"I'm. . I'm not sure. I was sitting near the back. It was all dark outside, so you couldn't see anything, but now I remember I think I heard a kind of thud at the back emergency door just as we were starting up, like something had run into us. Or somebody had jumped on. Oh, wow."
"You're saying the thump you heard could have been Raymond climbing on the back of the bus?"
"Now that I think of it, yes," he said in a voice just above a whisper. "There was a step on the back, and steel rungs he could have grabbed hold of."
"Did you hear anybody climbing up to the top?"
He swallowed hard, shook his head. "No. But I was scared. I wasn't listening for anything; it's only now that I even remember the thump, and I can't even be sure what that was. Everybody was scared and talking a lot-except for Emily, who was sitting on the floor up at the front next to Dr. Sharon. Mongo, I've seen newspaper headlines about how somebody's killing a lot of people here in New York. Do you think it could be Raymond?"
"He'd be my favorite candidate, except I don't see how anybody, even a homicidal maniac, could ride on down the New York Thruway on top of a bus for four hours at this time of year. If he didn't bounce off or freeze to death, he'd attract all kinds of attention up there and have cars honking, especially after the bus got to the city."
Michael licked his lips. His eyes had grown wide. "But there was stuff on top."
"What kind of stuff?"
"There was a railing around the edge, and storage bins bolted to the roof. They held sports equipment, tents, and other stuff we'd use when the staff took us on picnics, or camping. That's why there were rungs on the back. The bins were full of equipment, and not big enough to hide in, but nobody would have seen him if he lay down between them. And he could have wrapped himself in a tent to keep warm."
Ah. "Did Dr. Sharon stop anywhere to discuss what it was she planned to do with all of you?"
He again shook his head. "I don't think she knew then what she was going to do, except get us to New York. She drove right to the Thruway and headed south. She was quiet all the way, and every once in a while she'd reach down to stroke Emily's hair. I think she decided what she was going to do while she was driving, because once we got here she headed right for that place with the skating rink and the big statue."
"Rockefeller Center."
"Yeah. She parked at the curb of a street in the next block. Then she got up and came back through the bus, dividing up the capsules she'd brought with her in the plastic garbage bag. She told us she'd taken as many of the meds as she could find, and she hoped there were enough to get all of us through the next few weeks, at least until Christmas. She said each of us had a decision to make. She said she was afraid that the people who owned the hospital might send men after us to kill us, so we shouldn't help to identify ourselves by talking to anyone about Rivercliff. She said that if men were sent after us, the only way we could be safe was if we went to social workers or the police, told our story, and then asked them for their help and protection. But she also said there was no guarantee anyone would believe us, and she warned us that if we told the police or social workers about our meds, all of our meds might be taken away for testing, and we almost certainly wouldn't get them back in time to take the next day's dose. She said that if that happened, we'd get sick like we used to be, and might never be well again."
"Did she warn you that some or all of you might die if you didn't take your meds?"
"No. She just said we'd get crazy again. That was bad enough. So that's why each of us had to make a choice. She couldn't look after all of us-Emily was the only one she was taking with her. She said she was going to try to get more meds for us, but she wasn't sure she could do it. Any one of us could go to the police or social workers if we were willing to risk having our meds taken away. If any of us chose to take our chances living on the streets, then she would meet us by the Christmas tree next to the skating rink on Christmas Eve. She said she hoped she'd have a fresh supply of meds for us by then, and these would keep us going until she could come up with some kind of a plan for bringing us all in safely, maybe with a guarantee that we could keep taking our meds."
"You'd have had a better chance of being believed by the authorities if your psychiatrist had been with you. Why didn't she offer to go with you to the police?"
"I don't know. Maybe she needed time to come up with a plan. Maybe she was afraid they wouldn't believe her either, or that they'd still take away our meds."
And maybe arrest her, I thought. There had to be some very powerful people behind the operation at Rivercliff, and in the four hours or so it had taken Sharon Stephens to drive to the city they would almost certainly have found out what happened, and taken steps to protect themselves from exposure. They could have put out some kind of cover story to various agencies around the state, including key social welfare and medical authorities, and the police would have been waiting for this shepherdess and her lost flock. The capsules would have been confiscated, and then there wouldn't have been any need to send assassins; all of the patients would have died within forty-eight hours and Sharon Stephens would have been isolated. I wasn't willing to give this keeper at Rivercliff much credit for anything, including her rather belated acquiring of a moral sensibility and her heroics, but she obviously wasn't stupid, and she could think clearly under pressure.
I said, "She probably did the right thing."
"I know all of this sounds kind of weird, Mongo. Do you believe me?"
Nothing in the man's story sounded a bit weirder than what I'd already seen with my own eyes, and I said, "Yes, Michael, I believe you. And your Dr. Sharon knew what she was talking about. I believe people have come here to track you down and kill you, and I believe your meds would have been taken away if you'd gone to the authorities for help. To your knowledge, how many of the other patients made the same decision you did, to take your chances on the street and try to make it until Christmas Eve?"
"All of us did the same thing. It wasn't a hard choice to make, Mongo. Sometimes, even if you've been crazy for years, you can experience little snippets of memory, even if they only come in dreams, of what it was like to be able to think clearly, to be able to act normally and be with normal people, to not hear voices or screaming in your head all the time. Just those little pieces of memory can be so. . sweet. Then, to be able to function normally all of the time is like the most wonderful gift you've ever been given, and it's something you never take for granted. You never forget the torment of the craziness; to call it hell isn't an adequate description. It's worse than hell. All of us had maybe a month or more of sanity in our pockets, and it was worth being cold and hungry-and yes, maybe even dying-to keep that sanity for as long as was possible. To risk having our meds abruptly taken away from us was just. . unthinkable. I don't think you can understand."
I had a few vivid memories of my own, of the time when my brother's mind had gone over a very high cliff as a result of his being poisoned with "spy dust," a mysterious substance called nitrophenyldienal. I had suffered with him, in a very real way probably more than he did. I remembered him comatose, remembered how his consciousness had been warped when he'd recovered, his loss of "I," and his long, harrowing journey back to sanity. Garth had been changed forever, in many subtle but still distinct ways, but at least he could function again as a rational human being. I never again wanted to lose my brother to madness, didn't want to see anyone lost to madness. So I thought I could indeed understand what his meds meant to Michael Stout, but I didn't contradict him.