Pittsburgh, August 1985

After the thing with his bunkmate, Brian Kinney is put in a private room. His father has good insurance through the Steelworkers Union, but even if he didn't, the arrangement is easier than mopping up more blood and teeth.

The kid's been quiet since he got out of Isolation. But Paulie isn't fooled. He's seen that same quiet in his daughter's cat, right before it pounces on a rabbit and rips its head off.

So Paulie is careful when he enters the room. Not nervous, because believe it or not Brian Kinney isn't the scariest thing he's seen in fifteen years at this place. But wary, watchful. Never let your guard down with a patient--it's still good advice, even if it was wasted on that mick piece of shit he was training.

The room is dark except for the cold blue light from the television mounted in the far corner of the room. Brian is sprawled in the big visitor chair, long legs slung over one arm and bony shoulders wedged against the other in a posture that makes Paulie's bad back twinge. The boy's long neck is bent backward, eyes glued to the screen. More of that music video crap--screeching vocals and edits so fast and furious it's a miracle the entire viewing audience isn't flopped on the floor with grand mal seizures. Paulie recognizes the noise as the same weird shit he's heard coming from Kirstie's room, now that Daddy's princess has traded knee socks and ponies for ripped fishnets and punks with bad dye jobs.

Christ. Teenagers. Even the sane ones are fucking nuts.

Brian doesn't move or speak, doesn't give a sign he's noticed anyone else in the room. But he knows Paulie is there. Probably knew since the Chief Orderly turned the corner of the hallway outside.

Hypervigilance is one of the hallmarks of paranoid schizophrenia. It's also a common factor in the panic disorders associated with early-onset manic depression. The two conditions share many symptoms, which often results in mixed-up diagnoses. Especially in adolescents, whose breakdowns are always tricky to categorize. It took Sister Bridget three days of observation and three hours in session to make up her mind about Brian Kinney.

Bipolar I with severe manic episodes resulting in psychotic delusions--on his chart in black and white, her prim Palmer script spelling out the syllables of doom. Right next to the prescriptions: Lithium, Ativan, Wellbutrin. Enough dope to make Sid Vicious blanch, and the kid's still sleeping two hours a night.

It's a process, Paul, Sister Bridget said, adjusting her crucifix with one veined hand. Finding the right combination and dosage for each individual. After fifteen years, you should trust I know what I'm doing.

After fifteen years, it's never dawned on Sister Bridget that she doesn't know everything. Paulie's never pretended he's a saint--or a nun. But he's man enough to admit when he's wrong.

His fingers tighten on the bundle in his hand.

Man enough to do it, but that doesn't mean he's any good at it.

Without lead-up, he tosses the bundle in the kid's direction.

Brian's arm lashes out like a whip and snatches it from the air. He doesn't even turn his head.

"Special Delivery," Paulie says. Because he has to say something and he can't say what he's really thinking.

Fucking hell, kid. What the fuck are you?

Brian's lips curl briefly in the suggestion of a smile.

He breaks focus on the TV and looks at the package in his lap. Slides his hand under the tape holding the newspaper wrapping closed and sends the contents tumbling out. His non-expression doesn't change as he inspects the biggest--a bright yellow Sony Walkman, the case a little worse for wear.

"Thought you might like to have that back."

Brian picks up the bundle's other contents-- a bubble card of AA batteries and three audiotapes, brand new and still in the cellophane.

"Dunno what happened to the ones you came with. Hard to keep anything locked down in this place. I was amazed the player was still there."

Brian runs a finger over the narrow edges of the tapes. His mouth moves silently as he reads the names. Paulie's no good at lip-reading, but he'd recognize these titles even if he hadn't picked them out himself.

Beggars Banquet, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers.

"I can't keep up with the bands these days. They all look like drag queens to me. But Kirstie--that's my daughter--she likes those, and she doesn't like anything I listen to. The Stones, they got me through some pretty rough times in 'Nam. My best buddy over there, he liked the Doors and the Dead, but I could never get into all that psychedelic hippy-dippy shit. Keith and Mick speak to the regular Joe, y'know?" Paulie wipes a nervous hand across his balding head, knowing he's babbling and knowing the kid could give a shit, but needing to do something to break the chill that fills the room. A chill that doesn't come from the a/c vents but seems to radiate from Brian himself.

Brian gives no sign he's heard any of it. He wraps the headphone cord around the Walkman and puts it on the edge of the bed next to him. Puts the batteries on one side of the player, takes the three tapes and stacks them on the other side. Spends a full minute rearranging them so the edges of the tapes meet and the stack is centered exactly between the two short ends of the Walkman.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder presents in 12% of adolescent manic depressives. But Clomipramine, the best medication for OCD, can cause seizures when combined with Wellbutrin and other Bupropion-based meds. Not that the Wellbutrin seems to be doing a goddamn thing for the kid, except killing what little appetite he regained after they got him off the junk.

Paulie feels the temperature drop another couple of degrees. He looks up, sees Brian's eyes on him. His cadaver-like calm hasn't broken at all, but there's something else in the gaze now. The hint of a question.

Paulie doesn't have to hear it to answer it.

"We fired Scott MacKenna this morning."

Brian crosses stick-thin wrists over his stomach, waiting for the punchline.

"Last night I found him with his hand down Matt Moldarski's pajamas."

Matt is a catatonic schizophrenic, so he probably didn't mind. But Paulie sure as hell fucking did. He doesn't think MacKenna will be filing charges, though. He has more pressing matters to worry about, like how to get the fuck out of town before Matt's father, the former pro linebacker Stan "Meatgrinder" Moldarski, and the three equally gigantic Moldarski uncles find his freckled Irish ass. The higher-ups might not want a fuss, but Paulie and Stan were All-City together and though he still isn't clear on how to program the goddamn VHS so it'll record the Steelers when he's on night shift, he knows how to use a fucking payphone.

