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A.R.Yngve
PARRY'S PROTOCOL
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Chapter 3
"I know how weird this place feels the first time, Abram."
Joyce was still wearing her doctor's coat, reclining in a chair behind her overloaded desk. Abram sat facing her in a sunbleached, stuffed armchair, stiffly holding his briefcase in his lap. The sun, now just past noon, was shining through the windows behind Joyce's back, creating drapes of yellow haze across the office. Joyce put her fingertips together and turned her gaze to a wall covered with framed photographs, newspaper clippings, and postcards; most of them yellowed, some new.
"When I got in charge of this place five years ago," she mused, "I was convinced I'd be murdered or raped -- or worse! -- before the end of my first week."
Abram coughed and drew his hand across his mustaches.
"I've never seen so many... or so modern... security measures gathered in such a small institution as this one. "Don't even think organizations like the CIA have updated their routines this far. How many patients did you say are under observation?"
"Six," Joyce stated without emotion.
She raised an index-finger to call for Abram's attention: "But not just any six patients, mind you!" She looked intensely at him, eyebrows raised. "Their relatives have arranged that their identities remain classified -- except the case of Parry, but I'll explain that later on -- and every one of them were distinguished members of society before ending up here.
Her brow wrinkled: "Am I boring you? It's so rare, me getting the chance to discuss the patients' cases with a colleague like this..."
"No, by all means go on. I'd be asking anyway."
"Our oldest patient," she continued, "has been here under observation since 1963. He was a member of the Kennedy clan's presidential campaign staff, and expected to get a House seat at a record low age.
"But shortly after the murder of JFK -- the same year I was born -- he suffered a breakdown and tried to shoot his wife dead. Now, normally in this type of case, the perpetrator immediately commits suicide after the crime... but he ran out of bullets and could be captured alive. For more than thirty years, a number of treatments and therapies have been attempted on him -- brain surgery's been totally banned by his relatives -- without result. He's now sixty-seven years, and will probably die of old age here."
Joyce sat quiet in the warm glow of the post-midday sun, looking with unseeing eyes in the direction of Abram, until he moved and raised his hand in a question.
"Are we talking about... a retarded patient?"
Joyce looked up from her thoughts.
"No, we're talking about a very, very intelligent patient. And he's just killed one human being."
Joyce slowly rose from her chair and walked over to a sixties-model refrigerator standing in a corner of the office. Opening it, she collected a lunchbox, a cream bottle, and closed the fridge with her foot. She sank into her chair and picked up a thermos bottle, which she put on her crammed desk together with the other things. She made an inviting gesture. Abram put up his palm, unsmiling.
"No, thank you, I'm not hungry."
Joyce leaned over the desk and began unpacking her lunch. Abram grabbed the arm-rests of his chair and, with somewhat greater effort than his colleague, stood up and walked around the desk to the windows. From the tall windows on the second floor, he could overlook the courtyard and lawn at the short side of the building. Suddenly, the intercom on Joyce's desk beeped. She swallowed a sandwich bite and pressed the answering button.
"Joyce speaking."
"We're starting today's exercise schedule," Mark's voice said. "First we take out Eliza, supervised by Quincy Filkmore, Kareem Lincoln, and Simon Bisley. Confirm?"
Joyce pulled out a schedule from her stacks and eyed it through.
"Confirmed. Stand by."
From outside came the muffled sound of the steel door opening and closing. Fascinated, Abram stared at an adult, pale woman being led down the steps by a tall male nurse in white clothes. Right behind him went another two heavy-bodied wardens carrying nightsticks. They spread out in different directions, while the pale woman walked out on the lawn followed by her warden. Joyce accompanied Abram by the window. The woman on the lawn was wandering around in wide circles; after a short while it became apparent that for each round, she was approaching the three-meter high barbed-wire fence. The wardens cautiously circled her in what looked like a measured, ritual dance.
"She has tried to escape before..?" Abram probed.
"Eight times, from five institutions under a period of four years, once from here. During those years she's killed two nurses, seriously injured a physician, and threatened the lives of several people.
"I'm not allowed to tell you her name; but you wouldn't believe me if I told you who she was known as -- and what crimes she's committed."
Joyce winced to herself. The woman on the lawn had moved to a distance of fifteen feet away from the fence. Abram gave Joyce a questioning look.
"Electrified," she assured him. "The only risk is that she'll try killing herself by clinging to the fence. Should that happen, the guards must beat her loose."
Joyce turned from the window and started to clear away the remains of her lunch from the desk. Then suddenly Abram looked upset, his moustache sprawling a little. He paced around the desk and stood face to face with Joyce, who attentively met his stern gaze. He leaned across, resting on his knuckles.
"Doctor Oregon. I've played along for long enough. Why am I being prevented from seeing my patient?"
Joyce rested her knuckles on the desk in an imitation of Abram's stance, so that her grave face came just a few inches from his own. It was the textbook trick of how to confront an intellectual opponent.
"Doctor Lemercier, I'm just trying to prepare you for how futile -- how hopeless -- it would be to try talking someone like Parry healthy. This is supposed to be a 'study', but you've revealed a therapeutic ambition in your letters, right? Do you know what we're actually doing with our patients here? We're trying to prevent them from escaping and hurting themselves, until they've grown too old and tired to try. The medication they're getting is just enough to make them sleep at night, and if we gave them more they'd be seriously brain damaged. This ain't no Prozac people."
Abram blinked twice.
"Thanks to that damned old movie, 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest', the politicians no longer dare allowing the mental institutions to perform the only working treatment -- frontal lobotomy. You're far from the first upper-class psychoanalyst who thinks he's the one who truly 'understands' Parry's problem. If it wasn't for your letter from the governor, I wouldn't..."
Joyce's head suddenly dropped, she held her hand to her forehead, and slumped back into her chair.
"I'm sorry," she mumbled, rubbing her temples with her thumb and index-finger. "We've had quite a difficult month before you arrived, all the safety routines must be rearranged before a visit."
Abram's brow wrinkled worriedly.
"No, I've been arrogant," he said in a low voice. "Pardon me." He extended his right hand in a gesture of reconciliation. "I've been reading about Parry's case for two years now, and I've been waiting long for this permit to see him."
He smiled courteously. Joyce gave him a tired smile and clasped his hand.
"Okay," she said, standing up, "let's prepare Parry for a new visitor."
Abram briefly glanced over Joyce's shoulder, down at the lawn outside. The three wardens were escorting the pale woman back to the door. Joyce started, and reached for the intercom.
"Mark? Let'em in, and abort the exercise schedule. I repeat, abort the exercise schedule. Initiate the new visiting routine for Parry. I'm coming down with Dr. Lemercier now. Over and out."
Abram stood with his briefcase in one hand, and let Joyce walk past him to the door. She opened the door and stepped aside. He chuckled and looked quizzically at her.
"Age before beauty," he said, bowing imperceptibly before going out into the stairwell. Joyce followed, after having locked the three locks of the office door.