And then a loud mechanical voice intones, "Three, two, one. Step back from the door." The loud sound of the door's bolt being unlocked, and Clyde scrambles to freedom.
Clyde's ritualistic phrase, his private mantra, was actually the hard-conditioned cue given to him as a child that his fear was about to end. He used it still to alleviate anxiety.
The film cut out and David wiped the sheen of sweat from his forehead. Seconds later, the seclusion room appeared again on the screen, this time with the lights off.
The outline of the nurse in the chair is barely visible. Clyde is led in, though he pounds at the door as soon as it is closed behind him. "Please! Please!" He runs to the nurse, who again moves only to push him firmly away. The door opens and another nurse enters with a large rectangular box. She opens it and dumps what appear to be harmless garden snakes on the floor. Clyde shrieks and tries to run away but the snakes quickly spread out through the small seclusion room. The second nurse pushes them toward Clyde.
David closed his eyes for a moment, but Clyde's wails still came. "Please! I'll be good." And then: a final terrified strategy- "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."
When David viewed the screen again, his mouth was dry and sour. Clyde turns to the wall, burying his face in the corner as the snakes curl around his feet. He murmurs to himself, something inaudible, though David knew he was counting down from three over and over, anticipating. Finally, the second nurse collects the snakes and the mechanical voice sounds, "Three, two, one. Step back from the door." Clyde sprints for freedom.
At the beginning of the next trial, Clyde crosses immediately to the seated nurse and bites her leg. She rises and administers him a quick but vicious spanking before returning to her stonelike perch on the chair. When a series of blinding lights begin to flash in the white room, a wet spot spreads down the leg of Clyde's trousers.
Trial after trial followed on the reel of film. Experiments with animals, with people in threatening poses, with motorized contraptions that sprang open like jack-in-the-boxes, but with no warning. By the final trial, Clyde had resorted to sitting against the far wall, face blank and dazed. He made no attempt to approach the seated nurse. They brought in a snarling German shepherd on a chain and held it inches from Clyde's face. Clyde seemed hardly to notice it. The scene cut out and the end of the film flapped in the reel.
As the reel continued its mindless rotation, David sat in the darkness of the study, breathing dust. A long vacant block of time passed as the film slapped the reel and the katydids chirped. Finally, David peeled himself from the leather chair and clicked the lamp on the desk. With the quiet, precise movements of a priest, he put away the projector and the screen. He jotted down the names of the subjects and their dates of birth. Clyde's file, the general files, and a few reels of film he took with him.
The rest of the house was dark and smelled of mothballs and fragranced powder. Mrs. Connolly had fallen asleep in the living room, a quilted blanket at her side. Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman flickered across the TV screen, muted. David crossed silently and pulled the blanket up around her. She stirred as he reached the door.
Her voice was gentle, and it warbled slightly. "David?"
"Yes, Mrs. Connolly?"
"Did you find what you needed?"
"I did."
She smiled, though sadness found its way even into that. "We always appreciated what your mother did for us."
A quick flare of unease. "What do you mean by that?"
Her eyes gathered an acuity he had not before noticed. It quickly faded. David wondered for the first time if her usual demeanor was an affectation.
"He was a good man, wasn't he? My J.P.?"
David felt a slight tingling in his face at her avoidance of the question. "Yes, he was."
He closed the front door gently, leaving her to fall back into sleep.
Chapter 49
The nameplate on Sandy's door, like Sandy, was bold and straightforward. It read simply: EVANS. CHIEF OF STAFF. No first name, no appended M.D.
Though it was late and the halls had fallen quiet, light shone from beneath Sandy's door. An informal pool among members of the Board rode on how many consecutive nights she'd work past 10 P.M.
David knocked, and she called out for him to enter. She was sitting at the end of the long conference table at which she liked to work; her desk sat empty and untouched at the other end of the office. Her face lit with the glow of a green-shaded banker's lamp, she pored over papers. She looked up at David and smiled. He was one of the few people at whose entrance she smiled. He was aware of this and made uneasy by how much it flattered him.
"David, what's this I hear about you nosing around the hospital?"
"I've been following the trail a bit."
"Make sure you don't follow it too far away from the ER. There is a division to be run. You could also stand not to ruffle any more feathers."
He ignored her remark and his resultant irritation, not wanting to be sidetracked. "Dr. J. P. Connolly did a fear study in 1973 at the NPI. Are you familiar with it?"
Sandy pulled off her glasses and set them neatly on a stack of files. "Yes. I am."
"The NPI has no records of it. None at all. I tracked it down at Dr. Connolly's house. Pretty grim."
"It wasn't unusual for the time, David. You'd be surprised."
"Then why did my mother terminate it?"
Sandy averted her eyes, just for a moment, but it was such an uncharacteristic motion that David noticed it. "If memory serves, the science was sloppy from the get-go."
"Your memory serves well. Particularly for a study that took place thirty years ago."
Her green eyes gleamed cold and marblelike. She tapped her forehead. "Like a steel trap."
"It had some interesting methodology too, wouldn't you say?"
"Just because you and I now look at a study like that with disdain, you'd better remember it was not such a marked departure from the standard of the day. It may be hard to believe, but that's how many experiments were back then. I'm not kidding. Go back. Take a look at fear and separation studies from the late '60s, early '70s."
"Are you aware that Clyde Slade was a participant in that study?"
Sandy flushed, shocked. It was astounding how quickly she regained her composure. "I was not."
"I think something else happened. Something to do with the study. There were pages ripped out of Connolly's files. I think the hospital removed the copies from the NPI and expurgated the files I found at Connolly's. I think if you wanted to, you could talk to some people and figure out a way for me to see what's missing."
Sandy's lips pursed-they were just beginning to texture with wrinkles. "Seems you're out of your bailiwick here, Doctor."
"There are lives at stake."
"How do you know that whatever information is or isn't missing from those files is at all relevant?"
"I don't. But if it is, and you withhold it, think about what that means."
"Ah. A directive." Sandy's cheeks drew up in a half squint. "Don't pry too deep, David. You might not like what you find."
"In light of what we're dealing with here, I'll handle it." He paused by the door, tapping it with his fist once in a soft knock. "I'll check in with you tomorrow."
Sandy had already gone back to her papers. "I know where to find you, David," she said. "Should I want to."
For the tail end of her recovery, Diane had been moved to the VIP section of the prestigious ninth floor. She'd be ready to be released the day after tomorrow; her doctors thought it wise for her to remain on site so her eyedrops could be applied regularly and Silvadene spread over her wounds.
The elevator doors clanged open, and David stepped into the clean tiled hall. The door to Diane's room was ajar. David entered and closed it gently behind him.