The Diapered Detective – Chapter Four
“I’m on my way.” Jerry sprinted down the hall. A disturbance on the psychiatric ward would have finished him this early in the morning, but he felt an extra spring in his step that he couldn’t explain.
Over the radio, he heard Mike and Douglas responding. Their rounds covered the upper floors of the patient wing, so they were physically closer to psychiatric. As he rounded the corner, Joe was tempted to take a more leisurely pace. In the chaos, no one would question him too closely if he just happened to show up as the violent patient was brought under control and he could volunteer to do the paperwork and win just enough points with his coworkers that no one would complain.
Unfortunately, employee evaluations were coming up and in five years, nothing changed. He could prevent a severe outbreak of small pox by physically throwing himself on the disease and his boss would give him a bad mark if he forgot to polish his boots. This year would be no different, but, finally, he found something to make the job more bearable. Nothing could piss on this day, although some nut bag was sure going to try his best.
As Joe got close to the elevators, he pulled his ID badge from the clip on his shirt pocket. There were three elevators and a stairwell. Two went up to the minimum security wards and the one that went to the psychiatric floors could only be opened by hospital and security staff. Before Joe could swipe his badge, the door to the stairwell swung open. He didn’t have time to look up before someone punched him in the stomach and threw flipped him onto his back.
Somewhere between hitting the floor and having something removed from his hands and pockets, the spring in his step had gone.
* * *
“I’m not going back.”
Doctor Keating couldn’t resist a grin as he took the chair across the table from his favorite patient. It was close to noon and business in the little coffee shop was beginning to pick up. Aiden seemed to be perfectly at home in the environment, apparently oblivious to the subtle and not so subtle glances he was receiving from other patrons and some of the baristas. But judging from the coffee that had obviously gone cold, Aiden had been sitting there for some time, which only made it harder not to laugh.
“When I authorized your shoelaces, I didn’t expect you to be with us for much longer,” he said, placing a backpack on the floor and discreetly nudging it towards Aiden. “But I was hoping you would give me some time to get you out of there legally. “
Aiden’s cool and thoughtful gaze dropped, replaced by disappointment.
“You’re not going to drag me back?”
Keating pulled an envelope from a pocket inside of his coat and placed it on the table.
“I already signed your release last night.”
* * *
The next few moments were a blur. He remembered being helped onto a stretcher and having a doctor examine him for signs of serious injury in the emergency room, but not of details in between those events. He had either fallen asleep or blacked out, because all he could remember were it was a fragments of a conversation between himself and one of the other security guards (Mike? Douglas?) that led him to understand that a patient had escaped from the hospital.
Jerry slowly opened his eyes and took a few deep breaths. A mild pain in his back grew steadily worse as he became more aware of his surroundings. He was still in the hospital, but he was lying on a bed in one of the patient rooms. The curtain was drawn, but it didn’t block out the light coming from the open door of the room or the typical sounds of staff answering phones, typing away at computers and moving medical equipment. Through the paper thin walls, he heard people talking in the other rooms and in the hallway. He even thought he recognized the voice of one of the doctors who worked on this floor. Through the haze in his vision, he was also aware of someone standing just outside of the door.
“Nurse?”
Someone pulled the curtain back and stuck his head in. Jerry thought he could make out a badge and as his vision became clearer, he also thought he could see a gun at the man’s hip. A cop? He tried to sit up and his heart raced when he realized that one arm was cuffed to the bed rail.
“Take it easy,” the cop said. “I’ll get someone to see you.”
A few minutes later a nurse came in with some pills and water. They took care of the pain and the water calmed him down, but the anxiety came back when the nurse left and two more men entered the room.
One of the men was a doctor with the hospital, according to the badge attached to his coat pocket. Slightly overweight and with the beginnings of a bald spot, Jerry thought he had seen him a few times, but there were so many people coming and going that he was hard to place. The doctor pulled two swivel chairs over to Jerry’s bedside and sat down.
“Hello Mister Higgins, this is Detective Fleet. I should apologize, it was my patient who assaulted you and took your wallet.”
