The Lost and the Damned (12 page)

“Flames? Do you mean those five people?” I asked.

This seemed to snap him out of it. “Have you seen them? Are they here?” His head darted left and right, as if monsters were going to spring out of the tiled walls.

“I saw them leaving the hospital,” I said.

He relaxed immediately, slumping on the toilet. “Thank god!”

“Who were they?” I asked.

“Five patients,” he said, “five candidates. Sacrifices in an experim –“ He tensed again and his eyes snapped to mine.

“In an experiment? What type of experiment?” I asked.

“You know,” he said, “I think I shouldn’t say anything more until I talk to my lawyer.”

“Come on! I need to know what happened here. I can’t go through this place with no clue what’s going on.”

“Sorry,” he said, “I’m not saying anything more without my lawyer. Ashborn can rot before he takes me down with him.”

“Ashborn?”

“Dr. Ashborn. Chief Doctor and Administrator of Bellingham Psychiatric Institute.”

“Where is he? I’d like to talk to him.”

He paused for a second, then his words came slowly. “I’m not saying. Until I talk to my lawyer I don’t want to risk saying anything incriminating.”

I grabbed his shoulders, eliciting a frightened expression as he looked into my eyes. “I need to know what happened here!” I said through gritted teeth. “Lives may depend on it. If any die, I’ll have you charged with… with… reckless endangerment.” Okay, so that last part didn’t sound as tough-guy as the rest of it.

“I-I…” he started, before gaining some courage. “I’d like to see your badge.”

I let go of his arms and leaned back. I had no good response to this; quick thinking failed me. “I don’t have it,” I answered. “I lost it. When I was unconscious.”

He looked at me for a long moment before folding his arms. “You’re not a cop, are you?”

 I folded my arms as well. “What if I weren’t?” I decided I needed to work on my cop persona. When I wasn’t using it, people asked me if I was one. When I was trying to use it, they figured out I wasn’t one.

“I could have you arrested for impersonating an officer,” he said venomously.

“I could give a fair amount of information to the cops about you and your connection to what went on here. You ran after what Ashborn was doing in the other building. He was doing illegal experiments and you were in cahoots with him – “

“I would never be in cahoots with that man!”

“And your experiments went wrong and you ran. Maybe you got cold feet about it, but you ran. Something like that. I’m sure I could embellish enough additional information to get you in far more trouble than you could get me.”

“You wouldn’t!” he shouted.

“Look, I’ll be honest with you,” I said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “I don’t really care about you or Dr. Ashborn. I’m sure you all were doing some pretty fucked up shit here, but I don’t care about that right now. I might feel ashamed of the human race once the story airs on TV, but right now I don’t care about it. I need to find one person in this hospital, get them out, and then get a pickup. I need to know enough to make sure I don’t walk into any more pyromaniacs, I don’t fall through any broken floors, and that I don’t get shot.”

“Shot?” he asked, confused.

I leaned back and ran my hand through my hair. “State of emergency. The Army is setup at the front of the hospital, ready to shoot anyone who comes out.”

He turned his head toward the front of the hospital, staring at the tiled wall as if he could see through it to a window on the other side of the building. His face paled as the realization set in. “So those five patients –“

“I think they burned down Sommersfield,” I said matter of factly, though the idea of it still made me sick to my stomach.

“And then the Army came –“

“Yup.”

“And rescue teams –“

“Are not coming as far as I’ve seen,” I said. “Yeah, we’re pretty well fucked.”

He sat there, wide-eyed, his mouth open in shock. “Ashborn, what have you done?” he whispered.

I leaned back on the wall and let him have his time to work though it all. I thought about offering him a cigarette, but I noticed a bunch of fire-alarm triggered sprinklers on the ceiling.

He sat back against the wall and shook his head. “I should have stopped him.”

“Yeah, it sounds like it,” I said. “I also have a bunch of regrets about tonight already, but that’s not going to change things.”

“Who are you, anyway?” he asked. “I mean, besides not being a cop.”

“I’m a detective,” I said.

“Private?”

“Yup.”

“Why are you here?”

