Chapter 3
ASHLEY
Annie: Babe, I don’t feel good about this job. I think I made a mistake coming here.
Bryan: Really? But the pay increase…
Annie: I know. I know. But I’m starting to think the money is to cover up something awful. Some of these patients…they don’t belong here. They’re not crazy.
Bryan: Crazy is not nice, babe, they’re “patients with mental illness”
Annie: Shut up. This is serious. I have a really bad feeling about this place.
Bryan: Let’s talk tonight. Love you, baby.
“ N urse Annette, your shift started five minutes ago,” the stern-faced matron snapped as my favorite nurse rushed into the common room looking troubled.
I placed down my Uno cards—I’d been playing with one of the more lucid patients, a teenage guy called Jean-Luc who barely spoke a word of English.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” the young nurse replied, smoothing her already-perfect hair. “Won’t happen again.”
“Layne,” my card-playing partner said in his heavily accented voice, “ c'est ton tour. ”
My gaze swung back to Jean-Luc, and I blinked my confusion. He repeated himself, gesturing to my cards face down on the table, and I understood the sentiment. It was my turn.
He arched a brow, gesturing my cards again. “ Ne m'oblige pas à jouer avec ces autres salopards. La moitié d’entre eux ne connaissent même pas leur propre nom. ”
I knew very, very little French, and the speed at which he spoke was a bit too fast for me. So I just sighed and picked up my cards once more. “All right, fine. Pick up four.” I slapped down the +4 card with a smirk. “Change to blue.”
Jean-Luc grinned. “ Non. Prenez-en huit. ” He slapped down a matching card, and I didn’t need Google translate to tell me that I was picking up eight cards.
Damn it.
My focus wasn’t on the game, and after picking up eight extra cards, I barely stood a chance. Jean-Luc won in a matter of minutes, and I sighed as I tossed my remaining cards onto the deck.
“ Rejouer? ” he asked, shuffling the cards between his steady hands.
I already knew that one. “No, thanks. Maybe later?”
He shrugged and sighed, setting the cards back down on the table and grabbing his book.
I gave him a small smile, then got out of my seat to look for Nurse Annette.
I’d been working so hard to be sane while speaking with the staff, and I had a feeling she was more receptive than the rest. Now, more than ever before, I needed to get a message through to Nate.
He was the only one who could clear up all the conflicting questions swirling in my head, but only if he showed up.
To my disappointment, though, the young nurse was nowhere to be seen. There were two uniformed staff in the room, speaking with other patients or helping them with…fuck knows what. But Nurse Annette was gone.
Shit.
“Okay, that’s lunchtime,” the head nurse called out, reentering the room. “Come on now, everyone make your way to the dining room.”
With a deflated sigh, I did as we were told, starting to make my way out of the common room along with a dozen or so fellow patients. One—a particularly cranky older woman named Cheryl—seemed unwilling to leave her puzzle unfinished.
“No!” she protested when one of the staff gently tried to move her.
“No! Every time I leave my puzzle, someone takes a piece! I know it. I counted them! Someone takes one piece every single time I leave. I won’t go.
I don’t care. You can’t make me!” What started as a firm refusal quickly escalated into a full-on scuffle, and I watched, along with the other patients, as orderlies were called in and the puzzle table was kicked over as they physically restrained Cheryl and injected her with a sedative.
Then, all of a sudden, it was over. Cheryl went limp, and two bulky staff carried her out of the room while a shaken nurse knelt to start picking up the puzzle pieces. Her hand dipped into her pocket, and I realized she’d just pocketed a piece.
“Point taken,” one of the other patients muttered. “They can and will make us do anything they fucking want.”
“What are you all doing?” the matron barked, returning to the common room. “I said lunchtime!”
Fucking hell. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen a patient get sedated—hell, it’d happened to me—but it was the first for something so…minor. If I wanted any hope of getting a message out to Nate, I really needed to be careful. I couldn’t do shit if I was a drooling mess strapped to my bed.
Tucking my head down, I dutifully made my way to the dining hall and choked down the awful food—lukewarm mashed potatoes with zero salt and a ground-beef mix—with my spoon.
God forbid they feed us anything that required a knife or fork to eat.
Nope, breakfast, lunch, and dinner were all spoon foods only.
Nurse Annette wasn’t at lunch. Neither was the mysterious, dark-haired woman in the wheelchair… Abby . The frustration was so much that it made my skin itch, but every three seconds, I had to remind myself not to do anything to jeopardize my perceived sanity.
It was fucking hard. I wanted to scream and fight and demand answers. But as I’d already learned, that would just result in the sharp jab of a needle and smothering darkness of sedation. That got me nowhere, so for now I needed to bide my time and…hope.
Later in the day, I let my impatience get the better of me as a nurse named Kelsey handed out the medication in tiny paper cups. “Nurse Kelsey, I wondered if the doctor has managed to contact my stepbrother yet?” I asked in my calmest voice possible.
