Projection (29 page)

I knew one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt:  Violence is illness.  As a physician — as a human being — I had the right neither to ignore it nor to mirror it.  I had to treat it.  A line from Dante's
Inferno
came to me.

Here must all distrust be left behind; all cowardice

must be ended.

"You can see what we face," Lucas said.  "You can see why we need your help."  He turned his head and nodded over his right shoulder.  "There's still a chance to save this one."

I took a few deep breaths and joined him at the door to the quiet room.  My heart fell.

Kathy, wearing scrubs, stood over Nurse Vawn, who lay naked on a gurney, her wrists and ankles buckled into leather restraints.  Her belly was swollen with what was almost certainly Lucas’ child.  A scalpel and an assortment of makeshift medical instruments — the ten-inch shank of a screwdriver, a crescent wrench, half a barber's scissors — lay on a tray at the bedside, along with packages of blue nylon sutures.

Vawn was struggling to free herself.  "Please."  She began crying, repeating, "Let me go.  Let me go."

Lucas walked in ahead of me, chewing his lower lip.  "Just as soon as you're well," he said.

As I entered Kathy turned.  Volcanic anger flashed across her face, stopping me cold.

Lucas walked to the side of the gurney opposite Kathy.  "We were just getting started."

"With what?" I managed.

"Dilation and curettage," he answered.  "She's begun to bleed again.  D and C is the treatment of choice."

I tore my gaze away from Kathy's piercing eyes.  "She's pregnant.  The child needs help."

"She's infested!" Lucas spluttered.  "Satan may be curled inside her womb, sucking his hoof, but nothing human slumbers there."  He paused, his jaws working against one another.  "Kill it first, then remove it," he instructed Kathy.

Vawn screamed.

Kathy picked up the screwdriver.  "You bitch," she rasped, resting the gray metal shank against Vawn's inner thigh, but looking at me.  "This is all your doing.  You tried to split us up."  Her voice was murderous.  "Did you really think you'd get Trevor all to yourself?"

Nurse Vawn had become the rope in a psychological tug of war.  And I had the sense that if I didn't let go, the rope would snap.  "No.  I should never have come between you.  It wasn't for me to lock either one of you up."

"Too late.  You should never have come back here.  What Trevor needs he can get from me."

Kathy loved Lucas, twisted as the affection might be.  And Vawn's baby was part of him, derived from his flesh, his soul.  That fact might be the only one to stop Kathy from killing the child.  But it might instead pour fuel on her primitive jealousy.  I swallowed hard.  "The child is Trevor's," I said.

"Liar!" he roared.

Pain filled Kathy's eyes.  She pressed so hard on the metal shank that it punctured Vawn's thigh.

"No!" Vawn shrieked, jerking frantically.  "Please."

Kathy moved closer to the head of the gurney.  She grabbed a handful of Vawn's hair.  "Is the baby his?" she asked.

Vawn's eyes filled up.  Tears ran down her cheeks.

Kathy placed the tip of the screwdriver at Vawn's throat.  "Answer."

"Yes," Vawn choked.

Kathy stared at her several seconds, then walked back to stand over her abdomen.  She looked at Trevor.

"I love you," Trevor said.  "Stand up for the Lord."

Kathy put the screwdriver down on the bedside tray and picked up a scalpel.

"The child isn't Satan's."  I began to weep, too.  I turned to Lucas.  "You were eight years old when you knocked that boiling oil off the stove.  With your right hand."

Lucas’ face convulsed in pain, as if I were screaming in his ear.  The look in his eyes had changed from rage to panic.

I grabbed him.  "You didn't do it on purpose.  Do you understand?"

He stared at me for several seconds, then closed his eyes.  His jaws ground against one another.

"You didn't deserve to be locked up in a cage."

Without warning, Lucas used his whole body to drive me against the wall.  His face was just inches from mine.  His eyes were wild.

I forced myself not to turn away.  "No child is evil," I said.

A new sound filled the room.  Lucas wheeled around to face the gurney.  Then the sound came again.  And this time I recognized an infant's cry.

Kathy held a baby boy in her arms.  The scalpel, its blade bloodied, sat on the bedside tray.

Nurse Vawn lay unconscious.

"That is no human thing," Lucas said shakily.  "Please, Katherine.  Kill it."

