out that way,” said a voice behind him. James spun around to see his roommate Jeff walking in. “A guy tried a few weeks ago. They caught him and medicated the crap out of him. He’s on a guarded unit now. I hear he drools in his sleep!”
He knows. Eliminate him.
James tuned the Voices out. Jeff was annoying, but he was harmless. James had reluctantly grown fond of the manic young man. He didn’t really want him around, but he didn’t want him “eliminated.”
He knows. He’s dangerous.
James turned back toward the window and watched a couple of teenage girls from the adolescent unit play basketball on the single hoop. They were good. Both were laughing.
Tonight. There’s no more time.
Two days. He had refused meds and controlled the fear. But he had court in the morning. The judge would take the doctor’s side. They always did. He wouldn’t be allowed to refuse medications once he was court ordered.
Tonight.
There had to be another way.
There’s no other way. They will lock you up forever.
“James?”
James realized Jeff had asked him a question. He ignored it and continued to look out the window.
“If you change your mind, we’re playing in the common room. It’ll be fun!”
He heard Jeff’s steps as he walked out the door to go play Yahtzee with his friends.
You should have stopped him. He knows!
James lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. He hadn’t slept well in days. The fatigue settled like a heavy blanket and he drifted to sleep.
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He was standing over the bed watching Jeff breathe. He placed one knee on the mattress and swung his other leg over, straddling him as he reached for the man’s throat. Jeff’s eyes opened wide as he began to struggle, James’ thumbs pressing into his larynx and his fingers cutting off the arteries to his brain. James held for three minutes after the movement stopped.
GOOD! Be ready!
James gasped. He found himself astride Jeff on the young man’s bed. His roommate was not moving. He felt for the carotid pulse beside the windpipe. Jeff was dead.
“What happened?” he said in a whisper.
He knew. You have to get out.
James could hear his own heart pounding in his chest. He looked around the dark room. No one was there. Someone had killed Jeff.
Slowly he realized. He could feel the memory of Jeff’s skin against his fingers. He saw a flash on Jeff’s eyes, wide with fear, in the moments before he died.
“No,” he whispered.
James felt a part himself slipping away. He couldn’t understand. He wasn’t a killer. He liked Jeff, in an annoying little cousin kind of way. This couldn’t be real.
Be ready.
James stopped thinking about Jeff. He could hear steps in the hall. The tech was doing his rounds. He would walk in any minute and find Jeff. There was no more time.
James positioned himself behind the door and waited. Charlie, a short, thin young man in his early twenties walked into the room and moved toward Jeff’s bed. James quickly came up from behind and struck him hard at the point where the right side of his neck joined his shoulder, while simultaneously covering the boy’s mouth to mute his grunt of surprise and pain.
As the stunned psych tech fell to the floor, James drove the knuckles of his right hand into his throat, crushing the windpipe. He held the man until he stopped struggling. Just over a minute had passed with very little sound. James doubted anyone had heard.
Good. Get out.
James grabbed the tech’s badge and keys. He located a small key that he hoped would open the closet at the end of the hall.
Looking down the hall from his open doorway, James couldn’t see anyone else. He moved into the hall and tried the closet door just outside his room. The key fit and he quickly found his belongings bag. He re-locked the closet and brought the bag back into the bedroom. Searching inside, he found his small pocket penknife and opened the blade.
Carefully and quietly, James worked his way toward the nursing station, keeping close to the right wall. As he came closer, he could see Nurse Parker working at the desk with her back to the open office door. He crept up behind her, controlling his breathing. His hands were steady and controlled as he reached around and placed the knife blade against the woman’s throat and covered her mouth.
“Don’t make and sounds.”
Parker’s eyes went wide in fear as she tried to look up and back to see who was attacking her. Her body froze as she looked into the cold dead eyes of the patient from 109. The man’s face held no expression. The knife blade was cold against her skin.
“Stand up slowly.” Parker did as she was told. She felt as stab of pain as the patient jerked her arm up behind her back, the knife still present at her neck. She moved with the pressure, allowing herself to be guided toward the ambulance bay. She felt something heavy swinging against her leg as they walked.
“Don’t move your arm,” said the patient as he let go without moving the knife. She saw a belongings bag dangling from his wrist as he reached forward with an employee badge and released the door to the ante-room. He grabbed her arm again and they moved into the room toward the other door.
“Please.” Whispered Parker. “Please don’t hurt me.”
The patient pushed her to the keypad at the other side of the ante-room. He grabbed the badge from her lapel and placed it against the magnetic reader. The reader beeped and the number pad lit up.
“Type in the code.”
Parker reached up and typed the code. The red light on the pad turned green and the patient opened the door.
NOW GO!
James looked down at the body on the floor. He was standing at the ambulance bay with the door open. He had a badge and his belongings bag in his hand. Nurse Parker wasn’t moving. James saw flashes of her head slamming against the block wall. He drove the images away, refusing to remember. He felt himself go cold inside as he moved through the door and used the badge to exit the bay through the side pedestrian door.
In the parking lot, he clicked the lock button on Charlie’s key fob. An old Honda Civic flashed it lights. James walked to the car unlocked the doors, and sat in the driver’s seat, knocking his head against the roof of the door frame. He adjusted the seat and settled into the car.
The Voices praised and reassured him as he drove away.