The woman gave a small headshake. “I don’t know, I’m sorry. You can ask the doctor in your session tomorrow, though.”
I stifled a frustrated sigh and nodded. “Okay, sure. Thanks. Um, is Nurse Annette working today?”
“Yes, she is. I think she’s busy in another area of the facility. Is there something you needed?” Kelsey tipped her head, her sharp gaze assessing me.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if she could try calling Nate for me, but Kelsey struck me as a strict rule-follower. She would decline, then report my request, and I hated to think what would happen after that.
“Nope, nothing urgent. I just wanted to ask her for a reading recommendation.”
“Oh, well, I can help with that.” Kelsey crossed to the pathetic little bookshelf stuffed with ragged, falling-apart books.
She selected one and returned it to me with a satisfied smile.
“This is my favorite.” She placed it down on the table where I sat, then moved onto the next patient without waiting for my response.
Thank fuck.
“An autobiography written by Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex,” I read aloud, wrinkling my nose. “I’d rather eat my own toenails.” But it also confirmed my suspicion that Kelsey was not the rule-breaker I needed.
Infuriatingly, it was another two days before I managed to speak with Nurse Annette in private, and I was so desperate, I was probably looking crazy enough to belong.
“How are you feeling today, Ashley?” she asked when I approached her at the nurse’s station beside the medicine counter. “You look well.”
I nodded with a forced smile. “I’m feeling well, thank you. I wondered if there was any word from my stepbrother? Has the doctor contacted him?”
Annette’s smile faltered. “Uh…you really need to ask your doctor directly. He’s the only one who can contact family members for you and?—”
“I don’t believe he’s even tried,” I confessed in a pained whisper, imploring her with my eyes. “Nate wouldn’t just leave me here if he knew… Please, Annette, can you please try again?”
I had to cling to that belief, because it was the only thing keeping me going. Nate wouldn’t do that. Right?
The nurse bit her lip, and hope sparked fresh in my chest. She was thinking about it.
“Please,” I whispered again. “Just call and tell him where I am. Tell him that I need to see him. That’s all.
Surely that’s allowed, right? I’m not a prisoner here, I’m a patient .
So surely I’m permitted contact with my family?
After all, he’s my medical power of attorney, he needs to know what’s going on, right? ”
Her gaze darted around, like she was checking if we were alone. That was good.
“Shouldn’t he already know you’re here?” she asked in a small voice, the uncertainty causing a small tremble.
I nodded, my eyes wide. “Exactly. So what’s the harm? If he already knows, then you’re not telling him anything new. But if he doesn’t know…then shouldn’t that prove I’m not meant to be here?”
I was walking on thin ice here. Nothing made an uncooperative patient in a psychiatric facility sound more insane, than them insisting they weren’t crazy. That they didn’t belong in care.
But…I don’t belong here!
Nurse Annette licked her lips, then turned to her computer and typed in a few keystrokes. Her access code, most likely? She clicked and searched and typed for a few more moments before sucking a long inhale and pulling out her cellphone from her pocket.
“If I get fired for this…” she murmured, shaking her head, “then I guess I was right about this place all along. Tell me if anyone is coming?”
“Yes! Yes absolutely. Thank you.” Fucking hell, was I about to start crying? Pull it together, Ashley! Yet tears burned at my eyes while I waited with bated breath for her to dial Nate’s number, presumably from my medical file on the screen.
Wait. Was it even Nate’s number? Would it be a fake number? I sure as shit hadn’t memorized it, so had no clue if the number she called was correct.
She had the phone to her ear, but mentally, I played out the rings. Too many. Why wasn’t he answering? Then her posture changed. “Voicemail,” she said in a deflated whisper. “Do you want?—”
“Yes,” I quickly answered. “Please leave a message. Just tell him where I am. Please.”
Annette gave me a nod, her eyes full of worry as she waited for the beep.
“Hi, Mr. Essex, this is Annette Woodward calling from Mallard Psychiatric Hospital, Great Falls, Montana. Uh, I’m just calling on behalf of a patient here, Miss Ashley Layne.
She has you listed as her next of kin and medical power of attorney, and she— shit .
It cut out, I’m sorry. Do you want me to try again? ”
Footsteps echoing on the hard floors alerted me to the fact our time was up, though, and I quickly shook my head. “No, that was perfect. That’s enough. Thank you, Annette.” Then I hastily hauled ass back to my room before anyone could see me crying in the halls.
It was enough, wasn’t it?
She gave the name of the hospital, the location, and my name. It had to be enough. But that assumed that, for one thing, it was Nate’s number on my file. And if it was, then he needed to actually listen to his voicemails.
Shit. No one listened to voicemails from unknown numbers these days!
“Please,” I whispered to the universe as I closed myself away in my room, tears streaming down my face. “Please, Nate. Listen to your fucking voicemails.” Because I doubted I’d be able to convince any of the nurses to do that again if this failed.