At 7:00 a.m. a loud electric buzz echoed through the ward as all the doors unlocked simultaneously. Exhausted and bleary eyed after a sleepless night, Riley smushed her face into the thin pillow, refusing to acknowledge the daylight. Maybe they don’t know I’m here, maybe I got lost in the admission system, maybe someone didn’t get the update about which room I’m in, so if I don’t move or say anything they won’t know where to look for me and I can get just a little bit more sl—
A nurse opened the door and knocked. “Riley Diaz?”
Another hope dashed. “Yeah,” she said, and sat up, legs tangled in the sheets.
The nurse—tall, slender, nearly six feet, and probably middle forties—was dressed in a knee-length white uniform. A blue cap sat atop brown-gray hair pulled back in a bun so tight that Riley thought it might scream at any second.
“I’m Nurse Biedermann,” she said, ticking a box on her tablet to confirm she’d found the expected patient in the expected room. “I’m in charge of all the patients on the ARC ward and your direct liaison with the rest of the staff. If you have any problems or concerns, bring them to me directly, not the doctors, unless you are in session. I will convey your issues to the appropriate staff members for follow-up. We try to keep nurse-patient interactions casual but structured, so during all conversations we stick to titles and surnames, and I expect you to do the same, Ms. Diaz.”
“So do you answer to the doctors or to McGann?”
The nurse waited.
“—Nurse Biedermann,” Riley finished.
“We don’t discuss the administrative terms of our employment.” Then another nurse entered carrying a tray of small paper cups. “This is my assistant nurse, Consuela Sanchez,” Biedermann said, then checked the list of prescriptions on her tablet. “Number seven.”
Consuela handed her one of the paper cups, which Biedermann then held out for Riley. “Take this, please.”
“What is it?”
“Just something to calm your nerves a little. First days under observation can be difficult for some people.”
“I’m fine, and I don’t take anything unless I know what it is.”
“Buspirone.”
Riley nodded absently. She’d never heard of this one. “What’s the dose?”
“You don’t know what Buspirone is, do you?”
“Of course I know. Everyone knows what Busiperal—”
“Buspirone.”
“—right, Buspirone is. What’s the dose?”
“Ten milligrams. As I said, it’s very light.”
“And if I say no?”
“Are you saying no?”
“Yes.”
Biedermann returned the paper cup to the tray then folded her hands in front of her. “Under the rules of the Washington State Medical Association, patients committed for observation who are not currently showing signs of violent behavior may decline to receive medication.” From her tone she’d said this so many times that she knew the provision word for word. “However, I would remind you that this period of observation is to allow hospital staff to assess your readiness to return to society, which is at least partly determined by the degree to which you are willing to cooperate with hospital rules, regulations, and procedures. This includes your resistance to, or acceptance of, prescribed medications and other therapies necessary to your well-being and our ability to make a recommendation at the end of this period.”
“Fine. It’s still no.”
Biedermann made another notation on the tablet, then reached into the pocket of her uniform and set a folded sheet of paper down on the table. “This is your schedule for the day. We kept it fairly easy given that this is your first day. You are expected to appear on time for all therapeutic sessions and appointments unless you have a signed exemption from one of the staff. Breakfast is offered in the cafeteria beginning at eight. Do you have any further questions, Ms. Diaz?”
“Not at this time, thanks.”
Biedermann waited five seconds for her Nurse Biedermann. When it didn’t come, she turned on her heel and padded down the hall to her next appointment.
* * *
The cafeteria was nearly full when Riley entered, drawn by the smell of eggs and toast. Danny, Callie, and most of the other patients ate silently by themselves, reading or staring out the window while others sat in small groups talking in low tones carefully modulated to avoid drawing the attention of the white-uniformed staffers stationed along the walls. Sterile-gloved servers manned a food station in front of the kitchen, where hot meals were prepared. Juice, cereal, fruit, and vegetables were available at an adjacent table.
Suddenly very hungry, Riley ordered waffles and juice. “Can I get coffee?”
“Not on the menu,” the server said.
