The Trouble With Bodyguards: Part 2 (3 page)

              “Our house was a desolate place after they took Jake away. Mom felt guilty, as if somehow she had caused the whole thing, and she slipped into a deep depression. She and Dad argued all the time, spending entire evenings screaming at each other about nothing, only to end up heading to opposite ends of the house to cry alone. Dad started drinking, which only fueled the misery. I hid in my room most of the time, taking up Jake’s old habits, but not for the same reasons. I could not handle what my family had become, all because of what he had become.

              “We drove up to visit him one time. It was his birthday,” he said, a soft smile crossing his face. “The trees all along the drive were in bloom, pink cherry blossoms blowing around the parking lot like a snow storm. It made the place seem like a dream, sort of a heaven. But that was only on the outside, a façade. Once we stepped through the main doors into the hospital proper, you could feel it, the disturbance in the air. Something was wrong here, very wrong, and it made your skin crawl.”

              Endless white tiles lined the floor, crawling down hallways marked with numbers painted on the wall in bright colors. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, some flickering as if fighting for their last breath before finally giving up, all hope of shining another day lost. A nurse in a starched, white uniform had led the way, her soft shoes making not a sound as she traversed these halls, past dozens of unmarked doors, the deadbolt locks on the outside a true sign of what happened here when the lights went out.

              Rick had wondered what it would be like to be locked in your room at night, battling the monsters that lived inside your own head. He shivered, not wanting to think about his little brother in exactly that situation. He hung his head, not wanting to see any more of this place, his brother’s prison. He longed to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Staring at the back of his father’s shoes, he shuffled silently, his stomach tight with fear, hoping to avoid a repeat of the last time that he had seen his younger brother.

              The nurse brought out a great ring of keys, her nimble fingers sorting deftly through them, in search of the specific key among hundreds that would allow them entry into the dayroom, where his brother was waiting for them to arrive. Selecting a small, silver key, virtually identical to hundreds of others attached to the ring, she slid it deftly into the lock, twisting it violently, causing the lock to groan and open with a loud click.             

              These people knew that they were trapped, held in this place with heavy iron bars, barred from the outside world by the ominous clank of an impenetrable lock, the key for which they would never hold in their hands. Some sat in chairs, gazing longingly at the azure sky, bright with sunshine. Another world lay outside the large windows, a world that most of these people did not belong to. Out there, people had jobs, families to take care of, and the responsibilities of a normal life. In here, where the soft sounds of a cartoon were the only accompaniment to the sobbing of a young woman balled up on the floor in the corner, her arms wrapped tightly around her legs, rocking herself gently for comfort, this was their normal. This was their world.

              Jacob sat in the middle of an orange vinyl sofa, his hands resting folded in his lap, and his eyes turned to the floor. Rick stared at his younger brother, shocked at the change in him since their last encounter. He seemed small, broken somehow, nothing like the vibrant and enthusiastic young man that he had grown up with. He wore a t-shirt and blue jeans, his feet bare on the cold tile floor. As Rick watched, reluctantly following his father's footsteps, closer to what was supposed to be his little brother with each step, Jacob scratched at something on the arm of the sofa, picking away at the ancient vinyl, digging a hole with his fingernail.

              “Jacob,” said the nurse in a singsong tone that carried a note of pity, as if she were talking to someone who were on their death bed, “your family is here for a visit.”

              He continued to pick at the fabric of the sofa, the tear that he had created growing larger. He didn't look up, didn't make eye contact, didn't run into the waiting arms of his mother, tearfully apologizing for all that he had done, all that he had become. “Why?” he asked, further destroying the furniture.

              “Oh, Harold,” said their mother, her voice choked with unshed tears. She had been afraid to come, afraid to face what her youngest son had become. Guilt worried at her. Fear that she could have done something to prevent this, to keep him from being in this cage, kept her awake many nights, crying in the dark bathroom, trying not to wake what remained of her family.

              “Jacob,” said their father, putting his arms around his wife, lending her strength and comfort as they stood uncomfortably in this room, surrounded by madness and despair. “We love you,” he continued. “We just want you to get better so that we can bring you home.”

              The finger halted, the incessant tearing of the vinyl ceased, and Jacob lifted his eyes to his family standing before him. The burning rage that had been in them had been replaced by a dull glow of hatred, a distaste in his expression as he gazed upon them, his father, his mother. He turned his eyes to Rick, and a glimmer of dark pleasure rippled somewhere deep inside him.

              “Do you want me to come home?” he asked, his attention focused on his older brother.

              “I want you to get better,” Rick said, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. He didn't know how to deal with this, being looked in the eye by sheer madness. All he knew was that he wanted their family to be happy again, to be normal again.

              “Do you think I'm sick?” asked his brother, tipping his head to the side in question.

              “I don't know,” said Rick, shoving his hands into his pockets, kicking at a chip in the tile floor.

              “If I'm sick,” continued Jake, standing, “then I should be in a hospital, not in this…” He hesitated, lifting his arms to the room. “This place. This place is for crazies, lunatics, madmen. Do you think that I deserve to be here? Am I as crazy as all these fucks?”

              “Jacob,” said their father, crossing to his son, reaching out to him.

              “No!” shouted Jacob, darting away from his father. “Don't touch me! You don't want to catch my disease, my sickness!” He leapt onto the couch, jumping from cushion to cushion, smacking his father in the face each time he came near, laughing maniacally.

              Two large men in white came from the office near the door, both dressed in white uniforms, their black shoes silent on the tile floor as they rushed toward Jacob, grabbing hold of his arms, holding him still between them as they forced him slowly to the floor. One of the men pulled a syringe from his pocket, slipping it deftly into Jacob's vein and pushing in the plunger.

