Fixer (20 page)

Chapter Fourteen

Things worked a little differently for Corry in the summertime. In the fall and the spring, when he was in school, he was required by the Laws of Violet to attend the McClaren afterschool homework program—as she jokingly called it—Monday through Thursday. But when school was out, barring any summer classes, which he thankfully had not earned as his grades weren’t terrible enough to warrant them, he was free to come and go as he pleased. His school had a summer day camp that he attended sparingly, signing on for field trips to cool places but not lingering when they were just hanging around the school and doing crafts and whatnot because that was almost exactly like being in classes, only with fewer tests. Some days he just stayed at home, read comic books, and watched television. Very occasionally he went to the park and threw a ball around with one or two of the few kids he was friendly with, but that was a rare enough event to almost not warrant mentioning. Mostly, he did whatever struck him as interesting when he got up that morning.

On the days when he decided to stop in at McClaren, despite having a means to get back home again in the form of his bike, he typically waited until Violet got off work and then rode home with her. He expected in another couple of years they would reach an impasse where she would either have to purchase a larger car or he would have to deal with a bike that was much too small for him, as the one he currently used only just barely fit into the trunk of the Dart and also only barely fit him. Then again, in a couple of years, maybe he wouldn’t be interested in visiting the hospital at all. A lot could happen in that time.

The schedule of the Mildly Crazy patients at McClaren impacted his schedule as well. For instance, Corry generally preferred not to arrive there until just after lunch because most of his friends there were occupied in the morning with various Sessions. Corry didn’t know for sure what a Session was, but he had some indirect evidence to suggest it had something to do with making them better. There was just as much evidence that the opposite was true, as it did not seem to Corry that anybody there was getting any better—except for maybe Mr. Parseghian and his obsessive ticking—but it was a decent theory anyway.

The order of events was the patients would eat their lunches—under supervision, to make sure everybody was eating and also not harming themselves—and then get their meds. Roughly half an hour after that they were ready to see guests like Corry or whoever else might be there that day, as this was when visiting hours were scheduled. Family visits took place in a section of the hospital Corry had never seen. 

Corry thought the part when everybody took drugs was sort of interesting, if only because of what it told him about Violet. It occurred to him fairly recently—in a burst of insight that comes to children when they examine their parents as people instead of just as parents—that she seemed to go out of her way to find places where everybody
else
was taking drugs. According to Violet, she had stopped using drugs recreationally back when Corry was five, but she obviously still liked being around people who were taking them.

At around four thirty, the social-recreational part of their day was concluded, and the patients were asked politely to return to their rooms if they were not already in them. Corry wasn’t positive what followed from that point but he believed there was another round of meds involved, along with dinner and evening Sessions. Violet’s shift ended at five thirty, which made perfect sense in that a shift change was best done when all the patients were in their rooms rather than wandering the floors. But it was inconvenient for Corry, who was basically left with an hour to kill and nobody to kill it with. He usually spent that time in the front lobby because he wasn’t supposed to be in the common room alone, and Janet left along with the patients when four thirty rolled around.

So it was that at just before five on a day in which his entire understanding of the Secret Future collapsed around him, Corry ended up standing in the lobby and wondering how he was going to get back into the common room without attracting attention. The part of his twelve-year-old brain that had been fed a regular diet of horror stories about strangers and Bad Touching knew this was probably a terrible idea, but his curiosity was just too great to ignore. He had to try.

Getting from the lobby to the hospital’s ward rooms corridor was not, by itself, a difficult task. The door between the two wasn’t locked during the day because the Mildly Crazies weren’t very dangerous. And since all of them were wealthy and most of them were there because they’d put themselves in, it didn’t benefit anybody to make the place look like a prison. At least not this wing of it. 

The hard part was getting past Ned.

If it had been anybody else, it wouldn’t have been a problem. Unlike the staff inside the hospital—like Violet and Janet—the person at the front desk was different almost every day. Corry asked about it once and found out that the security staff had a rotating schedule, with the only exception being Carl in the parking lot booth, only because Carl couldn’t get around so well anymore.

