Chapter Seventeen
Tuesday
I left Rook’s office with a chill in my bones that had nothing to do with Saint Bart’s drafty corridors.
There was something deeply wrong with this entire place, and one didn’t have to spend long here to realize that Dr. Malcolm Rook was Saint Bartholomew’s rotten heart.
Keeping Barbara Reed’s file close to my chest, I reached into my coat pocket for my cell phone. I wasn’t sure what I expected. A miracle? Even just one damn bar. I was so far out in the boons neither miracles nor cell service seemed to bother making the trip.
Psychosis—or whatever was happening to me—gripped my mind and doused me in darkness. When I came back to awareness, I was standing at the front reception desk. The lobby was empty, no sign of the employee who’d snubbed me when I first arrived.
A rotary phone, yellowed by time, sat on the counter in front of me. Nine to get out was scratched into the plastic.
Who was I supposed to call? Even if I got an Uber to come out here, could I leave all these poor people alone in Rook’s charge?
Specifically, I didn’t want to leave Patient Seventeen.
He was a crucial piece of the puzzle I was trying to solve. If I left now, all the unanswered questions he’d left me with would haunt me forever. He would haunt me forever.
A shiver rushed down my spine as I picked up the phone and stabbed the worn-out nine key. Holding the receiver to my ear, I waited for the dial tone. Instead, there was a crackle, and then the vague sense someone was listening prickled my nape.
“Hello?”
No answer. Only an unsettling sound broke through the bad connection. Then, breathing.
“Who is this?” I didn’t expect an answer; whoever was on the other line seemed to think they were starring in a schlocky B-rated movie. “This is a hospital line. If this is a prank—”
“The Operator,” a grave-deep timbre answered me, his delayed response making me fall quiet. There weren’t any telephone operators anymore. There hadn’t been for decades.
“Um, I— I need to contact the Department of Health for a wellness check.”
My mind whirled as another sound, fragmented by the static, rumbled in my ear. Dread crawled up my throat when it hit me.
This “operator” was laughing at me.
The laugh barely sounded human. It was like some demonic hyena was on the other end of the line, laughing at a joke I hadn’t told.
I slammed the phone down, gaping at it in bewilderment as I tried to calm my rioting pulse.
My head swiveled toward the main entrance of Saint Bartholomew’s. Unlike other psychiatric hospitals, there was no security. No staff at the door. I could just…leave.
And go where?
There were no other buildings as far as the eye could see. I still couldn’t seem to recall the journey here. Did I have a blackout from knocking back too many of my pills?
Between Lauren’s ghost, the strange dreams I had of my patient before we’d met, the bizarre way everyone here acted, and the hallucinations and side effects of not only my pills, but Rook’s strange Treatment, I started to question if I could trust my own head anymore.
And the longer I stayed here, the worse it seemed to get.
It was like I was alone on the edge of sanity and, any day now, I’d fall.
But I couldn’t leave yet. Saint Bart’s still held too many secrets.
If I go mad chasing answers…
I conjured the image of my dark-haired patient, his heaving breath fogging up the bars of his mask as he stared intensely at me from where he was branded in my mind’s eye.
At least I won’t be alone.