©Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Wayne Webb and constantwriting.blogspot.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
DARWIN'S GAME
By Wayne Webb
CHAPTER 23
Working in a mental institution was dull with
periods of uninteresting chaos. Eugene Manson was an orderly and the
Russell-Watts Secure Mental Care Facility in Marquette Michigan and
he enjoyed being employed, liking the stability of his job. It was
predictable, reliable and he was paid well enough that he would not
consider going anywhere else. The place was a cold and inhospitable
castle like building that matched the occasionally austere winters.
If he would have described the building he worked at to anyone, it
would have been a stretch for him to find a good analogy.
It was European influenced and had that grand
French or Austrian façade, but inside it could have been a fifties
style cold and sterile public hospital in one wing, traversing a
corridor would take you to an English country manor style, and the
administration centre had its own oval office in the centre. His
favourite way of describing it to friends was it was as schizophrenic
as the people who were captured in it's walls.
Captivity was a good word for it, because it
was a secure facility in one of the larger wings and they had a
certain number of very dangerous patients locked up there who would
never see freedom again. There was treatment and care taking place as
well as pure incarceration, but it was well known that few of them
would ever be 'better' people, no matter how cauterised their mental
wounds, no matter much treatment was applied, there was such a thing
as incurably bad.
The facility itself was along the coast line,
set into a small forest peninsula along the coast from the city of
Marquette itself and had a sweeping view of Lake Superior from most
of the outward facing rooms and offices. The secure wing was in the
centre of the U-Shaped hub where the other care centres were housed
and had the advantage of being set in this old but incredibly sturdy
building, reinforced and built to last over a century before. The
facility was a stepping stone hospital for doctors and nurses as they
took their training in the university town before moving on to bigger
and better things. There was a high turnover in trained medical
personnel and because of this the management put great care into
finding local long term staff and keeping them happy, well paid and
being the backbone of the hospital when new people bounced through.
Eugene had a moderate education, he was far
from stupid but he never had any patience or discipline for study
beyond high school. He had drifted about for a year or two travelling
America, looking for something but not really finding it and
wondering what to do with his life. He never intended to return to
Michigan, not that he hated it there, he didn't even mind the weather
and the constant lack of warmth having grown up with it. He had
assumed that California would be a welcome respite as the climatic
opposition to Marquette, but had found the heat oppressive and he
wandered to other areas, further north looking for something more his
style and speed.
He had been happy in Portland and was
considering staying there, or moving to the nearby Eugene, just for
the namesake novelty alone when his father died, unexpectedly and he
came back home to help his mother settle his affairs and restart
after the loss. The hole it left in her life and in her directly, was
too much for her to handle and it was apparent to Eugene that he
would be living back home for a while, possibly for the rest of his
life.
This fact was not depressing to him but
comforting in more of a way than he had expected. Now he had a short
term purpose he had to construct a life, a living and a means to get
his own and his mother's life back to some sense of normalcy. This
meant that not just earning a wage, but finding a place in the
society of his home town. He had friends he fell back in with easily
enough, and knew his way around because he had only been gone a few
years. He had assumed to never return except for visits so a lot of
the experiences he had taken for granted were close to becoming new
for him. Once let go, the distance between your memory and your
experience widens and to Eugene it was not a homecoming, it was an
introduction.
He shortened his name to Gene because it was a
new life and new city for him, so a new Eugene was in order. His
friends took to the name change and his mother, well she had called
him Gene and even Genie when he was a child, it was reassuring to her
to have a child to look after again, even if it were the opposite
that was true. A week after the funeral took an afternoon to go and
convince the place where his mother was working as an office
administrator that she was just upset and distraught but was coming
back to work, soon. She had been gone for coming up to three weeks
and was in tears most days, she was not ready to go and spoke to Gene
about quitting and doing, well nothing as she had no plan only grief.
His mother Caroline was employed at the
Russell-Watts hospital, and her manager was a very kind and
understanding widower himself who showed the appropriate level of
concern, the firm but polite request for a return date within reason
and asked the obvious questions about her future state of mind. They
agreed on another week before Caroline would come back, part time
until she could find her feet without her husband around. The sudden
departure was due to a heart attack, it was unpredictable, he had
been healthy, happy and full of life until his chest imploded one
day, while driving to work. He drove the car to the shoulder before
passing out, and in the few minutes before someone stopped to check
on him, he passed away. He never turned up to work, they called his
cell phone to get no response and eventually called his home number.
Caroline assumed that he was having car trouble so she also tried his
cell phone, but this time there was someone answering it and it was
not her husband but one of the EMT's called in.
