The Law of Nines

35

THE NEXT MORNING,after an endlessly long, sleepless night of staring up at the ceiling in the dark, Alex got dressed and sat on the edge of his bed to wait. All he could think about was Jax hanging there, alone, no one caring how much agony she was in. Alex was the only one who cared, and he couldn’t do anything about it. Not yet, anyway.

Not long after he’d gotten dressed, Henry showed up. The big man looked to be in a foul mood. It became obvious just how bad his mood was when he pulled Alex to his feet and began punching him in the abdomen. Henry apparently didn’t want marks that would be obvious. Maybe the others had told him not to damage their prize.

Alex could do nothing but take it. He knew that such a beating to the abdomen could cause dangerous injuries. He also knew that he couldn’t fight back if he was to keep Henry believing that he was drugged. They had to believe that, if he was to have a chance to help Jax.

This time, though, as Henry slugged him, Alex didn’t have the benefit of drugs to dull the pain. This time it hurt in earnest and left him gasping on the floor. He fought back the urge to vomit. For a time as he lay on the floor convulsing in agony, Alex was hating life.

“You know, Alex,” Henry said as he stood with his fists at his sides, towering over Alex, catching his breath, “you would think that we would be even by now. But I have to tell you, when I woke up this morning and my nose was bleeding again, I realized that we’re not even close to being even.”

The big man unexpectedly kicked Alex in the side of the head. It caused Alex to bite the inside of his cheek. He swallowed the coppery taste of blood. He struggled to stay conscious, and to stay quiet, to act thoroughly sedated.

“Since I have to wait to screw the bitch, I figure you owe me even more. One way or another you two are going to end up talking up a storm for me.”

Henry squatted down to be close when he delivered the rest of the threat. “Tell you what else. Your day is going to end badly. I’m going to tie a tourniquet here, and here.” Henry used a finger to mark a place on each of Alex’s upper arms. “Then I’m going to cut off your arms, right here. Then I’m going to do the same things to your legs. The tourniquets will keep you from losing so much blood that you miss the show.

“You’re going to tell us everything you know or we’ll be doing even worse things to your lady. And let me tell you, when it comes to using a knife, Yuri is a real artist. Once he gets started he gets inspired and you just can’t stop the man. I think he’s kind of sick in the ways he enjoys hurting women, but maybe that’s just me. You’re going to be eager to tell me everything you know to keep Yuri from getting started on her.”

Alex lay curled up on the floor gripped by pain and rage. He pretended to be gripped by neither.

Henry stood. “Alice will be in with your morning medication any time now. Last night’s dose will be wearing off by tonight, and this morning’s dose is being reduced. You’ll be clearheaded enough to hear Jax screaming and begging you to tell us what we want to know.”

Even if he wanted to, Alex couldn’t tell them what they wanted to know. He didn’t know what a gateway was or anything about it. He didn’t think, though, that they were going to believe that.

“You understand?” Henry demanded.

Alex, curled up on the floor holding his arms across the cramping pain in his middle, could only nod.

Henry seized Alex’s shirt and hauled him to his feet, then heaved him into the chair. “You sit there and have a nice rest. Alice will be in with your medication in a bit. Got that?”

Alex nodded as if he didn’t care.

Henry paused at the door to look back and smile. “You just got to love a world that comes up with Thorazine. Just think, I can pound the crap out of you and the Thorazine keeps you helpless to lift a finger to defend yourself. What a great world.”

After Henry left, Alex put his throbbing head in his hands, recovering, trying to clear his vision from the brutal kick. His neck muscles hurt so much that he could hardly move his head.

He let the anger rage through him. He held his hand out to see his fingers trembling. He knew that he needed to get them under control or someone might get suspicious.

He wanted the day to be over. He wanted to see Jax. She would still be drugged, but not nearly as much. He needed her to be more alert if he was to have a chance of helping her.

He hated to see her doped up with Thorazine and whatever else was in the pills. He didn’t know if they would stop the pills. Since his mother was on Thorazine he’d long ago asked questions about them. Thorazine, he had learned, greatly amplified the effect of whatever pills were taken with it.

Alex leaned back in the chair and drew deep, even breaths, trying to calm himself as he waited for his morning medications to arrive.

One more dose of drugs to dodge.

He was pretty sure that they wouldn’t bother with the evening dose, since the morning dose wouldn’t be worn off that soon and they surely intended to kill him that night after they got the information they wanted.

Except Alex didn’t have any information to give them. He didn’t know anything except that Jax had figured out what they were after. She hadn’t had time to tell him what that was.

Still, even that much information was dangerous to them both. That information in and of itself might be all they needed. If Alex couldn’t find a way to stop them, they would be able to get him to reveal that Jax knew what they were looking for, and then torture her to get her to tell them everything she knew. Alex’s grandfather had told him once that everyone had a breaking point and everyone would eventually talk under torture.