“How is that even possible? Coffee is nature’s perfect food. I live on coffee, I live with coffee, I live for coffee.”
“Caffeine interacts with some of the medications. But there are herbal teas over by the counter.”
So far, not too bad, Riley thought, but she remained wary, fully aware that in every horror movie it’s always that one person in the middle of the film who says, “Well, we’re safe now,” who gets a pitchfork through the heart a minute later.
As she picked up her breakfast tray and a cup of lemon tea, she saw Steve waving at her from a table where he was sitting with several other patients. “Riley, hey, over here.”
“Shove over,” he told the rest, pulling a chair from another table. Chairs scraped the floor noisily as they cleared a space for her. The orderlies glanced at the sound but didn’t interfere.
As she took the empty seat beside Steve, an older, nervous-looking patient on his other side declined to make room as the other patients slid closer. Hispanic, with a tired, worn face that had never lost its baby fat, he began rubbing concentric circles over the surface of the table in front of him. “This is my spot,” he said firmly. “This is where the wood grain makes a straight line.”
The table was metal, painted green.
“This is my spot,” he said again, looking at her with bright questioning eyes that were desperate for affirmation and promised tears if it didn’t come. “Do you understand?”
“Don’t question it; won’t help,” Steve said. “He’s not seeing this table. Whatever he’s seeing, it was a long time ago, am I right, Enrique?”
“Do you understand?” the man asked again.
“Yes, I understand,” Riley said.
Enrique smiled and nodded happily, backhanding the just-in-case tears that had already formed.
“So did you meet Biedermann?” Steve asked.
Riley rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I did. Holy fuck. Whoever invented the term resting bitch face definitely had her in mind.”
“Resting bitch face!” an older African American man at the end of the table repeated, then said it again, louder. “Resting bitch face!”
The orderlies positioned along the wall glanced in their direction.
“Let it go, Lester,” Steve said, nodding ominously toward them.
Lester grinned with secret sin and went back to his grapefruit.
“I think I pissed her off when I asked which side she was working for,” Riley said.
“Yeah, Biedermann doesn’t like being questioned. She’s been in charge of the general nursing staff since forever. When the ARC thing started, McGann poached her from Kim because she knows where all the levers are. Doctors may be the big shots, but it’s the nurses who really run things. Handling the ARC patients is her main job now, but she still carries a lot of weight on this side of the aisle because she scares the shit out of the staff and they don’t want to cross her.”
“Resting bitch face,” Lester whispered into his herbal tea.
“Lester’s another self-commit,” Steve said. “Walked in on your own power, right?”
“Yes, yes,” Lester said eagerly. “I came here because I need help, and the staff have been very good to me. Very nice. I don’t know if it’ll do any good, because I’ve been here a while now and nothing’s changed, but I have great hopes.”
“How long?” Riley asked.
“Oh, golly, a few years, I guess. Problem is they know how to treat crazy people, and I’m not crazy. It’s my insides that are the problem.” He put his hand on his stomach. “It’s all dead and rotten in there. I can feel it when I roll over in bed, cracking like dry wood. I tried drinking weed killer, thought that might help break it up a little, but it just made me really sick, which is why my niece told me about this place and said they could help.”
“If your stomach doesn’t work, why eat?”
“I can still taste,” he said, his eyes sad and small and wistful. “I’m all dead inside, but I still get hungry, and I still taste, it’s just there’s no point to any of it. No point at all.”
Then his face switched to a smile. “Resting bitch face,” he whispered. “My guts may be dead, but nobody can say I have a resting bitch face.”
Riley turned back to Steve. “So where’s Frankenstein? I’ve been curious ever since you mentioned him.”
“There was an incident with some of the orderlies yesterday, around the same time you got here. He goes a little out of control sometimes, so they’ve got him under restraint. Not straitjackety stuff, but leather-cuffed to his bed. The nurses check in on him once an hour to make sure he’s okay and see if he’s settled down enough to go back into the general population. Don’t worry, you’ll know him when you see him.”
Then there was a burst of static from the PA system, and Biedermann’s voice boomed through the cafeteria. “Group therapy for ARC patients begins in twenty minutes in room two seventeen. ARC patients will report to room two seventeen in twenty minutes.”
