Thirteen West

Chapter
One

"Mother, will you please stop staring at that crazy!"

Sarah Goodrow Fenz ignored her daughter's plea as well as Linda's frantic tug at her arm. Her feet firmly planted on the southwest corner of
Horton Square
in revivified downtown
San Diego
, she peered at the stumbling, mumbling derelict weaving his way toward them.

He was no novelty—all cities had their quota of drunks, druggies and dippity-dos—but something about him triggered a warning flare of memory. She shook her head, but the long-ago and unwelcome memory persisted from a time she didn't care to dwell on.

"Moth-er!" Linda cried, giving her arm a hard yank. "Let's go!"

As Sarah freed herself, the man's blurry gaze met hers and she noticed the wedge of yellow in the brown iris of his right eye. The bottom fell out of her world. Frank. Almost unrecognizable, but Frank all the same. The one man she'd thought she'd left forever back in the past.

After a moment she recovered enough to realize there'd been no flare of recognition in his expression. He obviously hadn't a clue who she was. Thank heaven. She'd simply walk on by and that would be the end of it. But her feet wouldn't move.

"Frank Kent," she said when he drew even with her.

He blinked, stumbling to a stop, looking around, apparently unable to believe she was the one who'd spoken to him.

"Frank," she repeated, understanding with dismay that whether she wanted to or not, she'd made up her mind what must be done. Reaching out, she grasped his hand. "Come with me."

"Are you out of your mind?" Linda protested. "You can't do this. These people are dangerous."

"Not Frank," Sarah said. "Not anymore."

Linda stared at her. "You can't be serious. Even if you know him, just what do you intend to do? Remember, you're staying with us and Darrin will have a fit if you try to bring him to the house." She gave Frank a shuddering glance. "I don't even want him in my car. I'd never get the smell out."

Head down, looking at no one, Frank left his hand in Sarah's, apparently oblivious to what Linda was saying.

Sarah eyed her daughter. "Don't worry; I'll take a taxi to a motel. And I won't bother Darrin about this unless I need a medical opinion."

Linda's expression changed from worried to horrified. "You don't mean to stay with this—this street bum in a motel!"

"You know as well as I do that no hospital will admit him. Where can he go to be taken care of? There is no place for street bums, as you call them. I have no choice but to try to take care of him myself. After all, I'm a nurse."

"Be reasonable, Mother. You haven't done any nursing in years. He's filthy. He probably has lice and God only knows what awful diseases. AIDS, for one."

Sarah shot her daughter an exasperated look. "Either help me or leave me alone. I'm doing what I have to do." She waved her hand at an oncoming taxi and it pulled to the curb. "I'll call you from wherever I go and you can bring me my things." Leaving her still protesting daughter, Sarah loaded a passive Frank into the cab and climbed in after him, wrinkling her nose at the stink of dirty clothes, unwashed male, old vomit and second-hand wine fumes.

"Take me to a motel where they'll accept this man, but make sure it's one where I won't be in any danger," she told the cabbie.

His over-the-shoulder glance was dubious, but he nodded. Frank hadn't looked at her except for the one time on the street. He not only had no idea who she was but no concept of where he was headed or what she intended to do with him. He was as helpless in her hands as she'd once been in his.

She owed him no debt, quite the contrary. Why did she feel compelled to try to rescue him? After all, it had been—what?—twenty eight years since she last saw Frank.

At forty-seven, divorced and comfortably off, she didn't need any complications in her life. She could pick up and go any time she chose and she liked it that way. Her visit to Linda and Darrin here in
San Diego
had been spur of the moment. Sarah sighed. Her doctor son-in-law, conservative to a fault, would be more upset than her daughter had been. Neither of them would ever understand. There was only one person who might, if she could turn him into a rational human being again. Frank Kent.

 
Trying to rehabilitate him meant tending him over a period of time. Who knew how long? During his recovery, she might be forced to bring him to her own home in
Nevada
, a daunting thought. The process, she feared, would force her back into being nineteen-year-old Sally Goodrow again, back to 1972, trapped in the quagmire of the past, the insanity of the old state hospital system and the horrors she'd faced there.

