Every Fifteen Minutes

 

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For Sandy, with love and thanks

 

Unexpressed emotions will never die.

They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

—Sigmund Freud

 

Chapter One

I'm a sociopath. I look normal, but I'm not. I'm smarter, better, and
freer,
because I'm not bound by rules, law, emotion, or regard for you.

I can read you almost immediately, get your number right away, and push your buttons to make you do whatever I want. I don't really like you, but I'm so good at acting as if I do that it's basically the same thing. To you.

I fool you.

I fool
everybody
.

I've read that one out of twenty-four people is a sociopath, and if you ask me, the other twenty-three of you should be worried. One out of twenty-four people is 4 percent of the population, and that's a lot of sociopaths. Anorexics are 3 percent, and everybody talks about them. Schizophrenics are only 1 percent, but they get all the press. No one's paying any attention to sociopaths, or they think we're all killers, which is a misconception.

It's not being paranoid to worry about us. You should be more paranoid than you are. Your typical suburban mom worries all the time, but she worries about the wrong things.

Because she doesn't worry about me.

People think evil exists in the form of terrorists, murderers, and ruthless dictators, but not in “normal” people like me. They don't realize that evil lives on their street. Works in the cubicle next to them. Chats with them in the checkout line at CVS. Reads a paperback on the train next to them. Runs on a treadmill at their gym.

Or marries their daughter.

We're here, and we prey on
you.

We target you.

We groom you.

I took a sociopath test, not officially, of course. Only trained professionals can administer the real test, called the Hare test, but I found a version of it online. The first two questions went like this:

1. I am superior to others.

Circle one: Doesn't apply to me. Partially applies to me. Fully applies to me.

And:

2. I would not feel sorry if someone were blamed for something I did.

Circle one: Doesn't apply to me. Partially applies to me. Fully applies to me.

There were twenty questions, and forty was the top score. I scored a thirty-eight, which means I would be graduating with honors if I majored in being a sociopath.

I didn't need the test to tell me who I was, anyway.

I already knew.

I have always known.

I don't have any feelings, neither love nor hate, no like or dislike, not even a thumbs-up or thumbs-down like on Facebook.

I do have a Facebook account, however, and I have a respectable number of friends.

Ask me if I care.

Actually, I think it's funny they're my friends, because they have no idea who I am. My face is a mask. I hide my thoughts. My words are calculated to please, charm, or undermine. I can sound smarter or dumber, depending on what you expect to hear. My actions further my self-interest.

I'm neither your friend nor your frenemy, unless you have what I want.

In that case, I'm not only your enemy, I'm your nightmare.

I get bored easily.

I hate to wait for anything.

Waiting makes me so restless, and I've been in this room for hours, even this video game is
boring.
God knows what idiots are playing online right now, forming their pimple-faced teams, exploring dungeons, going on quests, killing dragons, hookers, and Nazis, all of them playing a role.

I wonder if whoever invented World of Warcraft realizes it's practice for sociopaths.

The gamers I play online name themselves KillerCobra, SwordofDeath, and Slice&Dice, but I bet they're in middle school.

Or law school.

If one out of twenty-four people is a sociopath, I'm not the only gamer who tried to burn the house down.

My character name is WorthyAdversary.

I role-play every day in real life, so I'm very good at gaming.

I'm always a step ahead, maybe two.

I plan everything. I set everyone in motion, and when the moment comes, I strike.

I always win in the end.

They never see me coming.

Know why?

Because I'm already there.

 

Chapter Two

Dr. Eric Parrish was on his way out when he was paged to the emergency department. His gut tensed as he approached, though he'd been Chief of the Psychiatric Unit at Havemeyer General Hospital for five years. There was always the possibility of violence on an emergency consult, and last year in nearby Delaware County, a hospital psychiatrist on an ED consult was shot and his caseworker killed by a psychotic patient. The tragedy ended when the psychiatrist, who carried a concealed gun, returned fire, killing the patient.

Eric hustled down the hospital corridor, followed by two medical students on their psych rotation, a female and a male talking among themselves. He felt confident that he could protect them, and himself, without a gun. His employer, the PhilaHealth Partnership, had become hyperaware of security after the Delaware County shooting and had trained him in defensive strategies and escape procedures. Eric would never carry a gun in a hospital. He was a healer at heart and, he suspected, a bad shot.

