"Oh, the facts were straight enough," she said bitterly. "It was the reasons he concealed. They thought you didn't have a chance, so they did all sorts of strange things they never tried on anyone else. You were an experiment, that's all—but you surprised them."
The hospital was looking for the wrong mental case. They had one working for them and didn't know it. He didn't doubt that she was right—about his being an experiment—but her observations were wrong. It was due entirely to their unorthodox procedures that he was alive.
She looked him over carefully and he knew that the halves of his face didn't match by a ridiculous margin, that one shoulder was heavier than the other, that his hair was in three colors. Even in repose and fully clothed, so that some of the discrepancies of his physique were hidden, he was hardly presentable.
"When I saw you standing there today, I realized what they had done to you and my loyalty to the institution and the doctor vanished," she said earnestly. "And the psychotherapy isn't to help you, it's to make sure you won't protest over what they've done. That's why I had to get you away. They've ruined you and now you must ruin them."
He had half-suspected it would come to this—but he hadn't been sure. "I don't want to ruin them," he said slowly. "I'd rather be alive, even as an experiment. And if you're thinking of a malpractice suit, you saw the files. I couldn't win against that."
"I ought to know about the files—I worked on them." Her eyes sparkled and her voice lowered. "What if the evidence is missing?"
He sat back. With her co-operation, the vital parts of the file could vanish and, with that gone, he could collect a staggering amount from the institution. He had only to appear and no jury or panels of experts would decide against him. Is that what she had planned so swiftly in the director's office—that she would share the money with him? Somehow, he couldn't believe money meant that much to her. "I can't permit it," he said. "In spite of everything, I feel obligated."
She flung herself across the narrow space. "I expected you to be noble," she sobbed. "One look at you, and I knew I had met the loneliest person in the world."
Like called to like, at least for her, and that explained why she had grimaced when she had first seen him. It was her counterpart of the receptionist's reaction. It explained, too, why she was willing to turn against the doctor she had previously adored. As for the money, she didn't want it for herself, but as bait for him—and he'd have to take her with it.