The Arx (18 page)

Carla casually laced her fingers together on the desk in front of her.

“How did you come up with the idea?” she said.

“Idea?”

“The successes and disasters idea. I believe your background is in social work – not pharmaceuticals or obstetrics.”

Rebecca hadn’t expected the question. She sensed her host’s eyes fixed on her as she fought for a plausible explanation. After Frank’s warning, the last thing she wanted to do was mention Gloria. She glanced at Carla and saw the tiniest hint of a smile on her face. She had the disturbing impression that Carla already knew about her sister.

Rebecca laughed to cover her nervousness. “There’s been a rash of pregnancies among my friends, and a couple of them mentioned taking Olmerol. I knew Olmerol and Thalidomide had been developed around the same time, and were prescribed for the same issues.” She shrugged her shoulders. “It seemed like an interesting story. I was pre-med before I took up social work, so I have some background…”

Carla unlaced her fingers. “Which friends?” she asked.

“What?”

“Which friends were taking Olmerol?”

Rebecca’s stomach tightened. Her host was looking at her expectantly. She was going to have to answer. She glanced down. Her nails dug into the leather arms of her chair.

She willed herself to relax. “I don’t think I’d be comfortable…”

“You don’t have to answer,” Carla’s smile broadened. “I’m sorry, I’ve put you on the spot. I just thought, as a friendly gesture, I could arrange for some kind of discount.”

“Oh,” said Rebecca. She was relieved, though she wasn’t sure she bought Carla’s explanation. “Thanks for the offer, but I think they’re past that phase.”

"Are you working for anyone in particular?" Carla said.

Rebecca
had
anticipated this question, and several others Carla asked regarding her background as a journalist, saying that this was her first foray into journalism, and that she was simply hoping to shop the article around. If Carla or anybody else at Kaffir were to dig into her life, as they obviously had, the facts would fit.

“Sorry,” Carla said, “you’re supposed to be the one doing the interviewing.”

Rebecca relaxed a little.

“I was expecting to find you in a more corporate setting,” she said.

The tiny office was sparsely decorated. There were no pictures on Carla’s desk, and the one or two that hung on the wall were generic Kaffir Pharma promo photographs, showing scientists and administrators hard at work. Judging from the rest of the office, Rebecca guessed that Carla had simply told the company to come up with something.

“I actually have another office on the floor above,” Carla said, but I prefer to be down here, in the trenches. Research is my first love, and I still feel more comfortable here.”

It took no more than a few minutes for Rebecca to grasp that Carla De Leon had a brilliant mind, and as she continued to interview the VP of Research, it became clear that Carla had a profound knowledge of Olmerol, though it must be a relatively minor drug in the company’s inventory. She briefly described its history and development, the refinements they’d made over the years, and the hurdles they’d overcome.

Carla showed no hostility, or even resistance, toward studies suggesting that Olmerol might have negative side effects. She projected a simple desire to get at the truth, and possibly make improvements to the drug if possible. She cheerfully provided Rebecca with references to more than a dozen studies on Olmerol.

After Frank’s lecture about the threat of the organization, Rebecca had built up an image of its employees as an army of black-suited murdering psychopaths. That image couldn’t have been farther from that of Carla De Leon. She was friendly, soft-spoken, even self-effacing, and dedicated to her work. In fact, her host’s highly organized, no-nonsense persona was a welcome break from Frank’s chaotic, conspiracy-obsessed world.

Buying into Frank’s theories, Rebecca had been hoping to somehow maneuver the VP of Research into giving away incriminating information about the drug’s side effects.

As she packed up the recorder and got up to leave, she had the unsettling feeling that if anything the opposite had occurred, that she was the one who’d said more than she intended.

She was turning for the door when Carla spoke. “We must go for coffee some time.”

A jolt went up Rebecca’s spine. It took a second for her to recover.

“Coffee?” was all she could think to say.

Carla quickly checked the smart phone on her desk. “I’m free on Tuesday at two PM.”

Rebecca wondered what she’d gotten herself into. What was Carla playing at?

A badged escort appeared to take her back downstairs.

“The Boathouse on Kits Beach,” Carla said.

Rebecca felt a knot in her stomach. The escort stood aside to clear the way for her. She considered her impression of Carla, a brilliant, thoughtful, unpretentious, not to mention powerful, woman. A woman she couldn’t help but admire.

“I’m sorry,” Carla said, “I’ve put you on the spot again. It’s just that it’s rare for me to find someone outside work to talk to. I feel as though we have a connection. It would mean a lot…”

Rebecca was touched. Carla’s eyes reflected a profound loneliness. Suddenly Rebecca felt a tinge of pity for her. In any case, she had to admit that as a fact-finding mission today’s meeting had been a failure. Maybe she could do better next time.

“Alright?” Carla asked.

Rebecca smiled. “I look forward to it.”

The escort led her out the door.

Frank Meets Ricky Augustus

The Mountain View Psychiatric Hospital was situated on a cul-de-sac terminating a long drive so deep in the suburbs that there were swaths of wild countryside surrounding it. Frank pressed the green access button that unlocked the front door of the aging wood-frame structure and strolled inside.

A white-haired old man in a wheelchair slept with his chin on his chest in a corner. Another man stood by a window, clenching and unclenching his hands over his head like he was grasping at non-existent insects. A middle-aged woman shuffled up to Frank, grabbed his sleeve, and said something urgently in what sounded like Polish. Frank shuddered, recalling his own time in the psych ward. He smiled at her and made his way to the reception desk.

He’d spent a day trying to come up with a plausible explanation for wanting to see Ricky Augustus, with no idea who the man was: a patient, a worker, a nurse, even a doctor. In the end he was forced to involve Rebecca, who, through her connections, was able to determine that Ricky must be a patient.

