Delirious (31 page)

Rachel’s eyes sparkled with concern. “Yes. I know. I heard about that. Dr. Shapiro mentioned the incident in our morning staff meeting. I’m so sorry, Charlie.”

For a moment Charlie let himself become lost in Rachel’s interest. Then, quick as he’d succumbed, he iced up. He needed to get her out of the way.

“What do you want, Rachel?” Charlie’s eyes narrowed. He allowed himself to become aggressive, hostile even.

Rachel took a step backward. “I just wanted to update you on the situation with the judge,” she said. “I think we can get you a hearing
the day after tomorrow. But I have to say, last night’s incident didn’t help your cause much.”

Charlie nodded. “I’m sure the staff is even warier of me now,” he said. “It must have been a dream. Perhaps it was something triggered by the hypnosis.” Offering a logical explanation and accepting responsibility for the incident might be enough to get her to move along and leave him alone.

“You have counseling scheduled for today?” Rachel asked.

“Yes. In the afternoon, I think. But I’m done with group.”

“I do hope that will change,” Rachel said.

Charlie was aware of her style now, though her compassion seemed boundless. The worse his situation deteriorated, the more determined Rachel seemed to help. Perhaps, Charlie thought, the same could be said of his attraction to her. The more unbalanced his life became, the more appealing she seemed. He brushed those thoughts aside.

“Listen, Charlie,” Rachel said. “It’s not common practice, but I’d be happy to talk to you as a friend if you need. Sometimes that can be the best therapy of all.”

“Thanks, Rachel,” Charlie said. “I’ll think about it. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”

Out of the corner of his eye, Charlie kept careful watch over George. Without the benefit of clocks to synchronize their plan, the two had agreed to use hand signals to communicate. Per the plan, George was engaged in a game of checkers against Maliek. When the game was over and George gave Charlie the sign, everything would start to happen. Fast.

“Charlie, there is something else I want to talk to you about,” Rachel said. “Something about Joe.”

“I don’t care about Joe right now, Rachel. And I don’t care much about you, either. I want you to go away from me and leave me alone.”

“But, Charlie …,” Rachel said.

“What part of ‘go away’ don’t you get?” Charlie asked. “Leave me alone, now.” He kept his voice low.

The harshness took Rachel by surprise. She stepped back. “Please, Charlie,” Rachel said. “Don’t be like that.”

Charlie couldn’t let up now. “Don’t you get it, Rachel?” he asked. “I don’t want you to talk to me. I don’t want you to be near me, and I don’t want a friend. I want you to go away.”

The hurt in Rachel’s eyes stung Charlie more than he had expected. She backed away but did not avert her gaze.

“You need help, Charlie,” she said. “You need to trust us.”

“What I need is for you to disappear, Rachel.” Charlie spat out the words through clenched teeth. “You did this to me. You’re the reason I’m here. I never want to see you again. Is that clear enough for you? Get away from me!”

Charlie couldn’t believe the harshness of his own words. Still, they rang true. If he had never contacted Rachel in the first place, he might never have been locked up in this hellhole.

Rachel covered her mouth. Charlie thought he saw tears well up in her eyes. Without another word, she turned and raced down the hallway. He watched as she exited through the floor’s security doors and then disappeared down the stairwell.

The timing couldn’t have been better, even though he felt sick about what he had said. The moment she was gone, George finished the game of checkers. He locked his fingers together, stretching his arms and his interlocked hands high above his head.

This was the signal Charlie was waiting for. The show was about to begin. Charlie took the cue and moved closer to the security doors that sealed off the floor’s only entrance and exit.

With his hands still locked together above his head, George screamed, “You’re a cheater! A cheater!”

With that, George thrust his balled hands downward, smashing them hard onto the gaming table. Checker pieces clattered onto the floor, sent in every direction by the force of the impact. Maliek stood up and retreated.

From his vantage point, Charlie could still see the action unfolding, but he stayed close enough to the doors to ensure that the plan worked as designed. Charlie couldn’t believe how well George was playing it up. It was an Oscar-worthy performance, only lacking a film crew to capture the beauty of it.

