Chapter Two
Tuesday
By the time I pulled haphazardly into my designated space in my complex’s parking garage, the sun was down.
I’d done some shopping. A bottle of cheap vodka and the white paper bag holding my prescription now joined Joanie and the fidget toys in the filing box.
Everything I needed to throw an epic pity party.
I wasn’t normally one to sit around and feel sorry for myself.
I was a “go-getter.” Look where that got me.
I was drowning in student loans and credit card debt.
I wasn’t just in the red—I was completely and financially fucked.
The position at Braith Psychiatry had been my ticket to digging myself out of the hole I’d gotten myself into, for a career I flubbed out of the gate.
Getting out of the car with the box tucked under my arm, I walked to the service elevator and stabbed the call button with no response.
Out of order. Of fucking course.
I pulled the vodka bottle from the box and took a shaky swig before beginning the trek up seven flights of stairs to my studio. It wasn’t the fact that I was in heels that had me swearing bitterly beneath my breath, but the increased chance of running into my landlady.
As my shit luck would have it today, Mrs. Zieliński’s door opened the instant I stepped onto her floor. The old woman came shuffling out in a mint green housecoat, with her silver hair up in yellow foam rollers that she was never seen without.
I stashed the vodka bottle back in the box. “Mrs. Zieliński, hi!”
“Don’t ‘hi’ me,” she snapped in her faint Polish accent. “I’m tired of your excuses. Pay what you owe, or you’re out by the end of the month.”
I nearly choked, but covered it up by clearing my throat with the most professional I-totally-have-my-shit-together smile I could muster. “That’s three months’ worth of back payment. I need more time, Mrs. Zieliński.”
“I thought doctors were supposed to be rich.”
My head throbbed as anxiety bubbled up my throat. Just keep smiling. Then you can go upstairs, take your meds and pretend like today didn’t happen.
“I’m expecting another paycheck in a week. It will be enough to cover a month’s worth of rent.” Also, my last paycheck, which I didn’t say out loud. It was smart to leave that detail out for now.
“End of the month. No more excuses.” She peered into the box in my arms, glaring at the vodka bottle and fidgets. “Maybe if your generation spent less money on toys and booze.”
Without another word, she turned on her heel and slammed her apartment door behind her.
I glared at the brass plate affixed to her door, reading MANAGEMENT. This day just kept getting worse.
Turning toward the stairs, I nearly dropped my box. “Sonofafuck!”
There she was again, Lauren Hawkins, clutching the banister with her tearful eyes, boring into me.
My spiraling mind grappled for the logical. Hallucinations were a common side of stress and other intense emotions, sleep deprivation, alcohol and psychoactive drugs—all of which I was experiencing.
Taking a deep inhale, I did as I instructed my patients when hallucinations set in. “Close your eyes… Count to three. One. Two. Three.”
When I opened my eyes, she was still there. With trembling hands, I took another drink of the vodka. Then another… until the bottle was mostly empty. “Ghosts aren’t real,” I drunkenly challenged the visage of my dead patient. “You’re just a manifestation of my own guilt.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Help us, Dr. Beckett.”
Close your eyes, Tuesday. Deep breath. She’s not really there.
“One. Two. Three.”
One. Two. Three.
One. Two. Three.
This time, she was gone.
The alcohol burning in my belly fueled the rest of my trudge up to my studio. I paused before entering to stare at the large orange sticker planted firmly in the center of the door.
FINAL NOTICE.
Kicking off the heels I wore to make myself taller in a workplace filled with male doctors looking down on me, I collapsed onto my couch and unloaded the contents of the filing box on my coffee table.
I placed my potted cactus next to the mostly empty vodka bottle and the paper prescription bag I’d picked up from the pharmacy.
“Today was really fucked, Joanie,” I told the plant. But it wasn’t just today. My whole life has always been pretty screwed up.
I’d gotten it into my head that so long as I finished my residency and bagged a job, everything would be okay. Most of my peers had trust funds or, in the very least, a family to help make ends meet.
I had neither.
My childhood had been spent in a trailer park with my father, who’d always been bitter about getting saddled with me after my mom ran out on us. But I still managed to get through the rest of high school and graduated top of my class. Got into a good college, top of my class again.
Med school had cost me everything. A potential lifetime of debt. The entirety of my twenties. Never had time for real friends outside of school or work.
The position at Braith Psychiatry was supposed to be a lifeline.
What a joke.
All that place had done was leave me with more unpaid bills, the death of Lauren Hawkins on my conscience, and a substance problem.
“I have to get my shit together, Joanie,” I groaned to my plant, nursing what was left of the vodka. I paused, pretending as though she was giving me advice. “Yes, you’re right. I’ll start tomorrow. Tonight, we drink.”
I lifted the bottle in a toast. "To me and my stupid ambition!"
First, I poured a splash of vodka into Joanie. Then I drained the last of the alcohol, washing down a handful of pills—I didn’t look to see how many I took. Too drunk to care.
Darkness took me without mercy.
Next thing I knew, I was standing inside a small room, furnished with only a porcelain toilet and a metal bedframe pushed against the far concrete wall.
On the filthy mattress was a man in a straitjacket, curled up in a fetal position.
