The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

The Adjusters IV: Running to Stand Still

The Craven-Wilford Institute, Revisited (1)

Erich Altman, director of the Craven-Wilford Institute for Mental Health, was having a bad day.

Which would not have been such a big deal had it not started out so well. He had met the representatives from the funding agencies that were involved in the annual review of the Institute at their hotel for breakfast, and the food had been excellent—the smoked salmon simply out of this world—and the weather had cooperated so that they could sit on the restaurant terrace overlooking the gorge.

The representatives from governmental agencies—the NIH, the DHHS, the NYSDOH—as well as those from private funding organizations—the National Mental Health Foundation and ADCorp—got along famously, all the chief representatives having moved in the same circles for many years.

Review visits such as the one that day were meant to keep the funding agencies abreast of the life of the Institute, and ensure that the public health arm of the Institute satisfied federal and state requirements on the one hand, and also matched the direction that public health policy emphasized year in year out on the other. The private foundations and the National Institute of Health, for their part, wanted to be kept informed of the latest research developments.

The two-days yearly event tended to be exhausting. The schedule was grueling because there was a lot to cover and little time to cover it, and negotiations about the ratio of resources allocated to public health efforts and to research efforts often led to late nights—but Altman usually enjoyed the exercise. By that point, all the work on his part had been done, and he could, at some level, relax and see all of his efforts over the previous year come to fruition. And in the decade of existence of the Institute, everything had always gone swimmingly well.

Until today.

Until the research overview meeting.

Altman could still see it in his mind’s eye, as if it were happening right then and there once again.

One second, the projector was displaying a pie chart describing the personnel allocation for the various research groups within the Institute. Altman loved pie charts. They summarized so much in so little space, with little frills, forestalling the research directors’ tendency to overload graphs with too much information through overlapping curves in different colors and styles. Pie charts were simplicity in service of functionality.

So one second, the projector was displaying a pie chart describing the personnel allocation for the various research groups within the Institute, and the next…

The image on the screen phased in and out, and suddenly the whole group in the conference room was staring at what looked like the output from a camera feed—black and white, complete with time stamp in the lower right corner, like you saw in television procedurals. The murmur of confusion in the room did not distract from the action on the projection screen, which clearly showed two women on a bed making out while a man stood by the side watching the action.

And action it was. It was pretty clear to everyone in the room—silence fell as this was going on, and no one thought of stopping the projection by shutting down the projector. Altman, in retrospect, wondered whether the representatives might not have been thought that the researcher who had been presenting was not leading up to an elaborate but questionable joke.

Altman had known, as soon as he saw the feed, that he was watching something that happening in real time in his own Institute. He recognized the clothing on the women—even without color, it was clearly Blue Ward accoutrement, and the setting matched the rooms in that wing. Altman prided himself on knowing his Institute inside and out.

What incensed Altman, however, was that the man on the screen who had started out standing by the bed and was now joining in on the action was wearing the nurse’s uniform of Blue Ward. It was one thing to consider ribaldry between patients, especially in such a highly volatile environment as Blue Ward and its particular clientele, but it was another thing altogether for the staff to indulge in wildly inappropriate behavior.

Altman grabbed the phone and called security, while scanning the screen for the location tag that accompanied every camera feed in the building. He did not find one, something which confused him, but before he could ponder that discrepancy he was talking to security and asking them to send people down to Blue Ward and halt the shenanigans, and while he could not direct them precisely his anger made up for his lack of direction.

The representatives were whispering among themselves by that point, frowning, and Altman could see that they were starting to understand that this was not a video but rather a direct camera feed—they had heard him scream on the phone—and when he motioned the confused researcher who had been presenting to shut down the projector, some of the representatives stopped him, and it took a while for Altman to understand that they wanted to see how the situation was handled.

