Loving Time

seventy-four

At eleven-forty-five, Ellen McCoo, the beefy middle-aged nurse who had discovered Bobbie on her floor and been knocked unconscious after confronting him, groaned and tried to open her eyes. Ellen had crumpled in the middle of the ward, oblivious to the chaos made by all fourteen patients of Six North, out of their beds and deeply into their own crazy behaviors.

Joe Penuch, a thirty-year-old delusional-aristocrat street beggar, gestured wildly, muttering curses as he approached and retreated from the melee. Roberto, a forty-five-year-old Puerto Rican who had been lobotomized because he had the compulsive habit of ripping and tearing gaping wounds in his body, and Cesar Garcia, a young man who had tried to commit suicide many times, most recently by cutting his wrists and injecting air into his liver, chased each other around a bed, arguing violently in Spanish.

Peter Austin, a friendly twenty-five-year-old disordered artist who drew happy landscapes in oils but couldn’t make sense when he spoke, wept as he saw Seamus tear some of Bobbie’s hair out, then copied Seamus by ripping out some of his own.

Terry, a short, fat man of indeterminate age and origin, who had recently amputated three of his fingers, was beating on the back of the Haitian known as Herbert, an HIV-positive patient who had raped his wife and then tried to hang himself after she became HIV-positive, too.

And Seamus had started it all. He’d seen Bobbie backhand the nurse who took care of him, saw her fall, and let loose with everything he had. And Seamus had a lot to let go. He was born with the XYY chromosomal abnormality associated with the most violent of criminals, was a hyperaggressive alcoholic and heroin addict. He’d become the object of extremely detailed Psychiatric Centre and police negotiations after his last release, when he’d slashed his boss’s throat with a knife while working in a vocational-rehab halfway house. Readmitted to the hospital instead of going to jail, he was presently contained with massive doses of Thorazine and Haldol.

When the throbbing began to ease a little and Ellen registered what was going on, she feebly tried to call for help. No one came. She struggled to a sitting position and was horrified to see Seamus try to bite off one of Bobbie’s ears.

“Stop that!” she screamed. But she might as well have asked a tornado to calm down and stop twisting.

The interloper in Seamus’s territory had attacked someone he knew. Seamus was going after the intruder with the force of a natural disaster—punching, kicking, tearing at Bobbie’s nose and hair and ears, growling, spattering blood.

He had sent the other patients into a frenzy. They had become a troubled school offish, vicious and hungry. Seamus himself seemed unaffected by the one milligram of Haldol he was on orders to take every hour in the evening until he was out cold. His opponent was bigger and heavier, but Seamus had the advantage of a chemical imbalance in his makeup that—in spite of all efforts—was not adequately tranquilized. He was all violence and no restraint. Bobbie fought just as hard and began to gain momentum as his own anger mounted. With the little finger of his right hand sticking straight out of his hand sideways and blood all over his face, Seamus abruptly backed off.

Bobbie shook himself like a wet dog, thinking it was all over. A cut on his forehead had filled his eyes with blood. He’d been fighting blind. Blood also spurted from his already-swollen broken nose. He wiped the blood out of his eyes with the back of his hand. For a second he saw his opponent’s eyes burn as Seamus retreated. Bobbie turned away, figuring he’d won.

Then suddenly Seamus circled and leaped on him from behind. He wrapped his legs around Bobbie’s waist and his arms around Bobbie’s neck. Bobbie made a choking noise as the crazy man crooked his arm, trying to bend Bobbie’s head back and snap his thick neck. Not a chance of that. Bobbie swung around, then bent forward, throwing Seamus to the floor with a loud crack. Then he picked up the chair he’d been sitting on.

Ellen dragged herself to her feet. “Hey, stop that.… That’s enough.… ” She pulled at the chair in Bobbie’s hands. “Stop … it.”

Bobbie swung at her. Ellen McCoo was a heavy woman, but tough, and now very angry. She ducked, screaming for help. This time her voice carried and two nurse’s aides rushed in. A third went to the phone to call for help. Doors started opening up and down the hall.

The whole ward was fighting when Special Agent Daveys ran into the brawl with his snub-nosed pistol held out in both hands.

“FBI,” he croaked, then found his voice. “FBI! Freeze!”

No one froze. At the sight of the gun, the screaming in Spanish and English, the curses and imprecations, the wild gesticulations only got louder and wilder. The school of fish had been frenzied; now it was terrified. Daveys pointed his gun at Bobbie, who still held the chair over his head in his hands. From the hall came sounds of people screaming and wailing.

“Get back!” Daveys screamed at the throng behind him. “Get out of here!”

“You get out of here!” Bobbie shouted back. “Don’t even think about coming in here.”

“Freeze, Bob. I’ve got a gun,” Daveys said. But he didn’t look too confident about it, hadn’t seen too many psycho wards.

“I don’t give a shit about the gun. Shoot the place up. Go ahead, you might get a gold star.” Bobbie laughed at the thought.

“That’s it, it’s over, Bob. Put the chair down.” Davey gaped at the spectacle. “Let’s calm it down in here,” he said reasonably.

“Fuck you.”

Ellen saw her chance and started wrestling Bobbie for the chair. Seamus pulled himself to his knees and grabbed Bobbie’s ankles. Bobbie wrenched the chair out of the nurse’s grasp and slammed it down on Seamus’s head. He collapsed and didn’t move again.

Daveys moved the gun from side to side, trying to get a clear sight. “Stop it! I said, stop it now. This has gone far enough.” Daveys lost his reasonable tone. “I mean it. I’ll shoot.”

“Oh, sure you will.” Bobbie grabbed Alberto, the closest patient, who still stood close to his nurse, weeping and holding onto his penis for dear life. Effortlessly, Bobbie picked up the half-naked old man and held him like a shield. He was laughing when he said, “Go ahead, asshole, shoot.”

At 11:56, Mike and April charged down the hall, past a dozen frantic aides and nurses, who had arrived from other floors to reestablish order on Six North. They raced into the opening at the end of the hall just in time to see Daveys’s arms tremble, skewing his aim from Bobbie’s foot to his head. Alberto screamed and wept for help. Daveys missed whatever he’d been trying for when his gun went off. The discharged bullet hit Bobbie and Alberto. Locked in a fatal embrace, they went down together.