Kathy looked at Lucas with a mixture of sympathy and longing.  "He's your son," she said softly.  "He's part of us.  So is she."  She held the boy gently to Vawn's breast.

All of a sudden, the unit was flooded with light form outside the building.  It poured through every window.

My stomach convulsed.  Rice had lied to me.  The attack was under way, hours before my midnight deadline.  North Anderson had been right; I'd been set up for the kill.  I shook Lucas.  "If you die here you'll never know the truth about your life," I said.

Lucas looked up at the corners of the room, then past me, into the hallway.  "The devil comes for his little prince," he said, with no emotion.  "Judgment Day."

I had nothing left.  I stepped back against the doorjamb.  "They're going to fire through the windows.  Just like they did last time.  Save the lives you can.  Tell everyone to lie on the floor.  Tell them to get down and stay there."

Lucas didn't respond.  He walked slowly out of the room.  As he did, Jack Rice's voice blared through the bullhorn.  "Trevor Lucas, this is Captain Rice.  Come to a window.  No one will harm you."

Lucas stood still, staring toward the green.

Rice was making it easy for Lucas.  He could take a bullet and go out believing himself a martyr in a holy war.  "You have my word," Rice went on.  "As God is my witness.  No one will fire a shot."

Lucas cocked his head to the left.  He glanced back at me.  Then he walked toward the Day Room.

I started toward the baby and Nurse Vawn, then realized they were indeed safe, not in spite of Kathy's illness, but because of it.  Her pathology had embraced them.  I turned and ran down the hallway.

Chapter 15

I made it to the door of the Day Room just in time to see Lucas walk through the rows of kneeling patients and hostages to the wall of windows.  The ceaseless chanting, together with the lights flooding the building, could only fuel his delusion that he was about to shepherd his flock to the afterlife.  He looked over the green, though I doubted he could make out anything in the glare.

"Your brother Michael is here to speak with you," Rice bellowed.

My heart began to race.  Breathing became an act of will.  Like most witnesses to a miracle, I told myself it couldn't be, even as the possibility filled me with hope and wonder.  I moved past the patients and hostages to a window several feet from Lucas.  I had to shield my eyes.

"Trevor, this is Michael," Lucas’ brother began.  Despite the PA system, his voice sounded tentative, almost shy.  "I came from home to see you."

Lucas opened his eyes wider, staring directly into the blaze of light.  He began to take deep breaths, arching his back to fill his lungs.

"I want you to come out of the building," Michael went on.

Lucas moved forward until he was nearly flush with the sheets of broken glass.  He raised himself onto his toes.

I couldn’t tell whether he was struggling to get a glimpse of Michael or getting up the nerve to jump.  And I couldn’t know whether his mind had begun to accept his brother as a human being or was still caught in webs of denial about a biblical guardian angel by the same name.  I was afraid to say anything that might push him over the edge.  I took a cautious step toward him and held out my hand.

Lucas stood motionless several seconds before turning around to face the patients and hostages.  They fell silent.  He glanced at me and smiled, but it was the vacant smile of an automaton.  "Be at peace," he told the group.  "The time has come for us to take our leave."

The patients stood up.  They pulled the hostages to their feet.  Zweig and the other two men took their places among them.

"Please come talk to me," Michael pleaded.

"Satan shall not inherit the earth," Lucas went on.  "The Lord is God."

"The Lord is God," the patients echoed.

Lucas’ voice built to a shout.  "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.  He restoreth my soul.  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death..."

Michael's voice over the PA system was still louder:  "We've both been hurt enough.  Please."

Rage surged in me.  I made no attempt to contain it.  I was out of time and out of strategy.  "You'll go straight to hell!" I shouted.

Lucas jerked his head in my direction.  His face was pure fury, but he looked at me askance, hardly making eye contact at all.

That subtle surrender of will was enough to make me roll the dice again.  I stepped closer to him.  "This is the moment you've been ranting about — the final battle for your soul.  If you don't face up to your pain, if you project it onto your brother, then you're Satan's through and through.  Michael will have to pay for your evil in this life.  And if there's any justice, you'll pay for it in the next.  Like every coward and fraud.