“I didn’t cheat!” Maliek said. “I won the game fair and square.”

“You’re a cheater!” George yelled again. Following their choreography to perfection, George flipped over the gaming table, which
sounded a deafening crash as it eventually settled to a stop on the floor.

Nurses rushed to the unfolding drama but kept their distance. George picked up a chair and pushed it threateningly at them, in the way a lion tamer would to keep a predator at bay. They hadn’t discussed that particular move during their planning, but the improvisation added a level of authenticity to George’s outburst.

Following protocol, Charlie watched the day nurse in charge pick up the phone at the nurses’ station, presumably to dial security. Charlie kept his position against the wall. He was standing to the right of the security doors. Once they opened, he’d have only seconds to react.

“George, put the chair down,” one of the nurses said. “Listen to me, George. You need to put it down.”

“Get away from me! Get away!” George shouted.

Orderlies and several nurses had formed a semicircle around George and closed in. Charlie’s heart raced. Although his eyes were fixated on George, his ears were attuned to the doors. He was waiting for the buzzer, a sound that would allow security to enter and him to leave.

A nurse had come over to the doors with her card key in hand. She kept peering out the small window of one of the thick ward floor doors, ready to press the buzzer the moment security arrived. She pressed the open button at the same instant security rang the bell. The doors buzzed loudly in Charlie’s ears and then were thrust open. Two sizable armed men burst into the room and darted off in George’s direction.

The nurse took no notice of Charlie. Her focus, as with every staffer on the floor, was on George. The doors started to close. They were on a hinge and closed slowly enough for Charlie to use his foot as a doorstop.

Propping one of the doors open, Charlie wasted no time in making his exit. If the doors didn’t close within a certain amount of time, a buzzer would sound an alarm. Removing his foot from underneath the door, Charlie slipped his body through the shrinking crack between the door and the doorjamb. At last, he was outside the floor walls without an escort. Charlie’s footsteps echoed loudly in the stairwell as he bounded down the concrete steps, two at a time.

At the bottom landing, he pushed open the unlocked fire exit door. He emerged into the sunlight and breathed the fresh air for the first time in days. With adrenaline still coursing through him, Charlie somehow managed to keep his pace unhurried. He kept his eyes focused forward, careful to not look around and perhaps rouse suspicions. Charlie breathed in the coolness of the fall day. His skin prickled with excitement.

Never looking back, Charlie headed east, away from the main campus, down a grassy knoll toward busy Belmont Street. He walked with calm, unhurried steps. It was just like a free man would walk.

C
harlie had only one thought on his mind: how much time before they discovered him missing? He didn’t need a degree in psychiatry or a law enforcement background to speculate that his escape would raise alarms. As far as Walderman was concerned, Charlie was a potentially violent and dangerous escaped mental patient. The police would be looking for him soon enough.

Worse, he didn’t know what he should do now that he was out. Eddie Prescott had spoken to him from the grave. He was the one who had set these events in motion. Charlie was certain of that. But Eddie had offered warnings only. The moves Charlie made now would have to be his alone. Free from Walderman and presumably away from the danger Eddie had warned him about, Charlie felt adrift. It surprised him how quickly he had adapted to the routine of institutionalized life. Freedom took far more effort.

Fortunately, nothing about his appearance would draw attention. His clothes and shoes were his own. At least Walderman didn’t further cement the stigma of commitment by forcing patients to wear hospital clothes or a uniform. But with the police looking for him, he needed a better disguise—a hat and sunglasses, at least. That would take money. Money was something he didn’t have, not to mention a watch, a cell phone, or ID of any sort. Going home for those items would be ill-advised. They would track him there. The same held true for contacting Joe. If he wanted to maintain his freedom, it was imperative that he stay away from his former life.

Charlie strolled down Belmont Avenue. He kept an even pace, certain that he still had hours before anyone would notice him missing.
He had a scheduled therapy session later in the afternoon. When he didn’t show for that, the alarms would sound.

His thoughts drifted back to Eddie Prescott’s voice. Eddie’s words remained ingrained in his memory, as though he were reading them written down.