Brian looks at the pile on the bed again. Taps on the hard plastic of the Walkman with one pale hand, processing.

"I know Sister Bridget doesn't want you to have 'em--she says you're isolating yourself too much as it is. But I don't care how many letters she has after her name, she doesn't know everything.

"And--neither do I."

He starts speaking fast, because as his ex-wife has informed him on more than one occasion (the most memorable across the aisle in court, but fuck her if she thought she was taking his kid to fucking Arizona with that asshole podiatrist or proctologist or whatever the fuck he is) Paulie is one pigheaded son-of-a-bitch and bad at this kind of thing. He just wants to get it over with.

"I did a shitty thing. I did. I admit it, okay? Leaving you tied up in Iso after you gave MacKenna the business--that was wrong."

Brian's eyebrows draw together a fraction of an inch. He stares at Paulie like he's a puzzle he thought he put together and is now finding extra pieces for. But he still doesn't say anything.

Paulie sighs and sits down on the edge of the bed. His weight knocks over the cassette tapes and he talks as Brian rearranges, glad to be out from under the kid's stare.

"I had a cousin. Luca--my ma's favorite sister's kid. They lived right down the street when we was growing up and his ma worked a lot so my house was pretty much his house, y'know? After school, weekends, whatever. He was this runt with these big horn-rimmed glasses. Looked like a real egghead but he wasn't that bright. Never could pay attention in class. Not a trouble-maker like I was, though, so the nuns usually left him alone. The one time he got it bad was the day he told Sister Mary Margaret to quit picking on me just 'cause her niece was getting rid of the baby. Got the shit beat out of him and suspended for two days, she said he must've been spying on the teacher's lounge when she was telling Sister Bernadette about it."

Paulie stops a second, gearing himself up.

"But that was bullshit, because Luca sat with me at lunch and he never went near that fucking lounge."

Now he's got Brian's full attention. He shrugs off the crawly feeling those brown eyes give him and goes on.

"Luca was always doing shit like that. If you were having a bad day, he'd suddenly show up with a pint of your favorite ice cream. We never got caught shoplifting smokes from Rexall's 'cause Luca fucking knew when the store manager was watching behind that mirrored window. My dad had him pick the ponies for him--and he wasn't right all the time, but he was right a helluva lot more often than he should've been. When my sister Cathy got sick, two years old and screaming her head off but couldn't tell us what was wrong, he took one look at her and told my mom to get her to the hospital 'cause her appendix was about to burst. Everybody in my family had a story like that, but we just sorta went with it 'cause it was Luca.

"Sister Bridget doesn't know everything, but I should've known. Luca, he had a thing about music, too. We didn't have the portable players back then, but he always had the transistor radio going. Fucking always."

For a second it looks like Brian is going to speak. He shifts in the chair, opens his mouth. Then he shuts it again, maintaining the stone silence he's kept since they took him out of the restraints.

Paulie sighs and stands up. "Anyway, I know you're going home next weekend. I'm sure a smart kid like you can keep these outta sight till then."

Sister Bridget's lips went even thinner than usual when Joan Kinney informed them Brian would be leaving the hospital in time to start high school in September. Holy Spirit didn't want him, not after that bad business with his teacher at Immaculate Heart. But North Allegheny would take him under certain conditions. For once, Paulie and the good Sister were in agreement: maybe he didn't know just what Brian Kinney needed, but the pressure cooker of a huge public high school sure wasn't it. It was gonna take a goddamn miracle just to see him through fall semester.

Good Catholic though he is, Paulie stopped believing in miracles a long time ago.

He has his hand on the door when it comes. Brian Kinney's voice, low and rusty with disuse.

"Your cousin--what happened to him?"

Paulie has to take a minute before turning and answering.

"The bottle got him."

It's not quite a lie. A box cutter and a dirty bathtub in a downtown tenement were the real culprits. But if it wasn't for the empty bottle of Jameson's they found at the scene, and the thousand that came before it, maybe Luca would still be picking ponies and turning up the Top 40 Countdown.

Or maybe not. Maybe the truth was, Luca was born gotten. Only a miracle could have saved him.

He stands there a moment, looking into Brian Kinney's deep-shadowed dark eyes. Eyes that remind him of Luca's, and of the young girls' in Vung Tau. The ones who would do anything for five dollars American. Eyes that have seen too much too soon, looked into darkness so long they don't expect to see light again.

And suddenly he knows that Brian knows he's lying. Almost lying, anyway. But the kid doesn't seem to judge him for it. Maybe he's beyond being shocked by the lies adults tell.

It's hard to know, because Brian has already looked away.

"I'm at a training seminar the rest of the week. I probably won't see you again before you go."

The news doesn't seem to affect Brian one way or another. Paulie doesn't know why he thought it would.

"So . . . you take care of yourself, kid. I hope things work out."

The words are stupid, corny. A bumper sticker slapped over a sucking chest wound. But he means them, he does.

He hopes Brian somehow knows that, too.

As he walks out into the hallway, he hears it. Music. Tinny through plastic headphones, but still keeping some of its original passion and power. Music that can see you through anything--the jungles outside Khe Sanh, or the isolation of a mental hospital. Music that speaks to Kirstie with her torn-up fishnets, and to Brian with his torn-up soul.

Music for all the lost ones, the ones Paulie has saved. And all the ones he didn't.

Oh, a storm is threatening
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

For just a minute, Paulie lets himself believe miracles are possible.