My chest squeezed when he lifted his head to look at me, black as death hair falling in pieces over his steely gaze.
He was the amalgamation of sex and violence, with a glimmer of intelligence embedded in the way his cunning eyes regarded me. If this weren’t a dream, I’d trust that this man was locked up for good reason.
“What are you?” His voice was a shock to my system—a hellishly deep baritone wrapped in smoky grit.
“Tuesday.”
The mattress springs creaked as he got off the bed and slowly stood to his full height.
Goddamn, he was tall, with broad shoulders and a handsome face made intimidating by the way shadows painted his sharp features.
“I didn’t ask who you are,” he growled, his glare darkening. “I asked what you are.”
The way he stalked toward me, with a predatory look in his eye, had me shivering against the cold wall. Don’t be afraid, it’s just a dream.
I didn’t move, I couldn’t. It was that classic phenomenon where you were suddenly paralyzed when the big bad monster had you cornered. Even if I could move, there was nowhere to run. I was trapped in this cell with an asylum inmate.
His arms were bound, but he still managed to trap me in the corner of the room, the top of his head flush with the wall, caging me in with his body.
“Can’t remember the last time I dreamed up something as pretty as you. I only dream in nightmares. Is that what you are? A pretty little nightmare?”
His cavernous rasp had me shivering against the wall where he had me pinned. “I–I’m a doctor.”
The man’s eyes lit up. “Well, lucky fucking me, I’m overdue for a physical.”
My blood heated in my veins as I stared straight up into his manic grin. Why were his teeth so sharp? By the dark look on his face, he was thinking of taking a bite out of me.
“I’m not that kind of doctor. I’m a psychiatrist. I help people like you.”
His eyes narrowed. “Like me? Oh, little nightmare, you’ve never met anyone like me. There’s no fixing what’s wrong with me.”
He was trying to scare me. And he did, a little. But in a way that was almost… fun.
After all, he was just a dream.
“You’re not real…” I muttered more to myself than to him.
His unhinged grin stretched wider as he pushed his pelvis tighter against me, pinning me to the wall. Fuck. His erection was so hard it was almost painful with the way it jabbed into my lower belly.
“Feel real enough for you, Doc?” he rasped.
My head bobbed, heat rushing between my legs, and instinctively, my thighs squeezed together in a futile attempt to sate the ache stirring in my core.
His grin twitched, and his nostrils flared as if he could smell my arousal soaking my panties. “Get me out of this jacket,” he demanded.
My mouth went dry as I dropped my attention to his lanky torso bound in leather straps, keeping his arms folded tightly over his chest.
Every instinct in my body told me not to let him out of his restraints. Even if this was a dream, it could turn into a nightmare in a snap.
“What are you going to do to me if I let you out?”
“I’m going to play with you until you break, Doc.”
“What if I’m already broken?”
His gaze roved down the length of my body. “You don’t look broken. What’s wrong with you?”
“I… I think I killed someone.”
He cocked his head, ink-black hair falling over his gleaming eyes. “Then you’re right where you belong. Saint Bart’s, home for the criminally insane.”
A loud banging brutally ripped me out of my sleep, and I bolted up from my couch.
The empty glass bottle and empty pill container fell to the floor and rolled under the coffee table as I put my feet on the cold hardwood and tried to steady my rapid pulse.
Another knock. Someone was at the door.
I got to my feet, stumbling for a moment. Fuck. It was like I’d been asleep for days. The sunlight bleeding through my drawn window curtains blinded me, and the next knock on my door drilled into my head like a railspike.
I opened the door to find no one in sight. The hallway was empty. Whoever it was, they’d left an envelope on my welcome mat. Odd. The mail was always delivered to the cluster of mailboxes in the lobby. Was it Mrs. Zieliński with another eviction notice?
Picking up the letter, I collapsed onto the couch to open it. Inside was a handwritten letter on paper yellowed with age.
Dear Dr. Tuesday Beckett,
We have reviewed your resume and would like to formally offer you a position at Saint Bartholomew’s Center for the Criminally Insane. This is a live-in institute, and our salaries are comparable and negotiable.
We are in desperate need of physicians, and for a doctor of your caliber, we believe you would be right at home here at Saint Bartholomew’s.
Below you will find our formal offer. Please respond immediately.
Regards,
Dr. Malcolm Rook,
Facility Medical Director
After I read the letter, I scanned it again. Then once more for good measure. The craziest thing wasn’t that I was being offered a position that I never applied for—or that this Dr. Rook seemed to think that I was a physician with prestige—but rather, his one particular line in the letter.
We believe you would be right at home here at Saint Bartholomew’s.
My heart hammered in my throat.
Those words. They were in a different order, but I’d heard them before. In my dream.
I could sit here all day and pore over my old textbooks from the Oneirology course I’d taken in school. I knew I wouldn’t find answers there.
Steeling myself, I reached for my cell phone and dialed the number printed below Dr. Malcolm Rook’s name.
It rang three times, and with each ring, I counted, breathing in, then out.
One. Two. Three.
One. Two. Three.
Click.
"This is Dr. Rook’s office.”
“Hello, this is Dr. Tuesday Beckett.”