Chapter 34
W ill’s hand is on my mouth, nearly cutting off my air.
I wonder how long he’s been waiting for me in this room. The best I can say is he doesn’t seem to have a weapon. And when his hazel eyes meet mine through his glasses, there’s no malice there. If anything, he looks just as scared as I do.
“Please don’t scream,” he says. “I just need to talk to you.”
I stare at him, tempted to try to bite his fingers keeping pressure on my lips.
Finally, I nod my head. As he pulls his shaky hand off my mouth, I eye the doorway, wondering how long it would take me to get there from where I’m standing.
But Will is bigger and faster than I am—he could stop me if he wanted to.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “But I needed to talk to you. In private.”
“Okay…”
He glances at the closed door, then back at my face. “I saw the blood on the floor too.”
That is the last thing I expected him to say. “What?”
“It was there .” A deep crease settles between his eyebrows. “It happened just like you told Dr. Beck. The blood leaked out from under the door, and I could hear Miguel making sounds like he was… I don’t know… like he was dying or something. Choking to death. Like someone cut his throat.”
All notions of running out of the room fly from my head. I sink onto the sofa, my thoughts running a mile a minute. “So what happened to the blood then?”
“That nurse Ramona got rid of it.”
I suck in a breath. “ What ?”
“She came and cleaned it all up while you were grabbing Dr. Beck,” he says. “I saw her do it. She came out real quick as soon as you left, cleaned up the blood, and then she was gone before you got back and Dr. Beck could see it.”
My head is spinning. “Why would she do something like that?”
Will starts pacing across the room. “I don’t know. I don’t know what the hell is going on here tonight. Honestly, I’m getting kind of freaked out.”
I don’t know what to think right now. It would be one thing if Cameron were here and told me he saw the blood.
But what am I supposed to think when the only person who saw what I saw is a guy with paranoid schizophrenia who hasn’t been taking his medications?
And right now, Will is looking a lot more like the person that was described in his emergency room notes.
His hair is sticking up, and his hazel eyes look wild.
He stops pacing and stares at me. “You don’t believe me.”
I play with the drawstring of my scrubs. It’s time to tell him the truth. “I know you haven’t been taking your medications. I found them hidden in your copy of The World According to Garp .”
He drops his eyes. “Oh.”
“So, you know, it’s kind of hard to take what you’re saying at face value.”
He nods slowly. “Okay, I can see why you would feel that way. But honestly, I don’t think I need those medications. The voices… they got better on their own. It must’ve been… you know, one of those things.”
“One of those things ?”
“Look.” He grits his teeth. “I wanted to take the medications, okay? I took them in the emergency room, but… you really feel shitty on them. I couldn’t handle it. The side effects…”
I don’t know what to say to that.
“I saw that blood,” he insists. “I didn’t hallucinate the blood, and neither did you. It was there. I mean, even if you don’t trust me, why don’t you trust yourself ?”
Will is looking at me intently, searching my face for answers. He doesn’t understand, and I’m not about to explain to him anything about my history.
“I’m just…” I rub my temples with my fingertips. “I’m tired. I don’t know what I’m thinking anymore.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something else you might not have thought about.” He settles down on the sofa beside me. “That other med student—what was his name? Carter?”
“Cameron…”
“Right.” He drops his voice a notch. “I heard him screaming.”
“ What ?”
“Right.” His eyes dart over to the door, a fearful expression on his face. “And it was hours ago.”
“But… where?”
“I heard it from my room,” he says. “And then here’s the really crazy part…” He takes a deep breath. “When I came out to the hall to see what was going on, I think I saw the door to Seclusion One slamming shut.”
I feel like somebody just punched me in the gut. “What? Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure,” he admits. “I said I think I saw it. It all happened really fast. But if the door to that room was open, then…”
He doesn’t have to complete the thought. If the door to Seclusion One was open, then that means Damon Sawyer got out. And I can’t even wrap my head around that possibility, considering how dangerous Dr. Beck warned us he was.
“I was hoping I imagined the whole thing,” Will says. “But then when he didn’t show up to that whole deal with Miguel, I got worried that something happened to him.”
I lean back against the couch, trying to calm my racing thoughts. “Cameron went home. He had a family emergency.”
“He told you that?”
“No. He left a message on Dr. Beck’s voicemail.”
Will arches an eyebrow. “And do you think Cameron is the kind of person who would do that? Just leave a voicemail message and take off?”
Maybe. If something spooked him…
“Let me try to call him,” I say. I leap off the couch and cross the room to get to the landline in the corner of the room.
Of course, I don’t know Cameron’s number by heart, but thankfully, I didn’t delete him from my phone in anger, although I was sorely tempted.
I bring up his number on the screen, and I pick up the receiver.
There’s no dial tone.
Will is sitting on the couch, watching me, his expression neutral. “The phones aren’t working,” I report.
“Yes,” he says. “I know. They stopped working when the power went out.”
Damn Miguel—why did he have to urinate on that light socket?
“Something is going on here,” Will says. “Don’t you think so?”
I have to admit, he’s building a very strong case.
But I have to remember that I am talking to a man with paranoid schizophrenia.
A man who has been hearing voices telling him to do terrible things, and he has decided it wasn’t necessary for him to take his medications.
Of course he’s going to think something suspicious is going on.
That’s part of his disease. But there’s some kind of rational explanation for everything. There’s got to be.
“I need to talk to Cameron.” I check my phone screen. Naturally, there’s no service.
“The only way you’re going to get any service on your phone is if you leave the unit,” Will points out.
He’s right. If I pop out for a minute, I can call Cameron and confirm that he’s fine and this is all just craziness.
“Fine,” I say.
Will follows me out of the staff lounge, over to the locked door to Ward D.
The hallway is so dark over here that the glowing green light of the keypad looks almost unearthly.
I don’t need to check the code, because I know it by heart.
347244. I’ve been reciting it to myself all night in case I need to get out of here.
“What are you waiting for?” Will says.
He’s standing behind me, shifting his weight between his feet, which are covered in thick white socks, no shoes. His hands are opening and closing repeatedly. He looks like he can’t stop moving.
It hits me that maybe this is all a trick on Will’s part. What if he came to me and told me all that stuff just to get me to open the door to Ward D? Because he wants out, and he knows I’m the only one stupid enough to open the door.
But no, I don’t think that’s what it is. Will brought up some really good points. And anyway, he’s here voluntarily. He was the one who came to the emergency room telling them he was hearing the voices. If he didn’t want to be here, he didn’t have to come.
I take a deep breath and punch the code into the keypad.