The building's design seemed to Francis to be every bit as crazy as its occupants. The upper floors held offices that abutted storage rooms and isolation cells. The first and second floors held wide-open dormitory-style rooms, crowded with simple steel framed beds, with an occasional footlocker for possessions. Inside the dormitory rooms there were cramped bathrooms and showers, with multiple stalls that he immediately saw delivered little in the way of privacy. There were other bathrooms off the corridors, spaced up and down the floor with men or women marked on the doors. In a concession to modesty, the women were housed on the north end of the corridor, the men on the south. A large nursing station divided the two areas. It was confined by wire mesh screens and a locked steel door. Francis saw that all the doors had two, sometimes three double deadbolt locks on them, all operated from the exterior. Once locked, he noticed, there was no way for anyone inside to unlock the door, unless they had a key.
The ground floor was shared by a large, open area, which Francis was told was the primary dayroom, and a cafeteria and kitchen large enough to fix meals and feed the Amherst Building's residents three times each day. There were also several smaller rooms, which he gathered were devoted to group therapy sessions. These dotted the ground floor. There were windows everywhere, which filled the Amherst Building with light, but every window had a locked wire mesh screen on the outside, so that the daylight that filtered into the building penetrated past bars tossing odd grid like shadows on the slick, polished floors or the glowing white painted walls. There were doors seemingly placed willy-nilly throughout the building that sometimes were locked, requiring Mr. Moses to pull out a massive key chain from his belt, but other times were left open, so that they simply pushed through unimpeded. Francis could not immediately detect what the governing principles were for locking the doors.
It was, he thought, a most curious jail.
They were confined, but not imprisoned. Restrained but not handcuffed.
Like Mr. Moses and his smaller brother, whom they passed in the hallway, the nurses and the attendants wore white outfits. An occasional physician, or doctor's aide, social worker or psychologist passed them by. These civilians wore either sports coats and slacks, or jeans. They almost all, Francis noted, carried manila envelopes, clipboards, and brown folders under their arms, and they all seemed to walk the corridors with a sense of direction and purpose, as if by having a specific task in hand, they were able to separate themselves from the general population of the Amherst Building.
Francis's fellow patients crowded the halls. There were knots of people, pressed together, while others stood aggressively alone. Many eyed him warily, as he passed. Some ignored him. No one smiled at him. He barely had time to observe his surroundings as he kept pace with the quick march that Mr. Moses adopted. And, what he saw of the other patients was a sort of motley, haphazard collection of folks of all ages and sizes. Hair that seemed to explode from scalps, beards that hung wildly down like the people in old, faded photographs from a century earlier. It seemed a place of contradictions. There were wild eyes everywhere that fastened upon him and measured him as he passed by, and then in contrast, muted looks, and faces that turned to the wall and avoided connection. Words and snatches of conversation surrounded him, sometimes spoken to others, sometimes spoken to inner selves. Clothing seemed to be an afterthought; some people wore loose-fitting hospital gowns and pajamas, others dressed in more regular street garb. Some wore long bathrobes or housecoats, others jeans and paisley shirts. It was all a little disjointed, a little out of whack, as if the colors were unsure what matched what, or the sizes were just off, shirts too loose, pants too tight or too short. Mismatched socks. Stripes conjoined with checks. There was a pungent smell of cigarette smoke virtually everywhere.
"Too many folks," Mr. Moses said, as they approached a nursing station. "Got beds for two hundred maybe. But got nearly three hundred peoples crowded in. You'd think they'd figured that part out, but no, not yet."
Francis didn't reply.
"Got a bed for you, though," Mr. Moses added. At the nursing station, Mr. Moses stopped. "You gonna be A-OK. Hello, ladies," he said. Two white-clad nurses behind the wire mesh, turned toward him. "You looking ever so sweet and beautiful this fine morning."
One was old, with graying hair and a well-lined, pinched face, but who still managed a smile. The other was a stocky black woman, far younger than her companion, who snorted her reply like a woman who had heard nice words that amounted to false promises more than once. "You always talking so sweet, but what it be you need this time around?" This was said in a mock-gruff tone, that caused both women to crack smiles.
"Why, ladies, I'm always looking only to bring a little joy and happiness into your lives," he said. "What more?"
The nurses laughed out loud. "Ain't no man ever not looking for something," the black nurse said. The white nurse quickly added, "Sweetheart, that's the God's truth."
Mr. Moses also laughed, while Francis suddenly stood awkwardly, unsure what he was to do. "Ladies, may I be presenting you with Mister Francis Petrel, who be staying with us. Mister C-Bird, this fine young lady be Miss Wright, and her lovely companion, there, be Miss Winchell." He handed over a clipboard. "The doctor listed out some meds for this boy. Look to be pretty much the usual."
He turned to Francis and said, "What you think, Mister C-Bird? You think the doc maybe prescribed a cup of hot coffee in the morning and a nice cold beer and a plate filled with fried chicken and cornbread at the end of the day? You think that's what the doctor ordered?"
Francis must have looked surprised, because the attendant quickly added, "I'm just having some fun with you. Don't mean nothing."
The nurses looked over the chart, then placed it along with a stack of others on a corner of their desk. The older one, Miss Winchell, reached below a counter and brought forth a small, cheap plaid cloth suitcase. "Mister Petrel, this was left for you by your family."
She passed it through an opening in the wire mesh, turning to the attendant, saying, "I've already searched it."
Francis took the suitcase and fought back the urge to burst into tears. He had recognized it instantly. It was a bag he'd been given as a gift one Christmas morning, when he was young, and because he'd never actually traveled anywhere, he'd always used for storage whenever he wanted to keep something special, or something unusual. A sort of portable secret place for the items collected during childhood, because each small item was, in its own way, a sort of journey in itself. A pine cone collected one fall; a set of toy soldiers, a book of children's verse never returned to the local library. His hands quivered slightly as they ran across the fake leather edging on the satchel, and he touched the handle. The zipper on the bag was open, and he saw that everything that the bag had once held had been removed, replaced with some clothes from his drawers at home. He knew instantly that everything that he'd accumulated in that bag had been emptied out and discarded. It was as if his parents had packed what little they thought of his life into the small luggage, and sent it to him to send him on his way. He could feel his lower lip trembling, and he felt completely and utterly alone.