“Then why am I the one under arrest?” Jerry yanked at the cuffs for emphasis. “I was out cold the whole time.”
Fleet, who had remained standing, lifted his hand to show that he was carrying Jerry’s wallet in an evidence bag. In the same hand there was a second evidence bag, which Fleet took in his left hand to show Jerry. There was a piece of paper with neat handwriting he could barely read. But still, Jerry began to feel nauseous and it didn’t help when the doctor started to explain.
“One of the things I ask my patients to do at the beginning of each session is to write a statement about the weather. It’s mostly to see if they’re cognizant and can follow simple directions. Over the last three weeks, my patient started writing a few interesting observations that were only very slightly related to the weather. This one was found in your wallet near the exit in the west wing of the hospital, close to the woods.”
“’On a nice cool autumn day’,” Fleet read the note through the note through the plastic. “’I took ten dollars from Jerry’s wallet to buy some new clothes and left the rest of the money in the wallet as evidence’.”
* * *
“Should the subject ever come up,” Keating said. “You should be very careful what you write on a piece of paper, when a psychiatrist is trying to determine whether or not you are able to function outside of an institutional setting. And I feel like that’s going to happen a lot sooner than later.”
Aiden frowned.
“What do you mean?” He asked. “Every single day I wrote those notes, I told you exactly what the weather was doing.”
Keating shrugged and gestured to the backpack on the floor.
“Why don’t you go get changed in the bathroom and we’ll talk more about this.”
Aiden looked at the backpack and arched a brow. Then he looked up and saw something behind Keating that seemed to surprise him. Keating turned around in his seat and slung his arm over the back of the chair so he could rest his chin as he looked at he large mirror hanging on the opposite wall that made the small shop seem a lot bigger than it was. More importantly, it showed a perfect reflection of Aiden as he stood up and finally seemed to notice that in addition to his fully laced sneakers, he was also wearing a hospital johnny and bottoms that both showed significant tears.
“Okay,” he said. “Clearly I forgot some things.”
“Clearly,” Keating said. “But you navigated a forest you were unfamiliar with, so I can’t fault you there. The note was clever. This is a popular shop among the hospital staff and now it’s going to be popular on Youtube, thanks to you.”
“What do you mean?” Aiden asked.
Keating turned around as he pulled out his iPhone and showed him the video titled “Crazy For Coffee”, that someone had taken from their car a few hours earlier. The camera zoomed past a sliver of car door and gave a very clear and shaky picture of a dark blond haired boy in full hospital clothes, trying to look natural as he walked down the street and into the coffee shop they were now sitting in. There were a few snickers and some chatter from whoever was in the car with the camera’s owner, but Aiden was more interested in scrolling down to see the statistics.
“A local newspaper got a hold of this and tweeted the link. Someone from the precinct saw it and called us to ask if you were one of ours.” Keating said. “I told them you were harmless and that I would be there to pick you up.”
“Over ten thousand hits and climbing.” Aiden said, picking up the backpack. “Well, if they didn’t monetize it than I’m hardly the crazy one.”
Only when he was in the tiny bathroom with the door locked and the light on did he look at himself in the mirror and admit that he made a mistake.
* * *
“You’re such an intelligent young man,” Keating said.
Aiden, who had spent much of the session focused on trying to solve a Rubik’s cube, paused long enough to shrug.
“Everyone has some form of intelligence,” he said. “Some people just choose not to use theirs.”
“That is true.”
Keating glanced at his notes. Six weeks ago, Aiden’s responses ranged from various unflattering remarks about Keating’s background, sexuality and physical appearance. Five weeks ago, Aiden showed Keating every unique way possible to flip someone the bird. Just four weeks ago, the nurses and staff seemed to note that Aiden was easiest to get along with when he was focused on solving problems. Crosswords were nothing to him. He had finished every book in the activity room in three days, never leaving a single puzzle unfinished. He could eat and drink while working on the puzzles but otherwise he only paused to sleep.