Abruptly the loudspeaker system switched on, and a recorded lullaby wafted through the speakers. The hospital played the lullaby each time a baby was born in its labor and delivery service, but Eric cringed at the sound, knowing it would cause misery on his psych unit, upstairs. One of his patients was a young mother depressed after the stillbirth of her child, and the intermittent lullaby always sent her into an emotional tailspin. Eric had asked administration not to pipe the music into his unit, but they said it would cost too much to alter the speaker system. He told them to take it out of his budget, but they said no.

The chimes of the lullaby reverberated in his ears, and it bugged him that he couldn't get the hospital bureaucracy to listen to him. He knew it was part of the larger problem, that mental illness wasn't taken as seriously as physical illness, and Eric was on a one-man campaign to change that. He was living proof that there was hope, even happiness. Back in med school he'd developed an anxiety disorder, but he'd gotten his symptoms under complete control during his training. Since then, he'd ended talk therapy and weaned himself off his meds. He'd been symptom-free. Cured.

He pushed open the double doors leading to the ED, which bustled on a Friday night. Nurses in patterned scrubs hurried in and out of full examining rooms, a physician's assistant pushed a rolling computer desk, and a group of black-uniformed EMTs talked near an empty stretcher with orange head-immobilizing blocks, resting on a hospital gurney.

Eric approached the octagonal nurses' station, and a blonde nurse looked up from her computer monitor, smiled, and pointed to examining room D. Everybody recognized the hospital shrinks from the bright red W on their lanyard IDs. The W stood for Wright, the wing that contained the locked psych unit, but the staff teased that W stood for Wackos. He'd heard all the jokes—
How do you tell the psychiatrists from the patients in the hospital? The patients get better and leave.
Eric told the best psychiatrist jokes, though he never told the ones about psychiatrist's kids. He didn't think those were funny. He lived those.

The medical students quieted as he beelined toward the examining room, walked to the open curtain, and stood in the threshold, relieved to see that his patient was a sweet-faced older woman with cropped silvery white hair, resting comfortably in bed in a hospital gown. Next to her sat a young man, looking concerned as he held her hand. Standing behind him was Dr. Laurie Fortunato, a short, curvy figure in a crisp white lab coat, the black rubber stems of her stethoscope decorated with flower stickers for her pediatric patients. She and Eric had been friends since medical school and were running buddies, even though she was faster, which sucked.

“Hi, Laurie, good to see you.” Eric entered the room followed by the medical students, whom he introduced briefly before they stood at the back wall, observing discreetly, per procedure.

“Eric, same, thanks for coming down.” Laurie grinned. She had a bright and lively aspect, owing to her warm brown eyes, longish Roman nose, chubby cheeks, and a generous mouth that never stopped moving, whether she was yakking away, cracking wise, or making faces. She was appealing without makeup, which almost none of the female professionals bothered with in the hospital, but Laurie's earthy lack of vanity was her defining characteristic; she always twisted up her curly brown hair in a knot, held in place at the nape of her neck by whatever she could grab—pencil, pen, or tongue depressor.

“Happy to do it. How can I help?”

Laurie gestured to the patient. “This is Virginia Teichner and her grandson Max Jakubowski.”

“I'm Eric Parrish. Good to meet you both.” Eric took a step closer to the bed, and the elderly patient looked up at him with a sly smile, her hooded brown eyes making direct contact, a good sign. She had no evident injury, but she was on a saline IV drip and her vital signs were being monitored by a finger clip. Eric checked the glowing screen; her numbers were normal, if not great.

“Ooh, look at you, you're so handsome,” Mrs. Teichner said, her voice raspy. She eyed him over in a mock-stagey way. “You can call me Virginia. Or honeybun.”

“Now we're talking.” Eric reached for the rolling stool, pulled it over, and sat down next to her bed. He enjoyed working with geriatric patients, and his first task was to establish a rapport with her. Humor usually worked. He smiled at her. “If you think I'm handsome, there's obviously nothing wrong with your vision.”

“Not true, I got macular degeneration.” Mrs. Teichner winked. “Or maybe I'm just a degenerate!”

Eric laughed.