“Looks like it’s your turn in the barrel,” Steve said. “Good luck.”
* * *
Riley entered the room that Callie had straightened up the night before to find her, Danny, and five other ARC patients already seated. As she took an empty chair, a slender doctor with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a white coat, plaid shirt, and jeans came through the door and nudged it closed with his foot because he had a tablet in one hand and a travel mug of coffee in the other!
Just let me sniff it, Riley thought. Just for a second. Hand over the mug and nobody gets hurt. Sweartagod.
“Good morning everyone,” he said, approaching the circle of chairs. “How are we doing today?”
A few of the others muttered fine or good while the rest shrugged or looked away.
“I see we have a new member of the group,” he said, taking a seat on the opposite side of the circle. “Riley Diaz, am I pronouncing that correctly?”
“Yes,” Riley said. “Rye-Lee.”
“Good to meet you, Riley. I’m Doctor Edward Kaminski, Chief of Psychiatry. Since this is your first day, perhaps you can start off today’s session by telling me and the rest of the group why you’re here. Would you like to do that?”
“Not really.”
Kaminski gestured toward the other patients. “All these people share your views and convictions. Why wouldn’t you want to share your story with them?”
She shrugged. Don’t give them anything to work with.
He turned to the rest of the group. “It seems Riley’s shy. That’s okay. Let’s break the ice by having everyone else introduce themselves. Let’s start with you, Becca.”
A hollowed-out looking woman in her thirties, startled at being singled out, glanced up at him through a curtain of bottle-blond hair that had grown out to reveal long dark roots. “Could someone else go first?”
“I called your name, Becca,” he said, as though addressing a child.
Riley immediately decided she didn’t like him—a lot.
Becca looked down at her hands folded in her lap. “Um, hi, Riley, I’m Rebecca Thompson, but obviously, I go by Becca. I got here around the same time as Danny, so almost two months. I’m originally from Provo, Utah, but I moved to Portland when I separated from my husband.”
“And . . . ?” Kaminski prodded.
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “I was arrested at a protest in Portland and given the same choice they gave you, and that’s why I’m here.”
“You were arrested because you made a mistake,” he said, prompting her.
“Yes,” she said, as if by rote. “I made a mistake. It was something I shouldn’t have done. I fell in with the wrong people, and they got me to do things I knew were wrong. I’m glad to be here, and I know I’ll come out the other side a better person.”
“Very good, Becca.” He said it as if she were a trained dolphin awaiting a snack. Riley wanted to put a fist through his face. “Who wants to go next? Callie?”
“We met Riley last night,” Callie said. “Me and Danny.”
“Ah! I see. Secret meetings.”
“No,” Callie said, a little too quickly. “I was fixing up the room and she wandered in.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“That this was a good place, that you were a good doctor, and that if she followed the rules and dug in and worked hard, she’d come out of here better than she came in.”
“Is that right, Riley?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good,” he said, and looked to Danny. “And what did you say?”
“We just talked about how we got here, and I gave her some advice,” he said and winked at Riley.
“About me?” Kaminski asked.
“Didn’t come up,” Riley said, taking Danny out of the firing line.
“Three full words,” Kaminski said, and applauded. “That’s the longest sentence you’ve spoken since we began. See? Ten minutes in, and you’re already making progress.”
She forced a smile so he wouldn’t see her brain throwing up behind her eyes, thinking, HateYouHateYouHateYouHateYouSOmuch, over and over.
“Anyone else care to introduce yourself and tell Riley why you’re here?” Kaminski asked.
The short, barrel-chested man to Riley’s right crossed his heavily tatted arms without looking up. “Hector Ramirez, property damage.” There was something about his face and voice that reminded her of an actor but she couldn’t quite get there. Who the hell is it?
“You set a patrol car on fire while protesting outside an NPF station,” Kaminski said.
Hector shrugged. “Well, yeah, that’s how it got damaged.”
Danny Trejo, Riley thought. That’s who he reminds me of, except not as scary.
