The Whisper, page 20
Fragment. Sting. Fragment. Sting. Fragment. Sting.
Having run out of patience, the orderly shook the old man hard by the shoulders. The man opened his eyes, and all the writhing and howling grew ferocious. At one point, the old man’s hand caught the orderly in the face. A hard slap left a reddening mark on his left cheek.
The orderly was young, never faced with a similar situation before. Multiple fragments of his intimidation and perplexity were clear to Jasper as well. The orderly stood idle for a little with his hand over the burning cheek then rushed out of Ward A and returned with an orderly from another ward. Together, they managed to handle the old man’s struggles as they gave him a shot of sedative. Even though the old man was unconscious, both orderlies agreed it would be better to take him out of the ward for the time being.
Afterward, Jasper wallowed in bed, listening to the patients discuss the recent events. He preferred to keep silent, and it wasn’t until the first glimpses of dawn peered through the windows that Jasper finally fell asleep.
That was how his first night in Ashberry Field Hospital went.
By the end of his first week in the hospital, the weather relented. The temperature climbed up to twenty-nine, the howling wind quieted down, and the sun shone brightly on the white blanket. That was when the majority of Ward A patients insisted on a gulp of fresh air.
Jasper hadn’t been in Ashberry Field Hospital long enough to feel the pressure of the four walls, but he decided to go along with everybody. The winter clothes they were issued happened to be too thick for the weather, and after twenty minutes outside Jasper’s skin was sticky with sweat.
The hospital’s yard was humming with life that day. As it turned out, Ward B and C, each including about half as many patients as Ward A, had claimed their right to fresh air as well. Every patient was offered a ski set, but very few didn’t put it aside. Jasper kept close to the group of patients that didn’t like any form of physical activity, the men aged fifty and over. It was with them that he’d had his rare casual conversations over the past week. You could really learn something from a person who found himself at a mental institution at that age.
Patients mingled, communicated, and watched one another like exotic pets or toddlers from different families. Nothing indicated a patient’s belonging to a particular ward, and all orderlies observed everyone with an equal amount of discretion. It seemed a little strange, considering that each ward dealt with different levels of mental disorders. There was a slight difference between Wards A and B. Jasper could sort those patients out only by the amount of the mist. Ward C was a different story. Those patients moved with unusual slowness, their faces blank.
There was one thirty-something man who spent the entire time outside picking at a snow pile with a ski pole. Ward C patients looked disturbing, and yet they fell in the category known at the hospital as harmless, which could not be said of Ward D, which was why Ward D wasn’t present at all.
Sitting on one of the yard benches, Jasper held his head up to the perfect cloudless blue, enjoying the warmth on his face. He took a deep breath and looked around. The main building of the hospital, with its ivory white outer walls and broad windows, looked as if it had been uprooted from some resort area and planted there, in the thick woods. Two lower buildings adjoined it on both sides. Like the Great Wall of China, they stretched as far as Jasper could see. Amid the blinding sun and the vast cover of snow, people looked like embryos in black shells scattered all over. Some shells were bigger, some smaller, but only one stood out from the rest.
The man Jasper had spotted was sitting about fifteen yards away from him. The mist around him billowed as high as the top of the fence running around the hospital. From afar, the parasites that inhabited the man’s mist resembled swarming bacteria. Human poison filled him up to the brim, but he gave no sign of it. Still like a statue, he gave no sign of anything actually. An orderly stood right next to him, leaning his back against the fence and restlessly watching the man like a personal bodyguard.
Jasper stood up from his bench. That childish curiosity that had gotten him in trouble so many times before was driving him again. He strode along the fence, pretending to mind his own business. The bodyguard orderly regarded him with a wary glance when he was passing by. Jasper didn’t mean to stop. He meant to take a look at the patient on his way around the yard, but the second the features of the man’s face got clearer, Jasper broke his stride. He had seen that face before.
He had seen it in the Arlington Building.
