Thursday, July 4, 4:46 a.m.
As soon as Lashonda had stepped inside and pulled the heavy door closed behind them, Mitt switched on his flashlight. As he’d been advised, he carefully made certain the beam was mostly shielded with the palm of his left hand and angled downward. Lashonda quickly moved past him, turning on her flashlight and covering it in a similar fashion. With a wave over her shoulder for him to follow, she passed an empty reception desk and headed into the central hall. From there two main corridors ran east and west along the long axis of the building. On both sides of the central hall were multiple out-of-service elevators, and in the middle was a Da Vinci–like open, spiral stairway with an ornate metal railing.
As Mitt followed Lashonda, he allowed his flashlight to illuminate a bit more of the surrounding central hall. He also briefly shined his light down each of the corridors, but both were longer than his flashlight beam’s reach. In keeping with the Renaissance embellishments on the exterior, both the main corridors’ interiors were remarkably decorative, with a series of half-round pilasters with Doric capitals supporting faux rib vaulting. Each of the many doors leading off the corridors had decorative jambs and miniature entablatures. A few of the doors in the immediate vicinity were open, and in several Mitt was surprised to catch a glimpse of remaining but outdated office furniture, as if the people had left for the night and would be back in the morning.
But what was the most striking to Mitt was the color. The walls of the two lengthy hallways extending east and west were a two-toned yellow-tan with the more yellow color starting about five feet off the tile floor to include the barrel-vaulted ceiling. The lower portion of the walls were the darker tan. The baseboard was a five-inch strip of glossy black, rubberized artificial material. Why Mitt found the color scheme so eye-catching was that it uncannily resembled the walls in the nightmares he’d experienced just prior to waking up Monday and Tuesday morning. In both instances he’d been chased down similarly colored, endless hallways by an unknown assailant or assailants, and the association gave him yet another chill. Was the dream some sort of harbinger of this visit? He didn’t know, but he certainly hoped not.
“How are you faring?” Lashonda questioned as Mitt reached her. To give him time to catch up, she’d hesitated at the top of the downward flight of the circular stairs.
“So far so good,” Mitt announced, although he was tempted to mention the similarities of the unique wall color and his disturbing dream.
“Do you hear what sounds like low-pitched distant cries of people in anguish?” Lashonda questioned.
“I haven’t,” Mitt said, as he had yet to stop and listen, making him momentarily forget about his nightmare. The moment he did, he could just barely make out a distant wailing. It was of a very low but gradually increasing amplitude as if the wailers were slowly approaching. “I hear them now. I suppose you do, too?”
“Obviously,” Lashonda said. “Since it’s getting louder, you’d best brace yourself.”
Before Mitt could respond, the terrible cacosmia that he’d experienced in the high-rise hit as a powerful olfactory assault, making them both involuntarily slap their hands to their faces to squeeze their noses against the foul smell. At the same time, the cacophony increased dramatically, and in the distance down the west-facing corridor a mob of people began to emerge out of the darkness, heading in their direction. Similar to the grisly, surgerized people Mitt had seen in his apparitions in the high-rise, these individuals were all partially clothed in historical garb. Many of them were also covered in what appeared to be filth. Perhaps worst of all, many of their faces and portions of their bodies had been dissected away as if they were living, anatomical specimens meant to show interior muscles or organs.
“Come on!” Lashonda said, suddenly grabbing Mitt’s arm and attempting to pull him forcibly down the stairway. “Ignore them!”
Horrified yet intrigued, Mitt initially resisted being pulled away from the oncoming group. He was totally mystified by what they represented, but his curiosity was quickly overwhelmed. The closer they got, the worse the cacosmia became, and now he recognized the odor’s character was a little different. On the previous occasions, he’d thought of the smell as being mostly of excrement, but now it was more of putrefaction and even more repulsive.
Finally, Mitt allowed himself to be pulled onto the stairway. To his utter relief, as soon as they started down, the odor inexplicably vanished. Halfway down, Mitt hazarded a quick look back up over his shoulder toward the first floor, expecting to see the ghoulish mob massing at the top of the stairs or, worse yet, starting down. But he didn’t see them at all.