“Why don’t you take the crosswords with you into the bathroom?” Keating asked, trying to appeal to Aiden’s logical mind. “There’s two stalls in the men’s bathroom, you don’t need to talk anyone while you’re in there. You could stay in there as long as you need to.”
Aiden placed the Rubik’s cube on the desk. Finished.
“32 minutes,” he said. “Why haven’t you done anything about the patient’s things being stolen?”
Keating sighed. He looked at Aiden’s latest statement and then glanced out at the window and saw it was, in fact, a very breezy afternoon. At first it was an easy to conclude that Aiden was suffering from a persecution complex, which may have been a sign of early onset schizophrenia. But his responses to the other questions and tests were reasonably normal and revealed a person who was perfectly functional in other areas. Being a smart ass certainly wasn’t a sign of mental illness and eventually Aiden might get bored with the game.
Clearly, Aiden was not yet bored. But this was also the first time Aiden had engaged him in conversation, so Keating decided to pursue the subject and see where it lead.
“Alright,” he said. “Why do you feel as if patient’s items are being stolen?”
“Not all patients, just the ones on this floor,” Aiden said. “And I don’t feel like anything is being stolen. Things are being stolen and sold.”
“How do you come to this conclusion?” Keating asked.
“When a patient is admitted to the hospital for any length of time, all of their possessions are inventoried, correct?”
“Go on.”
“That inventory is handwritten on a sheet of paper by the nurse, signed and cosigned, then copied. If the patient is bound for the psychiatric ward, all of those possessions are placed in a bin along with the copy of the inventory sheet. Another copy is made and placed in the patient’s file during the intake process so that if a patient wants something, the clinician assigned to their case can review the list and see if it’s appropriate for the patient to have at that time.”
“Right, because it could be something that could be used for self harm, or to harm someone else.”
Aiden nodded.
“Before I was admitted to the minimum security ward, three patients had things removed from their bins. When three people on a psychiatric ward make an accusation of theft, it immediately becomes questionable because who trusts the word of a mental patient?”
“Now that’s not entirely true,” Keating replied. “Unfortunately there are some bad apples out there who have stolen items from a patient’s nightstand and we may not always catch them in the act, but the hospital is insured against theft those people don’t remain employed for very long. The police get involved and we cooperate in anyway that we can to make sure the patient’s stolen possessions are returned to them. Sometimes that ends in a lawsuit where the hospital is forced to pay out a settlement.”
“But your lawyer might try to downplay an accusation from a person who was admitted for mental health reasons, you can’t deny that because what goes to court is not in your hands.” Aiden stepped in. Before Keating could speak, Aiden raised his hand. “Even if it was the patient’s family who made the accusations.”
Keating realized he was being defensive. He was to all sorts of misconceptions about the mental health field, usually as a result of people being unable to tell fact from fiction. Other times the media would get a hold of some crippling news item and milk it for what it was worth.
Aiden had surprised him with his well spoken reasoning so that for a moment, Keating felt like he was being grilled by another misinformed member of the public and not the patient who had been so rude and dismissive towards him until just now.
“I may not always be able to control the circumstances,” Keating said. “But I assure you that if one of my patients has been a victim of theft, I will do what I can to stop him.”
“What if it’s the patient of another clinician who works on this floor?” Aiden asked.
“You think the patients who had things stolen all had the same doctor?”
“Well, I only spoke to one patient. A man named Gellar. He had a watch on him when he was admitted to the hospital and he had asked to see it just to verify that it was there. It was very valuable and all he asked was that he could see it. The nurse on duty wouldn’t take it out of the bin, but she checked the inventory on file and it wasn’t there.” Aiden shrugged. “So it must not exist, right?”
Keating thought about this. It wasn’t unusual for patients to be more open with each other than with their doctors or other staff. He made a mental note to see if he could speak to Gellar and checked the clock.
“Alright, I’ll look into it,” he said. “In the meantime, we need to reach a compromise.”