“I’ve been asking myself the same thing,” I replied dryly. I thought of white, sandy beaches. “There’s a patient at your hospital that shouldn’t be here. I’m here to get her out.”

“I’m sure most of them would say that they shouldn’t be here if you asked them.”

“True,” I said, “but there’s a third party that’s highly interested in knowing where she is and getting her back safe.”

“Can I ask who that third party is?”

“No.”

“I see,” he said. “Who is she?”

“Katie – Kate Doe, Wing D.”

“Ah, Kate,” he said wistfully.

“Know her?” I asked. Stupid question, he works here.

“Yes, one of my patients.”

Now it was my turn to say Ah. “Anything I should know about her? Is she stabby?”

“Please, have some respect for the state of mental illness! Not all patients are homicidal. Most are just sick, non-functioning members of society. It’s a matter of pathology of their condition.”

“So I’m going with ‘not stabby’ here. What else?”

“I’m not sure how much use to you or your third party she’ll be in her current condition.”

“Why is that?” I asked with genuine interest.

“There’s doctor-patient confidentiality…” He started. I rolled my eyes and made a face. He nodded and continued. “I guess that’s not something that matters at the moment. Who knows if she’s even alive. She might die before you find her. If you find her, know that she’s near catatonic. You can get a conversation out of her now and again, but she’s mostly unaware and you have to lead her wherever you need her to go. She was checked in that way. I haven’t found a way to break her out of it yet.”

“Wait. Hold on.  Let's go back to what you said before that. That’s not the first time you’ve alluded to us dying. The Army is outside, the building is falling apart, and the Five have left the hospital. Why are we so doomed?”

“There’s… There’s other dangers,” he said simply.

“What other dangers?”

His eyes had this far off look, like he was remembering something or doing a math problem in his head. “It might be nothing. Just something I saw in Observation Room Six once. With drugs, it can be controlled. But with those drugs wearing off, it might be an issue again. It has been controlled with lower doses.”

“So how about an explanation for those of us without context? Something not so cryptic.”

“No,” he said, “It’s… It’s probably nothing.”

“Nothing, huh? Somehow I’m not convinced.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.

“Great,” I said, “I’ll be sure to keep my eyes out for the nothing that can kill me.”

He shrugged.

“Kate’s in Wing D, right?”

“Yes, in the female patients ward. Second floor. Room 212. If it’s still there,” he said.

“If it’s still there,” I repeated gloomily. “Care to show me?”

He shook his head vigorously. “No, I’m not leaving this bathroom.”

“Why?”

He looked in the direction of the door for a long moment. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You’re a great help,” I said sarcastically.

“Tell you what,” he said, fumbling with his ID clipped to his coat. “You don’t mention that I know anything about what Dr. Ashborn was doing, and I’ll give you my passcard.” He pulled the card from the clip behind his ID. “This should get you into the patient wings if the power is restored everywhere.”

“And if the power is not restored?”

“Then they’ll just be open,” he said dismissively.

“And you’re not going to need this passcard?”

He shook his head. “I’m not going into the patient wards.”

“Why not?” I asked, intrigued.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Before leaving the Men’s room, I took a moment to use the facilities. I spent another minute splashing water on my face and staring myself in the mirror while the doctor looked on disinterestedly. I pulled my flashlight back out and stopped at the door.

“You sure you wouldn’t rather come with me?” I asked. “There’s strength in numbers.”

“No,” said Merill flatly. “I’m not moving from this room. As far as I’m concerned, this is the safest place in the hospital.”

“Suit yourself,” I said. A second floor Men’s room in a crumbling building wouldn’t be my ideal sanctuary, but it was his risk to take. I clicked on my flashlight and pushed the door open.

The hall was about the same as I left it: dark, uninviting, empty. I heard the door swing shut behind me and the sound of him barring it again. The good doctor wasn’t taking any chances. I’m not sure if I could even talk him into opening it and letting me in again if I wanted.

I started down the hallway. My mind went over what I knew in my head. For all the conversation I had with Dr. Merill, I had few answers and now I had more questions. Something foul had gone on in this hospital, but I pretty much knew that before. I knew it involved Dr. Ashborn and experiments, but I had no clues to what he was actually doing. It probably involved those five monsters. Yet even knowing they left the hospital, Merill refused to leave his bathroom. What else was dangerous here? Patients? Yes, there could be homicidal maniacs here, but Merill was their doctor, surely there was no more risk now than usual. What was he afraid of?

