“You’re blessed.”
I nodded. “Oh, yeah. On so many levels. All you have to do is look at what happened in my house last February and you’re like, somebody upstairs loves this asshole. And He took care of me again just this past Tuesday. Think about it: how many chairborne commando lilly-white lawyers stab muggers? How often does the mouse eat the cat? That’s God, man. Looking out for me.”
I’d been smiling, but it faded now.
“And I just wonder if maybe the Bald Man knows that. And maybe this whole thing is bigger than any of us really understand. Maybe I’m caught in a grudge match between this guy, this thing, whatever you want to call him, and a much higher power.”
“You’re Job,” he said. “From the Bible.”
I stared at him.
“No,” I said, after some thought. “Job got ass-fucked. I got a writeup in Southern Rifleman.”
He pursed his lips again. Another glance down at that notepad.
“What’re you thinking?” I asked.
“I think we need to go back to February,” he answered. “And discuss this whack to your head.”
20.
Once again, I left my therapist’s office feeling decidedly worse than I had when I walked in. Fortunately, I had some gears I could shift.
An hour before I met with Dr. Koenig, the Clerk of Court appointed me as guardian ad litem to an incompetency proceeding involving the Department of Social Services and a young man named Brandon Cross. With an interim hearing only two days away, I had to visit him as soon as possible to advise him of his rights. I had decided that I would do this after seeing Dr. Koenig this afternoon, partly for efficiency’s sake—my shrink’s office stood at the halfway point between my office and Brandon’s facility—and partly because I needed to see someone more miserable than Yours Truly.
Because Brandon Cross was worse off than me. Much, much worse off. He showed me what crazy meant, assuring me that I had a ways to go before I ever caught up with him.
Brandon ended up in a lockdown unit at Magnolia Plantation in northeast Burlington. While the name of this place evoked images of Tara from Gone with the Wind, the reality consisted of something entirely different. Magnolia Plantation was an ugly girl with a pretty name, a squat, flat-roofed facility of mildewy brick that looked suspiciously like a converted elementary school. Four long halls shot out of a central hub that had probably once housed a library, gymnasium or cafeteria but now contained the administrative and physical therapy offices. Down the corridors, the patients lived two to a room in pods that someone had carved from old classrooms. Industrial tile floors and cinderblock walls amplified every hoot, holler and footfall to create a discordant sonic background that made me wonder how any of these guys slept.
And the smell. I couldn’t figure out which of Magnolia Plantation’s features sucked the worst; the drab walls and floors, the Department of Corrections-esque soundtrack or the assaultive bleached air that tried and failed to cover the scents of mildew, body odor and urine. If insanity had its own scent, this was it: poor moisture controls, armpits, feet and pee sandwiched in between Clorox and Pine-Sol. Bon appetit.
I introduced myself to the duty nurse as Brandon Cross’s court-appointed attorney and she directed me to Room 408. She buzzed me into the men’s lockdown wing, where psychiatric patients of all ages wandered a Linoleum hallway. In the second pod on the right, I found my client.
I’d read the petition and the DSS attorney’s packet of medical records out in the parking lot. Respondent is a 24-year-old male with a history of severe physical and sexual abuse that led to his foster placement at age 12, I read. Respondent suffers moderate mental retardation and disappeared from his Alamance County foster placement at age 17. On Friday, October 25, Respondent was found wandering the highway north of Glen Raven poorly nourished, in a confused and disoriented state, wearing clothes not appropriate for the weather. Respondent suffers from memory loss and severe delusions.
But the next sentence really raised my eyebrows.
Respondent believes he is a Navy fighter pilot.
I found two young men—Maverick and Goose from Top Gun, I guess—in Room 408 at Magnolia Plantation. I knocked on the door frame and stood there for a moment trying to figure out which one of the guys sitting Indian-style on their beds and watching Dr. Oz was Brandon Cross. Neither one of them looked at me. I waited a minute, then asked them.
Without even taking his eyes off the television for one second, the man closest to the window raised his right arm and hand straight out from his body and pointed his index finger at the other man. Who, unaware that his roommate had dimed him out, continued to ignore me.
“Thanks,” I said. I approached Brandon Cross. “Brandon?”
No response. Dr. Oz must have been on fire this afternoon.
“Mr. Cross? Brandon Cross?”
Still no response. He blinked when I talked, though, which suggested that he at least perceived my presence but chose to ignore it. Probably because he was a fighter pilot, a Navy officer, and I wasn’t addressing him correctly. I stared at his profile, pawing through the shallow understanding of Navy ranks I’d gained through reading Tom Clancy novels until I found a word that might fit. “Ensign?”
Now he looked at me. “Lieutenant Junior Grade,” he said.
He pronounced it wootenant juniuh gwade, unable to pronounce the “r” or “l” sounds. “I’m Kevin Swanson,” I said. “I’m your court-appointed attorney in the incompetency proceeding filed against you by Alamance County. You mind talking to me a bit?”
That was a lot of information for a patient in a lockdown unit to process at once. He blinked at me for a moment, and I thought, out to lunch. His head looked impossibly narrow, like he’d spent his formative years squished between two bricks. This promised a very quick, very simple and very shallow interview; if I didn’t want to go back to my office this afternoon, I’d have to find another excuse. Because an in-depth meeting with a respondent like Brandon Cross wasn’t going to happen. Mentally, I started formulating my very quick, very simple and very shallow report to the Court.
And then he asked, “Go somewhere else?” Go somewhewh ewse? He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at his roommate. “Nosy.”
“Uh… sure. Is there somewhere we can sit?” I remembered who he thought he was and added, “Sir?”
Wownge, he said and slid himself off the bed. Walking with a pronounced limp, he led me down the hall to a little room decorated with motivational posters, a ficus tree and what looked like dorm furniture or decades-old leftovers from the principal’s office back when this place used to be a school. Bright sun streamed in through the window, but the lounge was bereft of patients. Probably because it didn’t have a television.
Still limping, Brandon dragged a chair up to the coffee table—not as cheap or scarred as the one in Dr. Koenig’s office but pretty bad in its own right—and motioned for me to sit down. He took the couch.
I showed him my copy of the petition and notice of hearing. “Seen these before? Sheriff’s deputies bring them to you?”
He nodded.
“So you know what this is about?”
He shook his head and told me that he couldn’t wead.