There was a large collection of memories in his head, the moments that Jasper would never forget. He remembered those moments in vivid detail, the sounds, the colors, the words, the people—even those hovering in the background. That was the reason he remembered that face, the face from the moment titled “Ben Elliot Goes Wild.” That man had been there the day Ben had beaten Jasper to a bloody pulp. He’d been the last to leave the conference hall before the confrontation between Jasper and Ben had begun.
“Can I help you?” the bodyguard orderly asked as Jasper hesitated to proceed.
The question echoed in the back of Jasper’s head and got lost among hundreds of questions that clouded his mind. He kept his eyes fixed on the man’s face. Jasper didn’t know if he could actually call this person, with his boyish look, a man. He had long eyelashes, thick curly hair, and a light sprinkle of acne on his forehead. He looked verging on manhood, whereas his face expression summarized the life of a ninety-year-old with plenty to regret. His eyes seemed to be made of glass, and he was staring ahead with his mouth open.
The man absorbed the whisper like a sponge, and there was a lot to absorb. The fragments were stinging at the speed of a sewing machine needle, a boiling cocktail of fear, guilt, and misery. His share of the mist was probably the largest Jasper had seen so far, which provided the parasites with more than enough space to move fast and smoothly at the same time.
The man didn’t blink once as Jasper’s shadow fell over him.
What did Ben say the man’s name was?
“Alan?” Jasper asked quietly. “You’re Alan, aren’t you?”
The man raised his head, his mouth open so wide now that a thin thread of saliva was hanging off of it. Jasper would not think it was possible, but the whisper got intensified exponentially.
“Alan,” the man said. “Alan, Alan, Alan…”
He kept repeating his name with some feverish anxiety until the orderly approached him from behind and put a hand on his shoulder. Alan’s mist devoured him whole.
“Hey.” The orderly patted him gently. “It’s okay.”
Alan’s parasites couldn’t get nearly as much human poison out of him.
“Sir, I think you better go.” The orderly turned to Jasper.
In silence, Alan fixed his eyes on the ground. His hands hung limply between his knees. Jasper didn’t want to leave, not yet. There were too many questions in his head, but he didn’t know if he could ask them in front of the orderly, and he didn’t know if in his current state Alan would be able to give answers.
The doctor’s office was cold in every sense of the word. It had a large metal desk, the color of the wallpaper was icy-blue, and the winter freeze slipping from the outside was apparently too much for the heating system. Dr. Donovan felt comfortable in his thick knitted sweater. Jasper still had on his thin hospital t-shirt, and the hair on his bare arms bristled.
He spent those few seconds, before the doctor took his eyes off the papers on his desk, checking if there was something different about his parasites. The amount seemingly hadn’t changed, nor had the intensity of their whisper.
“How do you know him again?” Dr. Donovan asked.
“Um… our parents used to be close friends.” Jasper had prepared his lies in advance. “I haven’t seen him in a long time. Can you imagine how confused I was to see him here?”
Dr. Donovan leaned back in his chair, looking down. He was buried in paperwork, and Jasper felt privileged to know that he was willing to put it aside for a few minutes so they could talk.
“Your parents would’ve been horrified to know what happened to Mr. and Mrs. Rhodes.”
“What do you mean?” Jasper asked.
The doctor crossed his hands on his chest and tilted his head to one side.
“You don’t know that much about him, do you?” he asked.
“I don’t. As I said, I haven’t seen him in a long time.”
“Alan Rhodes is a drug dealer, used to be a drug dealer,” the doctor said.
“What… what are you talking about? He was… he couldn’t…”
All right, Clark Gable, don’t take it too far.
“You never know all the skeletons people hide in their closets,” the doctor said.
“How did he get here?”
The doctor took a deep breath, as if assessing whether he could disclose this much of a patient’s personal information to another patient. He looked Jasper straight in the eye, and for a fraction of a second Jasper thought their conversation was going to end right there.