Aiden stripped out of the johnny and pajamas. He used them to wrap up the wet brief and stuffed the entire package into the garbage bin in the corner of the bathroom. He used the hand soap and paper towels to clean himself up as well as he could without making too much noise.
He had the foresight to take a shower before going to bed the night before. But once the final phase of his plan went into motion, there was no time to for anything else but to get into position. He even wagered that asking for his own clothes from the bin might tip off the staff that he was up to something, so the hospital clothes were preferable to running naked through the woods.
What he didn’t count on was there not being a thrift shop in this little town to buy some cheap clothes to change into. And not being from the area, Aiden didn’t have much of a plan until he could figure out where he was going. There was a coffee shop, however.
The coffee was so much nicer than the cheap tea or the decaffeinated gutter water they had at the hospital. It had been so long since he drank real coffee that Aiden lost track of himself and took a few sips. As the coffee got cooler and he could take a deeper sip he stopped himself. This coffee was only supposed to be his beard!
He had to finish the coffee now. But he only had the one diaper and the coffee would soon give him two things to take care of. He never panicked, but he did hate himself for having a moment of weakness that would destroy weeks of planning.
Inevitably, he peed. Not a straight flood, but a controlled burn, as best as possible while sitting. He learned long ago to give the pad a chance to absorb the liquid. But the hospital diapers always leaked eventually, which he didn’t care so much about in the hospital, but he knew would bring him even more attention in the coffee shop.
With the relief Aiden was free to focus on how he was going to find new clothes. Judging from the customers, few people actually lived in the center of town but probably in surrounding rural areas. Further up the mountain, past the hospital, there may well have been a few homeowners with low security standards and clothes drying on a line. But he didn’t have enough time or information to go on to determine which of these customers might live close by, have clothes in his size, drying on a line outside of their home, that may or may not have afforded easy access to a visitor in the night.
The only solution Aiden had come to was to give up. Let the police take him back to the hospital, or arrest him for assaulting Jerry and stealing his wallet. They would know the truth. Now he just had to either wait for someone to call the police, which someone must have done by now. Too many people had been snickering or pointing in his direction, as though he wouldn’t notice.
To his surprise, it was Keating that arrived with his Aiden’s backpack without a squadron of police waiting outside to take him back to the hospital in cuffs.
When he was clean and dry, he pulled on the fresh pull-up, grateful to the good doctor for keeping up his end of the compromise. The clothes were new. Black jeans, a light gray t-shirt and a sweater, a package of boxers and a few clean pairs of socks. Aiden put them all on and washed his hands thoroughly.
Keating was still at the table, only now he had his own mug of coffee and he bought Aiden a fresh beard. There was also a chocolate eclair on a plate next to Aiden’s coffee. Keating looked up and smiled.
“My nephew wants to meet you someday.” He said. “I hope it’s okay that I mentioned you once or twice.”
Aiden returned the smile and sat down.
“Well you already broke the rules once. But, still I’d be happy to tell your nephew that you aren’t one of the corrupt ones.”
* * *
Samuel Gellar was released two days ago. Keating spent an hour reading his evaluation. The week before Thanksgiving, Gellar lost his job and became overwhelmed with depression. According to Gellar, he had just enough strength to wait until after the holiday to put his passive suicidal plan into action. Then he put on dark clothes and started walking along a dangerous road in the dead of night, hoping someone would run him over and that it would appear to his family that it was an accident.
Cary Levesque, the inpatient therapist assigned to his case, noted his progress during the initial two week evaluation. There were no more thoughts of suicide and he was planning to try to find seasonal employment for the Christmas season. She made additional follow up appointments with an outpatient therapist for when he left the hospital.
Doctor Willard was the clinical psychiatrist assigned to Gellar’s case. His report concurred with Levesque’s notes. He wrote a prescription for some anxiety medication, but otherwise he was perfectly happy to co-sign the release form with one of the other clinicians. There were plenty of notes in Gellar’s file from staff meetings, noting his progress and his good spirits in the milieu of the ward so there was no descent.