“Don’t look for them!” Lashonda commanded. “I’m telling you, you’ll encourage them if you do.”
“What are they?” Mitt questioned. “They’re different than the people I’ve seen before, who looked post-surgical.”
“I believe you are right,” Lashonda said as she reached the basement level and turned around to face Mitt as he continued to descend. “I was mystified when I saw that group for the first time. With a bit more reading about the history, I’ve come to believe they’re the spirits of the thousands of dead bodies dug up by Bellevue physicians and physicians in training to be used for anatomical dissection. Apparently your ancestor Dr. Homer Fuller had been an avid grave robber. Before the Bone Bill was passed in the mid-nineteenth century, no grave in New York was considered off-limits.”
“What was the Bone Bill?” he asked, reaching the basement level. He vaguely recalled reading something about the legislation back in June, but in the pressure of the moment he couldn’t remember.
“It was a law passed in the 1850s which expanded the cadavers that could be used for dissection. Previously it had only been executed criminals but after it included unclaimed bodies from prisons and almshouses. The Bone Bill dramatically increased the supply to meet the demand and decreased the need for grave robbing.”
“No wonder they appear so hideous,” Mitt said. By reflex he glanced back up the stairs over his shoulder, but Lashonda reached out and forcibly tugged on his arm.
“Control yourself!” she loudly warned. “As I said, paying them attention encourages them. Please!”
“Okay, okay,” Mitt repeated. He had to consciously restrain himself. With his fleeting glance, he hadn’t seen the dissected corpses, but he did see something else. He’d caught sight of a more familiar apparition coming down the stairs, the blond girl. And now, knowing she was behind them presented Mitt with an almost irresistible temptation to defy Lashonda’s warning. “I didn’t see the corpses,” he quickly admitted, “but I did catch a glimpse of Charlene Wagner!”
“I’m not surprised,” Lashonda said. “I see her every time I come in here. But ignore her, too! Come on! Follow me! We have a bit of a walk ahead of us.” With a wave over her shoulder, Lashonda set out across the rather large space lined with cabinetry and shelving at the foot of the stairs. She headed toward an archway that led into the main corridor heading west.
Mitt followed but with his skin crawling, particularly along the back of his neck, from knowing they were not alone. To keep from turning around to glance at Charlene, he had to utilize every ounce of restraint he could muster. The one good thing, since they were now in the basement where there were no windows, was that they didn’t have to concern themselves at all with the light from their flashlights. Mitt could use his flashlight however he saw fit as Lashonda was clearly doing. Ahead, her beam was dancing around in front of her as she passed under the archway and entered the central corridor. Trying to catch up, he increased his walking speed.
From Mitt’s perspective, the basement appeared pretty much as he imagined it would. Upstairs had been a surprise with the embellished architectural details and coloration, totally unexpected for a psychiatric hospital. None of that existed in the basement. Also, the upstairs had appeared surprisingly normal for a hospital building deserted for some forty years, meaning more organized and even cleaner than expected, albeit dusty on horizontal surfaces like the reception desk or the handrail of the circular stairway. In contrast, the basement, although whitewashed in the distant past, was obviously dirty and the hallway was lined with debris of all sorts—rags, broken tools, old paint cans, empty boxes. Along the ceiling was a tangle of piping, some areas with rotting insulation hanging down, as well as masses of exposed, aged electric wiring. Strung through the tangle was a fair number of cobwebs. The hallway was also lined with doors, most of which were closed. The few that were ajar revealed stacks of stored junk, even old, disused furniture.
“This is a different world down here,” Mitt called ahead to Lashonda. He was nervous and just wanted to maintain contact. From the moment they’d entered the building, the place gave him the creeps and that was even without apparitions.
“It always was,” she said without stopping or even slowing.