These people were obviously experienced at torture. They knew what they were doing. He couldn’t expect either Jax or himself to be able to hold out forever.

Alex knew that he couldn’t let it go that far. He had no option but to try to do something before it got to that point. He’d been awake most of the night trying to come up with something, but it was next to impossible to plan when he didn’t know exactly what it was that they were going to do. If they came to get him and first bound his hands or put him in a straitjacket before taking him to Jax, it would be all over. He needed them to believe he was drugged enough that he couldn’t fight them. He needed to keep up the act and put them at ease.

If they tried to restrain him, though, he would have no choice but to act.

If he had to fight them in his room first, he didn’t know how in the world he was going to get all the way across the ninth floor of Mother of Roses. He couldn’t break down the heavy doors. They were designed to keep mental patients from breaking them down.

If he could get keys he could unlock the doors, but not all the staff carried keys. Even if he managed to get his hands on a set of keys, he couldn’t simply stroll through so many locked doors, or through the nurses’ station, without being seen and an alarm being raised.

His head spun as he tried to think through the different scenarios. His thinking was beginning to become mired in panic.

Just then the door swung open. It was his morning medications. Except that this time it was Alice who marched in with a med tray. Alex sat limp, staring off at nothing.

Alice glared down at him a moment, then lowered the tray with the three cups. “Time for your medications. Don’t give me any grief. I have things to do, other patients waiting for my caring touch, so hurry it up.”

Alex nodded and took the cup with the Thorazine. He trapped the syrupy liquid in his mouth under his tongue as before, then added the pills to it. He spit the whole thing into the water cup after drinking down the water. He crushed the cup and threw it in the wastebasket with the first two.

Alice had watched him the whole time. Her gaze moved to the wastebasket. She stood for a moment, then tossed the tray on the bed and bent to retrieve the larger of the three cups, the one that had held the water and now contained the discarded drugs.

She looked in the cup and then angrily threw it in his lap.

“Nice try. You have ten seconds to drink it all down or I’m going to go get a couple of orderlies and we’re going to put you in a straitjacket.”

Alex blinked as he had when he’d been heavily drugged. “But I’ll need water to swallow this.”

“Clock’s ticking, Alex.”

He caught a glimpse of her other hand behind her back. She had a syringe.

Alex exploded out of the chair.

A brief, clipped cry of surprise was all that made it out before he broke her jaw.

He immediately grabbed her throat with both hands. He saw her hand with the syringe come up. He kept hold of her throat with one hand and with the other seized her hand and bent it downward until her wrist snapped. The syringe dropped to the floor, bouncing several times.

Alice couldn’t cry for help, not only because he was crushing her windpipe, but because her jaw was broken and hanging crookedly. Blood ran in strings from the side of her mouth, leaving a bright red stain that spread across the shoulder of her stark white dress.

Her back arched as she tried to get away, but Alex had her throat in a death grip. She beat her good fist against him to no effect as he took her to her knees. All the while she tried to lean back away from him.

Alex was lost in a life-or-death rage. He could see as well as feel his thumbs crushing her throat closed. He put every fiber of his strength into squeezing harder yet. He gritted his teeth, letting out a low growl with the effort.

Alice’s eyes bulged. She frantically swung her arm, trying to beat him back. Alex was immune to her impotent blows. She began turning blue. Her tongue swelled from her mouth as she desperately tried to gasp a breath, but it was impossible.

Alex followed her to the ground, straddling her as he choked the life out of her. He held her head against the floor, using his weight to help crush her throat. Her arms flailed weakly. Her mouth moved as if she was trying to say something, but her distended tongue prevented her from even mouthing words for which there was no air.

Alex let his anger rage at this woman who intended to be a party to torturing Jax. He wanted this woman dead. He wanted them all dead.

Alex had for so long been holding back his rage, his need to strike out and fight back, that it felt exhilarating to finally be able to let that fury loose.

He didn’t know how long she had been dead before he even realized it.

He finally sat back on his heels, catching his breath. With the back of his wrist he wiped sweat from his brow.

She was purple. Her eyes were wide open, staring at nothing. Her tongue bulged from her mouth, lying over to the side. Saliva and blood trickled out.

Alex raked his fingers back though his hair. He thought he might be sick.

He finally got up off the corpse. He saw the syringe and picked it up. The cap was missing. He realized that she must have popped it off with a thumb. He cast about and finally found the cap under the bed. He replaced it and put the syringe in his pocket.

In the eerie silence, the bed squeaked as Alex leaned back against it. He stared at the dead woman sprawled in the middle of the floor.

He’d had no choice, of course, but this complicated things. He had to figure out what he was going to do with her now. He considered stuffing her in the wardrobe, but when he opened the door to check its size, he realized that there was no way she would fit. He could push her under the bed, but the bedcovers didn’t hang down far enough to hide anything under such a high hospital bed.

