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By Root 474 0

the staff was back with two more doctors and a video tape crew. One of the newcomers she recognized from the Christmas party of her last commitment as the superintendent of the hospital. Dr. Samuel Hodges was over six feet tall and in his late fifties, with only a circlet of crisp curly gray hair like a laurel wreath around his ruddy dome. The other man was older, with silky white hair, a radiant tan, a fine gray suit, natty but conservatively tailored. Dr. Redding and Dr. Hodges called him Chip, but Dr. Morgan called him Dr. Argent. Dr. Redding asked him how St. Peter’s Island had been, casually throwing at the super that Dr. Argent’s family owned an island off Georgia. Scoring, point-counting.

“A very small island,” Dr. Argent said. “Used to offer shelter to runaway slaves. Now to runaway slaving doctors.” He spoke differently than the others; at first she thought perhaps he was English, and sometimes his voice reminded her of the Kennedys speaking on TV. He wore his white hair a little long and wherever he stood became the center of the room. Redding talked to him with the soft edge of diffidence mellowing his voice. A teasing edge brought a laugh up to Redding’s throat and kept it waiting there, like a little warning light.

“We’ll be video-taping occasionally over the next two months,” Redding said to Dr. Hodges. “Advantages: on-the-spot record of procedures and patient responses. Able to be edited into a film we can use for funding and education. No special lights needed.”

“The light in here is borderline,” one of the crew said. “When we get on the ward in NYNPI we’ll get you better tape.”

“Don’t turn that camera on me!” Alice yanked away from the nurse and flailed in the bed.

“I can, of course, calm her at any point, but I’d prefer to proceed as we’ve programmed it,” Redding said.

Dr. Hodges made him a little bow, indicating he should continue. “Doctor, it’s her head,” Mrs. Valente said apologetically. “We’ve shaved it. She’s bald. You know, it makes her be embarrassed? To be photographed bald?”

They looked at Valente blankly. Connie felt embarrassed herself. She had disliked Valente on sight, because of her burliness and her speech impediment. But Valente actually saw them as people; saw Alice as a woman who should not be publicly shamed. Valente went on, mumbling badly. “Could maybe get wigs?”

“Patty.” Dr. Redding nodded to the ever-hovering secretary. “Get an assortment of wigs for the women, for use while their hair grows out.”

“How soon do you want them, Doctor?” Patty looked dubious. She was a slender woman, always in a mint green or cherry red pants suit, with short blond hair and big round bluetinted glasses sliding on her nose.

“Alice is just a demonstration. We won’t start on the others till we’re at the institute. Two weeks, say.”

So they were going to do it to all of them. They were going to do it to her—whatever it was. Her too.

“Charlie, if I may be so bold,” Dr. Argent said, “why not begin with her kicking around? After all, irrational violence is what we’re about.”

“Right you are.” Redding chuckled, looking upstaged. “Certainly. Let’s go. Roll ’em.”

“One minute, Doc. We’re working on the miking. Just keep her going and we’ll be with you in a couple of minutes.”

Alice did keep going. She succeeded in heaving herself out of the bed and it took both attendants and the nurse to force her flat again. As the struggle proceeded, the crew started filming, a mike dangling over the bed, while the impassive gum-chewing cameraman edged Patty out of the way to get a good angle.

“Welcome to the monkey house at the zoo!” Sybil yelled. All the patients were active now, some talking loudly to themselves or the air, Miss Green lying prone with the pillow pushed over her head, Tina Ortiz watching in a knot of fury. The men were crowding the door to stare in. Alvin made a dash down the ward to bang on the outer door with both fists. Fats grabbed him under the armpits and walked him back to his bed. Alvin did not appear again; probably they snowed him with heavy tranks.

Redding, wearing a small mike around