Although Mitt was still sorely tempted to turn around because he assumed they were being followed by at least Charlene, he resisted, willing to follow Lashonda’s advice. As nervous as he was in the environment, he tried to make light of it by mentally noting that every reasonably intelligent person knew that the last place you were supposed to go in a haunted house was the basement, yet here he was.
Presently they came to an intersection, and without a second’s hesitation, Lashonda turned right. After about twenty-five feet she turned left, with Mitt close behind. He sensed they were now in the northwest wing of the building, parallel with 30th Street and approaching First Avenue, near where he had stopped to gaze at the building early Monday morning. Once again, he was glad he’d not tried to come on his own to look for the records. He never would have found them.
“Okay, here we are,” Lashonda finally said, stopping at a door with an actual label in contrast to most of the others. The sign was small and at eye level. It read simply: Housekeeping Supply. Then she turned to the door immediately opposite and felt along the top rail until she found a key. Facing back around, she brandished it. “We always had to keep the supply door locked. Ever since I’ve worked here at Bellevue, employee thievery has been a problem. It’s amazing. We even have to keep the toilet paper locked up.” She unlocked the door, put the key back, and then entered the supply room, leaving its door ajar.
Mitt started forward but paused on the threshold. He couldn’t resist a quick glance back down the corridor from which they’d come. Although it was only for a fraction of a second, the fleeting image his eyes caught startled him. He’d expected to see Charlene, but instead, he caught a glimpse of the surgerized crowd. They were silent, standing stock-still with venomous, angry expressions and holding their removed limbs or organs, all still bloody. With the closest spirits a mere twenty feet away, Mitt guessed that the gruesome crowd had been behind them for a good part of the long walk, and he shuddered. He’d sensed he and Lashonda were being followed by something but certainly not by such a horde and not so closely.
Mitt quickly entered and shut the supply room door behind him even though he suspected it wasn’t a barrier to such ghostly spirits. He then turned and let his flashlight beam circle the room. In contrast to the cluttered basement rooms Mitt had glanced into, the housekeeping supply room was almost totally empty. A number of open bottles and cans of cleaner lined the shelves along one wall. There was also a rack for mops and brooms, which contained a half dozen or so.
“The records are back here in a closet off the lavatory,” Lashonda called out, waving for Mitt. She’d retreated to the very rear of the storeroom and was standing next to an opened interior door. Her flashlight was on the floor in the main part of the storeroom with its lens angled upward. By the time Mitt got back there, she had stepped into a small toilet room and opened an interior closet. Inside, in plain sight and stacked chest-high, were five cardboard bankers boxes.
“Here they are,” Lashonda announced while giving the top box a tap. “Here are the records presumably collected by your ancestor Dr. Clarence Fuller.”
“Are all the boxes full?” Mitt questioned. It appeared to be more material than he’d expected.
“Pretty much,” Lashonda said. “Your ancestors were very busy people. I’d guess each box has fifty to a hundred records or thereabouts.” She then bent down and pointed to the box on the bottom. “This one has records that go back all the way to the 1820s and range up until around the 1860s or thereabouts. As near as I could determine, they were mostly Dr. Homer Fuller’s patients. But don’t count on that. I certainly didn’t go through all of them, just read a few here and there. On the top of each box there is a range of dates of the contained records.”
“So, the higher you go in the stack, the more recent the records?” Mitt asked. He was amazed at the sheer number of records seemingly involved and could imagine the excitement Robert Pendleton must have felt when he’d stumbled onto them.
“That’s correct. The lowest down is mostly for Homer, next up Otto, then Benjamin, and these on the top are Dr. Clarence Fuller’s lobotomy records.” Lashonda ended by patting the box on the very top.
“I know we don’t have a lot of time,” Mitt said as he put his flashlight on the floor next to Lashonda’s and also made a point of angling the lens upward as much as it would go but in the opposite direction, making the ambient light in the room more evenly disbursed. “And I appreciate your promise to your mother that the records mustn’t leave here, but I’d like to get an idea of them with the time we have. Do you mind if I check out the lower box first? I might as well do it in chronological order.”