“I bet you’ve heard of Frank Whitney’s gang,” the doctor said at last.
“Sure have,” Jasper said without any effort to hide his contempt.
Frank Whitney was so indiscreet and reckless that the whole city of Acheart knew and despised that name. That was why the devil was and would always be one hundred steps ahead of him.
“Whitney had a long-lasting rivalry with another gang,” the doctor went on. “A much more powerful gang, as I gather. Alan was forced to join it, becoming a snitch. He had been leaking information to Whitney for over a year before being exposed. The laws of that business are so cruel they make me tremble. Alan was so desperate that he turned to the only people who could help him—his parents.”
“Did they know what he was up to?” Jasper asked.
“They did.”
“And they were still willing to help?”
“Parental love knows no bounds. Alan was hiding out at their place, but it wasn’t for long. One day, three gang members broke into their house and killed Alan’s parents before his eyes. Thanks to his father’s efforts, Alan ended up with two non-fatal gunshots. He was taken to an ICU with a shattered femur and a bullet lodged an inch away from his spleen.”
“Oh my God,” Jasper exhaled.
“I’m sorry.” The doctor rubbed his forehead. “I think I should’ve been a little less straightforward.”
“It’s okay. Go on please.”
“The doctors at Brady’s Hospital Center faced a terrible case of PTSD. Rhodes was scared to death. He saw the enemy in everyone around him. A nurse once tried to give him a painkiller shot and ended up with the syringe needle stuck in her thigh. Rhodes was declared legally incompetent, spent three months on Gardener Island, after which he was transferred here.”
“Is he doing any better?” Jasper asked.
The doctor took another deep breath.
“His anxiety attacks are brief but frequent,” he said. “The rest of the time he’s just locked inside his head. Pharmacotherapy and ECT are all we can do so far.”
Jasper gave a slight nod, as if he were familiar with both of those terms.
“Did they… Did they ever catch those who, you know, did that to him?”
“I have no idea.”
“How long has Alan been in Ashberry Field?”
“It’ll be two years next month.”
Jasper computed the numbers in his head. So the whole break-in-the-house thing had happened almost a year after he’d gotten in the car accident.
Once Jasper had heard Alan’s whole story, he couldn’t stop wondering who would fit the roles of the cold-blooded killers. In Arlington Building, killing was a prerogative of the superiors, but Jasper was sure the devil himself would have never considered killing a snitch worth his precious time. Every now and then, Jasper pictured one of the horsemen pointing a gun at Alan—Louis, Morgan, and then, no matter how hard it was to accept, Glen.
Jasper felt a certain amount of sympathy, even guilt, for what had happened to this person. He knew, more than anyone else in the world, what it was like to have limited choices. He knew how cruel people could be. That was why Jasper longed to grant Alan peace.
He stumbled upon him in the cafeteria after another day session of group therapy. Ward A usually came a few minutes after Ward C had finished, but that day the latter lingered a bit longer. As Jasper got his tray filled, most Ward C patients were already leaving their tables, a few were rushing to eat up, and only one had a full plate in front of him, staring at it as if it were poisoned.
Alan sat all alone, holding a fork in his hand but never using it. The orderly had already given up any attempts to make him eat something and simply stood by, watching Alan watch the food.
Jasper took a few steps away from the counter and stopped in the middle of the cafeteria. He was wondering if there was a way to approach Alan without a fuss when the orderly—the same bodyguard orderly—caught his gaze. His eyes were full of hostility that remained there since that day in the yard.
Jasper started on his way to the table, his eyes fixed on Alan. At some point, the bodyguard orderly ran out of patience. He grabbed the tray in front of Alan, with all the food he had left untouched, and sauntered toward the dish return area.
That was it, the moment Jasper could use.
He hesitated for a few seconds, summoning his courage, and then plunged. Jasper kept his pace steady enough to look like he was in no rush. He looked over his shoulder to see the orderly talking to one of the cafeteria workers as the rest of Ward C hovered by the exit like a flock of lost sheep.