Gene explained all this to her manager and
elicited the usual come back of shock and empathy, made more poignant
by his own experiences with the slower death of his own wife to
cancer a few years earlier. He had recalled the support and attention
from Caroline and her husband at the time, and the karmic circle of
paying back the kindness only helped her smooth through the impact of
not doing her job for a month, one that not many others understood
and they sorely missed her expertise and knowledge of.
Gene was almost out of the main foyer when he
heard his name being called out across the marble floor, echoing
hollow and thin in the large open space. He closed the main door,
feeling that warmth closing off the snow breeze from winter outside.
His mother's boss was talking very fast and handing him some papers
to take home and read up on. Gene was looking for a job and had
mentioned that only in passing when referring to the list of things
he was doing to get his mother stabilised and back to a steady
routine again. That comment had fired off a note in the back part of
the boss's brain and it was after Gene had gone that he recalled that
they had three vacancies that Gene would be suited for, not medical,
training provided and suitable for a man who was strong enough and
wanted a steady reliable job.
There was a condition though, they already had
an orderly named Gene, so could they call him Eugene? Would that be a
big imposition for him? Eugene had come full circle to Gene and
Eugene in a month and he was back home, in a new life, new job and
new city, with all the old things clicking into place around him. If
he stopped to analyse it, he would laugh. He and the other Gene would
get together for drinks and the occasional recreational drug taking,
nothing too heavy, and it always coincided with something manic or
dramatic at work. These sessions were laughingly named 'Gene
Therapy', they were a cornerstone in his social circles very soon,
even when there was only one Gene left.
That had been over five years now and he was as
much a staple part of Russell-Watts as his mother Caroline was. The
other “Gene” had left the hospital and moved states to a warmer
climate, much like his friend Eugene had once done. Now that there
was only one, he still kept his full name, not bothering with the
need for a new identity, that he was who he was regardless of the
name attached.
He did not love the job part of his job, it was
a necessity but it yielded a camaraderie with his fellow workers that
he had not had before. It was very much a case of 'Us' vs 'Them' most
of the time and the harder the patient the more the bond between the
staff was. There was bitching and the usual frictions between people,
but there was that clear line of a soldier's job, the enemy was the
enemy and friendly fire was in no one's interest. Not that it did not
happen, but it was never ill intentioned or deliberate. Eugene was
definitely one of “us” for everyone at Russell-Watts.
He had a senior level pay grade, the management
wanted to keep him happy and employed, the anchor for the newer staff
and the go-to for new nurses and doctors doing their rotations here.
He moved to the secure incarceration wing after four years at
Russell-Watts and that made him even more critical and made him more
money again. His mother still worked in the office, but she had never
come back to full time after the funeral. They had not struggled for
money, but the insurance money that should have come from his fathers
policy was held back, they felt like they would never see it. The
company argued the meaning of the pre-existing condition, it turns
out that while no one else had known, his father had been told that
this heart was in dangerous shape. There was nothing to be done, and
it had been discovered after the policy had been taken out, by at
least twenty years, but he had know for at least twenty months before
he died and did not declare it once.
Gene and Caroline fought and fought and grew
tired, accepting the slow molasses like response of the insurance
company as a slow defeat, inevitable and inexorable and impossible to
fight. They signed nothing without the advice of their lawyer, but
the funeral costs were covered but the remaining two hundred thousand
dollar balance was nowhere near in sight. So they kept on the way
things were, not struggling but barely above comfortable, able to
keep the taxes and the utilities covered, thankful for the shrewd
paying down of the mortgage on the family home.
Gene had a girlfriend in Portland, they kept a
long distance relationship going for a while, visits were frequent to
start with then less so as time wore on until they drifted to a
gentle separation that ended with no closure, just a 'whenever'
clause that satisfied them both. He started seeing a local girl, she
was younger than him and was not interested the bright lights, big
city syndrome that afflicted more and more of the Marquette girls,
this was a place you came back to once you saw how bad other places
were, not the place where you saw yourself staying forever, until you
missed the waters. Penny was different, she was a homebody and just
his type considering the life he had carved in the snow, the
stability he craved and that she was attracted to. They had a small
wedding but it was enough to put them into a little debt that they
had to work their way out of. Then the car that he and his mother
drove to work in broke down, and it was time to get a new one and his
new wife got pregnant. All within a month of the wedding, the timing
was far from perfect.
Eugene was stressed that day at work, he was
tense and he let it show in front of the one patient he should not
have, David Wilson. Wilson was a socio-path, a murderous and cruel
patient who wore the staff down, and of all the people who handled
him it was only Eugene who managed to keep his cool, keep him at
arm's length and not show him the chinks in his armour. Important to
interacting with him was to falsify your feelings, appear as
socio-pathic to hurt and pain as he was inside, give him nothing to
leverage on you. He always had an agenda and was always trying to
find a way to manipulate his way through the staff and find a hole,
one he could tear open to a possible exit or advantage. Eugene was
calm, could talk endlessly about sports and town events while showing
no real interest and no passion that could be exploited.
