“We do, and I appreciate all that you have sacrificed caring for me.”
He didn’t care if they fully believed him. Their hubris would allow them to believe in their irresistible influence over him. Once he added compliant actions to his promises, they would be controlled.
When Straus told him that “a move to a more secluded, quieter, and much more pleasant environment” was necessary, he agreed to be sedated during the transfer. To sedate him, the doctors couldn’t just inject a sedative into his arm but needed him to drink a cocktail of drugs. Once consumed, his cells would transfer the sedative throughout his body, and the effects would be felt. They knew, from multiple experiments, that to sedate him could take as long as three hours. The only fast way to make him unconscious was by shocking him, and that method was too painful and too dangerous.
“If you still do not trust me, Doctor Straus, and feel you need to take this precautionary measure, I will offer no resistance. I am, however, disappointed in myself.”
“Why is that?” Straus had asked.
“Though I have tried to demonstrate my trustworthiness and my appreciation for all that you have done for me, if you still lack confidence in my promises, I must have not done enough. Yet.”
Doctor Straus had decided, more out of necessity and convenience than out of concern, that he needed to move his patient out of the once friendly and secure confines of Hilburn and up to the Adirondack Lodge that Straus had inherited from his father. The state of New York was continually slashing its funding to institutions like Hilburn and, twelve years after his patient had arrived, Straus received notice that Hilburn was scheduled to be closed within one year.
Having nowhere to continue to treat, examine, test, and hide his patient, Straus hired a contractor, who promised confidentiality in exchange for payment in cash, to make several modifications to Straus’s lodge in Piseco, Lake New York.
“I need an addition put on,” he told the contractor. “I plan to start renting out rooms to fellow doctors who need a quiet place to relax. However, I also need a suite of rooms designed to ensure maximum security.”
“Plan on keeping criminals in your lodge, Doctor?” the contractor from Connecticut asked.
“I believe our agreement includes confidentiality but does not require full disclosure. Am I correct?”
“Tell me what you want, and it will be done.”
His patient was nearly thirteen-years old before the modifications were completed at the lodge. The timing was perfect, as the state of New York informed Straus that many of the buildings that comprised the Hilburn campus were already being leased to start-up companies. The main building was to remain open until all the patients were placed in community group homes, smaller state-run facilities, or psychiatric hospitals. What happened, however, was that some of the patients that once called Hilburn home were simply released into the public and left, for the most part, to fend for themselves.
Most of the Hilburn staff were offered transfers or early retirement packages. Straus and his core team were all given the choice of transfer or to accept a rather healthy severance package. Curtis and Straus took the severance while Lucietta accepted a transfer to a state hospital in Manhattan.
Straus’s favorite nurse, Michelle Pettingal had resigned her position when Alex was only three years old. Though she never admitted it, Straus learned that she had married Doctor Stanley Mix and had moved somewhere in Upstate New York. Straus tried to keep track of Michelle as his desire to “have” her remained. But that desire eventually faded, and Michelle became nothing more than a pleasant memory.
On her last day of work, Straus made sure that Michelle would honor her commitment of keeping the story of Alexander Black quiet.
“I won’t say anything, Doctor. Honestly, no one would believe my story, and I would rather just forget everything about this place.”
The outlook of being forgotten struck Straus deeply. After all he had done for her, how could she simply “forget” him? He had suspected that Stanley Mix and she were keeping in contact but never thought their contacts would turn romantic.
“I hope you keep your promise, Nurse Pettingal,” he said to her as she handed in her staff badge and completed her exit interview. “But I do hope that you retain some pleasant memories of our time here together.”
His time in the lodge, though confined to two rooms for the first several months, was when he began designing, testing, and refining his plan. While he continued acting as the willing associate to Straus and those who remained a part of his team, he continually looked for opportunities to expand specific knowledge. He knew that, despite his intelligence, he would be lost in the world. He lacked the skills needed to blend in, to properly engage others, even to find sustenance. He knew that his plan needed time, and time demands patience.
The first time he was allowed to leave the walls of the lodge was at night. The night sky was brilliantly clear. He sat on the damp grass behind the lodge and stared up at the stars for well over an hour, saying nothing and remaining perfectly still. He had read about stars, about constellations and the folk tales surrounding them. He had studied the moon and the planets, and had read several books filled with theories and speculations about the universe. As he sat, staring up at the night sky, he grew more convinced that life could not be learned from a book. That no matter how talented a writer may be, describing the simple light of a star with words was as futile as him trying to escape and live in the world he had only read about. That night, he decided how his plan would conclude. He also decided that the first steps of his plan were still many years away.
Over the years, he often asked to be allowed to walk to the shore of Piseco Lake. Each request was denied.
“There are too many risks involved, Alexander. While we have grown to trust you, we don’t trust what others may do if they see you. I hate to have to remind you of this, but your appearance, Alexander, you don’t look like the others.”
He knew what he looked like, and he knew that his appearance would certainly disturb the public. He had been told, countless times, that the public would never understand him. They would, out of fear, restrain him and subject him to tests, much more severe and invasive that what he had grown accustomed to.
As the years rolled past, he continued to expand his understanding of the world outside of the lodge. Occasionally, he earned the reward of going outside, feeling the sun warming his face, watching a storm cloud releasing its anger, or seeing the stars, reminding him of their mysteries.