“We’re here for you, so of course I don’t mind. In fact, let me help you.” With that said, Lashonda began handing the uppermost boxes out to Mitt, who stacked them in reverse order next to their flashlights. As he did so, he noticed the dates written on the top.
“Here’s the last one,” Lashonda said, handing it to Mitt, “which I believe contains mostly Homer’s cases.”
“Perfect,” Mitt said. He put the box on top of the others and lifted off its lid. Inside was a stack of patient records that seemed to be written in a rather flamboyant but mostly readable cursive style on yellowed paper. Being particularly careful and respectful, he reached in and lifted out a short stack. Randomly, he picked one from the middle. The others he carefully placed face down on the top of the opened box. The record he was holding was a single page, and he had to angle it carefully in the meager light to be able to read it, as the ink had faded.
The date on the record was August 8, 1854, and at the bottom was Homer’s impressive signature, which gave Mitt a real sense he was looking into his family’s past. The patient’s name was John Mercer, age forty-three, described as a one-eyed farrier. Mitt had no idea what that meant until he learned a little later in the narrative that John had been attempting to shoe a horse when the animal collapsed on him, severely damaging his right leg from just above the knee down to the ankle, which caused unremitting pain. The above narrative was all under a heading: Problem. There were three more sections under the headings: Operation, Procedure, and Outcome.
Mitt looked up at Lashonda, who was peering over his shoulder at the record. “It’s like a miniature time machine,” he said.
Lashonda nodded. “I know what you mean. It must be especially so for you since it involves a relative.”
“It is amazing reading it, knowing he wrote this with his hand.”
“Maybe even moments after he’d done the operation,” Lashonda added.
“Perhaps,” Mitt said. He had no idea of the timing, but it didn’t matter. Going back to the record, he continued reading with difficulty as the ink intensity varied significantly: After bringing Mr. Mercer into the operating theatre filled with attentive students and asking him in front of all the witnesses if he wished to go ahead and have his damaged leg off or if he wished not to have it off, he responded to have it off, and four stout men took ahold of him and held him fast.
Suddenly Mitt stopped reading. Instead, his eyes snapped back to the top of the page to ascertain that the date was indeed 1854, and it was. Like every medical student, he was aware that anesthesia was first used at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston in 1846, so he was certain it was available at Bellevue in 1854. The fact that Homer chose not to use it, as Robert Pendleton had written, horrified Mitt, even as he recognized the role played by hindsight. He felt strongly that his relative’s rejection of the benefits of anesthesia, spurred by his supposed belief that denying natural pain was the devil’s work, bordered on the insanely delusional. It was also brutal, cruel, and remarkably cold-blooded even if the amputation could be done in a mere nine seconds.
“What’s the matter?” Lashonda questioned. She sensed Mitt’s emotional reaction.
“I’m embarrassed to tell you,” he said. “But this is a case of my ancestor doing a leg amputation without anesthesia eight years after anesthesia had been introduced. And remember, amputation of this kind required sawing through the largest bone in the human body.”
“Lordy!” Lashonda commented with a distinctly dismayed expression along with a disbelieving shake of her head.
“That’s my reaction, too,” Mitt said. “It’s perplexing as well as shameful.” With a shake of his own head, he went back to reading John Mercer’s short medical record. Unfortunately, the rest was just as bad. The man died of overwhelming sepsis after suffering through three post-surgical days in what had to have been indescribable pain. The last sentence explained that just before death, the leg wound spontaneously split open and discharged “a vast amount of pus.”
“Ay ay ay,” Mitt muttered under his breath. He assumed that Homer probably hadn’t washed his hands or his instruments or even changed his clothes before operating on poor John Mercer, even if he’d been doing something like an autopsy in the morgue. Back in those days, Mitt knew that as many as half the people suffering through surgery died of sepsis within days.
He raised his eyes and looked at Lashonda, who was still watching him. Since all the light in the room was coming from two flashlights sitting on the floor, he couldn’t see her eyes, and her sockets looked like black holes. “What a sad story,” he said. He waved the document in her direction. “Were all the records you looked at similar to this?”