“Who wants to go next?” Kaminski asked.
“I’m Jim Sutton,” said an African American man seated on the other side of Hector. He couldn’t have been more than nineteen but he had the build of a football player. “Poli-sci major at University of Portland. Busted for defending myself against a police riot.”
“For assaulting a police officer,” Kaminski corrected.
“Matter of perspective,” Jim said.
“A matter of law,” Kaminski continued.
“Law’s also a matter of perspective.”
“Tell that to the courts.”
“Tell that to George Washington, Rosa Parks, and Anne Edward.”
Riley allowed a smile.
Kaminski sighed, made a notation on his tablet, then glanced up again. “Who’s next? Lauren?”
A slender woman with auburn hair on the other side of the circle looked up and smiled. “Lauren Miller, 23, picked up during a protest in San Francisco. It was my third arrest, but the other two had nothing to do with protests. One was a DUI when I was in college, and the other was for shoplifting during a bad part of my life when I didn’t have any money. With the whole three-strikes thing and all, I was looking at a long stay in County so I was one of the first to volunteer for the ARC program.” She looked to Kaminski and the smile broadened. “Doctor Kaminski has been very helpful in getting me straightened out.”
That’s not the way a patient smiles at her doctor, Riley thought, and looked to Kaminski, then to Lauren, and back again.
Oh, shit . . .
Then: Don’t judge. Anyone with three strikes against them would be tempted to do anything if it meant avoiding hardcore prison time.
Then: Maybe so, but I’m telling you, the eyes don’t match the smile. Something’s wrong.
Then: Cut it out. You could be wrong.
Then: I’m not, and you know I’m not.
Then: Yeah, I know.
By the time she turned her attention back to the room, she realized that she’d missed the last introductions and Kaminski had her back in his sights. “Everyone else is willing to talk about what brought them here, Riley. Won’t you do the same?”
“Yeah, I can tell you what brought me here,” Riley said. “A police van, two cops, and a pair of handcuffs.”
Some of the group laughed.
Kaminski visibly darkened. Note to self: he doesn’t like having his authority challenged.
“Then let me fill in some of the gaps,” he said, “which may help you understand why I’m here.” He fired up the tablet on his lap. “I always request a full history of a new patient’s background: medical history, allergic reactions—sulfa drugs, in your case—and any other supplementary records that can help me to help them. And I was particularly struck by what I found in your background.”
Riley leaned forward to see him scrolling through police records and files she’d never seen before, listing every place she’d lived, her family history, posts and photos from her social media accounts. “As I understand it, your parents started bringing you to protests when you were just twelve. That must have been terribly traumatic.”
“It was my idea, I asked them to take me.”
“Well, of course you did. They were your parents; you wanted to share in what they did. Since protesting mattered to them, it mattered to you. But no one at that age really understands what goes on at these things—the violence, the stress, the chaos, and the crowds. Your parents, on the other hand, knew exactly what they were bringing you into and should have known better, or at least waited until you were older before exposing you to this kind of psychological trauma, not to mention the risk of physical injury.”
Riley bit her lip and said nothing. He’s just trying to get a rise out of you.
“In every family, as we grow from childhood into adults, we either walk with the stream or against it. Your parents were anarchists who had been indoctrinated by extremist propaganda, so you floated downstream with their opinions, accepting their ideas without, I suspect, ever stopping to think, ‘Why am I doing this, and does it make sense?’”
“I’m not here to talk about my parents.”
“But that’s what therapy is all about. So much of who we are begins and ends with our families. So when your parents were killed—”
“I said—”
“—just a few days after you turned eighteen, still in high school, it must have been terribly traumatic. An event like that can shatter a person’s entire world. It’s only natural to want to pick up where they left off, continuing the cycle of violent antisocial behavior, or to see the event itself as a kind of metaphor. They were killed by a truck carrying goods to market, so it follows that your subconscious would interpret that as a symbol of corporate America and want to strike back. You see that, don’t you?”
