“Oxy, Donepezil, Trazadone, Seroquel. Here, I’ll get Nancy. She’ll explain in more detail.”

“Is he cognizant? Is he with it, at all?”

“He was.”

“Was?”

“He’s… it’s hard to say, Tim. I mean, you know all about the incident that got him locked on Level Five.”

“Aren’t we supposed to call this the Guggenheim unit, now?”

Voices. Voices, voices, voices. He couldn’t process what they were saying. Painful twitches racked his body, but they felt foreign, as if his mind was floating somewhere far away.

“But anyway, no, I don’t know a lot about what happened. Just rumors. They had me filling in on West Wing until today, remember? How long has he been here now, two weeks?”

“Yeah, two weeks. He’s been almost nonresponsive that whole time. It’s strange. I mean, he can still walk to the bathroom using a walker. Dependent assist. His hip has been healing really fast. But the way he moves, it’s really mechanical. I dunno how to explain it. He replies to short questions. He eats if you put food in his mouth, but…”

“But what? Should we put an alarm on him?”

“Nah, I don’t think so. He’s like a robot. His eyes… it’s like he’s a blind robot. He doesn’t react to anything that you put in his face. Like he’s been brain damaged.”

“Oh, one of those.”

Hey, I’m in here. Can anyone hear me? Is my mouth open? Am I really talking? Why can’t anyone hear me?

“Yeah, you know how people act when they’re in a state of shock? Kinda like that. He’s just a shell now, which is really weird considering how cognizant he was right before the incident.”

Help. I’m in here. I’m still in here.

“Hey, Mr. Schist. Are you there?”

I can’t get out.

“See? No reply. Nothing.”

Help me. Please, I’m trapped. I’m trapped in here.

Slowly, the darkness cleared away like dissipating mist, but it was replaced by a strange, ethereal blue glow. Everything was hazy. A cool breeze hit him in the face. His hands were gripping something. Handlebars? He heard a growling noise and felt vibrations. He was on a motorcycle beneath a cloudless blue sky. A long stretch of interstate shot out ahead of him, with no traffic in sight. Just him, a motorcycle, and a free road that was calling his name.

“So I don’t think we need to put an alarm on him. He’s been quiet since he got here. But we do need to keep a close eye on him, for sure.”

As the motorcycle blasted through the air like a speeding comet, Gabriel smiled blissfully. He was free at last, with no restrictions to hold him down, no burdens, no limitations. He stared out at the road. He could go anywhere he wanted. An enormous valley lay ahead, a black pit that cut right through the center of the interstate, but right before that was a perfectly slanted hill. On the other side, the road continued as if uninterrupted. Gabriel rode toward the pit then raced up the asphalt surface of the jump. He went up over the lip and into the sky.

“He used to be a real cool guy, though.”

“You said he doesn’t feed himself?”

“Oh, oops. Yeah. Hey, Gabriel, have some of this. Please chew your food.”

Gabriel ignored the sensation of mushy food in his mouth. He was going up, up, up, spiraling through the air and hurtling into space. He looked toward the other side of the pit and imagined he was a ball moving through an invisible tube. If he directed the bike just right, he’d land on the other side of the pit.

Gravity pulled, and the bike began to descend right where he aimed. Then, the motorcycle twisted left and dropped like an anvil. He missed the jump. The motorcycle came out from between his legs. He frantically tried to grab onto a ledge, but it was out of reach, and he fell into the hollow darkness of the pit. The sky became a tiny blue circle, far above, out of reach. He crashed down against the hard earth, headfirst. His skull smashed open, shattering into a dizzying array of little glass cubes.

“It’s a shame.”

“The poor guy, he’s just falling apart. He’s like a zombie, y’know? No brains left anymore.”

The voices of the nurses trailed away, accompanied by the sound of footsteps. The glass cubes were scattered all around him. Inside each was a bloodshot eyeball with a tiny sharp-toothed mouth inside its pupil. The eyeball-mouths began to scream. “Help me! Can anyone hear me? Help!”

Help! Help!

Gabriel stirred into consciousness, and the nightmare disappeared. He was lying in bed in his new quarters on Level Five of Bright New Day. All his stuff was stuffed into his new closet. The lights were dimmed, and it was nighttime. He had an IV in one arm.

The Level Five bedrooms weren’t half as bad as they had been in Gabriel’s terrified imagination. The walls weren’t padded, he wasn’t strapped into a straitjacket, and there were no Orwellian telescreens in every room. Other than the maroon curtain, the room looked almost identical to his old one on South Wing. There was only one difference, but it was a ghastly difference that made Gabriel feel sick to his stomach: the windows were barred.

Gabriel closed his eyes again. He wanted to go back to the nightmare, figuring anything was better than reality. But before he could slip back into unconsciousness, his daze was shattered by a familiar female voice.

“Dad?”

Chapter 45:

Imprisoned

Melanie took his hand and squeezed it. How long had she been sitting beside him? Gabriel shuddered but couldn’t respond. He lay in bed, stiff as a corpse. It took effort just to hold his eyes open.

“Are you there, Dad? Can you hear me?” She caressed the back of his hand.

He wanted to turn his head in her direction, but the effort was painful, as his neck felt stiffer than a frost-covered iron rod. He tried to speak, but as the air rose up in his throat, he instead erupted into a coughing fit.

“It’s okay, Dad,” she whispered, running her fingers through his hair. “Don’t be scared. I’m here.”

He felt dead. Even the joints of his fingers were too stiff to bend. He breathed in slowly, trying to nourish his lungs back to life. He wanted to talk to her, no matter how bad the pain was.

As if sensing his desperation, she moved closer, and her face entered his field of vision. She wore no makeup, and her eyes were red-rimmed. “I guess you probably can’t hear me. But I’ll talk anyway. Just in case.”

He rolled his tongue around, desperately trying to choke words from his sour, dry mouth. They hadn’t been brushing his teeth properly.

“I’m sorry, Dad. God, I should’ve been here more. I’m the worst daughter ever. I should’ve never left my phone at home that day.” She started to cry. “All those missed calls, that message you left. If I’d had my phone on me, maybe I could’ve talked you out of it. I should’ve come here every day, twice a day. Maybe I could’ve… I could’ve…”

Don’t be sorry. You’re here now. That was what Gabriel wanted to tell her, but he couldn’t. He felt like a loose spirit trapped inside the confines of a heavy body he had no control over. The IV site burned like a bee sting.

Melanie wiped her eyes and took a deep, choked-up breath. Then, regaining her composure, she stared down at him and smiled weakly. “You never told me about your father. You never told me that he had Alzheimer’s, too.”

Gabriel wanted to reply, to explain that it’d been too painful to talk to her about, that it was something that had been on the cusp of his tongue many times but had never quite come out. He tried to look into her eyes, to fix his gaze on her in a way that let her know that he was there, but he couldn’t even seem to do that small task.

“I never knew about that, you know,” she continued. “I found out a few days ago from the nurses. I wish I could have met him. But now that I know, I wish I could… talk to you, I guess. I wish I could ask you what it was like for you, when he… when he got to this stage.”

It was hard. I didn’t handle it well.