“Dr. Lance isn’t in today.”
“I saw a black van in the employee lot. That doesn’t belong to Dr. Lance?” Max asked.
“The hospital owns several of those vans. They’re used for transporting patients.”
“I see. Does Dr. Lance work with children?”
The woman shook her head. “He works with adults. We don’t have children at the hospital anymore, Mr. Wolfenstein. You might be aware the asylum has been closing parts of the facility for the last several years. Our children’s unit is no longer open.”
“So, there are no kids here at all?”
“None except a few who live with the staff, children of the doctors, that kind of thing.”
“I wondered if I might visit Percy Hobbs?”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” she told him. “Visiting hours are on Sunday.”
Max started to argue, but a commotion in the hallway behind them caught her attention.
Two orderlies were struggling with a man wearing state-issued pajamas. He cried and shouted, twisting sideways as the two orderlies attempted to drag him back down the hall.
“Nurse Frances, could you help us here?” one of the orderlies grunted, his face turning red with the effort of keeping the patient from breaking free.
She stood and hurried down the hall, Max forgotten behind her.
Several doors opened off the lobby. Max tried two, locked. On the third he got lucky.
He hurried down a long hall, looking into commons room and peeking through small viewing windows.
He passed a large window into a community room. Max paused and looked through the glass.
A single man sat in a wheelchair, his head bowed and his face slack. A young woman sat beside him, her hand on his. Half a dozen bracelets adorned her wrists, and Max studied her. She looked familiar, but he could only see her from the back. He looked at the white blond hair brushing her shoulders. She was out of place, a teenager, a girl really, comforting an invalid.
“Melanie,” he murmured, pushing forward, reaching for the knob of the door.
“Sir, can I help you?” a man’s stern voice boomed behind him, and Max turned, startled.
Despite his big voice, the orderly was small, no more than five foot seven with long skinny arms that seemed out of proportion to his short torso.
“Yes, sorry. I’m here to see Percy-” He turned back to the glass and stopped abruptly. The girl no longer sat beside the patient, only an empty wooden chair.
“I see,” the orderly eyed him as if searching for identification.
“He’s my brother-in-law,” Max lied. Max didn’t know if Jody had a husband.
The orderly glanced toward the glass, pursing his lips. “Did the nurse on duty mention that we only have visiting hours on Sundays. If you’re not here in a professional capacity-”
“Please,” Max said, the earnestness in his voice genuine. “Please, I need to see him.”
The orderly frowned, looked into the room and sighed.
“Five minutes, sir, but you should understand Percy Hobbs is non-responsive. He doesn’t speak. You might think he can see you and hear you, but it’s highly unlikely.”
“I understand.”
Max followed the orderly into the large room, empty except for Percy Hobbs.
He wondered where all the patients were. Had they already released or transferred so many that entire wings of the enormous asylum stood empty?
Max stood in front of the man, aware he’d given no thought to what he’d say if he gained access to him.
“Percy,” Max said, but the man remained unmoving.
Max squatted in front of him.
“He’s not in there,” the orderly explained kindly, waving a hand in front of Percy’s glassy brown eyes.
Max surveyed the man, surely younger than fifty, with sandy colored hair mostly gone gray and a saggy, non-responsive expression. His head drooped forward, and he held his hands clasped in his lap, the fingers intertwined.
Max started to look back at Percy’s face, but then he paused, peering at his hands. The man was squeezing his hands together, squeezing them so tightly the blood had drained from his knuckles.
Max had to rescue Percy.
The thought overpowered rationality, but his commonsense sense quickly returned in the sound of his brother’s voice. Are you insane, Max? Do you want them to lock you up in here?
Max sat in the wooden chair and took Percy’s hand. The man’s eye twitched, but he still didn’t look up.
“Do you mind if I have a few minutes alone with him?” Max asked.
The orderly seemed oddly relieved by the request, as if the intimacy of Max holding the man’s hand had made him uncomfortable.
“That’d be fine. I’ll come back in five minutes.” The orderly stood, and to Max’s astonishment, he plodded down a hallway and disappeared through a white door.
Don’t even think about it, Max. You can’t save everyone. This vegetable’s going to get you thrown in prison, Jake’s voice insisted as Max stood, grabbed the wheelchair’s handles, and pushed Percy through the door.
He went out exactly the way he’d come in, praying beneath his breath the nurse would still be assisting the other orderlies. When he burst into the reception area, he halted at the sound of voices. But the sounds receded, and he saw the nurse’s chair standing empty.
Turning around, Max shoved the entrance doors open with his hip, hauling Percy’s chair backward and into the daylight.
Max’s legs shook as he pushed Percy along the paved sidewalk. A wheel hit a crack in the sidewalk and caught. The man lurched forward in his chair, but he didn’t fall out. Max reached forward, grabbed the man’s shoulder, and settled him back, holding him as Max forced the chair over the bump.
He walked faster, and then he ran.
“Hey, hey you!” a voice shrilled behind him.
Max didn’t stop.
The voice grew louder. It boomed across the lawn, and Max slowed. He feared if he kept running, a row of orderlies clad in white would suddenly step from the shadows of the buildings to block his path.
He turned to see a man lumbering toward him. The man wore a black coat and black pants. A doctor surely, but then Max noted his disheveled hair, and when his eyes drifted down to the man’s feet, he saw slippers.
The man was a yard away when an orderly ran up behind him. The orderly was young, his face full of worry as he grabbed the patient’s arm.
“Mr. Bernard, you gave me quite a scare.”
Mr. Bernard spun to face the orderly, shaking his head. “I have to go with these men,” Mr. Bernard announced, gesturing toward Max and the catatonic patient. “We have an appointment with the judge. Mind yourself, young man. Don’t you know who I am?”
Mr. Bernard tried to shake off the orderly’s grip, but the young man held tight.
“Sorry, sir,” the orderly called to Max as he led Mr. Bernard away, insisting he needed a shower and suit before he could meet with the judge.
Max swallowed the rock in his throat and pushed on, slowing only when he reached his car, which he hadn’t driven in weeks. He used it regularly enough on rainy days or to buy groceries in the summer, but this had been an unusual summer.
He’d been opting for his motorcycle because it felt… better somehow, like he’d embarked on a perilous journey and his motorcycle was his trusty sidekick. Without his sidekick he’d never have made it to that moment. He didn’t know how, but felt it was true just the same.
And yet when he’d driven to the asylum two hours before, he’d walked into his garage with barely a thought and climbed behind the wheel of his car.