All day Wilson kept at him and hammered home
the risks of debt, pregnancy complications, premature birth defects,
congenital heart defects passed on genetically and a raft of things
that Eugene had let slip to another staff member within unfortunate
earshot of the secure wing's worst patient. He left work early, the
blood pumping in his ears, the pressure rising behind his eyes,
trying to bleed it all out before he got home to his mother, his wife
and the home he now owed money on with a small but badly timed
mortgage.
Dinner was quiet, they could see he was ill at
ease with the world and he was best left to deal with it on his own
terms. After dinner he went to the woods, his thinking spot where he
could see the water of Lake Superior and it let him calm his nerves.
His phone was streaming some music to his car stereo, the ethereal
and otherworldly tones of Sigur Ros, the Icelandic band, were
floating out of the open car door and covering him as he watched the
dim light playing on the flat calm water of the bay where his
headlights of cars driving a nearby bend played lightly on the
surface. After an hour he cam back home, knew he could survive it all
and could even handle the dreaded David Wilson once more.
The next day at work he did not see Wilson, he
ignored the absence as good luck and went about his day. By the end
he still had not seen him, and after the tension that had ratcheted
between them the previous day, he was unsure if that was a good or a
bad thing. He finally asked someone where he was and he got a smile
in return. It happened that after he left Wilson had taken courage
from his run in with the previously impervious Eugene Manson and had
spent a few hours terrorising the patients and staff, causing a riot
with him at the centre, but it had been clamped down on so fast
because he had been closely watched. Closely watched because the
Doctor on duty had seen the results of the tail end of Eugene's shift
and decided enough was enough.
Eugene was taken to the crisis unit and there
he was, so out of it that it barely looked like David Wilson through
the fog of pills. He felt guilty for a few seconds that this was a
consequence of this slip up, his inability to mange himself. There
was a flicker of recognition in Wilson's eyes and a glimmer of a
smile and then that split second evaporated any of the sympathy
welling in Eugene right there and then.
They kept him on the medication, and a week
later he was the same vegetative lump in the room as he had been the
week before when Eugene checked up on him. This time there was no
glint of recognition in his eyes, in fact Eugene had to come up
closer and closer to see if it was really him. He went home, as
troubled as he had been after the run in a week before, but this time
he was unsettled because he was beginning to think that the man that
looked somewhat like the terrible and deserving David Wilson was not
David Wilson after all.
He went back again the next day, and the day
after that to be sure. He was not the same man, he just did not look
quite right. He could have been a brother or a cousin, and with the
now rough facial hair framing his features it was getting harder to
distinguish him from the real thing. He got Caroline to check the
patient visitation records for the crisis unit, there were none
except therapists and doctors doing the usual rounds. There were no
exits and no entries unaccounted for, and still he felt like there
was a miscarriage here somewhere.
He came to work early, to report what he
thought, even if it meant risking his job and his reputation to claim
that a man that was in a secure and tightly controlled environment
and under extremely heavy medication had somehow managed to replace
himself with a close approximate and escaped. The only real
explanation was outside help, but who would want to unleash that
monster on the world. He sat in his new car, still being paid off
with the mortgage and tapped his fingers on the wheel deciding if it
was worth it. He thought about the last encounter, and the ones that
he had intervened in before that and drew the conclusion that he
could not sit by, not to let him wreak a fresh havoc elsewhere.
He got out of the car and walked towards the
main entrance, not noticing the man who exited a car nearby and
walked alongside him.
“Eugene.” the man spoke matter of fact, and
Manson turned to look at the non-descript man, unable to place him.
“Sorry do I know you?”
“No. Not yet anyway. Please have a seat.”
The man indicated a park bench to the right of the entrance, and away
from the line of sight of the security camera watching the main
doors. They sat down and the mad folded his gloved hands and looked
straight ahead and not at Eugene.
“I take it that you know.”
“Uhhh?”
“You know that it is not Wilson.”
“Fuck, I'm right? Wait! What the hell?
Who...”
“Who is he? A very sick man, one who is no
worse where he is now than where he was before. You needn't worry
about him, he's better cared for here than where we got him from.”
“We?” Eugene was looking about and feeling
surreptitiously in his pocket for his mobile phone, though he guessed
he left it in the car in his haste to get his unpleasant task done,
his routine upset.
“We, me, it is not relevant. What is relevant
is that I need a favour from you. I don't want anyone to know that
it's not who they think it is, not yet anyway.”