Was it worth the doing?

Words echoed in her mind, said years ago by a nurse who'd befriended her: Pity is shit. Guilt is shit. Love or nothing.

Whatever she felt for Frank certainly wasn't love, never had been love. Yet something compelled her to take on what would be—make no mistake—an unpleasant, down and dirty job with no guarantee of success.

Maybe Linda had it right. Maybe she was out of her mind.

Chapter
Two

1972

Sally Goodrow peered out the rain-dotted window of the bus. A stuccoed cement wall ran along the highway, massive trees arching over it, ubiquitous oleanders laying red and pink flowers along the top. Did the wall enclose an old estate?

She caught sight of a red tiled roof and thought hacienda, one of the old Spanish estates.

A moment later the bus turned and passed between open iron gates and she saw the heavy wooden sign hung on black chains:
Calafia
State
Hospital
.

Palms lined the entrance drive, alternating Mexican and date like skinny Jack Sprat and his fat wife. The bus pulled up in front of a three-story Spanish mission style building which another sign identified as Administration.

Sally hurried through the rain, feeling conspicuous with her two suitcases, and entered the building. A scale model of the hospital grounds encased in glass confronted her just beyond the front door, so she put her bags down and examined it.

The
Administration
Building
wings elled east and west. Behind each ell, three single story structures sprawled like triple digits on a spread hand. Smaller outbuildings huddled in the open-ended inner court.

The entire unit was bounded by the stucco wall she'd seen from the bus. In addition, a higher metal fence cut off the three buildings to the west from the inner court and also from the wall, imprisoning them.

I knew I wasn't going to like it here, Sally thought, her gaze lingering on the fence. I guess I can stand anything for six weeks, though. It isn't like I'll ever have to come back again.

She picked up her luggage and looked around for some indication of where Personnel might be. A, B, C East Wards were indicated by an arrow, the A, B, C West Wards arrow pointed the opposite way. Seeing an Information sign, she crossed the lobby to ask for directions.

In Personnel she signed multiple forms, finally taking possession of a key marked #32.

"If you walk down that corridor," a secretary told her, pointing, "you can go out the side door on the east wing. When you come to a fork, make a left turn and follow that walk till you come to the singles' apartments. They're two-story, green. If you'd like some coffee before you go back out into the rain, there's an urn in the waiting room just off the lobby."

In the waiting room, Sally saw two men seated near the urn, hesitated, then decided she needed the coffee. As she filled her disposable cup, she tried to ignore the two men—one fat and balding, the other, wearing a green jacket, hunched over as though in pain. He had a towel wrapped around his right hand. A bloodstained towel.

"Take it easy, Dolph," the fat man muttered. "Ain't the end of the world, coming here. Can't be no worse than the one up north. If you'd've stayed off the booze, you wouldn't've got all squirrely again. Jeez, Vera's gonna kill me if she finds out you got hold of that bottle."

"Vera," Dolph said. "Knives."

"Wasn't no knife. You cut your hand on that bottle you smashed," the fat man said.

"Vera and Ron. Snake words."

"Only snakes around here are in your screwed-up head. Comes from too much booze."

Sally took a sip of the coffee, bitter beyond sweetening. She didn't want to hear any of this but she could hardly carry the coffee cup and the two suitcases.

"Knives," Dolph repeated. "They ain't gonna cut me." Without warning he bolted from the chair, startling Sally into spilling some of her coffee as he dashed past her toward the west wards.

"Catch him!" Ron shouted.

Sally froze in place, frightened of the situation.

 
A broad-shouldered man in a white uniform appeared from nowhere and raced after Dolph, Ron bringing up the rear. The receptionist, who'd come from behind her Information counter to watch, said, "Never a dull moment. Frank sure arrived in the nick of time, didn't he?"

She must mean the big guy. "Is he a doctor?" Sally asked.

 
"The evening supervisor," the receptionist told her.

 
"He came to pick up the guy. Frank can't help but nab him—that west side is all fenced in."

"I noticed," Sally said. Setting down what was left of the coffee in the cup, she picked up her bags, did her best to smile at the woman and left the lobby.