Things were getting more heated on the screen, and not in the expected way. The nurse was clearly enjoying himself with the patient that seemed to be sedated on the bed and also with the other, smaller, patient, but then the man and the woman on the bed started to struggle, and fell off the bed, and at that point the man started punching the woman, an action that sealed the fate of the nurse as far as Altman was concerned. While he might have been willing to consider a severe reprimand and long suspension for having sexual relations with a patient—he understood the stress that nurses and orderlies and doctors in Blue Ward and other high-intensity wings of the Institute were under, and recognized that human beings were human beings—violence against a patient was never acceptable, under any circumstance.

He was pleased to see security finally blast through the door of the room and grab the nurse and haul him away, and shut down the projector himself, having no desire to invade the privacy of the patient further. She was clearly struggling with what had just happened to her, shivering in shock on the ground. He made a mental note to check in with her later, and apologize in person for the treatment she received.

But all of that had happened during the morning meeting, and now Altman was in his office, taking a well-deserved break while the representatives were having lunch with his division directors. He had excused himself under the pretext of administrative work requiring his immediate attention.

His intercom buzzed and he bit down his desire to grab it and toss it out the window and watch it plummet down the six floors to crash into a million plastic and metal pieces that were like the shrapnel he wanted to see rip that nurse apart.

“I thought I said I did not want to be disturbed!” he barked in response to the buzzing.

“I’m sorry, Mister Altman, but Franklin from HR is on the line and—”

“Put him through, then!”

“Right away.”

Altman closed his eyes and reminded himself that none of this was his secretary’s fault. He grabbed the phone, and started speaking as soon as he heard the click indicating the transfer had gone through, standing up so that he could bang on his desk more effectively.

“I want him out on his ass!”

“Huh… what—”

“The nurse! From this morning. I want him out on his ass.”

“But—”

“No but, no if, no nothing. He’s out. You do realize that what happened happened while all of our funding partners were there to witness it, live, on a large screen. The only thing missing was the color AND THE POPCORN!”

Altman wiped sweat from his brow and sat back down.

“I understand,” replied the HR director. “I’ll process his termination papers right away, Mister Altman.”

“You do that. And talk to the lawyers. I want to bring charges against him.”

The HR director at the other end of the line seemed clearly nervous at the thought, something that Altman did not understand. Did the man realize how humiliating this was for the Institute?

“I… I’ll talk to the lawyers, Mister Altman, but maybe we should not pursue this further. After all, right now, this is between the Institute and the funding agencies. If we bring charges, we’ll get publicity we won’t care about.”

Altman sat fuming and restrained himself from talking until he had calmed down. His executive sense returned, and he reluctantly accepted his HR director’s advice.

“Fine. Talk to the lawyers anyway to see how we can punish the man—what’s his name?”

“Gutierrez. Pietro Gutierrez.”

“See if we can punish Gutierrez further beyond firing him. I don’t know, seize his pension plan or something. I don’t care what. Just find something. And make sure he can’t work anywhere close to a medical institution for as long as he has a working dick, you got that?”

“Yes, Mister Altman.”

“Good.”

Altman managed to put the phone down without slamming it.

The intercom buzzed again. “Mister Altman. the ADCorp reps would like a word.”

Here it comes, he thought. I figured the government would be the first to start laying down the law about inappropriate behavior and liabilities and increased supervision and budgetary pressure and what not. Guess I was wrong.

He sighed. “Two minutes, then let them in, Stacy.”

He stood, took a second to adjust his tie and his hair in the small mirror by the wall, then gave a long glance out the window, wishing for a moment he could be one of those hawks in the distance hunting above the forest, free of the kind of troubles the morning had brought.

And the day had started so well, too.

He stiffened when he heard the door open and his secretary usher the senior representative of the ADCorp delegation, a silver-haired gentleman named Gary Robertson, all laid-back attitude and easy smile. He was accompanied by his aide, an attractive young woman that Robertson introduced as Alice Wilcox. Behind them followed the senior representative for the NIH, a fellow that Altman knew well named Frank Rizzo.

“First off, Mister Altman,” started Robertson as everyone sat down, “I would like to reassure you that the unpleasant events of this morning are not going to be considered a black mark on your dossier. We are all,” and he gestured around the group, “well aware of the difficulties of running a large operation, and the challenges involved in making sure everyone acts their best. Once in a while, a bad apple does make their way into the basket, and how that bad apple is identified and pulled out is almost more important than keeping bad apples from getting into the basket in the first place.”

