Trauma

CHAPTER 58

“What the hell are you doing?” Carrie screamed at Dr. Finley. “Let me go! Let me out of here!”

Dressed in his trademark oxford shirt and khaki pants, Dr. Finley had a pressed, clean appearance that made the other men’s condition look even more deplorable. He approached with honest sympathy in his eyes. Almost a look of heartache, as though he knew Carrie’s fate and deeply regretted it. He came over to her kennel and locked his fingers around the wire.

Meanwhile, Fasciani continued to bark and mutter and speak unintelligibly, but Carrie no longer concentrated on what he said. Her entire focus remained on Dr. Finley and three men who accompanied him into this dank cellar: Terry Bushman, Ramón Hernandez, and Lee Taggart, who held in his hand a long rodlike implement with two pointed prongs on the end. A few of the men in cages took notice of the cattle prod in Taggart’s hand, and sank to the back of their kennels as though they’d been conditioned to react that way.

Carrie lunged at the wire, causing Dr. Finley to rip his hands away before she could grab them. With as much force as she could muster, Carrie shook the cage, but managed to make it rattle and nothing more. These kennels were bolted into the cement and would not budge no matter how much she tried. None of the men down here, those inside the cages or out, reacted to Carrie’s rage.

“You need to calm down, Carrie,” Dr. Finley said. “Nobody can hear you scream. Your outbursts will do you no good, and I have questions to ask. Important questions. If you yell, or don’t cooperate, Braxton will administer a painful shock with this livestock prod.”

“Braxton?” Carrie said.

Dr. Finley became aware of Carrie’s confusion. “Ah, of course, Nurse Lee Taggart is in actuality Braxton Price, and he’s as skilled as these other two gentlemen, if not more so. So you’ll need to cooperate now, Carrie. It’s vital for you.”

Carrie focused her thoughts to compartmentalize her fear and terror. “What is this? What is going on here?”

Dr. Finley kept some distance from the cage as he removed his spectacles and rubbed at his eyes.

“This, Carrie,” Dr. Finley said, gesturing to the kennels of men, “is how we’re going to cure PTSD.”

Carrie hated to hear Dr. Finley speak her name. It felt like another violation of her trust. She shook her head, disbelieving. She focused on the words the men in these cages spoke — playacted, it now seemed — and Carrie understood in a way she had not before that they seemed to be trapped inside a virtual reality simulation, one of war and bloodshed, a place where the gunfire never let up.

“What have you done to them?”

Easy does it, Carrie warned herself. Don’t lose your temper. They’ll hurt you if you do.

“I’m helping them,” Dr. Finley said. “Well, not them exactly, but others like them. These men are pioneers, Carrie. These are men who will give us a window into the secret world of the traumatized brain. These men are heroes.”

Carrie’s sense of Dr. Finley’s program was coming into sharper focus. A sickly chill overtook her.

“They’re all homeless, aren’t they?” she whispered. “Like Steve, like Eric, these men are vets who were living on the street, people nobody noticed and nobody missed.”

“They fit the criteria we needed.”

“And you!” Carrie’s eyes turned fierce as she set her gaze on Ramón Hernandez and Terry Bushman. “You were like them, you were on the streets, too. How could you let this happen to these men?”

“Actually,” Dr. Finley said, “Ramón and Terry weren’t like them at all. They’re both former members of Braxton’s military squad. And they helped to — oh, let’s call it recruit vets for our program. I was quite impressed when you discovered Ramón had a connection to Steve Abington that preceded our efforts here. You’re a very clever woman.”

Carrie gripped the wires again. “But you cured them both,” she said.

“No,” Dr. Finley answered. “I performed DBS surgery on them, and that’s all. These men never had PTSD. And their implants produce no electrical discharge. To be blunt, they are part of our dog-and-pony show for the federal government, to ensure we continue to receive more funding. You see, Cal Trent needed to show progress to the higher-ups at DARPA, and sadly vets like Steve Abington were not going to do the trick. Not yet, anyway.”

“What is this?” Carrie said, gesturing to Eric’s IV drip. “What is in those IVs?” What had she gotten herself into?

“You actually had it figured out, Carrie,” Dr. Finley said. “You just didn’t quite put it all together.”

“CerebroMed,” Carrie said. “Bob Richardson.”

“Richardson and CerebroMed,” Dr. Finley repeated. “But it’s not all Bob’s doing, not by a long shot. I had the basis for the chemical properties of Deleritum and brought it to Richardson’s attention.”

“Deleritum?” Carrie asked.

“From the Latin verb meaning ‘to erase.’”

