Chapter Eight
Tuesday
“Does she know yet?” The unfamiliar voice that spoke sounded like he had swollen adenoids, his tone so nasally that it pulled me back into consciousness.
“No, we haven’t reached that part of her onboarding yet,” Rook answered.
I hadn’t moved or opened my eyes. They didn’t know I was awake yet.
“Looks too delicate, this one, sir. Won’t handle the stuff,” the man with the warped voice wheezed with a mucus-filled cough. “She’ll break, like the weak souls.”
Weak soul?
I resisted the urge to react. Even a twitch would alert them that I was awake, and they’d stop their conversation.
Who was the person speaking? How dare he call me a weak soul? And what did they mean by “won’t handle the stuff?” What stuff were they referring to?
The easy explanation was that they had trouble keeping physicians on their staff. Not shocking, considering this facility was an archaic pit, just begging for an inspection. It was a wonder they hadn’t been reported yet.
OSHA would have a field day with this one.
“Nonsense. She’s desperate. That’s exactly what we need.”
“She’s a modern doctor, this one,” the stranger wheezed. “Won’t like how we do things.”
“It doesn’t matter if she likes it,” Rook said with indifference. “She’ll bend to our ways. You know I have my methods, Fredrick.”
There were no specifics with what they were referring to, but the conversation they were having when they thought I wasn’t listening filled me with prickling unease.
“And if your methods don’t work…” The man with the unfortunate voice—Fredrick—carried closer, a plume of rancid breath making me bristle. “Can I have her? She’ll look so pretty all in pieces—ack!”
The sound of skin striking skin had me flinching. Rook had hit Fredrick. Normally, I wouldn’t stand for abuse in the workplace, especially since Fredrick clearly wasn’t mentally well… Yet, after the sick comment he made about me, I couldn’t help reveling in his grunt of pain.
“If you put your filthy mutant hands on her, you’ll be the one in pieces. Understand?”
“Y–yes, sir.”
I couldn’t stand lying on this table for another second. Slowly, I started to shift and immediately felt Rook's presence looming over me. My eyes flicked open to find the noseless doctor smiling down at me.
“Ah, good, you’re awake.”
Swallowing, I pulled myself into a sitting position and surveyed my surroundings.
Whether Lauren was a product of my gut instincts or something else, it didn’t matter. She was right. I shouldn’t have come here. The space was dark, poorly ventilated, and the damp air was rank with the stink of death and chemicals.
The white subway tiled walls were lined with steel shelving, holding a myriad of glass containers—most of them filled with wet specimens of all varieties. Severed hands, mason jars of eyeballs, sorted by colors. There were even a few severed heads, bloated by the yellow liquid preserving them.
When my attention landed on a shelf dedicated entirely to reproductive organs, I cringed and forced my attention elsewhere. What was the likelihood of this macabre collection being ethically sourced? It made me sick, knowing the answer.
There were a few small rectangular windows near the basement’s ceiling, but they didn’t bring in much light since the unmowed lawn outside covered most of the glass.
Even down here, there were bars over the windows. If following OSHA wasn’t one of Doctor Rook’s concerns, it made sense that he wouldn’t lend much thought to the fire code.
“Ah, don’t panic, Doctor,” Rook said, likely reading my facial expression. “You just had a little fainting spell. Probably the altitude. The lack of ventilation down here doesn’t help either.”
Behind the noseless doctor was, whom I assumed to be, Fredrick, cowering behind one of the shelves loaded with specimens. He peered through a jar that magnified his yellowed sclera to monstrous proportions.
“Oh, don’t worry about him. That’s just our resident pharmacist.” Rook pivoted, motioning at the cowering man. “Come out, Fredrick.”
A strange little man with a warped spine shuffled out from behind the shelving.
As a medical professional, I’d seen plenty of people with various deformities.
But not like this. The skin around his mouth was covered in scabs and sores that oozed.
His bulging eyes looked like they might pop at any moment, with one so swollen that his eyelid struggled to close with every blink.
His thinning sable hair was so greasy, it stuck to his forehead.
Several medical conditions sprang to mind while I quietly appraised the creature.
What I couldn’t name was the cause of the elaborate network of acid green veins running all over his body.
It couldn’t be chronic venous insufficiency, a condition where blood couldn’t return to the heart due to damaged valves.
Blood would become trapped in his veins, causing them to blacken and bulge.
No, that’s not what this was. These veins were a shade of green so bright they were nearly incandescent, as if he were radioactive.
Fredrick wiped his hand on his stained lab coat before offering it to me. When it was clear I wasn’t going to shake it, he awkwardly stuffed it in his coat pocket, mumbling something indiscernible.
The mystery of this place deepened by the moment. What had happened to this man? He didn’t speak like he was mentally well at all.
I suppressed the urge to shiver as his words played through my head.
Can I have her? She’ll look so pretty all in pieces…
My attention darted back to Rook. “Pharmacist, you say?” I had to have heard that wrong.
Doctor Rook nodded at a steel door on the other end of the room. “Yes. The pharmacy is through that door there. Its main entrance can be accessed by the basement stairwell or the staff elevator.”
“And where are we now?” I swallowed, taking another scan of the dimly lit room. “A laboratory?”
“Something like that, yes. Here is where I do most of my experimentation, research and tinkering. This is also where I produce some of my own concoctions that we prescribe to the patients, hence the close proximity to the pharmacy.”
