Slowly, David raised a hand to his mouth and pressed it to his split lip. He had felt no pain, just a sudden pressure. His stomach churned.
He turned back to Clyde, careful to keep his head lowered so as not to make eye contact. The thought of Diane's soft whimpering the first time she kissed him in the hospital room brought on a sudden, intense rage, but he fought it away. Anger did him little good here, as it did little good on the ER floor.
Only Clyde's large stomach and chest were within his view. The sickening and frighteningly familiar combination of body odor and orange candy-coating hung in the air.
It occurred to David how surreal it was to be threatened physically and how ill equipped he was to handle it. He'd been in one fight in his life-Daniel Madison in third grade over a stolen Sandy Koufax baseball card. The ass-kicking Daniel administered had convinced David subsequently to pursue other avenues of conflict resolution. And to root for the Giants.
"You don't know," Clyde said, his words a slur. "You don't know how scary I can be."
"Yes, I do," David said. Clyde might strike him at any moment. He tried to figure out where he'd hit Clyde if he had to defend himself. Neck? Crotch? "But you're in danger. I can help. I can bring you in myself, and make sure you're taken care of."
"I'm not a game." Clyde's voice, deep and raspy, was pained. "You'd better leave me alone."
"Clyde, listen to me." David's voice was shaking, though he was doing everything to keep it even. "I saw the films of the fear study. I know what they put you through when you were a kid, and how wrong it was. I understand why you're angry-you have every right to be angry." He sensed Clyde's shape relaxing slightly, shoulders starting to lower.
"No one's born with problems like mine," Clyde said. "Someone made me."
"If you come with me, we can talk to the authorities together and explain everything that's happened to you," David continued, in as calm a voice as he could muster. "But as long as you're out here and wanted, you put yourself in danger."
"I'm not in danger. They're the ones. They're the ones who are scared of me."
"Clyde, I know there's a part of you that doesn't want to do these things to people. I know there's a part of you that wants to be better." Wording the question like a statement, trying to pick up ground. David stared up at Clyde's shadowy face, framed in silhouette by the glow of a distant streetlight.
"I tried to go into a clinic," Clyde said. "To stop the feelings that were starting to come. I wanted them to make me better. To give me… things… to make me better." Fear crept into his voice. "But I got to the parking lot and saw them with their white coats and I couldn't. My hands were sweating. I dropped my orange bottle, but it was empty."
The orange bottle-for prescription drugs? Clyde's cryptic words were confirming connections David had already made. Connolly's study had left Clyde terrified of doctors. Or at least of receiving treatment. That's why he'd been trying to cure himself.
"How about if I went with you?" David asked. "To get help?"
A voice, small and defiant, like a child's. "No."
"If you won't go with me to get help, I have to believe you're not very serious about getting better."
A low humming sound broadened into a sob-stained cry. David waited silently, shocked, as Clyde wept and then fell silent. After a pause, Clyde said, "People talk at me but their voices don't have any color. They're metal and cold. They scrape my ears." His words were distorted from crying, but his tone was more gentle. Confessional. "It's like there's darkness everywhere and in my eyes until someone smiles and then it gets light." A mournful pause. "It hasn't been light in a long time."
David tried to collect his thoughts.
"I'm not filled inside," Clyde continued. "It's like straw instead of skin, and ropes instead of veins. I'm rotting. I'm rotting from the inside out, but I still move around in my body." Clyde beginning to cry again. Rocking on his feet, muttering. "Three, two, one. Back from the door." Calming himself. When he raised his head, his eyes gleamed, sharp-focused and angry. A forged connection-vulnerability followed by intense animosity.
David took a small step back. "There are people who can talk to you." He made sure not to mention psychologists or psychiatrists. "Make you feel better. Plus your wounds-your wounds from the alkali-those need to be treated as well."
Clyde turned and spat. "I can taste my rot. It's like there's a dead rat in my throat and it's melting."
"That's a side effect," David said, "and another reason you need help. You've been poisoning yourself with the drugs you're taking."
Clyde's shadow stiffened, rearing back, and David realized he'd made a terrible mistake.
"I don't take drugs." The fist drew back calmly again, like a piston, and drove down into David's face.
David came to with gravel in his mouth. Using the front bumper of the car, he pulled himself to his feet and spit out the gravel on the hood. His mouth was warm and salty; when he studied the gob of spit in the moonlight, he saw it was dark, lined with blood.
The vice-grip of a headache seized him suddenly and intensely, pulsed three times, then dissipated. He slid up on the hood, careful to miss his spit, and sat with his feet on the front bumper. His pants were ripped and bloody at one knee. He caught his breath slowly, blotting his split lip with a sleeve and going through a neuro checklist. He didn't have any weakness or altered sensations, and there seemed to be no clouding of his mental facilities. He thought about getting himself to the ER to be checked out, but continued toward the missing slat in the fence on the far side of the lot. Halfway there, he noticed another slat that had been shoved aside, farther down the fence. This one appeared to lead not to a street but an alley. David was fairly certain the slat had been in place before his confrontation with Clyde.
He headed over and stepped through the fence without first scanning the alley. He was tired, aching, pissed off, and no longer cared to slow down for the sake of taking precautions. A homeless man shuffled from behind a Dumpster, approaching David in threatening fashion, but David lowered his hand from his bloody lip and froze him with a glare.
He trudged out from the alley and found himself on an empty street of run-down apartments. Dilapidated cars were parked along the curbs-Chevettes with tinted windows, El Dorados on sunken shocks, trucks with soil scattered in the beds. On the apartments, screens hung off windows by single pegs; clean patches of wood were visible where decorative shutters had recently fallen off. David walked along the torn-up strips of grass intended to decorate the sidewalks, not really sure for what he was looking. He paused at the corner of the street, staring at the row of quiet, decaying buildings. Insects chirped somewhere nearby, though there was little vegetation.
The realities of the situation struck him. He was alone, in a bad part of town at night, searching the streets for an assailant.
David turned purposefully and began the long walk back to his car. Beside an overturned Healton's shopping cart, a man slept on the sidewalk, drawing deep, shuddering breaths. David circled him, passing beside a car.
A parking permit hanging from the car's rearview mirror caught his eye: UCLA MEDICAL CENTER. Expired in May, three months ago. The month Clyde was fired.
David froze, peering at the car. A chipped brown Crown Victoria. On the dash sat an empty box of Nobleman's Zinc Lozenges and a loose twenty-gauge needle, still in its plastic sheath. Wrappers and soda cans covered the backseat.
Carefully sidestepping the homeless man, David headed for the run-down apartment building closest to the car. He ran his finger down the list of names on the mailboxes, searching for Clyde's to no avail. He did the same at the apartment building next door. And the one next door to that. He was just about to give up when a name caught his eye. Slade Douglas. Apartment 203.