Chapter Twenty-Two
Mal
"Well, Dr. Rook, what do you think?" My father's heavy hand clasped my shoulder and squeezed hard.
I stared up at the old church my grandfather had bought, turning it into the hospital it is today.
I'd been inside a hundred times. Though today was the first time I'd enter as one of its staff physicians.
When Grandad was alive, he said the imposing bell tower, crosses, and macabre statues would be of comfort to our patients.
I wasn't religious myself, but I always admired the Gothic vibes the Catholic church favored.
And yet, I wouldn't call it comforting. The main tower of Saint Bartholomew's Asylum for the Insane stretched over the shroud of fog that often cloaked its stone facade, a warning to all who passed through its wrought iron gates:
Bend to its will, or break.
It wasn't exactly the philosophy I supported, unlike the line of Rooks that came before me. There were a plethora of other hospitals that would be happy to take me.
Yet, much to my chagrin, I was here. All because I couldn't shake off the part of me that wanted to make my father proud.
"I still think it would be wise to move to a building closer to civilization. It will take all day to get to town. You might like living in the middle of nowhere, but now that I'm finally out of school, I'd like to live a little."
My father's sunny disposition turned cold in an instant.
I'd jokingly called him Two-Face, a character from a comic book.
After he'd struck me, I hadn't called him that since.
Not to his face, but it still rang true.
He could swap personalities without warning; my father one moment and a volatile force of nature the next.
"You won't have time for the stupid shit you used to waste your weekends on at Brown. You could have been valedictorian if it wasn't for those rock concerts and those whorish women they've allowed into your graduate program. When I was a boy—"
"Don't fucking start, Father."
"Mal—"
"Don't call me that. If you insist I join your practice, fine. But refer to me as Dr. Rook now."
"Fine. Then you'll no longer call me Father. You'll refer to me as Dr. Rook as well."
Pulling my cigarette case from my suit jacket, I plucked a roll with my teeth and lit the end with a deep inhale. "Yeah, sure. But you're not injecting your back-shed meds into me."
My father's nose tilted upward—it often did in my presence—and he glared through my smoke. "We'll see about that, Dr. Rook."
"Hi Dr. Rook!" My office door swung open without warning. I nearly dropped the record I was holding. "Bunny, what did I tell you about knocking?"
"I don't remember," she said with a shrug as she strode in. When she saw me at my record player, she bounced excitedly on her heels. "Oooh, yay, music!"
She held up the little stuffed bunny she took with her everywhere—it's where I'd come up with that nickname for her—and started to twirl around the room.
I chuckled as I watched my patient dance with the raggedy toy.
She sang her own rendition of the song, replacing the lyrics with "blue-eyed girl.” She liked to imagine the song was about her.
I always played music before we sat down for our sessions.
It relaxed her. However, music could only do so much for her when, after our hour, the seventeen-year-old had to return to Ward One.
It was co-ed, with no cells for protection.
The men pawed at her in her sleep, and the guards did little to stop it. My father was no help.
He didn't care that his prison, parading as a hospital, was a miserable cesspit of abuse and disease. When I first came to work here, I'd been waiting for us to be shut down. I'd even reported him myself several times.
But the board had little respect for psychiatry.
We were still considered quacks to most of the medical world.
They cared even less for our patients. Even their families turned their backs on them.
One of the most sobering lessons my position at Saint Bart's taught me was that there was big money in operating a place for society to stick its rejects.
Especially the ones they were ashamed of.
When the song ended, I turned the volume down and sat in my chair, gesturing for Bunny to sit across from me.
"How is your hydrotherapy coming with Dr. Rook?" I hated to ask. My father was certain of its success in curing patients of their acute mania, and there was no shaking his conviction.
At the mention of her prescribed ice-bath therapy, she shivered and tucked her Bunny against her chest. "We're not doing that anymore."
The muscles in my shoulders coiled at the sudden shift in her demeanor. "What does he have you doing now?"
"I'm not supposed to talk about it."
"Did he tell you not to tell me?"
She looked out my stained-glass window, tucking her hands beneath her thighs. For several minutes, she didn't answer. I was always patient with her—my asshole father never was, with anyone.
Eventually, taking a big breath, she met my gaze again and nodded.
Her bright blue eyes burned with something I couldn't quite parse, yet it had dread slithering over my skin. "What did he do to you, Bunny? Did he touch you?"
Another nod.
My fingers dug into the sides of my armchair, my grip so tight it would leave marks in the leather. "Tell me."
Bunny had been sexually assaulted before; it was the entire reason she was here. This wasn't the first time we'd discussed this topic, so I knew what to do. "Show me on your bunny where he touched you."
The bitter taste of hatred exploded over my tongue when she pointed between the stuffed toy's legs.
Normally, I was of a calmer disposition. It was the late ‘60s, for Christ’s sake. With no end to the war in sight, this decade had seen enough suffering. When the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” started playing, it was surely unholy serendipity.
There was no sympathy for the devil in this house.
Violence spread through me like poison, and before I realized what I was doing, I was already charging across my office. “Stay here, Bunny.”
“What are you going to do?” I glanced back to see her curled up on the couch with her knees tucked under her chin.
“I’m taking a page from your book. I’m going to punish a bad parent.”