Frank stated his appointment with Susan Carstairs, the head nurse for the afternoon shift. The receptionist paged her. Several minutes later Carstairs, blond and wearing a white lab coat, walked in. They shook hands and walked to her office.

“You’d like to volunteer as a companion for a patient,” she said.

“That’s right.”

“The information you provided says you’re on stress leave,” Nurse Carstairs said. “Are you sure you’re up to dealing with someone who’s mentally ill?”

“I was in a high-stress job,” Frank said, trying his best to come across as well-balanced. “I’m not quite ready to go back to that work, but I’m fine. Volunteering would be good therapy for me. And the structure will help ease my way back into a work environment.”

Carstairs bought his story and took him on a tour of the facility. They passed through a hallway somewhat bizarrely decorated with paintings depicting the English countryside. Thatched cottages nestled behind crooked fences along streams and rustic country roads. Hunters clad in crimson jackets and black helmets galloped on horseback in search of elusive foxes.

The hallway funneled into a bright and airy rec-room in the southwest corner of the building. Floor-to-ceiling windows provided lots of sunlight, though the bars behind them reminded Frank where he was. Shabby tables and rickety chairs dotted the room. At a few, patients sat thumbing through magazines or playing cards.

The nurse began to introduce Frank to the patients he might want to occasionally come and spend time with. Half an hour later they’d met almost all of them and he still hadn’t spotted Ricky.

In a far corner, facing the wall, was an electric wheelchair. Finally they headed for it. A balding blond head, leaning to one side, projected only slightly above the push handles. A freckled, withered hand rested on the right arm just behind the motor control. As they arrived, Frank noticed the name scrawled on a worn strip of masking tape on the back: ‘R. Augustus’.

He took a step back.
This was Ricky Augustus?

“Ricky?” said the nurse.

Ricky didn’t move.

“Ricky?” she repeated more loudly. The fingers moved slowly, like a pale spider, crawling the hand forward toward the control. After an impossibly long delay, it reached the knob and the chair jolted to life, slowly swinging around to face them.

Rebecca’s information had indicated that Ricky
was in his early twenties, but the ravages of his condition made him appear much older. He was pale to the point of transparency. He reminded Frank of pictures he’d seen of translucent sea life at the perpetually sunless bottom of the ocean.

His wispy blond hair had almost all fallen out – only a sparse ring sprouted around his otherwise bald head. He slouched heavily to his right side, and his head tilted in the same direction. His condition seemed to have affected his facial muscles. His mouth drooped on the right side, and the eye on that side didn’t open completely. There were a variety of bags hanging from metal hooks, and tubes connected to various parts of Ricky’s body. Some seemed to be going in, others coming out.

“Ricky,” said the nurse. “This is Frank.”

Ricky didn’t respond. He just stared stupidly at them.

“Hello, Ricky,” Frank said, smiling. He reached out and attempted to shake Ricky’s hand, which he realized didn’t function well enough to perform that operation. He finally just lifted the lifeless fingers and did all the shaking himself.

Back in Nurse Carstairs’ office, Frank expressed an interest in Ricky. “He was literally left on their doorstep,” the nurse said, referring to the hospital that had transferred Ricky Augustus to Mountain View.

“He was called Augustus because he came to us in the month of August,” she continued. “Why he was called Ricky, I have no idea. It was all before my time.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“As far as we can tell he’s the victim of a genetic anomaly. We don’t know the cause. We’ve never been able to study his lineage because we have no idea where he came from or who his parents were, and nobody’s ever come by to talk to him or see how he is.

“It’s sad, really. He’s almost catatonic. It’s difficult to know because of all his other disabilities, but the most widely held opinion is that he’s severely intellectually disabled. He has extreme difficulty with even the simplest speech, and he only seems to have a dim grasp of what’s being said to him. He’s been here so long now – I’m afraid he’s fallen through the cracks to a certain extent.

“Wouldn’t you rather take on a patient you can at least talk to? Your conversations with Ricky will be one-sided. He has very limited communication skills.”

“I like a challenge,” Frank smiled.

They filled out the papers and headed back down the hallway toward the rec-room.

Again they approached Ricky’s wheelchair in the corner.

“Ricky,” said the nurse. “Frank would like to spend some time with you. Would that be okay?”

Ricky didn’t respond.

Nurse Carstairs brought over a folding chair and set it in front of the crippled man.

“Would you like me to stay?” she said to Frank.

“No,” he said. “We’ll be fine. Will you be around?”

“I’ll be passing in and out of here periodically.”

“I’ll keep an eye out and if I need anything I’ll let you know.”

“Don’t spend too long. Ricky tires quickly. He can sometimes get overly excited for no apparent reason, but he’s usually pretty docile.”

“Are you alright, Ricky?” she said in a loud voice to Ricky. He grunted softly and nodded his head almost imperceptibly. She patted him on the shoulder and walked away.

Frank smiled at Ricky. “I thought you might like to have a little company once in a while.”

Ricky’s head was lowered, staring at a point somewhere around Frank’s chest. A trickle of spittle appeared at the corner of his mouth, and ran down his chin. He gave no indication that he understood anything Frank had said.

It seemed incomprehensible that anyone would want to put a contract out on Ricky Augustus. Crippled, severely ill, and unable to speak, it was hard to imagine how Ricky could pose a threat to anyone. Frank decided that his visit here had been a waste of time. He considered that maybe the photograph he’d found on his attacker wasn’t a hit list after all. Or maybe somehow Ricky wasn’t the actual target.

He tried a few more pleasantries but Ricky showed no response. After about fifteen minutes, Frank spotted nurse Carstairs coming through the door and motioned to her.