“I’m afraid so,” Lashonda said. “But remember, I didn’t look at that many, so don’t jump to conclusions. Although the ones I did read were similar. Well, let me clarify. When I looked at Otto’s and Benjamin’s records, there were significant differences, but it seemed that the outcomes, meaning frequent deaths, were the same.”
“That’s not encouraging.”
“I’m sure not. What I’m hoping is that by seeing even this one record, you’ll take my warning and my advice to heart.”
“You mean leave Bellevue.”
“Yes.”
Mitt struggled to organize his thoughts. Although he’d been rather successfully fighting his exhaustion, it was starting to truly influence his ability to think. He’d also noticed the record was fluttering in his hand—he’d developed a mild tremor that he couldn’t control.
“What would you like to do?” Lashonda questioned. She gestured toward the stack of boxes. “We’ve a bit more time. Would you like to see more of the records? Here they all are.”
“I don’t know,” Mitt managed. He felt momentarily incapable of making up his mind. To give himself something to do while he organized his thoughts, he carefully returned John Mercer’s record to its place within the short stack of documents he’d originally removed and then replaced them all back into the bankers box. When he was finished, he straightened up and looked directly over at Lashonda.
“I’m having trouble dealing with all this,” he admitted.
“That’s entirely understandable,” Lashonda said. “We can come back at some future date, but I recommend we do it sooner rather than later, even tomorrow night. No, sorry. I’m off tomorrow because of the holiday. We could come back Friday night, about this same time. I’m truly distressed to hear about all your patients dying. Although we can’t be certain, it suggests to me that my fears are well grounded. This many angry ghosts, from the three-hundred-year history of this hospital, are a force that has to be respected and reckoned with. It’s not only for your safety, but it’s also for all your future patients’ safety.”
“I’m certainly getting the message that the Bellevue paranormal forces have to be respected,” Mitt said. He thought for a moment and then added: “Here’s what I’d like to do tonight before we leave. I’d like to see Charlene Wagner’s record. Would you be able to put your finger on it with reasonable ease?”
“Of course! I can find that after we return all the boxes to the lavatory closet. Charlene’s is in the top box, which unfortunately at the moment is on the bottom.”
“Fine, let’s do it,” Mitt said with newly found resolve.
With Lashonda restacking the boxes and Mitt bringing them to her, all the records were returned to their original resting place in short order. When it was done, Lashonda opened the last box after taking it from Mitt and, as promised, quickly produced Charlene Wagner’s record.
“I’m impressed,” Mitt said, taking it. “How did you find it so quickly?”
“I’ve seen her so many times and had referred to the record often enough that I ended up flagging it.”
“A wise move,” Mitt said as he rapidly leafed through the stapled, eight-page record. Although it was typed and not handwritten, the font size was small, making it very difficult to read in the available light, but at least it was a hundred years newer than Homer’s handwritten record, and it was in the format of a modern inpatient medical record. He skimmed the last page, which tersely described that the bedside lobotomy had resulted in death. Below that there was an equally brief summary of the autopsy findings, with the cause of death listed as exsanguination and intracerebral hemorrhage. The final sentence of the report, which had been underlined with red ink, noted that the patient had been found to have an aberrantly positioned anterior cerebral artery. Mitt looked at the underlining and wondered if Clarence had done it in an attempt to absolve himself of the child’s untimely demise, as it was probably true that if there hadn’t been an anatomical anomaly, the child might not have died. But the same was true for the lobotomy itself—even more so.
When he was finished with his quick scan and feeling more enticed than satisfied, Mitt looked up at Lashonda and said: “Do we have time for me to read this with a bit more care? It won’t take long.”
“Of course,” Lashonda said, but Mitt saw her look at her watch. “That’s what we’re here for, but time is marching on.”
“I appreciate it,” Mitt said. “I’ll be very quick.” He flipped back to the first page but paused.