“
I will be your guide,
” Eddie had said.
“Everything can be explained. Nothing is as it seems.”

Charlie burst into laughter. His circumstances were so surreal, laughing felt as justified as crying.

He looked around, grateful that he had not drawn attention to himself. Twenty minutes of walking and Charlie had come to Fresh Pond Circle in Cambridge. The area was a major oasis for the outlier city dwellers of Cambridge. Paths for bikers, walkers, and runners crisscrossed the 150-acre tract of land surrounding the city public water supply. He was near Alewife Station on the Red Line. The subway could take him deep into the heart of Boston or away from the city, into other suburban towns accessible by bus.

The Fresh Pond area always drew an eclectic crowd, and today was no exception. Charlie was grateful for the increase in pedestrian traffic. It would help keep him concealed.

He fell into step with the shoppers walking in and out of stores in the Fresh Pond Mall. Charlie took notice of a group of young people—some teenagers, some older—loitering outside the Staples near the Fresh Pond Mall cinema. Most were dressed in black, tattered clothes, their bodies adorned with pierced jewelry and tattoos. One boy, sitting idle on the curb, caught Charlie’s attention. At first he didn’t believe it possible. Curiosity getting the better of him, Charlie slipped behind a group of women shoppers with their small children in tow to get closer to the youths without being spotted.

The boy sitting on the curb was Maxim, his bunk mate from the night before. Maxim sat with his shoulders hunched forward, his head hung low, and his eyes cast downward. He wore the same skull T-shirt that he’d had on when they were first introduced. His jewelry returned, Maxim glistened in the sunlight like a chain-mailed gothic warrior.

Most of Maxim’s companions were thin like him. They swarmed about the empty parking lot on their skateboards and BMX bikes. The skaters would hit the curb, flipping their boards, and almost
without fail miss the landing. Maxim looked up and Charlie jumped. He darted into the Whole Foods Market, praying that Maxim hadn’t noticed him. To blend in with the crowd, he wandered the aisles, carrying a basket and placing a few items inside. As far as store security was concerned Charlie was just another shopper out on a busy afternoon.

A few minutes wandering the aisles was all it took for Charlie to decide he needed to move on. He figured he’d walk into Boston from here. His best chance of staying free was to stay hidden. And the best place for that was in the city. Belmont police would probably take the lead on his recapture. But coordinating with Boston police would add some confusion and delay to the process. Charlie was certain he’d be safer in Boston than anywhere else. At least then he’d have time to plan his next move. Or maybe Eddie Prescott would return and tell him where to go next.

Charlie was in the bread aisle, returning one of the items he had placed in his basket, when Eddie spoke to him.

“
You have to get to the Seacoast Motel. The answers are there,
” Eddie whispered.

Charlie whirled around. Six people were in the aisle. A plus-size black woman with a cart crammed with enough food to feed a family of twelve stood across from two elderly women who were examining the ingredients of some baking product. On the same side of the aisle as Charlie but some twenty feet away was an elderly man who walked with a cane. He wore a dark blue baseball cap. A shock of white hair spilled out from underneath it. Across from him was a mother, shopping with her two-year-old wedged safely in the shopping cart seat.

Charlie was looking directly at the old man when Eddie spoke again.

“The Seacoast Motel in Revere. All the answers are there. Room two-twenty-four. Go there and everything will become clear.”

The old man and the woman didn’t react to Eddie’s voice at all.

They can’t hear him,
Charlie thought.
I’m the only one who can.

Charlie looked over at the black woman, who was still filling her cart with food.

“
You are running out of time,
” Eddie warned.

The black woman didn’t flinch. The older women kept examining
different ingredients, unfazed. Eddie was speaking to him alone, guiding the way.

Charlie couldn’t help but laugh. Unlike Eddie’s voice, his laugh was heard by both the black woman and the elderly shoppers. They turned and looked at Charlie. He held up a box of crackers.

“Can you believe these prices?” he said.

“Best quality, but they sure make you pay for it,” the black woman agreed.

“They sure do,” Charlie said.

“
The Seacoast Motel in Revere. Room two-twenty-four. Go now …,
” Eddie hissed.