Neither report mentioned a watch. But there was a missing item report filled out by Gellar before he left the ward that day. He described it in great detail and included a note about how the watch was a gift from his grandfather. The note was stapled to the copy of the inventory sheet but there was nothing else indicating that someone followed up. He went to the nurse’s station and managed to catch up with the head nurse who signed the inventory sheet when Gellar’s belongings were brought to psychiatric.
“We get about a hundred claims a week,” the nurse said. “I can count the normal ones on my hand. One woman insisted that we stole the chip in her head so she couldn’t report back to her grandmother’s secret bunker.”
“But you don’t remember if Mister Gellar had a watch?” Keating asked.
The nurse shook his head.
“Sorry Doctor, I honestly don’t look too closely Even when I am the one I really lose track of things like that. Like I tell the patients, if it’s not on the list, it’s not there and it probably never was.”
Keating was annoyed by the cynical tone in the nurse’s voice, but he couldn’t fault the guy. Hospitals were a busy place during the holidays and the psychiatric ward was no exception.
When the nurse punched out, Keating took a closer look at the inventory sheet. This was the copy that was made when Gellar’s belongings were brought to psychiatric. The signatures at the bottom were barely readable and the original would have gone home with Gellar along with the instructions for his follow-up appointments and his prescription.
“Hello?”
Keating looked up and saw Doctor Willard standing in the doorway, holding a coffee cup from Honey Dew in one hand and a magazine rolled up in the other. He seemed taken aback to find Keating there.
“Theodore. Did you forget your keys?” Keating asked.
Willard hesitated. His eyes seemed to narrow on the folder Keating was looking through, but he quickly turned his focus to Keating and smiled.
“No, uh, the night staff was a bit short tonight,” he said, placing his coffee on the desk by the switchboard. “I thought I’d just come up here and provide an extra body on the floor.”
Keating nodded and tried to go back to reading. There was plenty of room for just two people, but Willard seemed to be making a labor out of walking behind him.
“Am I in your way?” He asked, trying to be polite.
“Oh, no, you’re fine.” Warren took a seat at the switchboard. “Is Aiden giving you a hard time?”
“Actually, we’ve made some real progress today,” Keating said.
“Great.”
That seemed to be the end of the conversation, but there was an unspoken tension between the two men. Keating was ready to put the file away and call it a night. He did his part, looking into it as he promised. Aiden was clearly manipulating him and he was falling for it like a cat chasing a flashlight. Before he left, he decided to come clean with Warren to clear the air.
“Theodore, I just wanted to apologize.”
Warren looked up and Keating looked him in the eye. Then noticed the book Theo had brought with him. It wasn’t a magazine. It was a crossword puzzle book. The puzzle was solved on one page and he working on the next one.
“Apologize for what?”
Now Keating hesitated. Suddenly, he had a very strong hunch.
“I’m sorry if Aiden has been bothering you,” he said. “I know he’s been bugging the staff to get more crossword books. I hope he hasn’t been trying to get at yours.”
Theo laughed.
“Oh no, Aiden didn’t bother me at all. He only asked for one-,” Theo stopped, as if he had just admitted to doing something wrong. His gaze went from the file in Keating’s hand to his crossword book. “It was no big deal.”
Keating returned the laugh and shrugged. He was glad he chose to wore a darker sweater today, because the sweat would definitely have shown as he turned his back on Theo to discreetly remove the inventory sheet from Gellar’s file before placing it back in the cabinet. Doing his best to discreetly keep the inventory sheet out of site, he grabbed his coat from the hook on one wall and threw it over his arm before muttering a quick “goodnight”.
He stopped at Aiden’s room. The door was only open a crack, just enough so that the night staff could open it during room checks without waking up the patients. Keating knocked. He didn’t know exactly what the plan was, but as he glanced down the hallway to the nurse’s station where Warren was still sitting, he knew he would sleep a little better tonight if he made sure Aiden was safe.
“Come in.”
Keating opened the door and stuck his head in.
“Aiden, can I-”
“I said you can come in.”
