Susan took her eyes from her patient to fix them on Remington. She could not help grinning at the comment. “I’m so sorry. I’m not usually . . . insane.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Remington said with not-wholly-mock seriousness. “What happened?”
“One of our study patients went AWOL. Goldman and Peters have been going mad trying to find him. I saw him getting on the bus, and I didn’t want to lose him.” Susan tapped the laboratory number into her Vox and sent off a quick text: “Found P.F. 15 bus. Advise.”
Remington stretched to peek around Susan. “Is it the shabby one in the coat?”
Susan nodded. “His name’s Payton.” For discretionary reasons, she did not divulge his last name.
Remington continued to peer past her. “How crazy is he?”
Susan winced. Psychiatrists were generally not enamored of the “c” word. “You know I can’t say. Confidentiality.”
“Yeah.” Remington surely understood, but he did not seem happy with the reply. “But I like to know a little bit about a guy when I’m stuck on a bus with him and he’s wearing a trench coat in July.”
Susan dismissed Remington’s concerns. “Just because he’s a psych patient doesn’t make him dangerous.”
Remington sat back, though clearly still uneasy. “Susan, one of your patients, age four, tried to murder one of my patients. She did murder his sister. You want to come up with something more comforting than ‘just because he’s a psych patient doesn’t make him dangerous’?”
Susan had little to offer. While not the most dangerous of psychiatric diagnoses — antisocial personalities such as Sharicka had that sewn up — schizophrenia did make its victims unpredictable and, sometimes, dangerous. She could not forget Payton’s answers to her questions about how and why he had come to the procedure room: “I walked. Ninety-three billion miles. From da sun.” Susan shrugged. “As long as we’re just following him and don’t confront him, we shouldn’t incite any problems.”
Remington grunted. “No way a paranoid schizophrenic would lash out at people following him, right?”
Susan tried not to reveal that Remington had inadvertently discovered the correct diagnosis. “Well . . .”
“And you wouldn’t actually try to talk to him, that is, confront him, would you?”
As that had been Susan’s plan, she could hardly deny it. A buzz from her Vox rescued her from a reply. It was the lab: “StA wth. Wll gt prmssn frm fmly fr cops.” “Doesn’t look like I’ll have to. Goldman and Peters are contacting the family. They should be able to get permission for intervention by law enforcement.”
Remington glanced around Susan again. “Good.” He craned farther. “Where’s he going?”
Susan turned her attention to Payton Flowers. The man had risen from his seat, heading toward the front of the bus.
The resident physicians watched him approach the bus driver, talk for a moment, then flip the edge of his coat. Even from a dozen seats back, Susan could see the driver of the bus grow visibly pale. He punched the intercom button. “Passengers, please remain calm.”
No words in the English language could have had a more opposite effect. Though no one left his seat, all of the passengers visibly stiffened, including a woman who had appeared so deeply asleep she sprawled partway into the aisle, held in place by her seat belt.
“If we all stay in our seats and don’t panic, we’ll be fine.”
Susan’s heart rate tripled. She found herself leaning on Remington, who put a steadying arm around her.
The driver continued, his voice tremulous and edged with fear. Clearly, he was trying to control it, but it would not wholly obey him. “This man has a bomb and has threatened to set it off if anyone leaves their seat.”
A bomb? Susan’s first thought was to deny it. Things like that did not happen on glide-buses in downtown Manhattan. Then, her thoughts scattered in several directions. This can’t be real. This can’t be happening. Why would Payton Flowers want to blow us up? Why would anyone hijack a glide-bus; it wouldn’t have the power to make it out of the state, let alone the country. Then, one thought shattered all the others. We’re going to die!
All around her, Susan could hear the faint click of Vox messages being sent. Likely, some of them had locked into Emergency mode. Others were probably sending love notes to friends, children, parents, and spouses. Surely, the police would pinpoint them before Payton could do anything stupid.
Pinpoint us and what? Make sure we explode somewhere less populated? Susan looked at Remington. His Vox glowed red. He, at least, had put his Vox into Emergency mode. The police computers could lock onto it and, probably, several others on the crowded bus. I know this guy. I should be able to do something no one else can.
Yet, Susan realized, she barely knew him. She had done little more than punch a needle into his back, hardly the starting point for a friendship. She considered texting her father but discarded it. He already knew how much she loved him. She would do better focusing on how to fix this situation, dredging her brain for some way to handle a raging, unmedicated schizophrenic that only a psychiatrist would know.
A psychiatrist, Susan realized, would inject him with an emergency dose of antipsychotics. That information did little to help. She did not carry around spare doses of hospital medications, let alone a needle. If I did, she decided, it would contain a potent and fast-acting anesthesia. She punched another message to Goldman and Peters: “E! P.F. w/bomb. Hijack! Advise.” She had no idea what they could tell her that would make any difference, but it seemed worth trying. They might know how to contact Payton’s regular psychiatrist.
Remington whispered, “If you distract him, I’ll grab him.”
“No!” Susan returned in a forceful whisper. “It’s not like he has a gun or something you could take from him. He’d just detonate the bomb and kill us all.”
Remington’s jaw set. “We have to do something.”
Susan could hardly argue. The only other option was to sit back and leave their fate to a psychotic, assuming no one else tried anything stupid and got them all killed first. “Patients with hallucinations and delusions may not see things as they are.”
Remington’s gaze seemed to bore through her, as if trying to read the point behind her words. “Are you saying he might not act or react in a rational fashion? Because that seems rather obvious under the circumstances.”
Susan could see how he might interpret her words that way. “I mean he may believe he has a bomb, but it might be something . . . harmless.”
“In which case, I can jump him.”
“In which case,” Susan corrected, “you don’t need to jump him.”
The buzz of the lab’s reply joined a cacophony of Vox noises: “StA clm, quiet. Sndng hlp.”
Remington peered over the heads of the people in front of him. “That’s real fear in the driver’s voice and face. If it’s not a bomb, it’s a good facsimile.”
“Yeah.” Before Susan could say anything further, the driver came on again.
“Everyone, I must remind you to remain in your seats for the safety of us all.”
Susan had not seen anyone attempt to stand, but it did not hurt to remind people.
“Also, the gentleman has asked that you shut down all electronics, remain silent, and . . .”
Payton said something Susan could not make out.
“And stop talking about him.” The driver fairly screeched the words, as if realizing how ludicrous they sounded but certain choosing others might get him killed. Remington had an excellent point. The person sitting closest to Payton Flowers, the one who should know, was clearly convinced the device beneath his trench coat was actively explosive. He added pleadingly, “Please do as he says.”