Gabriel smiled. “I see.”
“Mr. Schist, my name is Victor. It’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. Shall we begin the game?”
Gabriel nodded, and Victor began resetting the chess pieces. Gabriel studied Victor’s long, bony fingers, and something occurred to him.
“What’s your last name, Victor?” Gabriel asked.
Victor gave him a knowing smile and dusted off his jacket again. “My apologies. I set up the board without even asking you something. Do you wish to play as black or white?”
Gabriel knew Victor had heard him, but the man had chosen not to answer. Gabriel was curious as to why, but he fully understood that sometimes a man’s chosen identity could get lost beneath the baggage of his life story, and sometimes, it was easier not to spill all the beans at once.
The stone chess pieces were oversized, specifically made for people with shaky hands. Victor had already placed the white pieces on his own side.
“We’ll leave it like this,” Gabriel said.
“So I have the white pieces, do I? I suppose that means I move first.” Victor confidently moved a pawn forward.
Gabriel opened with his queen’s knight. Not wanting to make Victor uncomfortable, he didn’t repeat his question or ask more.
From in front of the fish tank, John Morris continued muttering in his louder tone. His skin was covered in sweat, which was often the case, but still, the dampness of his clothes made Gabriel a bit concerned. The man reeked of sweat. Gabriel wondered if John had been given a change in medication.
Morris turned his wheelchair to face the chessboard. He looked at them with a desperate, pleading expression, his bloodshot eyeballs darting back and forth. “I don’t… ah… ah… yes, I want. I want.”
A small part of Gabriel’s mind flashed back to his conversation with the slug then quickly retreated from the idea. They’d gotten a new doctor a few weeks ago, and many of the residents—including Gabriel—had recently undergone minor or major changes in their medications. Medication changes could produce unforeseen side effects, and Morris clearly looked to be exhibiting them.
“Ah… ahhh… please help me. Please, I wanna go… upstairs.” Morris turned his wheelchair around again to face the fish tank.
Gabriel looked down the corridor. He considered alerting a nurse to Morris’s condition, but he was relieved to see that Jill was already keeping a close eye on the man. Victor continued advancing his pawns, keeping his important pieces close to his chest. Gabriel’s game was dramatically different; he took more risks. He brought the big guns out early and made their presence known.
“Ohhh,” Morris mumbled. “Oh damn… spllasshh… blah… I just want to go upstairs. Upstairs, please, upstairs…”
“Upstairs,” Gabriel muttered, shaking his head.
“Interesting, isn’t it?” Victor replied, his eyes shimmering with curiosity. “The strange things that dementia patients say, sometimes? I must say, it makes a man wonder.”
“Not really,” Gabriel scoffed. “Dementia is just the side effect of a rotting brain. That’s all there is to it. Upstairs? For God’s sake, Bright New Day doesn’t even have an upstairs.”
Victor moved yet another pawn. Gabriel captured the pawn with his rook, realizing a second later that he’d left his knight vulnerable to attack.
“Wanna… wanna… wanna go upstairs…” Morris continued.
“Oh yes, that’s correct, literally speaking,” Victor replied. “This nursing facility has only one floor, yes. However, you’re missing the point, Mr. Schist. You’re being a bit blockheaded, if you don’t mind my saying so.” Victor captured Gabriel’s knight with his pawn.
Gabriel reached out to move his queen forward to take the pawn but hesitated. “What point?”
“Intriguing questions are raised when one tracks patterns, watches people, and monitors frequent behaviors. Don’t you think? And you must realize that I’ve been around here for a long time, longer than I care to mention. I’ve seen more people come in and out of these doors than you can imagine. And once you’ve seen enough Alzheimer’s victims, you start to notice… trends.”
Gabriel, always rather dubious of unscientific claims, rolled his eyes. “Trends. Hmm.”
“No need to be snide.” Victor’s eyes narrowed, but his smile remained. “Consider this: when a person first comes into the nursing home, there is only one thought on his mind—home. They want to go home. Now. Immediately. They want to escape, like a dog that’s been put in the pound.”
“Obviously.”
Victor moved another pawn forward. “However, once you lock a dog in the pound long enough, that dog will eventually start to give up all hope of escape. The same thing happens when you lock a human being up in a building full of medical equipment. And let’s face it, Gabriel, the residents of this nursing home are quite trapped. Though perhaps not quite as trapped as those unfortunate souls in the Level Five unit.”
Gabriel shuddered. Level Five. That was Bright New Day’s special locked unit, accessible only to those with the right keys. Level Five was where they kept the residents with especially difficult dementia, the wanderers and the troublemakers. Those were the ones reaching a point where their mental faculties were so compromised that they couldn’t be permitted any semblance of a normal life.
“Mr. Schist?” Victor asked.
“Uh… yes. Yes, I’m still here.”
“Oh, good. It’s a delight to see color return to your eyes.” Victor chuckled. “So yes, at first, everyone wants to go home. They plead. They beg. They bargain. Then, toward the end, they give up. And at this point, over and over, I see the same pattern, the same demand. They start begging to be taken upstairs.”
“Really?”
“Yes, quite often.” Victor leaned back, crossing his arms. “They always want to go upstairs.”
“Fascinating.” Gabriel scratched his chin. “Perhaps if a study was done, it could—”
“Your move, Gabriel.”
Gabriel pondered his next move. He decided on moving the rook. In the background, John Morris was still pleading to go upstairs. Upstairs.
“This is such a bizarre place we live in,” Victor said. “It does strange things to a man, doesn’t it?”
Gabriel sighed. “Maybe. Probably. For instance, my roommate died last night—”
“I’m sorry to hear it.”