Dr. Finley’s ego and overweening pride would keep him talking, revealing secrets Carrie longed to know, but dreaded to hear.

“What is Deleritum?” Carrie spat out the word.

“It’s a drug, Carrie, that reconsolidates bad memories causing PTSD symptoms,” Dr. Finley answered matter-of-factly. “The drug is a highly modified form of MDMA, which you know better as the street drug ecstasy. Our lab is located down here, but I’m sure you had no idea. There are no nasty fumes, and not a lot of highly suspicious chemicals involved. Richardson is our supplier, and that service can’t be undervalued. CerebroMed has been after something like this for years. Richardson stands to make a lot of money from this discovery, but money isn’t everything.”

Carrie was aware that the compounds found in MDMA had been shown to dampen the amygdala, which would allow people to re-engage with the negative experiences without significant consequence.

“It all has to do with perseverating memory,” Dr. Finley continued. “We needed a way to trigger the memory so that it persisted in the amygdala, where we could then use DBS to neutralize the emotion. The problem was getting the memory to perseverate properly.”

Carrie’s eyes went wide with a look of horror. “Virtual reality didn’t work, did it? You needed drugs to make it happen,” she said.

“We needed drugs and a way to test them. Animals aren’t very good at telling us their feelings. It might not look to you like we’re close to a breakthrough here, but we are. A few more trials and we’ll have something truly remarkable.”

“But these drugs don’t work,” Carrie said. “These men are lost.”

“Well, they do in some ways. It’s a process, you see.”

Carrie’s thoughts were gelling, and those disparate threads Dr. Finley had referenced connected in ways she could not possibly have imagined. The word that flashed in her mind like neon on Broadway was “perseverate.” It meant a thought or action repeated long after a stimulus that prompted a response had ceased. For some of these men, Deleritum made the war live on in their minds. Their trauma continued unabated — perseverated, in medical parlance — but for some, that perseveration manifested as palinacousis.

Dr. Finley observed Carrie thoughtfully. “So you do understand now, don’t you?”

Carrie felt gravely ill, weak throughout her body. “Have you cured anybody?” she asked.

Dr. Finley appeared a bit contrite. “There are flashes of real lucidity, yes, and the length varies — sometimes weeks — but eventually significant deteriorations recur. A few of the patients just have the palinacousis side effect, no lingering PTSD symptoms, but that’s happened only a handful of times. Of course those are the ones we’re most excited about.”

Carrie felt confused. “Steve Abington — he communicated with me. He talked about his friend Roach before he attacked me. Was he one of those men? Is he still alive?”

“No, I’m afraid not. The sedatives we gave him pre-op dampened the effects of Deleritum significantly, but as soon as those drugs wore off he was completely lost. Same as your friend Eric, here.”

Carrie looked down the row of cages. None of them appeared to be engaged with reality.

“But you said some people just have the palinacousis side effect. Where are those men?”

“They didn’t make it.”

“Make it? What do you do, Alistair — just execute them?”

“They might have trouble with hearing,” Dr. Finley said, “but their mouths work just fine.”

“You’re a monster,” Carrie said. “All of you. Monsters!”

Hernandez took a threatening step toward Carrie’s cage. She retreated a few steps, forgetting for a moment the barrier between them.

“These guys were gone anyway,” Hernandez said. “Why not put the body and mind to good use?”

“And what do you get out of this deal?” Carrie asked bitterly.

“Me?” Hernandez touched a finger to his chest. “I’m helping to fix one of the biggest problems in the military and make a fortune doing it. What more do you want?”

“Is that it for you, Alistair?” Carrie asked. “Is it about the money?”

“No,” Dr. Finley said with a shake of his head. “It’s about the results. Think about what a drug like Deleritum can do for the world. The trauma of war, of rape, of child abuse, fatal accidents, death and grief, all of it can be neutralized. I can bring happiness to the world. True peace of mind. What’s that worth, Carrie? I think it’s worth the sacrifice of these men.”

“I think you don’t want to go through the proper channels and develop a drug under the guidelines of the FDA. I think you want your glory and you want it now.”

Dr. Finley shrugged off the rebuke. “There’s a certain truth to what you say,” he admitted. “I would like to be alive when I finally get the recognition and respect I deserve. Who wouldn’t want to go down in history as the person who unlocked the secrets of the mind?”

“And Sandra Goodwin will have a state-of-the-art neurosurgical practice to run. I guess she gets something out of the deal, too,” Carrie said.

“We all have our motivators in life,” Dr. Finley said.

Carrie shook on the inside and out. Whether it was hubris or ego, Dr. Finley needed Carrie to understand his motives, to accept them if possible.