“Your own concoctions… Like this ‘Treatment’ you were telling me about?”
Pleased that I remembered, Rook beamed at me, offering his hand. This one, I took and hopped to my feet, allowing him to guide me to the other side of his laboratory.
Silence spanned several moments as I tried to process what I was looking at.
It wasn’t odd for hospitals to make their own pharmaceuticals to combat high costs and keep supplies well-stocked. But this setup felt better suited for a mad scientist in a horror flick.
Before me was a chemistry station loaded with all sorts of test tubes and outdated equipment I’d only seen in medical textbooks.
Something bright caught my eye through a locked cabinet, holding what appeared to be several dozen glass vials containing a glowing green substance.
I turned to my boss to see if this was the Treatment, and his prideful expression confirmed it. “I’ve spent years developing this. Years. It’s changed my whole life.”
“And you said it’s a supplement, or a vaccine?”
“That and more. It makes the strong stronger. It has saved lives…”
“And has it taken any?”
The air in the room seemed to grow colder yet as the doctor stiffened. “Only one, in the early testing stages of the drug. But that was years ago. It’s perfectly safe now. You’ll find that it will help you with your transition here at Saint Bartholomew’s.”
It wasn’t until Rook turned the combination lock, opening the cabinet to the glowing solution, that I realized he wanted me to take it.
Just like almost everything else here, he was being too vague with the answers to my questions. “I’m not going to take that if that’s what you’re getting at. I know nothing about it.”
“Well, it’s a requirement for my staff to take it,” he mused with a chuckle, as if he found my objection amusing.
I took a step back, eyes rounding as he brandished a syringe seemingly out of nowhere. Attached was a beast of a needle, fourteen-gauge by my estimation.
He stabbed the needle into the vial’s rubber stopper. Panic burned my throat as I watched the glass vial fill with the ominous substance.
My next move “should” have been to get the fuck out of here and report this.
Too bad it wasn’t that simple.
I needed this job. Without it, I had nothing. Nowhere to stay, no money, just two black marks on my resume and a mountain of debt I’d likely never repay.
“W–What will it do to me?”
“Splendid question, Dr. Beckett. All this shot is going to do is help you adjust to our climate here. Less headaches. Less fainting. No more hallucinations. Your mind will be calmer. You’ll feel stronger. And all this you’ll need, if you’re going to treat the patients here at Saint Bartholomew’s.”
My breath froze in my chest. How did he know about the hallucinations?
In any case, the promise of never getting jumpscared by Lauren again was tempting. Tempting enough to roll the dice on Rook’s mystery solution. Plus, a calmer mind probably meant no more wild dreams.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. There was a mystery there that I needed to uncover, and it started with the black file I’d seen in Rook’s office.
Rook took a step toward me with a glint in his eye that had my mind racing. I glanced behind me to see Fredrick inching closer, as if he intended to grab me from behind and force me to take the shot.
I swallowed, making up my mind fast. “I’ll make a deal with you, Doctor,” I said, keeping my voice firm and steady. I really didn’t have the upper hand here, and I had a sickening feeling they’d make me take the shot no matter what.
Still, I had to maintain some control, somehow.
Steeling my nerves, I stepped closer to Rook with a coy smile. He was attracted to me; it was obvious in the way his eyes lingered. I also had a feeling that Dr. Rook wasn’t exactly a benevolent man.
I could leverage his soft spot for me to my advantage… Perhaps I could finally get answers to the most pressing questions that had gone unanswered, the ones eating me alive from the inside.
“A deal?” Rook’s gray eyebrows rose with intrigue as I approached.
“I’ll be a good girl for you, and I’ll take your injection…” My inflection turned flirty, and I sent him a smile that had the front of his pants swelling with his appreciation for the direction this had taken. “If you assign me as the primary physician for the patient in the black file.”
The air between us buzzed with tension.
Rook’s demeanor instantly shifted as his eyes narrowed. “Why do you care so much about Patient Seventeen?”
“I have something to prove.” I didn’t bother elaborating. “Besides, you said this Treatment will help me be at my best. So why not put that to the test by assigning me Saint Bartholomew's most deranged patient?”
Rook’s jaw flexed as he contemplated my offer.
I was more than tempting him. I was challenging the bastard. It wasn’t the first time I’d manipulated a male superior by using his own ego against him.
Then, just like that, his disposition once again was that of a kind, cheery man. I was starting to think that it was as much a part of his uniform as the lab coat and stethoscope he wore.
“Alright, Dr. Beckett. Have it your way. You may provide care to Patient Seventeen. However, you’ll regret it, mark me.”
My nerves lurched as the doctor came so close that I could see all the way into the hollow cavity where his nose had once been. Given the chance, would Patient Seventeen do something like that to me, too?
Catching where my attention had dropped, Rook leaned closer yet, his hot breath slithering over my skin. “We’ll keep him restrained, but sometimes the devil pulls a Houdini and slips free. If that happens, he’ll do far worse than this—” he tapped his nasal bone “—to someone like you.”
“Someone like me?”
“Yes. A beautiful, educated young woman. He’ll eat you up, given half the chance. Now—” The doctor pressed the syringe’s plunger, forcing a bright bead of fluid to the needle point. “Pull down your trousers, and bend over.”