Most of the desk staff was nice and very easygoing. If he said to one of them that he had forgotten something in the common room, they’d let him head back alone to get it and probably wouldn’t even notice he’d been gone for longer than it should have taken him to fetch something and return. But Ned wasn’t going to be that easy.

Corry had never heard Ned tell a story in which he wasn’t the hero. He seemed to live a life of adventure in a world in which he was the only person who knew the right thing to do, and everyone else—his wife, family, friends, coworkers—was a complete idiot. Corry used to be impressed by Ned and his stories until one day when he witnessed Ned giving a hard time to a guest who was trying to obtain post-visiting hour permission. The incident itself was minor and ultimately involved phoning up a doctor who escorted the guest through. But a week later Corry heard Ned describe the event to one of the orderlies, and from the sound of it one might have concluded Ned had dealt handily with a terrorist holding a live bomb. From that point on, he didn’t believe a word the man said.

Ned would never let him go in back unescorted, and if he did, he would probably have him on a stopwatch the whole time. So Corry would have to figure out a way to outsmart him if he wanted to have his conversation with Mr. Nilsson.

Standing in the lobby, Corry watched the parking lot through the glass double doors and listened to the clock over the exit as it ticked away the time. It was five o’clock. Somewhere, Mr. Parseghian was shouting. Probably. Unless they didn’t let him have a clock in his room which, when he thought about it, was probably the smart thing. That gave him an idea. It was a stupid idea, but Ned was pretty stupid, so it might work.

“Hey,” Corry said, trying desperately to sound casual. “Is Mr. Parseghian all better?”

Ned was busy staring at some random paperwork at his desk, or rather, at the racing forms hidden underneath the random paperwork. He had video monitors to stare at, too, showing black-and-white closed-circuit camera images of the front door and the back door. “Who?” he asked.

“Mr. Parseghian. The guy who announces the time.”

“Oh. Him?” He laughed. “Christ, kid, I don’t think he’s ready for the outside world, do you? And I’m not even a doctor . . .”

Corry interrupted, as surely a lengthy tale in which Ned out-diagnosed somebody with a degree was sure to follow. “Then how come I just saw him hop into a car?”

Ned smiled for as long as it took to realize Corry wasn’t going to say
ha-ha, just kidding
. He stood up. “You fucking with me?”

“No, serious. It’s that car right there.” Corry pointed at a car that was now backing out of a parking space. The person inside of it was actually one of the assistant directors of the hospital—a guy named Walter who always had cough drop breath. He’d come out of one of the staff exits a few minutes ago.

Ned toddled out from behind the counter and pulled his huge walkie-talkie off his belt. He got to the front door just in time to see the car reach the gate. “Stay here, kid,” he said as he hit the door. Ned ran out, shouting commands to Carl on his radio. It should have occurred to Ned that the only way Mr. Parseghian could have gotten out was via the door he’d just used—or possibly through the back door, where he’d have been spotted on the surveillance camera—but Ned was too busy acting to stop and think.
Stupid
, Corry confirmed.

Corry figured he had maybe five minutes before Ned came back again, which was enough time to make it down the hall but probably not enough to get back. But one thing at a time.

He ran past the now-vacant reception desk and down the hall. Thanks to the Secret Future, he knew he was alone for the trip there, which was good fortune all around. And that same Secret Future told him the room ahead was empty, so Mr. Nilsson hadn’t made it there yet. 

He was about to round the corner into the common room when someone grabbed him from behind and yanked him into the bathroom. He nearly screamed, but a hand was clapped over Corry’s mouth before anything could escape. It was the first time in his entire life something happened in Corry’s future that he didn’t see coming, and he was justifiably freaked out by it, so much so that it didn’t initially occur to him that the person who nabbed him had to be the guy he was there to see.

The door to the bathroom slammed shut and the light came on, and only then did Mr. Nilsson release him. Corry pushed away and ended up standing beside the door, visibly trembling. “How do you do that?” he demanded angrily.