Eugene was stunned and a little dizzy, this was
odd in the extreme, it felt like he was watching a film from the
inside, like a distorted 'common man' who could see beyond the fourth
wall and be in both worlds at the same time. He felt disoriented and
confused.
“I... I...”
“It's confusing I know, and you need to know
a few things so let me be clear, and it won't matter after that as
I'll walk away and you will never see me again. I promise you that.”
The man was not smiling, but his eyes were hidden behind dark
glasses, he did not seem blind, but did not or could not look
directly at Eugene, so he mostly saw profile and no clear picture of
him head on.
“Ok. I guess, I can hear you out.” Eugene
folded his arms and looked about, he was earlier than most in the
shift crossover and it was cold outside so no one was around.
“David Wilson is a bad man, this you know. He
is never not going to be bad, and he his here to avoid the more
criminal incarceration that he would get in a real prison, where his
advantages and freedoms would be curtailed even more, or worse he
would be a more effective force for … well let's just call it evil
shall we.”
Eugene nodded. “Yes, yes we can call it
that.”
“So we, I, have him now and he will face a
full accounting for his … I was going to say crimes but nature
might be the best way to put it, you'll understand that soon enough.
Either way he is not rescued, he has not escaped and the man inside
is being cared for in a way that he had not before. Do you
understand?”
“Not really, no.”
“Don't worry too much, it will become clear.
What I need from you is silence, you need to not report what you
know. For this you will be handsomely paid.”
Eugene thought about the money for a second
before indignantly saying “I'm not for sale, if you think...”
The man held up a finger. “Sorry, my mistake
you won't “will be” paid, you will “have been” paid. The
money from your fathers insurance settlement has been released to
your lawyer today, and the judge kindly added punitive costs to your
claim. You are now financially secure.”
“What? Are you from them? What is that got to
do with my father? What has Wilson got to do with anything?” he was
more confused than before.
“No, nothing and nothing. The thing is I like
you well enough, I have done my research and justice in your case is
to get your mother's settlement. Justice in David Wilson's case is
something else.”
“Justice? I don't understand.”
“No, you won't for a while. When you do you
may be tempted to tell people about this conversation, but when the
insurance people get wind of my interference with the payout
settlement they will injunction it and you so it would vanish
promptly. So think of your silence as less paid for and more secured
by your own valid financial concern.”
Eugene stood up “Are you blackmailing me?”
The man stood up and waked away. Eugene ran
after him and put a hand on his arm. “What the fuck is this all
about and who the hell are you? Why are you doing this to me?”
The man still facing away, turned slightly to be
seen in profile once more.
“This is about Justice, kind of. I'm helping
you, and giving you yours because you deserve it and there is an
unexpected weak link in my plan. Instead of threatening you to shore
that up, because you are not a bad person at all, I have found a
win/win solution to your continued silence.” He turned away once
more and walked away, a few feet further he added.
“If you need a name? Call me Charles.”
That was the last he saw of Charles, and he
went into work and started his shift early, did not finish early but
on time. He did not check on Wilson, knowing what he did now and did
not report him either. He went home and found his mother waiting for
him with a letter and a cheque for a million dollars and tears in
her eyes. His wife was beaming and the smile he forced out of his
thoughts of guilt and complicity was genuine quickly.
When episode one aired the FBI swarmed through
the facility and he kept his cool. No one pointed any fingers and no
one asked him anything other than routine questions. Everyone knew
about the settlement, it had made local news and it was a feel good
story for a little guy beating the evil corporate. So when the Feds
looked at the money trails of all the employees they found kickbacks
and drug dealing, stolen merchandise and contraband a plenty, they
did not look twice at the publicly disclosed and obviously well
deserved insurance payout.
Each week they watched the new episode in the
staff room together, downloading the unedited version each time and
all the Russell-Watts staff followed Wilson carefully, seeing him sit
back and evaluating the others, looking for pressure points and
talking, the words unheard but the staff knew the tone of voice he
would always use, and then when his luck ran out they saw him working
overtime for the advantage that never came.
When it was all over for Wilson Eugene sat and
stared at the screen for a few more minutes before commenting “That
was just.” and no one blinked or disagreed. The man doped out to
the eyeballs was a terminal brain cancer case, his mental faculties
were gone even when the drugs were stopped and he was brought back to
normal. He had no records in any system, had no fingerprints on any
files and looked enough like David Wilson to pass for him. He died
before the end of Darwin's Game, a John Doe.
Eugene and his wife had a son when the baby
finally arrived and he did not think twice about naming the child
Charles. Caroline approved immediately, as that was the nicest thing
that her son could have done for her, naming his first born after her
late husband Chuck Manson.
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