Sitting alone in the Mortem reception, head bowed dejectedly, time leaches the hope from Lydia like a sandcastle gradually blowing away in the wind. She feels her very essence draining away, power fading, the warmth that had been rekindled in her heart over the past week cooling and dying.
She looks at her phone. No messages. No calls. It has been less than twelve hours since she was with Alex, yet it feels like a lifetime. She needs him now. She can’t do this alone, struggling silently to arrest the onslaught of cynicism that generates from within herself. Judgement from which she can neither run nor hide.
Footsteps on the polished floor make Lydia’s stomach turn over. She has come to like Gretchen Engel, even feel some uncharacteristic affection for her, but the doctor is the last person she wants to see when she looks up.
“Is he…?” Lydia can’t bring herself to finish the question. Gretchen nods slowly, pink patches around her eyes betraying recent tears.
“Yes,” she replies, weakly.
Lydia feels a sickness growing deep within her, and realises with surprise that it is grief. She doesn’t know Jason Devere very well. She certainly doesn’t like him. He may very well have been complicit in her assault, as well of course in the murders of over a dozen people. But the thought of him being taken to a premeditated death, the idea that she is complicit in it not only as a member of society but as an active player in the events that led to this point, makes her feel sad, and guilty, and bereaved. She remembers the kindly old woman she spoke to in the hospital just a few days ago. Lydia had promised to help. Instead here she sits, completely powerless.
“Can I see him?” asks Lydia.
“I’m sorry,” Gretchen replies. “Nobody can. Warden’s orders. His body’s to be kept under guard until they can get the incinerator lit. There’s some sort of problem. Maintenance are working on it now.” Lydia’s hate for Shade grows. “Here,” Gretchen offers her a small box; the same one Lydia had given to Jason, containing his personal effects. “He wanted you to have this back.”
“Thank you,” says Lydia, surprised, clutching the box tightly. Gretchen sits down next to her.
“Did you get what you wanted?”
Lydia shakes her head, biting her lip hard to keep the tears at bay.
“What will you do now?”
“Nothing,” Lydia replies, in a hollow voice.
“Nothing?” Gretchen asks, a note of surprise in her soft voice.
“I’m done,” Lydia says. “It’s hopeless.”
“Nothing is hopeless,” says Gretchen, laying a hand on Lydia’s arm and smiling. It would have been easy, Lydia thinks, for all of the terrible people in this godforsaken building to drain Gretchen of her empathy, her compassion. But her bedside manner is as kind and genuine as it is possible for a person to be.
“You know that’s not true,” says Lydia, forlornly. “Soon Jason is going to be gone. And what about the four patients you lost the other night? They’re gone too.”
“I haven’t given up on them,” says Gretchen, a tiny twinkle in her eye. “And you haven’t given up on Jason. I know you haven’t. Listen, I… I’ve heard your conversations with Jason, all of them.” Lydia looks up at the doctor. “And in doing so, I think, I’m starting to realise that there is more going on with his story than I initially thought. And you know there’s more to this story, don’t you? You can still help him.”
Lydia looks into Gretchen’s eyes, wanting so badly to believe what she says, but the positive words bounce off the ice core now re-crystallising around her heart. She hangs her head. “I don’t even know where to start,” she says quietly. “I have no leads, no ideas. Even Alex won’t call me back.” She sighs. “This book is dead. There’s nothing more I can do here.”
Gretchen listens patiently, considers Lydia’s words, then pats her gently on the leg and stands up. “I don’t believe that.” She starts to walk away.
“You don’t know me,” says Lydia, suddenly flaring up, her temper boiling over. Gretchen turns around, a shocked expression on her face. “I didn’t get where I am today by looking out for other people,” Lydia says, eyes blazing. “I did it by looking after myself. That’s how you make it in this world. It’s the only way to survive. Nobody wants to admit it, but that’s the brutal truth.”
Gretchen stares at her coolly, all trace of bedside manner vanished. “And how is that working out for you?” she asks. “Are you happy?”
Lydia glares at her furiously, then looks away without answering.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for, Lydia,” Gretchen says. “I hope you find that happiness.” She turns and walks to the elevator, and when Lydia looks up again Gretchen is gone. Probably from her life forever. After all, there’s no reason for her ever to return to this place now.
Just another person who hates me, Lydia thinks bitterly. But that doesn’t quite sit right. The words fester in her mind like an infection. Gretchen doesn’t hate her. Lydia is too adept a student of humanity to so lazily misread what just transpired. It wasn’t hate, she realises with a pang of embarrassment. It was pity. Gretchen feels sorry for her. Sorry for her selfishness, her loneliness, her arrogance, her ego. Sorry that a man is dead and all Lydia seems to care about is her book. Sorry because Gretchen knows, just as Lydia does, that her fling with Alex is destined to crash and burn because of what Lydia is. What she has allowed herself to become.
She looks down at the box in her lap. When she packed it originally, it was as a tactic. Just another piece on the game board, to try to outmanoeuvre a man she hadn’t yet met. A gift of poor intent. Lydia opens it now with trembling fingers. Inside is a photograph, creased and torn around the edges, of two young boys, Jason and Finley, with their mother and father, Evelyn and Adam. All wearing genuine smiles, happy, peaceful, content, like the family from the hotel lobby last night. Like a family should be. Lydia stares at their faces, and realises with a pang of sickness that they are all dead now. The Devere family is gone, taking their secrets with them to the grave.
Underneath the photograph, a comb and mirror, and the silver, heart-shaped locket she had seen in Jason’s hands just yesterday. Lydia reaches for it, but can’t bring herself to touch the thing. A voice in her head is screaming that she isn’t allowed. That it isn’t right. That she has let down both mother and son, and to touch the locket would violate their memory. She snaps the box shut and jumps to her feet. She has to get out of here.
Lydia strides across the lobby in as composed a fashion as she can muster, aware of the receptionist’s eyes on her, aware of the cameras. Then as soon as she is out the door she breaks into a run, high heels skimming across the snow towards her car. The winter sky is pale blue, peaceful, completely at odds with the dark storm raging inside of her. She unlocks the car door and throws herself into the driver’s seat, slamming the keys into the ignition and stirring the engine to life with a roar. The radio blares loudly, and Lydia smashes the power button with her palm to silence it. She doesn’t want to hear her favourite songs right now. Doesn’t want to be reminded of the man who still hasn’t called her back.
Just as she feels her anger towards him boiling up, a chime rings out. It’s her phone. A message from Alex.