You have no right to talk about my parents, she wanted to scream at him, you didn’t know them, you don’t give a shit about them, you’re just using them to get to me, so leave them the fuck alone. But yelling would just give Kaminski something he could use to drill into her head, so she declined to answer and crossed her arms tightly, welcoming the pain of her nails digging into her flesh because it kept her focused on refusing to give him access to even an inch of her feelings.
“Humans are like trees, Riley,” Kaminski continued. “We bend toward the nearest light source. Often we don’t even realize we’re doing it because that’s how we were raised. My job, my responsibility, is to help you understand where you began to bend in the wrong direction, toward impulses that pose a danger to yourself and others.
“You’re being given a second chance through this program because it’s not your fault that you were misled and exploited by the very people you trusted most: organizers, fellow protesters, and yes, your parents. Most of them do it unintentionally, because they’re playing out-of-date tapes in their heads, passing along old, debunked, second-generation misinformation. But for others, the subversion process is deliberate and dangerous, financed by foreign powers intent on tearing this country apart by encouraging extremist thought. They don’t want you to ask questions or think for yourself. They want you scared and unstable, because that makes you vulnerable to their propaganda. So to answer the question I asked you a moment earlier, you’re here because we want to help you return to a state of psychological stability, so you can become a productive member of society.”
He leaned forward, tuning his voice to what he probably thought was a soothing frequency but which only creeped her out further. “It’s very simple, Riley,” he said. “You’re here so I can help you.”
She wanted to say, Is that why Lauren’s smiling at you like she’s afraid of not smiling at you? but there was always the chance of a misfire. She had six months ahead of her to figure this place out. No reason to blow up the world on day one.
“All right then,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Who else has something they’d like to share with the group?”
* * *
When the session was over, Riley made her way down the hall to a solarium that had been converted into a fake garden. Fake grass. Fake trees. Fake flowers.
Real tears.
She sat on a green metal bench, staring out into the harsh afternoon light, and angrily batted away tears. Stop it, she thought. Not one more.
During the session, she’d wanted to tear Kaminski’s face off, but her mother’s words kept playing through her head. When people fuck with your mind—though she’d pronounced it fook—they do it because they want you to come at them right then and there, swinging wild, out of control, because they’re ready for you, and that gives them the upper hand. That’s why you have to wait. No matter how hard it is. Wait. Get the lay of the land. Find their strengths and weaknesses. Figure out who your allies are and who’s looking to sell you out. Don’t rush it. The time it takes is the time it takes. When you think you can’t wait a second longer, wait some more. Wait until they decide you’re not going to do anything about whatever they did to fook with you. Wait until they lower their guard and stop looking in your direction. That’s when you come at them with everything you’ve got, hard and fast. And once you start, no matter what happens, you don’t stop until you’ve absolutely and completely destroyed them.
If you look up revenge in the dictionary, she’d said, you won’t find anyone’s picture, just a really good description of what that word means. But if you look up who invented, patented, and trademarked revenge, it’s the Irish. So trust me on this one.
She was right. She was always right about that stuff.
But that didn’t make it any easier.
“Is it all right if I sit?”
She looked up to see a white-coated doctor standing beside her: heavyset, probably close to three hundred pounds, with thin white hair and a matching beard that framed a wide, pale face.
“Sure,” she said distantly, and started to stand. “I should go anyway—”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” Using a cane, he leveraged his massive frame onto the bench. “Julian Munroe, director of Inpatient Psychiatric Services,” he said, extending his hand.
She didn’t take it.
“Fair enough,” he said, withdrawing the hand. “It’s only noon and I imagine you’ve already had quite a day.”
“You’d know,” she threw back.
“Actually, I wouldn’t. Oh, sure, in prior years nothing happened here without my knowing about it, and trust me, there were times when it involved petty interpersonal squabbles that I would’ve much preferred to be out of the proverbial loop. But ever since our staff was split by the ARC program, I don’t hear much from the other side.
“I was sad to see it happen, you know. I was sure the others would refuse to take part in McGann’s operation despite the state board’s recommendation, because that would’ve forced him to go elsewhere. But there will always be people like Saruman, who’d rather lean into power than stand against it if the money’s right or if it means being given unchecked authority over other people, which for some people can be even more attractive and considerably more addictive. ‘Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ Lord Acton said that, but honestly, it might just as well have been Gandalf.”