Alan took his eyes off the table’s surface, feeling the presence of another person yet not acknowledging it. He looked at Jasper briefly and then back down. Jasper felt the tension rising with every second of silence. He had to hurry.
“Can you speak?” A silly but appropriate question.
Jasper thought he already knew the answer but wanted to be one hundred percent sure.
Alan didn’t say a word, his eyes still lowered.
“You know who I am, don’t you?” Jasper asked.
No reaction followed.
“Listen, I know what you’ve been through,” Jasper said. “I know what risk Whitney put you at. I know what Owen Arlington is.”
Jasper regretted saying those two names aloud. Alan’s parasites became energized, and his mist began to spread, slowly streaming down the table toward Jasper. Tears welled up in Alan’s eyes. He was shaking with his whole body. Jasper extended his hand through the thick black clouds, intending to place it over Alan’s, but before he could do so Alan abruptly snatched his hand away.
“Don’t be afraid. I’m trying to help you,” Jasper said. Alan put both hands over his ears and closed his eyes tightly. “You don’t have to feel this way. I know what it’s…”
“HEY!” The moment Jasper heard the voice, the orderly showed up by the table.
He squatted next to Alan, looked at the tears and the fearful expression on his face, then turned to Jasper.
“What did you do to him?” the orderly said.
“Nothing. We were…”
“I thought Mr. Rhodes made it clear that he’s not up for any conversations with you.”
“Yes, but he…”
“Look at him now.”
The orderly’s tone was equally formal and stern. The other people in the cafeteria pretended to mind their own business, keeping their voices low enough to hear what the whole fuss was about.
“If that happens again, I’ll have to ask Dr. Donovan to undertake all the necessary measures.”
Alan sat frozen in fear. The orderly made a considerable effort to get him out of the table. He took him by the shoulders, gently pulling him up and letting go, pulling up and letting go. He was repeating the action as if he were uprooting an old tree until at last Alan was willing to cooperate.
The next moment, Jasper was watching them move away, the orderly’s arm around Alan’s shoulder. He could feel his only chance slipping through his fingers, and a surge of overwhelming anxiety was taking over him.
Do something. Do something. Do something.
At that point, Jasper could only think of one way to heal Alan’s mutilated soul, and if he had more time to think it through, he would’ve probably never ventured to do it. Jasper had vague assumptions about how he could take Alan’s parasites for himself, but he clearly understood what consequences it would entail if he succeeded.
The parasites always needed someone to feed on.
Ward C patients were leaving the cafeteria, with the orderly leading the way. Jasper stood rooted to the ground, looking to his right, where his fellow patients were halfway through their meals, and to his left, where Alan had gotten lost from his sight somewhere in the middle of the crowd.
“Jasper, please take your seat,” Herb Smith, a Ward A orderly, called.
Jasper looked at his alert face then suddenly jumped to his feet and turned around. On some subconscious level, he knew that his further attempt would be futile, yet he thought it was worth a shot. Jasper dashed toward the exit, hurtling through the crowd, shouldering everyone on his way aside until he finally reached his target. He knocked Alan out of the bodyguard orderly’s grip, and they both fell on the hallway floor.
Jasper locked his arms and legs around Alan, restraining his movements. Their mists instantly merged, becoming one disastrous force, making Jasper feel almost as if he were stranded in a pitch-dark cave with a swarm of bats raging on him.
The orderly rushed to hold him back, but he could not compete with Jasper’s determination. Alan struggled to get out of the grip, screaming at the top of his lungs. His parasites were fighting for their territory, which was too prosperous to leave. Jasper simply had nothing to offer them in exchange unless he could accumulate the equal amount of darkness inside him. He closed his eyes, his cheek pressed to Alan’s back. With the help of his own parasites, he appealed to all the pain, worries, and fears he had ever experienced.