Lucas ducked for cover in the Bible.  "Was Jesus a coward because he carried his own cross?" he said, his voice wafting high and low, as if her were reciting poetry.  "Would you pillory him as you do me?  Let he who is without sin among us cast the first—"

I stayed on the attack.  "You're no Christ," I seethed.  "You won't even face your own sins, let alone die for anyone else's.  You want your brother to absorb your guilt while he watches you fall five stories.  It wasn't enough that you threw boiling oil on him and turned him into a freak."

"Stop!" Lucas screamed.

Zweig and two other patients stepped out of line and started toward me.  I reached back and broke a shard of glass off the shattered pane behind me, holding it like a dagger at my side.  I felt the edges cut my palm.  I transferred it to my other hand.  It sliced me again.  My fists grew warm and wet.

Zweig stopped coming forward and started to pace right and left, like a hungry lion stalking its prey.  He drew a knife.  The two other men stayed just behind him.

"Haven't you tortured Michael enough?" I peppered Lucas.  "You never even went back to see if he was alive or dead in that godforsaken row house on Jasper Street.  You hated him because he was your mother's ‘sweet boy.’"  I watched Zweig while I gave the words a few moments to sink in, then increased the pressure another notch.  "You remember.  ‘Sweet boy.’  She used to call out to him while you were locked in that cage in the basement.  Cooped up like a dog."

"I don't..." Lucas started.

"You left him behind for her to feast on."

Zweig stopped pacing and stared at Lucas.

"I don't remember that," Lucas said softly.

I glanced back at him and lost my breath.  Tears were streaming down his cheeks, turning the blood-red splotches on his scrub top pink in places.  He looked baffled by his own grief.

The patients and hostages stood motionless, watching him.

He closed his eyes and shook his head, then squinted at the floor.  The tears didn't stop.  "I remember that cage."  He finally raised his eyes to mine.  "You say my brother is here to see me?"

I still couldn’t be certain that Lucas was using the word
brother
in the biological, rather than spiritual, sense.  But I wasn't certain it mattered.  "Michael.  He never forgot you.  He came here from Baltimore."  I felt as if I could push further.  I pointed to the hostages.  "These people have families, too."

Lucas’ gaze traveled over the rows of patients and hostages.

"Shepherd them home," I said.

He turned to the wall of windows again.

I knew in my heart that Lucas was making his decision between life and death, between facing reality and literally flying in its face.  Strange as it seemed to me, I knew I would forgive him if the rest of the truth was too much, if he couldn't bear to look upon Michael's face.  Because the mind buries some traumas so deeply that the excavation is more torture than a person can stand.  "You didn't mean to hurt him," I said, in case it was the last thing he heard.  "It was an accident."

Several seconds passed.  "Mr. Zweig," Lucas said, without turning around.  "Give Dr. Clevenger your key."  He waited another moment.  "Bring him to me, Frank," he said.  "Bring me to this man you call my brother."

*            *            *

Lucas released the four hostages who were well enough to walk, along with Calvin Sanger.  He left Laura Elmonte where she lay.  Despite my protests, he insisted Kathy and his child remain in the quiet room with Nurse Vawn.  Then he had me medicate the patients and lock them in their rooms.

No one fought us, not even Zweig.  No one asked a question.  Maybe the dose of methadone had left them listless.  Maybe the fever pitch of violence on the unit had sated them.  Maybe neither.  Lucas had an irresistible force of his own.  He had converted a ward of hopeless cases into soldiers in a great war against the devil.  Caught in the drama of Lucas’ psychosis they were liberated from their own tortured minds, allowed for a brief time to joust their demons, like Don Quixote tall in the saddle, tilting at windmills.  To keep the wind through their hair a moment longer, to keep denying that the monsters were inside them, not in front of them, I believe they would have played out any final scene for Lucas — suicide, murder or surrender.

At 8:24
P.M.
Lucas and I stood together, just inside the sliding glass doors of the hospital.  The green was lighted like a football stadium.  In the glow, Lucas looked cadaverous.  The yellowing stump of his right arm hung like a dead weight at his side.  His lip twitched feverishly while he took in the scene — the M-1 tank, dozens of police cruisers, the Hummers outfitted with Gatling guns, Jersey barriers shielding at least fifty officers shouldering high-powered rifles, legions of reporters choking the perimeter road.  The blades of the assault helicopter turned slowly, at the ready.