“In other words, Erich,” said Rizzo, “no need to worry. You’re not in trouble. Everything got handled quickly and with a minimum of fuss, and as near as we can tell, little by way of rumor had made it throughout the Institute.”

Altman appreciated Rizzo telling him, and nodded by way of thanking him. He glanced at Robertson, who seemed relaxed and unbothered by anything that had happened. He and Rizzo were trading anecdotes and laughing, and since Altman trusted Rizzo, he finally began to calm down as well.

His eyes strayed to Alice Wilcox, who had remained quiet in her chair watching her boss and the NIH representative pal around. She was definitely a lovely young lady, and he smiled in response when she noticed him watching her and smiled at him. She wore a tailored suit, something that Altman always found attractive on a woman.

“So are you going to press charges?” Robertson asked Altman, startling him out of his reverie.

“Huh, probably not. The best policy would be to avoid publicizing this event as much as possible. The man will be fired, obviously, and we’ll investigate other venues of punishment, but we will keep this in house as much as possible.”

Robertson and Rizzo both nodded, and Wilcox remained in her chair, looking at him, a polite smile on her face. Altman did notice she was taking notes in an old-fashioned pocket notepad. He thought it quaint.

* * *

As they emerged from the Institute Director’s office, Alice Wilcox waited for her boss to finish with the head representative of the NIH—they were enjoying themselves, two old timers in positions that required them to be social and powerful, a job they not only knew how to do but how to do well.

To prove the point, Alice had noted how relieved Director Altman had appeared when Robertson and Rizzo reassured him about his handling of the events of the morning.

Alice had no idea whether the situation had been handled appropriately or not. It had been so far out of her sphere of experience that it left her emotionally disconnected. She had been painfully aware, in the meeting room that morning, of being one of the few women in the representatives’ staff—they were four in total, lost in a sea of older white males—as the sexual perversions were transpiring.

As if aware of the misgivings in her head, her boss Robertson turned to her after making plans for meeting up with Rizzo after the afternoon’s meetings.

“Sorry about all of that, Alice. I assure you, this is way more excitement than is usual during these visits. Nothing like that’s ever happened, or at least,” he said with a frown, “not while we were here.”

Alice nodded. “I’ve only heard good things about this place, sir.”

“As you should. They do good work. Great work, in fact. Needed work.”

Alice looked at him, taken by surprise. Gary Robertson looked like anybody’s grandfather, and was friendly and affable when on duty, but he rarely vented his passions.

“You really believe in this place, don’t you, sir?”

“I do, Alice. That’s why what we’re doing here is so important, at least to me.”

Alice thought about this for a while, partly because it added to her understanding of her boss, and partly to give her time to find the best way to segue into what she really wanted to ask him.

“Sir? What you said to the director earlier, about ensuring that when bad apples exist they can be found and pulled out, it made a lot of sense. I think it might be useful to go and see how the medical staff responds to the kind of situation like… the one this morning. See how they deal with the effects on other patients, for instance.”

Robertson nodded, thinking over what she said. “That’s an excellent idea, Alice. An excellent idea. Would you mind going down and having a look?”

Alice, who was hoping that her boss did not decide to accompany her, fought back a response that she knew would be too eager and might make Robertson suspicious. She counted to three slowly in her head, and then nodded. “Of course not. It should be interesting.”

“I have no doubt,” Robertson replied with a broad relaxed smile.

She stepped to the elevator bank, and pressed the down button. After a few seconds, the doors opened.

Robertson did not move.

“Are you coming down as well, sir?”

“No, you go ahead. There’s something I forgot to ask Erich—the director—and I should do so while I still remember. Let’s synchronize again at the Clinical Trials meeting at 4, shall we?”

“Will do.”

The elevator doors closed in front of Alice, and she permitted herself a sigh of relief. It had been much easier than she had feared to get away from the old man.