“Sam Rockwell knew what you were doing, didn’t he?”

Dr. Finley got a distant look in his eyes, almost a pained expression. “Sam was a dear friend. And he supported us from the start. He saw the greater good.”

“By ‘us,’ you mean Navarro and Goodwin.”

Dr. Finley scoffed. “Sandra yes, but Evan, no. That boy is a flea whom I utterly despise, as does Sandra. But he’s a good soldier and he does as Sandra says. Unlike you.”

Carrie felt nauseated all over again. Turfing. Sandra Goodwin had fostered the perfect work culture to make these patients disappear. “When these vets leave the floor they become other people’s problems,” Carrie said, almost to herself. “Navarro never bothered to look at the number of medical complications associated with DBS. To him it was just one less thing to worry about. So you killed Sam because why? He didn’t want to play along?”

“So to speak,” Dr. Finley said. “But believe me, I did not want to hurt him. Same as I don’t want to hurt you. Sam left me no choice. I do have a heart, Carrie. We could have killed him when the accident didn’t.” Dr. Finley put the word “accident” inside air quotes. “But I told Braxton to leave him be. In his condition his family at least had a sprig of hope for his recovery, and he was no threat to me.”

“Until he woke up.”

A dark cloud crossed Dr. Finley’s face. “If you hadn’t been on your way to see him, we might have been able to handle it differently. As it was, you forced us to improvise. Why couldn’t you have just done your job and inserted those wires while we did the rest?”

“It’s not who I am.”

“That, I’m afraid, was my miscalculation. Now I need to know: besides David Hoffman, who else have you told?”

Cold terror seeped into Carrie’s bones. “No, no, not David. He doesn’t know anything.”

Dr. Finley returned an annoyed look. “Don’t play me for a fool,” he said. “Who else have you told?”

Carrie would not answer.

“Your entire family is in danger now, Carrie. Be honest here. Who else have you told?”

“Go screw yourself.” Carrie bent down, grabbed the empty blue bucket beside her, and hurled it as hard as she could against the wire. The bucket bounced back and nearly hit her in the face before it clattered noisily to the ground.

Dr. Finley turned his attention to Braxton. “Come with me to the lab. I’d like to have a word with you in private before we go and deal with Mr. Hoffman.”

Braxton showed Carrie a syringe. “I used this to take care of Sam Rockwell after I ran you off the road,” he said, a cold glint in his eyes. Ruefully, he added, “Guess I should have taken you out that day, after all.”

Dr. Finley took a single step toward the exit, but turned back to address Carrie once more.

“I’m so sorry it’s come to this,” he said. “I really thought we could continue our efforts with you on board. The thought of landing a top-notch neurosurgeon so soon after we dealt with Sam was simply out of the question. I figured we’d have to go dark for some time. But then you came along. Like a miracle, really. The timing honestly could not have been better. And given your … past, well, I assumed you’d follow the rules and just do your job. Insert wires. Go home. Why would you rock the boat? You should have been the ultimate good soldier, Carrie. Sandra was right about you. You really were a loose cannon all along.”

Braxton followed Dr. Finley to the exit.

“What are you going to do to me?” Carrie yelled.

Dr. Finley turned to Braxton. “He was your friend.”

Braxton looked over at Carrie and then to Bushman. “Shooting an unarmed woman inside a cage isn’t really my style. Bushman, kill the bitch.”

Bushman’s eyes flared as he took a pistol from an ankle holster. “As you wish,” he said.

Braxton and Dr. Finley disappeared through an exit door. The vets’ mumbling flooded Carrie’s ears once again.

Bushman and Hernandez consulted one another for a bit, out of Carrie’s earshot. When Bushman approached, he had venom in his eyes. Then he softened. For a second, Carrie thought he was going to let her go.

“It won’t hurt, I promise,” he said, almost apologetically.

Carrie fell to her knees as tears streamed down her face.

“Any last words?” Hernandez asked.

Carrie began to convulse. The fear, the pure terror of knowing these were her final few seconds, overwhelmed her. She really had no way out. Death had come for her.

In that moment Carrie’s resolve thickened. She caught her breath and with great effort, fixed her gaze on Bushman. She would not die with her eyes closed. She would stare into the face of her killer. It was the last bit of humanity she had left.

Bushman’s outstretched arm was like a steel rod. The pistol in his hand did not waver.

“Do you have anything to say?” Bushman asked.

“Yeah, get the fuck away from my sister.”

Carrie heard an enormous bang, a bright flash of light that came from her right. In the very next instant, Terry Bushman’s entire head vanished inside an explosion of blood, brains, and bone.