I reached the end of the hallway uneventfully. The last door on the hallway was a stairwell, reminding me of my floor with a big “2”. This stairwell was much bigger than the previous. While the first was just a within-building access stairwell, this one linked the two buildings. I could take stairs down to find doors to the first floor corridors in Wing B or the Main building, or I could take a set of stairs upwards. Since I was on the second floor of the admin building I could go only go up or down.  I climbed that stairs just to the next landing and saw it was another locked and gated roof access. It seemed Wing B could only be entered from the first floor. I guess if you were trying to keep people in, you’d want to limit access. With a cautious reluctance, I opened the door and entered Wing B.

Six

TRANSCRIPT: INTERVIEW ROOM 5. PATIENT 457. ATTENDING PHYSICIAN: DR. MERILL

DOCTOR: Let’s talk about the past.

PATIENT: I don’t want to talk about the past.

DOCTOR: Why not?

PATIENT: That’s where all the pain is.

DOCTOR: So let’s talk about the present then.

PATIENT: Yes?

DOCTOR: What do you think of this hospital?

PATIENT: It’s wrong, very wrong.

DOCTOR: What’s wrong with it?

PATIENT: It’s built with madness, painted with unhappiness, and populated with monsters. Anywhere would be better than here.

The lights were on in B Wing. Banks of fluorescent lights shined down, unbroken, unmarred. The lights revealed white walls and spartan hallways. This place was designed to be as inoffensive as possible, and it pulled that off well. Too well. It was numbing how generic the walls and floor were. I guess if you were planning to keep the mentally disturbed anywhere, you should keep an environment that only the most mentally imbalanced room designer would be agitated by.

Rather than long hallways of offices like the administration building, the entrance of B Wing was taken up by a nurse’s station and a large glass wall. I knew it wasn’t really glass, but that’s what it looked like. Probably some form of high durability clear plastic. Within the glass wall was a door with a pass card reader. There were some black scorch marks on the glass wall, but otherwise it looked unharmed. How had the Five gotten through here? They seemed to have burned their way through as far as I’d seen so far.

To my right was a door, which, according to the map in the stairwell, opened up to a long access hallway which would take me in a straight line through Wing B to where it connected to Wing D. It faced the back of the building, so it would not be facing the Army. I grabbed the door and pulled. Securely locked. I looked for anything to use the keycard on and found nothing. Just a regular key lock. The door looked reinforced, so no chance of busting it down. Just my luck.

Immediately to my left was a lounge. The door was ajar. Just turning my head toward it gave me a whiff of a horrible burnt smell – the kind of smell that does not come from burnt building materials. I had never smelled anything like it, but I knew what the smell was by the shiver in my bones and the nausea in my stomach. I looked toward the nurses' station and saw no nurses. I looked back to the ajar door. It all clicked in my head, as horrible a thought as it was. The lounge was where they must have been when that pyromaniac found them. On the other side of this door was… I reached over and reverently closed the door. Not much I could do for them at the moment.

I walked toward the glass enclosure and saw movement. Near the door, resting against the wall was someone I hadn’t noticed at first. He was wearing a bathrobe and looked dazed. A patient. I froze, arms hovering at my sides, ready for trouble. I still held my flashlight; I knew it would make a good club.

It took him a moment, but he eventually saw me. He broke out in a goofy smile and said, “Hi!” with a wave.

I paused, watching for any other reaction. When I saw none, I said, “Hello,” in a not particularly friendly tone.

He smiled again and then padded across the floor toward me in his slippers. When he was a few paces away, I stepped back, causing him to stop moving. I looked him over. Brown hair, pale skin, light blue bathrobe, white and brown checkered pajamas, brown slippers. I’d guess him in his thirties, maybe forties. Shorter than me, and with his weird looking face, I didn’t think he was a fan with the ladies. His eyes were glazed over and he had a stupid grin on his face. Drugged, I guessed. They must keep him on some pretty heavy prescriptions.