Chapter 50
D r. Beck is alone at the nurses’ station, writing in Will’s chart. When he sees me approaching, he frowns. “I’m so sorry you had to experience that, Amy,” he says.
“Yeah,” I mumble.
“It’s been an uncharacteristically difficult night.” His shoulders sag. “Please don’t think it’s always like this. I don’t want this to sour you on the field of psychiatry.”
I manage a halfhearted smile. “I wasn’t going to do psychiatry anyway, remember?”
Dr. Beck taps the pen against his page. “Yes, that’s right. It was your colleague, Cameron, who was the one feigning interest.”
“Dr. Beck.” I sit down beside him at the nurses’ station. “When Cameron left that message on your machine, how did he sound?”
“I told you. He sounded choked up. I certainly believed he had a family emergency.” He arches an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”
“Did he sound scared?”
Dr. Beck considers my question for a moment. His eyes cloud over as he looks at Will’s closed door, then back at my face. “Amy,” he says quietly. “Have you ever heard of a psychiatric syndrome called folie à deux?”
“Um… no…”
“It’s also called a shared psychotic disorder,” he says. “Basically, it’s a delusional belief, sometimes even involving hallucinations, that are shared by two people. For example, if a married couple both believed that their dog could speak English.”
I blink at him. “Oh, I don’t think—”
“Will has unfortunately managed to convince you that certain delusions of his were true,” Dr. Beck says. “But if you think about it, you will realize that nothing he believed was rational. He was using these delusions to justify insignificant events, and ultimately, his own violent behavior.”
I look down at my hands. “Oh.”
“I’m afraid Will’s psychosis is much worse than what my colleague from the day shift reported to me,” he says. “He should really be transferred to a much more secure facility, possibly even a criminal facility given our suspicions about what he did to Mary Cummings.”
“I… I see.”
Dr. Beck reaches out and puts a hand on my shoulder. “The night is almost over. Please just try to get some sleep, and this will all get taken care of. Don’t worry about Will. He will get the psychiatric treatment he needs, whether he likes it or not.”
With those words of wisdom, he closes the chart labeled SCHOENFELD and sticks it back up on the rack. Then he goes back to his office.
I wonder how he would feel if I asked him if I could follow him and hide in the corner of his office for the rest of the night.
But instead, I am left alone at the nurses’ station. Jade has gone back to her room, Ramona is off somewhere, and Will is in a drugged slumber. Now it’s just me. And the crazy man who has quite possibly been wandering the halls ever since the power outage.
Damon Sawyer.
I close my eyes, remembering the sounds I heard from within that room when I first arrived.
Those awful guttural noises. Or when Sawyer was throwing himself at the door, attempting to break it down.
Or when he pleaded with me to let him out.
Although the scariest thing of all was the silence.
The man somehow got out of his wrist restraints.
And now he may have escaped the room entirely.
Except where is he?
I had thought Damon Sawyer’s chart had been removed from the nurses’ station, but now I realize that it’s just been pushed into the corner.
There was no reason to look at it when I first got here, because I did not believe I would be seeing him.
But now it’s the only way to know what I’m up against.
I need to know what this man did to put him in here. I need to know what he’s capable of. I need to be able to defend myself, especially now that Will is incapacitated.
I grab the chart, my hands shaking so much that I almost drop it.
I pull the cover open, turning to the emergency room notes.
Just like in all the other charts, he’s got a note from his intake.
It was written the night he came in and details the events that led to his incarceration here, as well as his mental health history.
As I start reading, a sick feeling comes over me. Oh my God. I wish I had read this from the beginning.
This changes absolutely everything.