Riley squinted against the sunlight to get a better look at his face. It was round and soft and there was a smile in the middle of it. Okay, this is different.
“Their willingness to lean into the dark side is what sets them apart from, say, the storm troopers in Star Wars,” he continued, “who don’t have much choice in which side of the Force they serve, they’re just doing what’s necessary to avoid getting shot or mind-choked by Vader. Which is what separates them from the Klingons, who do messy things to people because they like it.”
Riley smiled despite herself. “Are you an actual doctor or just a patient who thinks he’s a doctor?”
“Do you want to see some ID?”
“Yeah.”
He pulled out a wallet, and the paperwork matched the allegation.
“So why are we talking like this?” she asked as he slid the wallet back into his jacket.
“It’s my never-fails, always-works First Amendment free-speech methodology for talking about people in terms that everyone understands but won’t get me dragged into a courtroom. No one has ever said to a judge, ‘I’m suing because he called me a Klingon!’ They’d be laughed right out of court.”
He laced his fingers over the cane’s silver handle and turned toward her. “In a reluctant nod to what remains of my position, McGann is required to brief me on new admissions to the hospital, and I still have the authority to speak with ARC patients and consult on cases when requested, but unfortunately, that’s where my influence ends.”
“So you have read my file.”
“Nope.”
“Why not?”
“Because as someone who took part in his fair share of protests when I was thirty years younger and fifty pounds lighter, it’s my considered opinion that you have no business being here,” he said, his voice surprisingly hard. “You shouldn’t be here, because, as I have stated repeatedly to Mr. McGann, expressing an unpopular or controversial opinion is not a form of mental illness.”
“So would he be Darth Vader?”
“No. Emperor Palpatine, maybe. This whole ARC business started off as his idea. He sold it to the head of Homeland Security, who sold it to the attorney general. They gave him money and a mandate to find someone on the mental health side to take his ideas and make them work. That led him to Kaminski, and the two of them partnered up to work out the details of the program. Once that was done, they took this place over as proof of concept, then added more facilities around the country as they fleshed out the program.”
“You said, ‘proof of concept.’ What concept are they proving?”
Julian started to answer, then pulled back whatever he was about to say. “I have my suspicions about where this is all going, but for now that’s all they are. The only thing I know for sure is that McGann and Kaminski are seriously invested in making this work, which is a pretty clear indication that there must be something bigger lined up down the road.”
“If they’re in charge of the ARC program, and it started here, why does the sign out front say ARC center number fourteen?”
“Moving the numbers around is how they obscure the chain of command. Everyone in Chicago is protesting ARC center number one because they think that’s the epicenter for this wrongheaded conflation of civil protests and mental illness. Meanwhile, McGann gets to sit here in the middle of his web without anyone bothering him.”
“So, Shelob the spider?”
“Yes. He wants to be Palpatine, but for now he’s just a spider with a pituitary condition.”
“Are you sure you’re not worried, talking like this?”
He shrugged. “At my age there’s not much they can do to me. Besides, they know that if they get too much in my face, it’ll give Dr. Kim the grounds he needs to trigger all kinds of administrative reviews, and that’s the last thing McGann wants.”
“So are you Obi-Wan or Dumbledore in this story?”
He grinned. “I suppose we’ll have to see how it ends.”
“What about Biedermann? Who’s she in all this?”
“I don’t know,” he said, and his voice grew soft. “She puzzles me. I know she’s enthusiastic about her work, but beyond that . . . I don’t know.”
“And Kaminski? What story does he fit into?”
He leaned back against the bench, looking around for the first time to make sure no one was near enough to hear. “Seeing you leave his group therapy session looking distressed is why I sought you out. Some people get into psychiatry because they want to help people. Others do it because they enjoy climbing inside someone’s head and taking it for a spin, even if that means driving it off a cliff. Especially if that’s what it means. Kaminski enjoys having power over other people. He’s good at what he does; he just has a disturbing tendency to do it the wrong way, for the wrong reasons, which is one of several reasons I was going to terminate his contract. But as it turned out, Kaminski’s frivolous attitude toward ethical matters is the very reason McGann partnered up with him and gave him the keys to the kingdom.
