Israel Book Shop presents Chapter 81 of a new online serial novel, Outside the Bubble, by Esther Rapaport. Check back for a new chapter every week. Click here for previous chapters.
Copyright © Israel Bookshop Publications.
“Mike.” Dr. Skulholt addressed the young man, his tone strident. “Come outside with me now. I want to speak to you.”
Mike dutifully followed him out of the room. The psychiatrist chose one of the red chairs opposite the door and pointed to the seat beside him.
“Pray with your uncle in the meantime,” Rob instructed Martin, who had remained in the room. He glanced nervously toward the corridor. “Wait a minute, you aren’t putting on your boxes? Why did you bring them?”
“To pray together with my uncle, obviously,” Martin said hastily, and opened his tefillin bag. Something in the psychiatrist’s expression was making him nervous. Had Shimon Weisskopf managed to get here already? Had he tried to interfere in the healing center’s affairs in a way that had aroused the man’s suspicions? He hoped not. Shimon had seemed like the cautious and measured type.
Michoel did not say anything. He davened quietly, sitting down, while Martin sat beside him, wearing his own tefillin and looking into an open siddur, murmuring constantly.
The conversation outside dragged on, with Dr. Skulholt and Mike standing up and moving off. Michoel had time to finish his davening calmly, and still the two weren’t back. When he was done, he didn’t close his siddur, instead keeping his eyes studiously on the open page in front of him. Then he suddenly asked Martin in Hebrew, “What are you saying there the whole time?”
“I’m davening to Hashem to help us.”
“Oh, so you are religious?”
“A little bit.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“If I’m your nephew…” Martin didn’t know if he was supposed to be offended.
“Dov taught you how to daven?”
“No, when I was in your house, I read a very nice booklet about tefillah, in English, something by a Rabbi Schaefer.”
“One second, hold it, you once mentioned something to that effect. I mean, about your being in my house.” Michoel was speaking quietly, his eyes staring at the blanket covering his legs, but Martin could clearly hear his interrogative tone. “When were you there?”
“The pizza guy from the street next to your house once asked me to bring you your pie, because neither you nor that man, Gronam, came to pick it up. And because of the responses on your intercom, I realized that you weren’t home, and that it was all just a cover-up. Soon afterward, I needed to run away. I ended up near your house, and I knew where the spare key was hidden, so I went in.” He paused. “I thought you’d come back, and I’d ask you permission to live with you for a short time… I’m sorry.”
Michoel did not react to the apology. “Who were you running away from?” he asked sharply.
Martin was quiet, pondering how the man would receive the answer to that. All the different scenarios that he’d imagined for this conversation did not include one as delusional as the reality.
“You’re not telling me who you were running away from, huh? Hinda sent a criminal to help me?!”
“I’m not a criminal.”
“Why should I belive that? And the truth is, you’re not really helping me. Why are you just sitting there and doing nothing? If you’ve already come here, don’t you think you should try to find a way for us to get out of here?”
Martin took a deep breath. “I haven’t had a chance yet,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rob rise from his chair. It seemed obvious by now that they were not exactly praying with too much fervor. “I couldn’t start running around the minute I arrived to see which members of the staff I could reach out to, or where there’s a quiet exit or—”
“Or you’re just talking,” Michoel filled in, sounding harsher than Martin had ever heard him sound. “Excuse me, but I don’t really know how trustworthy you are.”
“And what about the past two days?”
“I don’t know. After I saw Ernie, everyone looks equally awful to me. I don’t trust anyone. I don’t even know you.”
“Did you forget that we know each other somewhat from the German Colony in Jerusalem? I lived in a dorm in the neighborhood.”
“You are familiar, yes, but that doesn’t mean I know who you are.”
“Have you finished praying?” Rob asked, standing beside the bed and glaring at them. “Let’s go, Josef, help him take off those things, and then go out quietly. He needs to rest.”
The pairs of tefillin were silently placed in their velvet bags.
“Very good,” Rob said impatiently. “You’ve done your job, Josef. Now go outside and sit on a chair there until we go back to the facility.”
But Perl ignored him completely. “What were you doing in my house?” he asked Martin.
“When I went in, I hoped to find you so I could ask you for help. But you weren’t there. I ended up living in your house for a few weeks. I’m sorry it was without your permission. I left you payment for everything I used. But you should know that I’m the one who raised the alarm that you were in trouble, and that you needed to be found and helped. I’m the one who started—”
“I asked Josef to leave,” Rob interrupted. “Please stop speaking in Hebrew, alright?”
“We will continue, because he needs a good scolding!” Perl shouted in English. “And he will get it, and then he’ll leave, okay?” And he switched back to Hebrew. “What are your plans now?” he asked furiously, and Martin only hoped that it was part of his impressive act, and not that Perl still bore a grudge against him for living in his house, because if so, the man was not stable.
“I will go out to a quiet corner,” he said defensively, for the sake of Rob and his eyes that were darting around with mounting impatience, “and I’ll speak to Shimon Weisskopf, okay?”
“Shimon, Shimon, the whole time Shimon… What do you want him to do?”
“To wait for us with a car nearby. What can the psychiatrist do in this public place if we decide we’re getting up to leave?”
“Enough, enough!” Rob didn’t understand a word, and he was getting very edgy. “I’m asking you to stop this conversation in Hebrew immediately! Mr. Perl, I think you should try to nap a little. Josef, I asked you to step out of the room and wait, didn’t I?”
Martin stood up, took his jacket, and left the room, without another word. Skulholt and Mike were nowhere to be seen. What did the doctor want from Mike?
The corridor opened into a large space, with a huge desk in the center staffed by personnel who were monitoring the incessantly beeping screens. Martin walked slowly along the perimeter of the desk, casting glances in every direction. He was looking for a quiet corner, and he soon found one in the form of a large curtain that concealed a medicine cart of some kind behind it. He slipped between the curtain and the wall and stuck his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket. The curtain was a bit translucent, and when he put his eyes very close to it, he could discern approaching shadows.
The small screen on the phone lit up as he placed the call.
“Hi, Martin,” Shimon said. “What’s going on?”
“I’m with Perl in the hospital in Charleston,” Martin whispered. “It’s called Central Hospital. I think it will be easy to escape from here.” A vague image rose in his mind of himself lying in a bed in the emergency room at Hadassah Ein Kerem in Jerusalem. This would be his second time escaping from a hospital.
“Excellent. I’m here too.”
“Where?”
“In Charleston.”
“Great. Can you wait for us with a car next to the emergency room entrance?”
“Do you need police backup?”
“If we can get out of here smoothly, then no. But there’s no way to know whether or not it’ll be smooth….”
“I hear…” Shimon said. Then he added something, but a shadow that drew a bit too close startled Martin, and he hastily stuck the phone into his pocket, without hearing Shimon’s words. The curtain was yanked aside, and Martin breathed a sigh of relief to see Mike. But he didn’t even have a chance to finish his sigh of relief when his breath caught again. Mike’s expression could only be described as a thundercloud, and Martin didn’t know what to think.
“Just in case you want to know, your shoes are visible,” Mike said, as he toyed with his phone. “Stand behind the cart—yes, like that.”
“And you?”
“I’m allowed to talk on my phone as much as I want.”
“What did Skulholt want from you?”
“He wanted to hear my perspective on how the night went. Michoel Perl said some things, and shouted a bit; I don’t know if he was sleeping or disoriented or if he was really awake and alert. In any case, the hospital staff was none too pleased about what he was shouting.”
“What was he shouting about?”
“Things about Ernie. At the march, Michoel recognized someone from the facility’s management, a guy who doesn’t usually spend time at the healing center.”
“He’s the one who brings in new patients?”
“Yes. Apparently, Michoel identified him as someone who had either attacked him or mugged him or something like that.”
“Does it make sense?” Martin asked cautiously.
“Everything here could make sense.” Mike was bitter. “I told you, at first I pinned so many hopes on them. But even if some of those hopes came true, it didn’t take long for me to realize just how worthless I am to these people.”
Martin didn’t know how to react to this, so instead he asked, “Did the staff hear what Perl said?”
“Yeah, and the doctor on shift, a nice guy by the name of Dr. Clark, took it seriously. He tried to question me during the night, but Alfred was hovering the whole time to keep an eye on us, so I couldn’t talk too much.”
“Alfred?”
“The fat, redheaded nurse.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“It doesn’t matter; he’s one of Dr. Jerry’s guys. Did you think they’d leave us here alone?”
Martin was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “It’s not a bad thing that the hospital realizes that something here isn’t right. Maybe it can help us.”
“I’m not sure, because Dr. Jerry is planning to get Michoel out of here within the next twenty minutes. So the doctors won’t have too much time to question what happened to him.”
“How will Dr. Jerry get Michoel out if the doctors object?”
“They can’t object, because Dr. Jerry has friends everywhere, including here, and Perl’s discharge papers have already been printed and signed.”
“Who signed them? Dr. Clark?”
“No. It seems Clark knows Dr. Jerry very well, I don’t know from where, and the two really detest each other.”
“What do we do now? Go talk to Clark?”
“Not me,” Mike said hastily.
“So I’ll do it.”
“You’d dare?”
“Yes. Show me where to find him.”
“Umm…and what if you get in trouble with our people?”
“I hope to have good backup.” He took a deep breath and pulled the phone out of his pocket again, picking up the call where he’d left off. “Shimon? Any chance you can make it to Central Hospital pronto?”
“Who is Shimon?” The curtain got pulled away, and Rob stood facing them, wearing a furious expression. His eyes flicked from Martin to Mike, and then from Mike to Martin. “I noticed that you’d both disappeared! And whose phone is this, Josef?”
Then, with a sharp motion—very different from his usual fluid movements—he grabbed the phone out of Martin’s hand.
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