Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [53]
Some patients would scream all the time if there were no sedatives to quiet them. Others, who cycled through stages of illness, had their lucid periods, when they could be transferred to Ward A, the admitting ward. Here they were installed as temporary guests, until their precarious mental balance was upset, and they had to be drugged and restrained in a private cell.
So, nearly always, there was somebody screaming, but the staff—three psychiatrists, seven supervising nurses, two dozen therapy aides, eight security officers, three cooks, and assorted groundskeepers and maintenance personnel—had learned to pay no attention to the noise.
Only the hospital director, John Bainbridge Cray, M.D., did not ignore the screams.
He rather liked them.
This had been a hectic morning for Cray. He had arrived at his home on the hospital grounds at 8:45, exhausted after his long night and only moderately revived by the coffee he’d consumed during the drive from Tucson.
Quickly he showered and changed, then spent some time in his garage, taking care of a few unpleasant but necessary details.
By 9:20 he was in his office. To his secretary, Margaret, he excused his tardiness by saying he’d forgotten to set his alarm dock.
His first order of business was a conference call involving an allegation of misconduct by a therapy aide, David Wilson. Wilson was accused of having beaten an unruly patient, Jocelyn Beatty, who had checked into the hospital voluntarily after experiencing symptoms of manic-depressive illness.
He spent half an hour on the phone with the patient’s mother, the attorney she had retained to represent her daughter, and a case officer employed by the Arizona Health Services Department. Cray informed them that David Wilson already had been placed on paid leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation. He offered to turn over Wilson’s duty logs to the attorney. He promised his full cooperation. And he meant it.
Cray took any allegation of misconduct with the utmost seriousness. The patients in his care were never to be mistreated. In the performance of his duties, he adhered to the most conscientious standards of professionalism. It was a point of pride with him.
Was this an inconsistency in a man of his predilections? He supposed so. But in truth he did feel something special for his patients. The women he had killed—they were nothing, merely lab rats, experimental animals set loose to run a deadly maze. The patients at the hospital, on the other hand, were his charges, almost his children, and he would not let them be hurt.
Well, there had been one exception. One patient he had meant to harm. But he’d never had the chance.
At least, not yet.
When the phone call was done, he hosted a meeting in his office. A patient, Dennis Callaghan, was set to be discharged. Cray served coffee and pastries to Dennis and his grateful parents. The atmosphere was cheery, and the strong morning sun poured through the spotless windows like a benediction.
“We just don’t know how to thank you, Doctor,” Mrs. Callaghan said, holding tight to her son’s hand. “Dennis has been in and out of places like this for ... well, all his life. You’ve managed some sort of miracle cure.”
Her husband said the same, and Dennis mumbled an echo.
Cray accepted the compliments graciously. To be honest, he did not think that either he or his staff had contributed greatly to Dennis Callaghan’s recovery. The treatment prescribed for him had been entirely routine, not much different from the strategies employed by other hospitals throughout the patient’s history. A loading dose of Haldol had been administered, then tapered to a lower dose, at which point Dennis’s condition had stabilized.
Why had the pharmaceuticals worked here and now, but not before? There was no reason. More precisely, the reason was unknown, owing to the mysterious complexity of the