Keating entered the L-shaped room and found Aiden, lying spread eagle above the covers on the bed closest to the window. Before Keating could say anything, Aiden yawned and held up a hand containing an envelope.
“What’s this?” Keating asked.
“My ticket out of here.” Aiden answered, half asleep.
Keating took it and Aiden fell back to sleep, signifying the end of the exchange.
* * *
Flustered, Jerry stammered. “Look, I’ve been having a lot of financial troubles. I got desperate.”
“That’s not an excuse,” Detective Fleet replied. “Those poor people you stole from have problems too. Is it worth a couple of dirty twenties to steal the watch of a man so desperate he tried to kill himself?”
“I didn’t steal anything,” Jerry said. “I swear.”
Doctor Keating leaned forward.
“Calm down, Jerry. Listen to what I have to say.” He offered Jerry another cup of water, which he accepted. When he was calmer, Keating continued. “I’ve spoken with Detective Fleet. We know you had an accomplice. You’ve already lost your job, so why don’t you help us out and the hospital might be willing to drop a few charges and keep you from spending too much time in jail.”
Jerry shook his head, but his expression said it all. He was willing to do anything to make this day end. He agreed to drop any assault charges against Aiden in exchange for his full statement and testimony in court. He was expected to help retrieve the items he had taken to be pawned and anything he couldn’t retrieve in a reasonable amount of time, he would be forced to pay restitution to the patients.
* * *
Aiden picked up the envelope.
“On a cool December evening, Doctor Theodore Warren left his coat in the office and proceeded to the nurse’s station on the psychiatric ward of the hospital. There he planned to wait for the opportunity to go into the inventory bin of his newest patient to see if the patient had anything valuable that he could smuggle out to an accomplice, who would pawn the item and bring back the money.”
“Not sure where you’re reading that,” Keating said. “The envelope you gave me was given to the police as evidence.”
“I have a great memory,” Aiden flashed a playful grin. “I’m just glad you had one too. If I had to fill out one more crossword puzzle I was going to really go insane.
“May I remind you, you could have told me about Warren at anytime and even given me the crossword puzzle with his handwriting on it and I could have compared the inventory lists he had altered long ago .Or you could have just said, ‘Hey, Doctor Keating, you’ve so attentive to my needs that I feel the need to tell you that Doctor Warren is writing new inventory lists and forging the signatures of the other employees to cover up what he had stolen.’” ” Keating put his hands behind his head and leaned back in the chair, regarding his patient with bewilderment.“You also didn’t have to put Jerry Higgins in the emergency room. What if he hadn’t been the one outside the stairwell? Would you have assaulted any random person who happened to responding to that call?”
“First, I didn’t hurt the guy that badly. Secondly, my plan was to go straight down to the basement floor. Everyone was busy dealing with Peter, who was having his violent episode that Higgins being there was just a happy coincidence.”
Keating recognized the name of the twenty-two year-old autistic patient who was normally very gentle and sweet-natured. He got up early every morning to watch cartoons in the common area and Keating realized what Aiden had done.
“You changed the channel on him.”
“Just to see what the weather was going to be like,” Aiden said, feigning innocence. “Anyway, when I got to the second floor, I saw Higgins through the window of the stairwell door. I remembered him becoming a frequent visitor to the ward, even when he was out of uniform. Then I remembered how unusual it was to overhear Doctor Warren talking to a security guard at the nurse’s station about credit card balances and financial difficulties, when they thought no one was listening. I wasn’t going to stick around, but I wanted to make it easier to find Higgins in case Doctor Warren tried to throw him under the bus.”
“How thoughtful of you.”
Keating was beginning to wonder if releasing Aiden from the hospital was such a good idea. Of course with Warren’s scheme exposed, Keating’s remaining colleagues practically got in line to cosign the release. Did Aiden plan that part too, or was it also a happy coincidence?
The End of The Diapered Detective – Chapter Four.
If you want to read more stories about ABDL boys you can find a list here: Diaper Boys – Index