13 WINDOWS

Chapter 31 Part 3: STEAK KNIFE

Rupert walked along the beach in the sand wearing his old sneakers. He had been meaning to buy new shoes. He looked across the lake, which on a day like today may as well have been an ocean. The waves were crashing over the rocks. In the distance he could make out the tiniest hint of lights across the massive lake. He wasn't sure if the buildings were from Buffalo or Niagara on the Lake. It was so vast. There was so much space. He could think clearly.

Rupert carried a bottle of red wine under his arm, and he was sipping on a cappuccino. He really didn't have any plan for the rest of the day. Perhaps he would walk up to Queen Street later and have some Thai food for dinner.

It would take a long time to get over what had happened over the past few years, especially what had happened in Romania. But perhaps living near the water would help calm his nerves.

Rupert turned the key to the house, closed the door and sat down on the couch. He kicked off his shoes, which had sand in them. It was almost too much fresh air. He was always exhausted after these long walks on the beach. He had heard that there is extra oxygen in the air because crashing waves release ozone. The tiredness you experience after walking by waves was a result of your body suddenly breathing in larger amounts of oxygen...

Rupert turned on the news, but his eyes were heavy. He felt almost as if he had been doped up. For some reason he didn't want to go to sleep. He was afraid...afraid of his dreams. But the world of sleep was upon him. Rupert could hear the crash of the waves down the street from the open windows.

Yes he was free from his fear of windows. He could now sit by an open curtain and listen to the hypnotic sound of the waves being blown by a heavy wind from the south. Rupert drifted off...

Then he opened his eyes. It was his nightmare, again. Except his nightmare was his actual living reality. He looked up at the ceiling. There was only one light. It was a flickering fluorescent tube covered by a plastic screen. The stench of the room was familiar to Rupert's nostrils.

He was back in the mental asylum. Rupert's tricky legal situation had landed him inside a state mental hospital. The hospital was high up in the Carpathians, near the peak of a mountain. There were steep drops everywhere surrounding the fortress and only one service road. The location made it almost impossible for patients to escape.

Jens had come to Romania to see if he could help with the legal battle, but there was not much he could do. Rupert was trapped inside a foreign legal system. He was able to afford a lawyer but the lawyer had insisted Rupert take a plea deal.

Rupert's mental health was evaluated. The counsel was able to provide enough evidence that Rupert had suffered mentally for many months before the incident at the Sinaia train station. So instead of rotting in a prison for the rest of his life, Rupert was going to rot inside a mental institution instead. At first he thought he was lucky until he saw the state of the hospital to which he was admitted. Jens later told him on the phone that the hospital had been charged with numerous human rights violations over the years.

The conditions were really grim. Rupert was sharing his bed with two other people. One was a man with tight curly hair, curlier than Rupert's. He told Rupert he was a gypsy. The other man was a troubled older gentleman who screamed for hours every night, sometimes right into Rupert's ear. The old man had scabies on his skin, and everyone had hair lice. As if that weren't enough everyone was regularly being bitten by bed bugs, and cockroaches would crawl across everyone's bodies at night.

There was only one toilet and one shower for the entire floor. It was shared by almost a hundred people, Rupert reckoned. He only had a shower about once a week if he stood in a long line.