He paced, trying to think. Soon, someone was going to come in and they would see her. If nothing else they would come that night to get him and take him over to their private torture session in the women’s shower.

He considered putting Alice against the wall, behind where the door opened, cleaning up the mess, and then going down to the sunroom to wait. It would probably be Henry who came looking for him. If Alex only left on the reading lamp over the bed, Henry might pop his head in, not see Alex, and go to the sunroom.

He realized that that was a lousy plan. Any number of things were likely to go wrong. People were soon going to wonder where Alice was and start searching for her. The orderlies were quick to pick up on such things. Some of the patients could be dangerous and they didn’t allow staff to go unaccounted for. They knew that she was doing med rounds. It was probably only a matter of minutes before they came looking for her to make sure she was all right.

Alex paced, frantically trying to think of what he could do, glancing over at the corpse every time he turned to pace in the other direction. He needed to somehow make Alice disappear.

He stopped suddenly and stared down at the woman. She was a mess. Blood from when he had struck her and broken her jaw lay in a long string halfway across the floor. Alice had lost control of herself as he had strangled her. There was a spreading puddle of urine under her sprawled legs.

He needed her to disappear.

Alex wondered if it was possible.

He could try. At this point he had no other ideas and nothing to lose.

He ran to the bed. It was old and squeaked whenever someone leaned against it. When things squeaked like that it usually meant that screws had worked loose. He ran his fingers along the metal bars and quickly found a self-tapping metal screw sticking up at the end of the side rail. He used his thumb and the side of his first finger to loosen it. He gritted his teeth with the effort. Had he not been so frantic he might not have been able to unscrew it with his bare hands.

The screw wasn’t long — certainly not long enough to be an effective weapon — but it had a relatively sharp point and was long enough for his purpose. He hurried over to Alice and squatted down beside her purple face.

He held the screw over the dead woman’s forehead as he thought. He closed his eyes as he worked to remember. He had seen Jax activate a lifeline several times. The first time it had been shocking to see her carving in Bethany’s forehead. Such surprise helped indelibly fix the picture in his mind.

More than that, though, he was an artist. Designs stuck in his head. He remembered forms, spatial relationships. He clearly recalled that every time Jax had drawn the design it looked the same. He was pretty sure that he remembered the way Jax had cut that design into foreheads. He let himself see it in his mind.

He could hear orderlies talking as they walked along the hallway outside his room. He had no choice but to try.

With the point of the screw Alex started carving the lines into Alice’s forehead. He made the arc that Jax had done first, then added two angled lines on the right and one on the left. He cut each line in turn, concentrating on the mental picture he had of the lines in Bethany’s forehead, making them precisely the same angles he remembered.

Alex lost himself in the task, just as he lost himself in painting. He made each stroke with confidence, the way Jax had. The point of the screw dragged against bone as he pulled it across the skin of Alice’s forehead. He finished with the pattern that overlaid the beginning arc, just as Jax had done.

Alex sat back on his heels, holding the screw in his fingers, looking at the thing he had drawn. Blood covered his fingers and ran down his wrist.

Unexpectedly, Alice ceased to be there. She didn’t become transparent and slowly fade away like in a ghost movie. It didn’t look like some spooky special effect. There was no drama to it. She was there one moment, and the next instant she simply wasn’t.

Alex blinked in astonishment. He looked around. The blood across the floor was gone. The puddle of urine was gone. He looked at his bloody fingers holding the screw. There was no blood. He sat still for a moment, taking it in.

He had just drawn a spell and made someone disappear before his very eyes. He had done it. It was so astonishing, and such a huge relief, that Alex laughed.

He heard orderlies coming down the hall. By their brief, muffled words, he could tell that they were putting their head into each room along the way, asking if anyone had seen Alice.

Alex scrambled to his chair and sat, working up a dazed look. He stared ahead, waiting for the door to open.

That was when he saw the med tray on the bed.

Alex jumped up and snatched the tray. He shoved it under the mattress. He wiped his sweaty hands on his thighs as he looked around the room. Everything looked normal. Nothing looked out of place.

He plopped down in the chair, letting his hands lie limp at his sides.

The door opened partway as an orderly leaned halfway in and glanced around the room. “Have you seen Nurse Alice?”

Alex gave the man a stuporous look. “She gave me my medicine and left.”

The orderly nodded and hurried away. When the door shut, Alex let out a sigh of relief.

Now he had to wait for night, when they would come to get him. They would expect him to be more awake but they would also believe he would still be sufficiently sedated that they could torture answers out of him and he wouldn’t fight back.

Alex allowed himself a smile of triumph for this much of it. The next part would be vastly more difficult, and he didn’t know if he would succeed, but he had finally taken back control of his life.

As he sat waiting, he worried about Jax, hoping she could hold out. He couldn’t fail. The price of failure was unacceptable.

He had promised her that as long as he could help it, he wasn’t going to allow them to hurt her. He meant it.