“So to answer your question, I’d compare Kaminski to Snape for attitude, but that’s where it ends, because as we know from the last Harry Potter book, Snape had something resembling a heart. If you look into Kaminski’s eyes, all you see are little machines that can’t wait to chew through your skull to whatever’s on the other side. So be careful what you say around him, what you bring into the therapy room, and what you take with you when you leave. If you let him start crawling around inside your head, you’ll never get him back out again.
“I’m telling you this for the same reason I told some of the others: you were brought here under unethical circumstances, and as far as I’m concerned, that supersedes any problems I might normally have when discussing certain issues and individuals. It’s far more important to make sure you have the information needed to cope with what’s going on here, because in a place like this, knowledge is power.”
Looking suddenly tired, Julian glanced at his watch, sighed, then pulled himself to his feet slowly and with effort. “Gets a little harder every day,” he said, red in the face. “I’d planned to retire this year, spend some time traveling, but I’m not about to leave while all this is going on.”
He turned to face her, leaning on his cane. “As I said, I still have some privileges and minor influence here, which includes doing grand rounds in your ward every Friday afternoon. If you should find yourself in a bad place but not in a position to speak frankly when I come to see you, just say, ‘Good morning, Dr. Munroe.’ Just like that.” Then he started toward the door.
“If you make your rounds on Friday afternoons, won’t the other doctors think it’s strange that I say good morning?”
He smiled over his shoulder at her. “It’s a mental hospital,” he said. “Work it out.”
* * *
The wing of the building set aside for ARC patients was on the north side of the hospital, with the regular patients in the south and east wings. So Riley decided to loop through the south wing on her way back to her room from the solarium to continue familiarizing herself with the layout. The ARC rooms were pretty secure, but she hoped there might be vulnerabilities in the other wards she could exploit when the opportunity arose.
As she started down the hallway, which had been painted a soft robin’s-egg blue, she stopped at the sound of a strange noise. It sounded like hurrrrrrrr. She assumed it was coming from the air conditioning building one floor down, but there was something not quite right about it, and she paused in case it came again.
Hurrrrrrrr.
Looking around to make sure she was alone, Riley followed the sound to the open door of one of the rooms and peeked inside. A man dressed in shapeless black pants and a worn black sweatshirt was lying flat on the bed, arms restrained by leather cuffs attached to metal guardrails on either side. His body was that of a young man, tall and massively built, but what she could see of his face was gaunt, his cheeks hollow, as though the skin had been stretched tight to cover his skull. He was staring straight up at the ceiling past a cascade of dark hair, and the light from the window cast such deep shadows over his sunken eyes that it took her a moment to realize he even had them.
Then he slowly turned his head, eyes lolling to the side until his gaze met her own.
“Hurrrrrrrr . . .”
Don’t worry, you’ll know him when you see him.
A lifetime ago, Riley had watched a documentary about mental patients who believed they were someone famous or important: the president, the queen of England, Christ, Sherlock Holmes, Michael Jackson, or in this case—
“Hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . .”
—Frankenstein.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
Riley turned, startled to find a nurse standing behind her. “Common areas are shared by all patients, but the ward rooms on this side of the hospital are off-limits to ARC patients.”
“Sorry,” Riley said, backing away from the door to let her pass. “I got lost. First day here.”
The nurse went to the figure in black, checked his temperature and blood pressure, and loosened the restraints. “We were just getting him calmed down,” she said impatiently. “There’s been a lot of construction going on outside, and the noise upsets him. Strangers also upset him, so if you don’t mind, please head back to your wing before I call an orderly.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Riley said. As she started to turn away, she saw that his eyes were still locked on hers. Dark. Dead. But behind them, the slightest flicker of vulnerable curiosity.
“See you around,” she called to him with a smile.
“Hurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr . . .”