He wanted to go to school, he said, to improve his techniques, but because his reputation had preceded him, he felt he wouldn’t be accepted in a college classroom. Perhaps that would change someday. He would wait.

“I’m facing reality now,” he told her, “and that’s what’s important.”

Billy felt the staff at the hospital reacted well to the evening newscasts, which showed him hanging his paintings and talking to the newscasters. Most of the staff had become warm toward him; few were openly critical. He’d even gotten word that some people who had been openly hostile before had recently written positive statements about him in the progress notes. It amazed him that some would tell him what went on in team meetings and what had been reported in his charts.

He knew he’d made a lot of progress since Ward 5.

On Saturday, August 4, he was heading out the door of AIT when he heard the elevator alarm. The elevator was stuck between the third and fourth floors. A mentally retarded young girl was trapped inside. Billy could see the sparking and hear the crackling and sputtering and humming of the outer electrical box, and he realized there must have been a short circuit. As several of the patients gathered in the hallway, the girl began screaming inside the elevator and banging on the panels. Billy shouted for help, and with the assistance of one of the workmen, he pried the outer door open.

Katherine Gillott and Pat Perry came out to see what the commotion was about. They watched as Billy went down into the elevator shaft, squeezing through the overhead trap door. Billy dropped down beside the girl and began talking to keep her calm. They waited while an elevator serviceman was called. Billy worked on the electrical box from the inside.

“Do you know any poems?” he asked her.

“I know the Bible.”

“Recite some psalms for me,” he said.

They talked about the Bible fur nearly half an hour.

When the elevator maintenance man finally got it moving, and they came out on the third floor, the girl looked up at Billy and said, “Can I have a can of pop now?”

The following Saturday, Billy rose early. Though he felt good about his art exhibit, he was upset about the Dispatch article that described the exhibit, rehashing—as they always did—the ten personalities and calling him a “multi-personality rapist.” He had to get used to handling mixed emotions. It was a new kind of feeling—confusing but necessary to his mental stability.

This morning he decided to jog to the Ohio University Inn, adjacent to the hospital grounds, and get a pack of cigarettes. He knew he shouldn’t be smoking. In the old days only Allen had smoked cigarettes. But he needed it. There would be time enough to give up the habit when he was cured.

He walked down the front steps of the hospital and noticed two men in a car parked opposite the entrance. He assumed they were visiting someone. But when he crossed the road, the car passed him. Coming around the building to a secondary road, he saw it again.