Mr. Nilsson didn’t answer right away. Instead, he sat himself down on the toilet and studied his young sort-of captive. Sitting made him less impressive, which helped Corry calm down, because this way the older man wasn’t looming over him anymore. More significantly, if Corry wanted to jerk the door open and run out, Mr. Nilsson probably couldn’t stop him.

“I’m sorry I frightened you,” he said finally.

“Yeah, you did,” Corry answered angrily, wiping an inadvertent tear from the corner of his eye. “Nobody’s s’posed to be able to sneak up on me.” Later, he would be ashamed to have gotten rattled so easily. Other kids deal with surprises every day; he shouldn’t have that much trouble with them.

“How long have you been able to see?” the old man asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

Corry fiddled with the belt loop on his pants, a nervous thing he did mostly in school when he didn’t know the answer to a direct question or when Violet got especially angry with him. “All my life, I think,” he said.

“You handle it well.”

“Thanks.”

“I mean that sincerely. I have met two others like us in my life. You’re the youngest and by far the most stable.”

“There are others?” Corry asked. This surprised him.

“A few.”

“You see it too, huh?”

“Yes, of course. How else do you suppose I could have snuck up on you? I changed the future. You and I are the only ones here capable of doing that.”

“You seem okay with it,” Corry said. “I mean, stable. You’re stable.”

Mr. Nilsson smiled. “Am I? Think about where we are.”

“I mean . . .” Corry hedged. “Right now, you’re okay. And you can do that . . . thing with the talking and not talking.”

The old man sat up, so that the back of his head was touching a rack full of toilet paper. It didn’t look real comfortable. “Do you see your own actions in the future?” he asked.

“Sure. Don’t you?”

“Yes, of course. And do you follow through with those actions?”

“Usually. Unless I’m about to get hurt or something.”

“Exactly. There’s no trick to what I did earlier, Master Corry. All I’m doing is electing not to say what I would have otherwise said. It takes some practice, but that’s all. I used to do it in boardroom meetings to keep from dozing off, although then I never had anyone else around to appreciate it. You’ll figure it out.”

“Oh. Okay,” Corry said, wondering what a bored room meeting was.

Mr. Nilsson smiled. “How far can you see?”

Corry thought about it. “Dunno. Five or six seconds. Depends on how much is going on.”

“Gets blurry after that, does it?”

“Yeah, kinda.”

He nodded.

“Can you see more than that?” Corry asked.

“Sometimes. If I sit very still and think very hard for a very long time; sometimes.”

“Huh.”

“I prefer not to.”

“Why not?”

“Sometimes I just want to be surprised,” he said without elaboration.

This conversation wasn’t exactly what Corry had been expecting. Not that he was sure what to expect, but this wasn’t it. 

“So what are we?” Corry asked, getting to what he thought was the point of this conversation.

“What . . .” Mr. Nilsson laughed. “We’re people. Did you suppose we were aliens or some such?”

“Dunno.” Corry blushed. “Maybe. Or superheroes.”

“Ah, well . . . I am long past the opportunity to be a hero of any kind, young man. You, however, have a lifetime to work on that. Is that what you’d like to do with your gifts?”

“Maybe, yeah.”

“It’s an admirable goal.” He stared hard at Corry, as if by doing so he could look a decade or two ahead. “Yes. I do think if you wanted to, you could become a . . . superhero, as you said.” He smiled. “That’s a fantastic idea.”

Corry beamed. Finally, someone else he could talk to about the Secret Future. He’d have to learn how to do that secret talking trick so they could speak without sneaking off together. And that reminded him, Carl was most surely done bothering Walter.

“Look,” Corry said, “I should probably—”

“No, not yet,” Mr. Nilsson said. “There’s a reason I wanted to talk to you alone.” He leaned forward again. “There are others.”

“Others like us? You said that already.”

“No. Yes. Yes, there are others like us. That’s not what I mean. I mean there are others. I don’t know what they are, but I can see them. Nobody else can. Except you.”