              Jacob howled, thrashing in the grip of these behemoths, until the drugs took hold of him instead, his body going limp, his head lolling to the side. His eyes came to rest on his brother's gaze, and Rick could see what was left of the little brother that he knew screaming from inside the shell of this monster that he had become. A single tear rolled down his cheek, dripping onto the tile floor as his eyes slowly closed.

              “Mom cried for days,” Rick said, looking down at his hands, lost in the horror of his memory. “She wouldn't get out of bed. Dad tried the best he could to cheer her up and to take care of us at the same time. He was a lousy cook; he burned everything that he tried to make.” Rick chuckled halfheartedly. “I remember there was a lot of pizza back then.”

              He looked up at her, his eyes brimming with tears. Alex wanted to reach for him, pull him into her arms and comfort him as he had once done for her, but she didn't feel that his story was complete, and she wanted him to continue. She pulled her sweater tighter around herself, warding off a sudden chill, the sun having set completely now, ridding her of its warming light.

              “They tried what seemed like hundreds of different medications, many of them only lessening the symptoms. Jacob was hearing voices, and could not control his outbursts. He became violent with the hospital staff, and was forced to spend time locked in his room, which only made things worse. He went to therapy, alone and in groups. Shit, the whole family had to go to therapy.” He sighed, running his fingers through his hair, to release the tension.

              “At one point, after he had been in that place for close to a year, he seemed to be showing some improvement. They thought that they had finally found the right combination of meds to keep his behavior under control, and decided that it was time for him to return home. I had just graduated from high school, and was getting ready to head off to college upstate.

              “I remember the day that Dad brought him home. We planned a little party. Well, really Mom just baked a cake and we hung up a banner and some balloons, but we wanted to celebrate. Thanks to modern medicine, our family was going to be normal again. Mom cooked his favorite dinner, fried chicken and macaroni and cheese, and it was ready on the table when the car pulled in the driveway. Mom was terrified, you could tell, the way that she bustled around the house, making sure that everything was ready. Only she wasn't ready, not for how things went down.”

              “What happened?” asked Alex, her interest piqued.

              “Nothing really,” Rick said, turning to her. “Dad opened the door, they came in the house, and Jake walked right past us and into his room. There was no party, no celebration. Dinner went cold on the table.”

              “So he wasn't better then,” she commented.

              “Oh, he was,” Rick continued. “He didn't yell. He didn't attack anybody or throw anything. But he didn't do much of anything else either. He would eat when told to, shower when he was told to, sit in front of the television with the rest of the family in the evening and watch sitcoms. But his personality was gone; the medications that they had given him kept it very much dead. There was no ‘Jake’ left, only a drone wandering around the house, following orders.

              “Mom tried, really tried to deal with the situation. But you could see that she was screaming inside, that the fact that her baby had turned into this was eating away at her. She started to drink, a glass of wine with dinner, a cocktail as we watched TV. I guess that it made it easier for her to ignore the fact that her son was crazy, that he had to be drugged into a stupor to not attack her over the dinner table. She started to carry a flask in her purse, nipping off it when she thought that no one was paying attention, but we all knew.”

              He drew in a shuddering breath, “She died in a car accident a few months later. The autopsy showed that she had a blood alcohol level twice the legal limit. The report says that she must have fallen asleep at the wheel, but I have a suspicion that she might have driven off that overpass on purpose. She couldn't deal with it anymore.”

              “Oh, Rick,” said Alex, reaching out and placing her hand over his where it rested on his knee.

              He turned his hand over, lacing his fingers with hers and squeezing gently, grateful for the comfort as he continued. “Dad lost it. Blamed Mom's death on Jake. He screamed at him until his voice went hoarse, berating him, throwing things around the house, blind with rage. I thought that he might kill Jake, or me, or himself. But he didn't. Once he ran out of steam, sobbing uncontrollably, he just went into his room and shut the door.”

              “Rick,” she said, wiping the tears from her own cheeks, the pain in his story too much to listen to without reacting emotionally.

              “He wasn't there in the morning,” he said, his voice broken, distant, and the memories overtook him. “He had just left.

              “Here I was, not even twenty, left to look after my crazy brother. I was supposed to go to college, but now that was out. Somebody needed to bring in money, so that we had food to eat, a roof over our heads. I needed to be able to afford to buy Jake his meds, so that he had some sort of chance. I got a job working at the tire factory outside of town. Bought an old car with my first paycheck, enough to get me back and forth to work, and to take Jake to his appointments. He couldn't work, but he took care of things around the house, the cooking and cleaning.

              “He never talked about our parents, about what had happened, none of it. He didn't talk much at all really, not to me, though I could hear him, talking softly to himself in his room, late at night, just like before. I started getting up, out of the house, and sitting in the grass beneath his window, listening to him. He confessed everything, all his feelings, his fear and guilt, his suspicions, to whoever it is that he talks to when he's alone. I don't understand it, but I started to tell the doctors all the things that I've heard. Delusions, that's what they call it, the thoughts that he has. The meds that they give him help to control the violence in him, but he will always suffer the delusions.

              “And so,” he said, blowing out a breath, “I have kept an eye on him. I listen to him, when he thinks I'm not, and most of the time it's nothing.”

              “Most of the time?” she asked. “What happens when it's something?”

              “That's when I start to worry,” he said. “That's when he disappears.”

              “Disappears?” she asked, startled. “You don't know where your brother is?”