What suddenly flashed through his mind was Robert Pendleton and how ecstatic the man must have been when he’d first stumbled across this trove of old Bellevue Hospital records. For a bioethicist, it would have been nothing short of a gold mine. Mitt now knew that the discovery had happened right after Clarence’s retirement but before the hospital administrator had been able to deal with these records. Perhaps Pendleton’s discovery forced the administrator to panic and coopt Lashonda’s mother into hiding them in the housekeeping supply room in the basement. For the administrator, Pendleton’s discovery and threat to publish must have been a nerve-wrackingly close call.
On his second read-through, Mitt squatted down to make better use of the meager light. He was hoping to find a reasonable and understandable explanation for why a lobotomy—of all things—had been done on eight-year-old Charlene Wagner, considering the procedure’s irrevocability. He quickly confirmed that the child’s diagnosis had indeed been in the realm of a behavioral disorder, probably what was now called an oppositional defiant disorder, but then nowhere in the relatively lengthy chart was the issue of whether or not to do a lobotomy even raised. Since it was generally known, even back then, that such behavioral disorders often resolved as the child aged, especially in girls, this drastic treatment option was the last thing that should have been done. Yet as the issue was not addressed in the file, Mitt had nothing to refute Pendleton’s claim that Clarence Fuller had been advocating the use of lobotomies for his own personal reasons and not in the patients’ best interests. Mitt felt the selfsame letdown and even anger that he’d experienced reading that Homer had chosen not to use anesthesia when he amputated John Mercer’s leg.
Mitt let out an agonized sigh along with another disappointed shake of his head. He then extended Charlene’s record toward Lashonda as if he didn’t even want to hold it any longer.
“Not good?” she questioned as she took the record.
“Not good,” Mitt repeated. “Not good at all. I’m thinking I want to disown some of my ancestors.”
“Unfortunately, even if you do, it’s not going to do you much good. It’s certainly not going to improve your reputation with the Bellevue ghost community.”
“At the moment, I’m thinking more about my own state of mind.”
“Fair enough,” Lashonda said. She again looked at her watch. “It’s five after five and sunrise is fast approaching. We have to leave before it gets light outside. Are you ready?”
“I suppose,” Mitt said. He was having more and more difficulty thinking clearly. He needed sleep and he needed it badly.
Lashonda quickly returned Charlene’s medical record to its appropriate position in the top box and replaced the lid. She then closed the closet door and stepped out of the lavatory. She looked at Mitt as she picked up her flashlight. “You don’t look so good.”
“I don’t feel so good,” Mitt admitted. He picked up his flashlight, too.
“Okay, let’s get you out of here so you can get some sleep.”
“Good idea,” Mitt managed. He followed her over to the door to the hall, but just as Lashonda went to open it, he raised his arm and put his hand against the door to keep it closed. It was the same hand that was holding the flashlight. “Hold up for a second!” he said. “Before I followed you in here when we first arrived, I couldn’t help myself from glancing back up the hall from whence we’d come. I know you told me not to, but I did, and the entire corridor was jam-packed with surgerized patients carrying their limbs or organs. Isn’t that going to be a major problem?’’
“No, as I told you, if they are still there, they should just be ignored.”
“How can I ignore them if they are staring me in the face?”
“You just do! You merely pretend they are not there because, in a way, they are not there. You are seeing them because you are a portal. I can’t explain it better than that. Do you understand?”
“No, I don’t,” Mitt admitted.
“Okay, fine,” Lashonda said with a roll of her eyes. It was obvious she was getting progressively more tense and impatient as dawn approached. “Listen! Just follow me! Close your eyes if you have to.”
“Are you serious? Walk with my eyes closed? I’m not sure I can.”
“If it comes to that, put your hand on my shoulder.” To demonstrate she reached out and grasped Mitt’s free hand and placed it on her shoulder, giving it a final pat. “Just like this, okay?”
“Okay,” Mitt said, retrieving his hand and removing the other from the door to the hallway.
“Okay, brace yourself!” Lashonda said as she reached for the door handle.